by Cynthia Bond
Then Celia threw herself to the ground. Hard. Using one hand to secure her hat and wig, she thrashed herself against the cracked clay. Ripped at her collar … some, but not enough for impropriety. She tore at the lace along the sleeves and inadvertently bloodied her ankle. When she stood she was covered in dust, her brunette skin ashy with scrapes and dirt. Then she reached into her purse, retrieved the brooch and pinned it close to her heart.
When Celia turned onto the church road she had a mission, a holy war she would not only fight, but win. She practiced the first words she would utter upon entering the gate. Upon opening the door to a seated congregation. Upon the singular note of awe she would conjure from the crowd.
She mouthed the words, “I just had a fight with the Devil—” The rest, Celia knew, would spring forth from her mouth like a deep well gushing in the desert. “I just had a fight with the Devil,” she practiced, “and I needs your help to win.”
Chapter 11
The man’s flag was still waving, but it was filthy as hell. Ruby sat on the bed and ate the third tea cake Ephram had given her that morning. He’d also brought her head cheese, which she had promptly ignored.
Little charges flashed through her body, then settled. She sipped coffee that he had valiantly prepared on the hearth with a small kettle he’d bought from P & K. The bitter smell connected, then exploded. She hadn’t had a cup of coffee in ten years. And she loved coffee, loved it like air. The fire he’d made danced in the warmth of the day, flecks of blue and gold. He was still cleaning. It had been two hours and he had not stopped to sit, that is, if there had been a clean inch to sit on.
When he had first stepped foot in the door Ruby had seen him falter. Stumble over the black of his shoes. Then he had held his handkerchief near his nose, paused and looked about the house. Then he seemed to be methodically planning his attack.
Ruby watched him survey the five solid rooms: the kitchen, its black potbelly stove thick with grease, dried batter, bits of food and a pan holding stagnant water that had long since sprouted maggots. The wood pail was filled with rotted dewberries she had picked and forgotten. The counter, ripe with molded bread and peaches slick brown surrounded by swarming fruit flies. Ruby had not truly seen the house, but now, through Ephram’s eyes the filth and waste echoed.
He pushed the rounded oak table away from something crusted and black and noted the mound of leaves and bark on top. He made a left from the kitchen and walked into an empty living room that not one person had sat in since Neva died. Ruby knew it was unusually clean, as was the back bedroom he disappeared into. They did not belong to her.
Ruby had heard all three girls, Neva, Ruby’s mama, Charlotte and her aunt Girdie, had shared that room, slept some nights back to back like spoons, giggling like a waterfall.
Ephram went through the kitchen into the small bathroom and stumbled out, a bit of fear washing over him. Ruby knew that what he had seen might send him out of the door for good. Instead he stepped out onto the generous porch and walked down to the pump.
Before Neva died, Ruby’d heard that Papa Bell had started fitting the house for running water. He’d bought long iron tubes and loops of wire. He’d gotten as far as the bathroom. Then later, he had sold every last pipe for pennies on the dime.
Papa Bell would have liked him. He did not slip. Ruby had heard that her grandfather had built the steps a little slanted. “To keep out shaky, crooked folks,” he used to say. “Straight-minded folk can walk up any kind of stairs.”
Back when the house was young, Ruby had heard, often visitors ended up in the sugar snap peas just to the right of the porch.
When Ephram came back she watched as he turned left and walked into her room. It was the worst of them all, but it had been built square and spacious. The windows so wide they needed special panes of glass. It had been her Granddaddy’s, and for all the ghosts who had haunted her, Ruby often wished he would come. He never did. Perhaps, Ruby thought, he had no great desire to spend one more second on earth. Maybe he had finally found a bit of rest sitting beside Neva on a star, paying the world no mind.
Once Ephram had taken on the job, he began in earnest.
The supplies were meager but he improvised well and worked steadily. He’d bought a can of Comet at P & K and added that to the few things she’d bought when she first arrived. He’d swept the floors with an old mud-caked broom he’d found out back. He’d held it under the pump until the water ran clean, then made it through two rooms, sweeping all manner of things into a central pile when his sister had come to the door.
Her eyes had bulged, the vein on her temple had leapt and strained. Celia Jennings stood at Ruby’s door spitting like a raving lunatic, screaming down curses in the way of verses. So Ruby had started giggling, and then she started laughing. She hadn’t meant to, but when she peeked through the window and saw the froth collecting in the corner of Celia’s mouth, that Popeye-the-sailor-man hat bobbing on top of that ridiculous zebra wig, Ruby had stuffed her fist against her mouth and laughed until her eyes grew wet. Ephram tried to shush her with his eyes, which made her laugh harder.
Finally Ruby had gone to the door just to mess with the woman’s head. Let her see him choose her. He had. Of course he had.
After his sister left he appeared lost. He had wiped his hand over his face and paused before turning back to Ruby, rubbed his arms and shaken out his legs. He’d seemed beaten for a moment, then he’d apologized for the interruption, and he started cleaning again. She would be ready for him when he finished.
Now he was using Chauncy Rankin’s pail. Chauncy had filled it with water and doused her with it two nights ago in the backyard when he’d come with his brother.
Moss had left the Dove soap whittling into slime in a broken bowl. Ephram was reaching for that now to wash his hands.
In the beginning, when Ruby first moved to Liberty, there had been many visitors and they had been more industrious. It had been harvest time, corn gold and tall, cotton flying and catching on tree tops. The chinaberry tree had sprouted the yellow berries all of the birds loved to pluck. It had been sweet, hot fall when the first—a slanted, tall man with a small keloid scar on his upper lip—had wandered down the road. She was scrubbing the old stain on the porch at the time—the one she’d heard her Auntie Neva had left when she died. When the man asked if she was little Ruby Bell, she’d told him yes. He said he’d known her grandfather, and her mama and aunts, and had seen her go to church on Sundays. He said he’d heard she was back in town, and he’d come by to offer his help. The fact that he was a janitor by profession proved convenient and so he had gotten down on his hands and knees and taken over washing the stained porch. Ruby couldn’t remember his name—Jeffers, Jefferson, and didn’t want to be rude by asking again, but he was polite and said thank you when she offered him a glass of water. He worked at the Colored High School in Jasper, and said he had a special cream cleanser at work that could get that up. He almost bowed when he left. When he came back a week later, Ruby had been growling in a corner, her clothes stripped and balled in the center of the floor. He had led her to her bed and taken her, simply and politely. He’d left the cleanser on the nightstand when he exited.
Word travels fast along the Sabine when it comes to unmarried women who offer horizontal refreshments. Three others came shortly thereafter. A tall, seal-colored man with a pious expression who’d quoted the Bible during and after. A fat, yellow sloth of a man and an old dark grandfather with a creased face. But then the high school boys from Jasper had made their pilgrimage. They came in bunches and they came drunk. Sometimes they came mean. Sometimes they hit, and worse, sometimes they laughed. As time passed, as her skin seemed to sink tight about her bones and she lost every remnant of sanity, fewer came. As the house piled high with human waste and garbage only the diligent remained. Old-timers like Chauncy and Percy wiped here and there before doing their business, always taking her outside. Sometimes under the chinaberry tree with the old crow staring down on t
hem, calling out, blaming. Sometimes they brought a rag, or a box of lye and a jar of bacon grease to mix for soap. Sometimes they brought food.
What she never articulated, not even in adjoining thoughts, like train cars linking for a journey that she never let herself take, was that, of late, she had enjoyed these visits. Had found her own reflection in their routine. There was no other mirror in the house. These men, and their eyes—wide, slitted, beetle black, hazel green, repentant, fearful, angry, joyous, wet with lust—saw her. Not her grace, nor her strength. Not the plow horse of her soul, but they saw something. They held someone. They ached for her legs to part, for her to receive them. For in that instant, before release, the world could have split in two and they would have continued. Pumping steadily. Furrows deepening. Sweat washing. All hypocrisy silenced. And while they might have gone out and found a better, saner, prettier girl with full breasts, in that instant, nothing else on earth would suffice and subsequently Ruby knew the only power she had ever known on earth.
Ruby kept her screen door unhooked most nights.
Ephram had found the white box of lye and was sprinkling it like powdered sugar on the swept floors.
Ruby said softly, “You good at that.”
“Thank you.” He let a smile tickle the edge of his lip.
Ruby looked down at her foot. It had involuntarily started to become the grain of the wood. She felt herself grow too hard, too stiff to move. Small splinters formed a fuzz along the toes. Ruby ardently shook her leg and foot back to flesh. Ephram politely looked down at the floor as Ruby asked, “Your sister teach you?”
“She did as a matter of fact.”
Now a familiar buzz started again, this time in her belly. The food smelled too strong, the cheese too bitter and orange. She couldn’t eat such a bright aching color. She put it down on her soiled mattress. She was still hungry so she bit into the bread, but it caught as she tried to swallow. She coughed it into her hand and rubbed the chewed mass into the mattress.
Ephram noted it, but only said, “How’s that coffee?”
Ruby picked it up and took another sip. The coffee stole down her tongue and secreted into pockets of her mouth before spilling down her throat. It was a friendly dull brown. Ruby chose not to answer his pushy question. Instead she took aim.
“Why you call her Mama?”
“Celia raised me.”
“Wonder how your real Mama would feel about it.”
It was Ephram’s turn to be quiet.
“And what’s all that you were talking about at the door … the ox in a ditch on a Sunday. What’s that all about?”
The buzzing grew louder. Her stomach turned in on itself and Ruby felt the food rising into her throat.
He glanced at her. “It’s a Bible verse, Book of Luke.”
“What’s it mean?”
The food spewed out of her mouth, covering the mattress, her throat raw. Ephram didn’t pause. He took her hand but the sound was louder. His touch hurt her skin. She yanked away and walked to the window.
Ephram took the broom and swept the vomit into a pail. Then went to dump it. He came back in with his jacket wetted.
Ruby was relieved. He was to now take what he’d come for. She knew he would clean her up, wipe her down. The world tilted back to normal. The sound stopped as she imagined Ephram—a lonely, docile man who jacked off behind his “Mama’s” bathroom door and hated his sin later. Ruby just stood there and waited.
He handed her his jacket and said, “Interesting you asked ’bout that ox. It’s what Jesus say to the Pharisee when they give him a hard time ’bout healing a man on the Sabbath. Jesus say, if your ox fall down in a pit, whatever the day, you’d fetch him out. If it’s important enough you got to do it.”
She nearly yanked the jacket from his outstretched hand. “So my house is an ox.”
“I’d say so.”
She began cleaning her face and mouth in a kind of shock.
Ephram dipped the broom into the pail of lye water and commenced to scrubbing the bed. Then with a simple ease, he moved back to the floors.
Ruby watched Ephram cleaning and could feel the old house stretching under his hands, sighing and adjusting itself to better meet his efforts. The broom all but fell apart as he worked, but he mopped on with the handle and the shredded nub until Ruby could see the tan of the floor. Then he tackled the ceiling with a found rag. Small cubbies of dust and web disappeared from the corners, carrying with them the carcasses of forty or fifty house-flies. The stilt legs of spiders flew to the floor.
Ruby watched as Ephram disturbed the coiled shadows of men and women lining the baseboards. The homeless dead had been using her place as a squat for the past nine years, fully grown spirits who were not Ruby’s kin. While they were a nuisance she had let them stay, no reason to refuse their entrance. They insulated the rooms and cushioned the alone.
Ephram began humming as he cleaned. Ruby gasped at his knowing. Perhaps a preacher’s son knew something about haints. Maybe it was the lavender rings around his pupils or a lucky coincidence. Ruby watched as his voice vibrated against their parasitic intrusion. He did not stand up or billow out his chest. He simply hummed and the treble of his voice said, “Get.” They yawned awake and slowly filed out her door.
Fuck, Ruby thought. He was more than she had imagined. This was not the man she had seen approach last night, the frightened man with only a puddle of life in his chest. Something had grown wide in him. It had a tide and a rhythm to it. Fuck. It smelled acrid and bitter, like the mattress. The scent was heavy in the room. Why was this man here? What did he come to take? Ruby’s eyes squinted tight to better see him. What right did he have to flip her home over like a flapjack?
Ruby almost barked, “Hey.”
He looked over.
“Hey.” She smoothed the cut of her voice to better fit her purpose.
He was starting to tackle the potbelly stove. Something sticky and tar black had cooked to the iron years ago.
“You ain’t got to do all that.”
“Yeah, I do.” He kept scrubbing.
“No, you don’t.” Ruby walked up to him. Once she was there, he turned to face her. She was close enough to smell his salt, and placed her hand over his. It burned yet she held it. She put her chin in the crook of his neck and slid her arm around his back. She tiptoed and pressed her groin ever so gently against his. Felt his lungs catch. Would he push into her with temerity? Or would he aim higher? Unzip his pants over the apple of her throat? A jaded anger rose from her gut. She wanted to swallow him whole and when he was properly trained she would release him.
The room creaked as the day brought warmth under her arms, between her legs. Ruby felt Ephram’s hands around her waist. He all but lifted her off him and half carried her to the lone chair in the place. He leaned over her, lips close. She could see the oil that had collected along the curves of his nose. She closed her eyes.
“We already got one ox in the ditch. Let’s leave it at that for now.”
Ruby blinked. In that instant she saw what he saw. Her rib cage loose with skin. The spirit of meanness poking out of her like nails. The corrugated filth of her hair. But more. The broken femur of her soul, reset without a proper splint. She could accept anything on earth from a man except his pity.
“Faggot,” she spat out, and ran from the house.
He caught up to her on the first step of the porch, his hand firm about her wrist.
She tugged against him, “Let me be.” But he did not. He held tight to her arm so she spit out: “You ain’t the only man I know.”
“I know that.”
“You just scared.”
In kindness he said: “Maybe.”
But Ruby knew that that was only partly true. Shame spread under her skin as she smelled the stench that rose from her dress, her scarecrow body. Blood caked in her thumbnail, sludge caught in the creases of her palms. And if that were not all Ruby was suddenly aware of the twisted knot of her features, the madne
ss streaming out of her eyes.
For a moment Ruby grasped at the girl she had been, the one who had arrived in New York, fresh from Neches, scrubbed and eighteen. Haunting eyes, beauty mark painted by God, angled jaw, a tight sway in her hips. A dipping smile that men and women were drawn to, collided with one another to be near, handing over money and liquor and ready drugs. All that and more.
The year was 1950, when the town’s literati adorned themselves in token colorful accessories. Ruby had been a bright bangle on the arm of one of their esteemed patrons. But that came later; first Ruby had had to kneel at the city’s gate and decide what she would sacrifice for admittance. Her culpability had been an easy choice.
Chapter 12
It hadn’t been difficult for Ruby Bell to find the ripe center of the city. Having never fully entered the house of her body, she had no difficulty finding boarders. Mr. Hubert Malloy was the first man to offer her ten dollars and change for sex. She had been sitting in Brewster’s, a small jazz piano bar in the mid–West Twenties, listening to a tepid rendition of “Lush Life.” That morning, Ruby had spent six of her remaining twelve dollars on the brushed satin dress that cinched midnight at her waist. She sipped water with an olive and a wink, until Mr. Hubert Malloy joined her.
He was a fur merchant whose second-floor business peered across Seventh Avenue to Penn Station. Monday through Friday he watched women and men crowd into its belly at dinnertime. Today he had stayed late and watched his mother-in-law, his wife’s son from her first marriage, and his wife Bea, swarm down with them to the A train, Far Rockaway bound. He had entered the bathroom near his office, wetted a ball of toilet paper and wiped himself extra clean below. Then made his way to where Colored girls and White pretended to be equal in the creamy black hollow of a basement bar.
He had slipped his hand onto the small of Ruby’s back and when she hadn’t moved it, even to see who he was, he knew he’d found his girl. He was too round and belted to be hip, but the dark gave him courage. He’d bought her a Manhattan, because she said she’d never had one, and he fucked her two hours later by a threaded Blaster machine, mink pelts half stitched under its needle. Feet swinging inches above discarded black pumps. Bent at the waist, breasts scrunched against the giant spool of thread. Panties school girl white. No stockings. The scent of cured skins beside her white fingernails. He loved the feel of her. Nasty black and tight. The way she arched her young buttocks to allow him. The way her head never turned when he farted low and sticky. How he pulled her then to the floor upon scraps of rabbit and wolf, her face almost in the dustpan. Mouth open on still hide. She had no tits. Her padded bra lay like small lace hills on the ground beside her. It had been his one disappointment. But she was stringy and astringent and felt like a young boy with lipstick smeared down his throat. She was a nigger drag queen with a pussy. So it was easy to fuck her mouth and her anus. She opened to all of it and drank in his wadded semen. He gave her a rabbit stole and a whiskey kiss on her cheek. After. He pressed a folded ten-dollar bill to her palm, wrapped neatly around a “Bea’s Furrier” card. Then he gave her two bits—a quarter, “for fare home,” he explained. “Ten cents to spare.”
