by Cynthia Bond
She had met him at The Pony in the East Village one night and after three dirty martinis apiece, Billy, a pale redhead from Boston, told her he was queer. She told him she was a rich woman’s platonic whore, and the two had become fast friends. They had crashed downtown “tea parties” and smoked weed with artists who had rambled for hours about abstract expressionism versus pop art. Billy had slept with an unnamed famous on-the-road writer who pretended to be straight, and they were both in love, from afar, with the short, pudgy author famous for being gay. At night, when Mrs. Gladdington was out of town, the two had slept together in Ruby’s narrow bed, whispering their dreams, her head on his shoulder.
Ruby breathed the smoke in—hard. She was a wet smoker, filters always damp and shit brown when she crushed them. Maggie was the opposite, even though she inhaled like she was sucking in air after a hard run, the tips were as dry as straw. But everything Maggie did was clean. She made rolling her own cigarettes with one hand an art form. Each one perfectly like the next.
Ruby tapped the ash, her lipstick bright along the end, then brought it back to her mouth. Fucking Maggie, she thought, Fucking Maggie and that goddamn telegram. The fact that she had never wanted to come back home was another matter. It was Maggie’s fault she was there. Maggie yanking her back to Liberty Township, where Black folks waved the heat away with Jesus fans. Everyone was slow. Blood flowed in veins like molasses, sweat stuck to clothes like blessing oil.
Fucking Maggie. How she stood over Ruby before she left for New York, stiff as cast iron but crying in spite of herself. It had been the first time, to hear Maggie tell it, that she had ever cried. Ever. It was, in any case, the first time Ruby had ever seen it. She’d told Maggie she despised the town—what it had taken and how it had used her as a spittoon.
Ruby remembered how Maggie’s own mama Beulah Wilkins had hated Liberty Township. How she used to say, nearly every Sunday when they were children as she cleaned her shotgun, “Town cursed.”
She’d continue, “Not one of them fools had the gumption to incorporate with the county. So Liberty ain’t under America, God, nothing. Hell, place tweren’t never baptize by nobody’s law.” Then she would push the oil rag down her barrel. “Which is why the Devil write it down in his book, got many Liberty men soul on his roster.”
Ruby had known that Maggie would never leave. She’d known that Maggie would take in wash, catch striped bass and catfish at Marion Lake, that she would work like a plow horse, drink herself stupid, get into scuffles at Bloom’s, and cheat at poker. That over time, creases would be smoothed like damp clay into her face, until bit by bit they would dry and harden; that her hair would become dusted gray, cheeks sinking into her teeth, her muscles shrinking to her bones. Ruby knew that one day some fevered complaint would steal through Maggie’s proud body until she could barely lift her head to swallow a spoonful of soup; that she would light cigarettes in spite of the shouts and condemnations of the sisters she had yet living. That those same sisters would crowd around her as she sipped in her last breath; they would be her pallbearers and only mourners. That Maggie would lay in a coffin, under sugar sand and red clay, until her bones blanched and her flesh wormed away. And that she would never leave the piney woods.
They had met at the edge of a cotton field when Ruby was three and Maggie five. Ruby’s grandmother and Maggie’s mama sweated oceans under the Texas sun as the two children sat under a faded umbrella and sucked on sugarcane. Ruby remembered how everyone said that the two of them had locked eyes and hearts in the time it took a star to twinkle. As they grew older, they all but lived in the chinaberry tree. The branches were low enough for a seven-year-old to easily pull herself up. Legs dangling beneath the branches. Maggie would always find her there. Even through the worst of it, when Ruby was caught like a bird under the claws of a great cat, Maggie would climb up and sit beside her. Give her gifts she’d stolen from P & K, and even more boldly, from the five-and-dime in Newton, where they would have beaten her raw. Thimbles and Butterfingers, barrettes and embroidered handkerchiefs, Cracker Jack—Maggie would always let Ruby keep the coveted prize inside the box. They would pull taffy and wrap it around their wrists like soft bracelets before eating it. Maggie would find her clear stones down at Marion Lake, or a bluebird feather. She would bring her Clem Rankin’s peaches, because Ruby didn’t have the stomach for his buckshot. In the evening, before Papa Bell died, they sat under that tree staring into the blueberry sky, listening to his fiddle—the horsehairs thick with resin, and metal strings casting a line of sound that sailed through the trees and caught their hearts. Ruby would then put her head against Maggie’s wide chest, and feel her arms like supple steel around her. There had been a comfort to the way Maggie smelled, like Juicy Fruit and tobacco. When she got older and she began smelling like the wash she was taking in, Ruby saw it crush something inside of her. For Maggie was meant to be the king of something. She was meant to puff out her chest and conquer worlds. But Ruby watched her join the army of Black folks dragging off to Newton, their souls crumpled in their handkerchiefs until suppertime. And while Maggie didn’t droop her head as much as the rest, it still fell a bit to fit through the door of servitude.
But before that, when they were free under the chinaberry, Maggie told Ruby that she wished she had a fine ring to give to her. She said she wished for a steeple someplace that would hold them up high in the eyes of God. But Maggie could not steal a ring good enough for Ruby, for they kept them under glass at the five-and-dime, and the only rings in Liberty were on the hands of some married ladies. So Maggie had wrapped Ruby all the closer, always holding her like she was made of lace and glass, and promised she would get a ring befitting her Ruby Bell. Not long after, she had gone to work, and not long after that, Ruby had lost her.
To leave Maggie, Ruby had had to forget the chinaberry and the blueberry sky, the crickets and cicadas who accompanied Papa Bell. The mockingbird, who came after the fiddle was put away, and sang every birdsong in the forest, the wood thrush’s and the pine warbler’s, even making up his own tunes. Ruby had to push all of that away and turn into that hard clear river stone. She had to turn her tongue into a sharp stick—otherwise she would have stayed. She had to all but kill Maggie to leave her. She had been too young to know she could have kissed her good-bye. She had been too young to know that a person can still hold on to the shared secret of love and walk away. She hadn’t known, until she reached Manhattan, that she had murdered a part of herself as well. That it would be years until that part came to life again.
RUBY FELT her eyes grow wet, a knot form in her throat. She swallowed it down—as she had done the whole of her life.
Then she grew angry. If Maggie had left, even for a trip to Houston, she would not be on that platform. Fuck Maggie. She saw the Red Cap helping a young blond woman with her bags. New passengers had begun to congregate on the platform waiting for the next train, both Negro and White. Fuck Maggie and fuck the Red Cap. Slow-ass Negro. She flicked her dead cigarette onto the tracks and as she lit another, her jaw started aching. Over the past week she had been pressing her molars together so tight that at times the mandible had begun to throb. She wished she had brought her aspirin, or Mrs. Gladdington’s sleeping pills, or both. Ruby could not remember the last time she truly slept. Even before the telegram, many nights a low scraping sound had kept her awake—like a man sanding a wooden floor. Ruby’s hand shook a bit as she took another long puff of her new cigarette.
The train platform was sparse and clear. She had to think. Wait. She pursed her lips and pushed the smoke out of her lungs. Where was the goddamn porter? Suddenly a dark curve between her bags shifted and moved. Ruby ignored it, as she had ignored it for weeks, as she had ignored so many things lately. But the nothing that lived on the periphery of her vision had been the worst of it. The nothing with small chubby fingers that sifted through the weave in her clothes—that sometimes had the outline of pigtails. Ruby hated her. Hated her need, the way she tried to curl on her che
st when she slept. Hated that she knelt beneath the apple bins and ruffled through the bok choy in the fresh-air markets in Chinatown. Ruby saw that the dead nothing was hollow and imagined that was why it had affixed itself to her left femur.
Once anchored, she had trailed behind Ruby like a helium balloon, drifting back down to earth, only to rise again. Ruby had tried to shake her, take sharp turns, or leap into subway cars seconds before they closed, to no avail. Once she had gotten the telegram from Maggie, once she was headed home, the spirit floated above her in Penn Station near the newsstand, fluttering the folded papers with images of the young Buddhist nun guilty of self-immolation. She had settled near a cafeteria radio while Ruby got a regular coffee, and swung her legs in time to “It’s All Right.”
She’d cozied beneath Ruby’s seat on the train, tickling the inside of her knees. Now on the platform she crept out of her hiding place. Ruby refused to look down. In answer the puff of air leapt onto her shoulders. Ruby stood quickly, knocking over two of her bags. Four faces turned her way. A shock of fear shot through her. She sat back on the bag but the little spirit clung tight to her neck. Desperate now, Ruby felt it trying to enter at the base of her skull. She quickly put her hand there, a thin sweat filming her forehead. It then slipped under her arm and was pushing now against her chest, softly at first, then roughly, almost knocking Ruby onto the platform boards. Ruby wanted to run, to scream and kick the cloud of a girl away.
Now, Ruby was trapped on the mountain of pink bags. The day tilted. The horizon slipped blue to prairie brown to cut-outs of green. Too green. An electric spinning green. The black of the tracks, the wash of the ties. Her fingers were on fire. Ruby flicked her orange cigarette to the ground then sucked at the fleshy burns. She smelled the remnant of a cigar burning somewhere, some salty thing like ham, perfume. And sweat. All left behind on the platform. The child was weeping now, so strong that the air crackled. In moments, Ruby knew she would scream. In a few moments she would break through the mirror of convention and the White men would come running, their hands twisting her thin wrists, eyes too red, faces too white. The Black folks would cower as they hauled her to jail or worse. So Ruby prayed. She prayed for the illusion of sameness.
As if in answer, the spirit grew smaller. Younger. A toddler. Younger still until she was six months old, three, until she was a small baby newly born. Ruby recognized her for the first time. Heart-shaped face. Long tan body. Her breath stopped when she saw it was her girl. Her baby who died without a name when Ruby was fourteen.
She was swaddled and tiny, there on the wooden planks, so of course Ruby lifted her into her arms. The child began crying. Bawling so loud, so scared, coughing something out of her lungs, trying to breathe. Ruby held her and rocked back and forth. Her girl. Her lost girl. Ruby tried to hide her from the people at the station, some of them turning to look. Ruby pretended she had a chill and was merely wrapping her arms around her body, but her child could not stop—the sound tearing through Ruby.
There on the platform Ruby bade her to enter. The girl hushed and looked into her eyes. Ruby could hear the echo of her tiny heart and suddenly the baby slipped as if soapy from a bath, and fell hard into Ruby’s chest.
Ruby stumbled back, tripping over her bags. She struggled to right herself and her feet caught the handle of a bag and she fell down again. Then Ruby wept. Huge black tears that plopped onto the sky blue of her dress.
The Red Cap was back, hand on her arm, face crunched like a fist with worry, the Station Master was looming behind him. A small crowd of White folks pushed forward.
The Station Master boomed over her, “What’s the problem here, Jonah?”
Ruby looked around, liquid liner running down her cheek.
The Red Cap, Jonah, knew something. Was it about the child? Had he seen it too?
Jonah threw out a rope. “She just trip and fall is all Suh.”
Ruby took it. “Yes, I’m sorry, I just tripped. Over my bag. I’m so sorry.” Ruby began standing, straightening her dress.
The Station Master took a step forward.
“You drunk, gal?” The White man was less than a foot away.
Ruby knew if she looked at him she would be taken. So she stood, slumped her shoulders, stared at the ground and answered the White man, “No, Sir, No. I’m sorry, so sorry.” She spit out, “I’m on my way home—my cousin is dead.” Ruby cut the truth out of her gut and sliced it up to save herself. “She—her funeral was a month ago. I just found out, Sir. Yesterday, Sir. I’m just—just got upset is all.”
The air was close to boiling. Ruby searched the platform. Her purse lay on its side. She reached down and grabbed the telegram, the one Western Union had tried to deliver to three old addresses before they found her. She pushed it in the Red Cap’s face. He handed it over to the Station Master. He scanned it, lips tight.
Jonah put the nail on the thing. “You know how emotional we be sometime, Suh.”
Nearly satisfied, the Station Master stepped away, throwing the telegram in Ruby’s direction, “One thing I don’t need is another drunk nigger. They been leaving from here all week for that monkey march, I swear to God as drunk as Moses.” His associates chuckled. The rest of the White folk turned on his cue, retreating into cool shade and ice cold soda pops of the Whites Only Waiting Area.
Ruby took a breath. Her hand on Jonah’s arm. “Thank you.”
“No need, Miss. How old was she?”
“Thirty-three.”
“What happened?”
“Cardiac arrest, they said.”
Off of his confounded look, Ruby said, “Heart attack.”
He shook his head, “I’m sorry for you.”
“Thank you. Can you—did you find a car?”
He looked to make sure no one was around. “No. I’m sorry Miss, but you best get yourself out this here station if you gots to walk. They be looking for somebody to lynch since Minister King started this here. My nephew be up there. Young men’s church group. Ain’t never had a drop of liquor in his life.” Then he bustled into the station.
Ruby watched his back walking into the building. Fucking Maggie. Ruby collected her pocketbook and walked and sat on the bench next to a withered plum-colored man chewing a wad of tobacco. A bit of the brown juice dripped onto his chin. He wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. She started crying anew. Her fucking heart. Her fucking weak-ass heart. Ruby pulled out her compact, looked in the mirror. Crazy stared back. Black lines like soot across her face. Crimson lipstick on her teeth, chin. Cheeks. Her perfect hair unpinned and sticking straight up. But it was her eyes that finished the job. Blood red, but more than that, there was a new, empty terror spreading from the center. Her eyes had disappeared and these new dead things had emerged. The old man handed her a handkerchief. She silently thanked him and began to wipe her face with shaking hands.
She had cleaned her face as best as she could when the man said, “I ain’t got a car,” then gave her a wink, “but I got me a truck.”
“I can pay you—”
He smiled, bashful but certain. “Yo’ company be payment enough.”
Ruby’s eyebrows lifted a bit. He looked to be about seventy. The few teeth he had left were dark brown with tobacco. He smelled musty with age. She tried to conjure her smile, the one that used to send the New York boys and girls reeling. She tried, but all she managed was a nod.
The old man caught his breath and began dragging her largest bag across the platform, looking back as if he’d just stumbled upon a free steak dinner.
Her little girl shifted inside of her chest and Ruby was forced to step out of the dark room of her mind. Step out and turn off the projector, the one with an old truck pulled over on an abandoned Texas road. And a not so young girl with her head in an old man’s lap, destroying the girl and corrupting the man, whose biggest temptation in all his years had most likely been hard apple cider in his wife’s basement.
Ruby looked up. Gray, when had the sun become so gray?
; “You’re in luck lady,” Jonah said. “Train’s coming back.”
“What happened?” the old man with her bag asked plaintively.
“Seems the Rail Manager for Southeastern line’s wife done fell asleep and forgot her stop.”
The railway platform filled with people, surprised at the returning train. The Station Master ran to the doorway flagged by a conductor as the train screeched to its stop, and everyone watched as a drowsy-eyed White woman stepped down. Angry. Embarrassed. Flustered.
Jonah said gently, “Colored car in the rear. Get yourself on and quick.” Ruby flew from the bench, and with his help, gathered her bags and climbed into the designated car. She pushed a ten-dollar bill into his hand. He tried to push it away, but Ruby won out. In seconds the train cranked into movement and headed for the heart of the Black folks’ Liberty.
AN HOUR passed before Ephram returned with two bags of groceries. His forehead was wet and there were dark stains under the arms of his shirt.
Ruby stood, bones stiff from sitting, and nodded towards the house. He waved back and walked towards the porch.
Ruby knew what he would find just inside the door. Refuse, soiled clothes, feces in the corners, caked dirt, flies breeding. Ruby had found that nursing and battling ghosts and the hell of memory was hard work, and keeping house while doing it had proved to be impossible. She was anxious to see how Ephram’s flag of hope fared in such desolate waters. She would not raise hers until she was sure.
She felt saliva rising in her mouth like anger so she spit. Not raise her flag? She’d have to make one first. Hope was a dangerous thing, something best squashed before it became contagious. She looked at Ephram inches from her door and felt a low growl in the pit of her stomach. She doubted he would last the day.
Chapter 10
Celia looked at the rooster clock on the kitchen wall. It was now nine on Sunday morning. The In-His-Name Liberty Township chapter of the Holiness Church was beginning service across town and Celia had not put on the navy dress she had ironed the day before. It rested like a grounded flag on the bed in her room—the fabric, napped and pleated just under the bodice, the scooped high collar and sleeves trimmed in duchess lace—starched hard and pointed.
