The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  I wasn’t noticing words people got; I was so dizzy, praying to win. Eventually, as a result of my winning, I would become a TV celebrity. They’d send me to Springfield, Illinois, to win the state championship; then I’d go to Washington, D.C., and beat every boy and girl in the nation. The president would kiss my cheek in person and invite me to live in his house. For lunch we’d have deviled eggs and slabs of ham, and root beers so tall you’d have to stand up to suck at the straw. And there Diane Crawford and Missy Baker would always be, following at my heels like hungry pet slugs, waiting for me to feed them some dirt.

  When I got up the next time I stroked the pin, of course. My word was petroleum. It was a long one. I started out slowly, petting the purple gems. I said, “P———E—T—R—O-L-E-U-M.” One false move and I knew it was over. I sent a flashy smile in the direction of Missy Baker. She had her head down in her lap while her mother handled her black braids and tried to tell her it was all right. It wasn’t all right, not with me up there just about to take the grand prize.

  I pictured fighting it out with Matt. There were only five of us up on stage, if you don’t count Diane Crawford. She was the teacher’s helper. She kept track of the spelling lists and marked off the students who went down. Mrs. Golden was on stage too, giving out words and making up sentences on the spot. I prayed during the next round that I would cream Matt. I told Jesus that I’d believe in him forever and on into eternity if I could only whop Matt, just this once, I’d never ask for anything again, in Jesus’ name I asked it, Amen.

  Just as I had gotten my word, pejorative, the fire alarm went off. I was so dazed I thought it was someone screaming at me. I stood straight with my eyes closed, watching my red flaming lips make the sounds. When David Cazola bumped into me and said, “Get moving,” I scrambled along behind him. I didn’t have the slightest idea how to spell pejorative. I didn’t know I was moving or knocking against people; I was hearing myself say, “Please use it in a sentence.” I tripped at the door on my shoelace and went sliding down on all fours as I thought, P-E-J . . .

  After waiting ten minutes we were allowed back in. Mrs. Golden announced to the parents that having to stand up while the alarm went off would tangle up anyone’s nerves and that I would be awarded a free round. David Cazola immediately went down on unrequited. Matt was up next. He had to spell the dangling word. He didn’t have to stop to think. My turn came and as I stood up I felt for my pin, for the luck; I felt, my hands went spastic, they flittered all over my chest, my neck, my face—my pin wasn’t there any more. My heart instantly shriveled to the size of a raisin. I had to clutch at my throat and croak, “Wait.” I had to look all around me back and forth, and back and forth. I was like beagle dogs when they think they smell a squirrel. They don’t have control over their body parts or their hoarse yelps.

  “Miss Grey, please step up to the center,” I heard Mrs. Golden say. It was my turn. The free round was over. I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks and I felt the hole where the pin used to be. I knew my luck couldn’t last now. I knew I was being punished, for among other things, wishing Missy Baker a scarred-up face.

  Sandwich was my word. It was easy but I stalled for time. I said, “Please use it in a sentence.” I held my throat like my head wasn’t screwed on tight.

  “You have a delicious sandwich for lunch,” Mrs. Golden said. I could hear the parents laughing at me for asking for a sentence.

  “Sandwich.” I tried to pronounce it so carefully. There was no hope for me since my vocal cords had decided to change jobs, see if they liked being ear lobes instead. I whispered the letters “S-A-N-D-W-I-T-C-H.” For one second I thought I had it right. I wasn’t punished after all, but Mrs. Golden said, “I’m sorry, please be seated.”

  When I got to May way up at the top of the bleachers I was crying so hard it was impossible to stop. She took one look at me and said, “Where’s my pin?”

  “I don’t know,” I wailed at her, so that everyone heard me. I was hoping she saw it fall off of me somewhere along the line. The latch on it was too weak for fire alarms and scraping your knees and praying and spelling. I could tell May was dying to get her hands on a dish towel so she could wring it. She picked violently at the knees of the orange slacks she always wore. I couldn’t figure out how the pin had fallen off, plus I went down on sandwich. I wanted her to strangle me right then, get my life over with.

  Afterwards, while everyone cleared out, I sat on the bleacher with my head down and I felt a hand at my back. I didn’t recognize the feel of it and I had to look up. It was Aunt Sid, come forty miles to see me spell. When I saw her I burst into tears all over again.

  “You were wonderful,” she said. If I had had the words I would have told her that lie stank worse than a pig fart.

  I couldn’t speak to her. I heard nothing she said. When she was gone I noticed that there was a bag on my lap. I picked it up and carried it to the car.

  All I wanted was May to be proud of me, to be her smartest daughter, and for Matt to turn a hideous green color at my stardom—and what did I do but go down on the easiest word in the English language and lose May’s favorite jewel, worth millions of dollars. Afterwards I had looked everywhere. I only saw Diane Crawford laughing at me, at the way I crawled around, feeling the floor like I didn’t have sight. Matt was the first alternate. He went down on aforementioned. He must have temporarily slipped a cog. Still, he ended up going to Springfield because the winner busted his collarbone at the last minute. That’s the kind of luck Matt has. On the way home May said one thing. She turned around to me at the stop sign and said, “I’m never going to give you nothin’ valuable again.”

  Later that night I went out to the plateau and stared into the sky, thinking how I didn’t care about the gems. I didn’t care about the cassette recorder Aunt Sid had placed on my lap, including five full tapes. I was going to pin stars on my chest, real ones. I’d walk into the house with a huge shining star on me, it’d blind May, and she would fall to her knees saying how sorry she was.

  One Saturday, a year after the spelling bee, I was over at Miss Finch’s house, even though I didn’t have to visit her on the weekends. There was something about her, with no eyes to see, that made it seem all right to tell her thoughts. We were listening to Emma. I started telling Miss Finch I wished I could be in that book; the people were so funny and even the bad characters weren’t too terrible. We were talking about their faults a little and I told her that compared to May, with the sharp flat back of her hand, and Elmer, who was about as emotional as a corpse, the English people didn’t do anything very terrible. It seemed like having pride was the biggest sin back then, and not knowing yourself through and through. Miss Finch said she wanted to hold my hand so I let her. Hers was all scaly like a fish’s back.

  She said she could tell I had good thoughts—good thoughts, she said—and that I shouldn’t ever let people put me down, that I had to try and rise above any meanness I saw. She asked me if I told my Aunt Sid the things I told her, and I said, “Sure,” even though I was lying. She put her fingers on my face and she said that she knew I was beautiful. I felt something far down inside me the size of a pin point flicker and then glow for a minute.

  Six

  I HAVE to go backwards one more time, to a certain Sunday when the Rev called upon us in church. It was one of the children’s Sundays when Matt and I were small. We had to go up to the pulpit to hear the words from our Rev. I watched his brown shoes tapping the green carpet while he sat there with us discussing how great it is for people to have friends. Better yet, Best Friends. He had a mustache that didn’t amount to anything and places on his cheeks where it looked like he hurt himself shaving. He said that sometimes a good friend surprised a person, with their generosity and kindness. He told us about Lazarus, in the Holy Bible, and how Lazarus was just a bag of dry bones, and then bingo, Jesus comes along and puts him back together: puts skin on him, restores his beard and the creases in his wrists, and makes him breathe. The
Rev said Lazarus was lucky to have such a good friend in Jesus. He mentioned that the Lord could be our friend also. For a while after that story I tried to get in touch with Jesus, but it’s not the easiest thing in the world to do. You have to create him in your mind’s eye, and I already had my mind’s eye cluttered with owls flapping their quiet wings and frogs calling through mud. Still, when I saw bones of sheep out in the pasture, a whole skeleton picked clean, I imagined it all of a sudden covered back up with wool and eyeballs and nostrils, and I ached for the Son of God to come on over and do his magic. That old skeleton was Gloria, one of my favorite sheep. Now I’d have to say that the Lazarus story is about the craziest section in the book.

  I remember when the Rev was talking about friends, how he looked at Matt and me sitting together like we belonged, like we were supposed to be playmates. The Rev didn’t know that my brother lived in an entirely different landscape, that Matt thought he was a handsome oak tree vigorously climbing up toward the light, while May and I were scrawny mulberry bushes.

  By the time we were in high school Matt was fairly handsome, according to the girls in my class—despite his outbreaks of pimples. Matt didn’t seem to mind having acne. He probably thought each pimple was a national treasure. He played tennis on the team. Doubles was his specialty since he cooperated with the other boys. I always thought the coach must have been hard up for players, because whenever I watched the games all Matt did was shift from foot to foot, leaning over, gripping his racket. I didn’t ever see him take a shot. It was always the boy in the back. Nonetheless he was popular, which made May awfully glad. She was thankful he hadn’t gone straight to college from kindergarten, because then she couldn’t have rooted for him at the tennis match. He was the youngest in our class but you couldn’t tell, because of the fancy sports jacket decorated in the school’s blue and white. The jacket had a patch on it that meant he was a hot shot. Most of all, however, everyone raved about his math. Our Matt was a wizard. They drove him to Chicago for contests, and it seemed like he was always taking exams so he could go to college at a great distance from Honey Creek. They sent him to a math summer camp at the University of Chicago. You should have seen May mourning him for two months. She gave up putting her hair in rollers and wearing fresh aprons, plus cooking food a human could stand to eat. The principal at our school, Dr. Heck, was apparently in love with Matt, judging by the number of times he called our home. All of the faculty had plans for my brother.

  Matt came home each day with a calculator attached to his belt, in case he needed to figure out something quickly, I guess, like in an emergency. He went into his room, came out for supper, and then went back to his desk. That’s my brother Matt: we were supposed to be friends; we were supposed to surprise each other with kindness and generosity. When he looked at my face I turned away, because I could see him scrutinizing me for signs of life. I felt shy around him, because I knew his brains were tremendous. Shy isn’t the precise word; I felt smaller and meaner than a bee sting.

  May desperately wanted to be his favorite person. She reminded me of our gray cat who never died; she always kept living, and each year she had scores of kittens. There she was every time you looked, with a juicy mouse in her chops, calling to her brood. The kittens were usually playing with their tails or going crazy watching an ant. They couldn’t have cared less about their mother and her carefully planned meals. May tried to pet Matt sometimes—she’d get up from the supper table and I could see her wanting to touch his hair, and if she did it, gingerly, he shook his head like she’d spilled hot grease on top of him. He mumbled at her with his mouth full of tuna casserole if she asked him, “How was your day?”

  Matt, with the pimples and the jacket, didn’t talk to us, and I was quiet because I didn’t have usable words on my tongue. I saved them all for Miss Finch. May had to do the talking, solo, if she wanted company. She sat at the head of the table in her extra-large fuzzy green sweater that looked like a bloated zucchini consuming her. She told us about everyone in town and what all their children were doing. Matt and I ate without uttering a sound while May went on about Mrs. Brierly’s daughter, Pamela, and her marriage to the banker. The newlyweds went down to a hotel in Rockford with a big old bubbling bathtub in their room. I couldn’t imagine Pamela and that pock-faced banker sitting in a boiling hot tub, coming out with their flanks all red.

  When we were in high school May worked at the dry cleaners. We had our land rented out, although May and I continued to raise chickens. I fed them and shoveled out the henhouse, and May took the eggs on a route. She sold dozens and dozens to Negroes. She didn’t like it if people were a different color. She drove about sixty miles twice a week, taking eggs to feed people she didn’t think should live on the earth. It slayed her, serving the black ladies who had more money than she did. We didn’t have cows or sheep any more because they were too much work without a man around. Matt didn’t do chores. He was busy exploring all the avenues in his head.

  I knew one truth about May back then, without putting words to it. She was so lonesome. You could tell it in every movement she made. She never sat still and when she moved she dragged herself from place to place; she couldn’t bear to think about how empty she was. She sure needed Jesus to come breathe life into her. There were moments, too, when I could see May feeling sorry for me. I would catch her looking over at me, her head tilted, and her eyes a little wider and sadder than usual. How pitiful I was made her even more lonesome. I averted my eyes when she stared my way. I couldn’t stand the hopes she had for me. She told me about the dances and parties at our school. They showed all the queens in the paper, being crowned, and then kissed by their consorts. I knew she wished I was in the paper too. They photographed all the girls in fluffy skirts and fitted tops. If I went to the dances I might be sorely tempted to sink my teeth into their flesh, and then they’d put me in the dog pound.

  One fall after supper, when I was a junior, May asked me if I didn’t want to go to the homecoming dance, and I got scared because it was within her power to make me do it. I felt myself looking like a cow when it’s being led somewhere it doesn’t want to go, bugging out its eyes so the bloodshot whites showed. I could see myself in some dress not fitting my top, and no one asking me to dance, not once the whole night, and all the other girls are queen.

  “I don’t want to go, Ma,” I said, “and no one is gonna ask me either.”

  “That’s what every girl thinks,” she said, mopping up the table. “You wait, someday someone will beg you to go.”

  “Never,” I said under my breath. I didn’t say that I would pass out dead if it ever happened.

  Then May started telling me that when she was my age she loved to dance. She wiggled her fanny and took me into the living room by the wrist; she trotted around moving the TV out of the way and pushing the chairs to the side. She grabbed my grandmother’s handmade broom, the antique May always said was especially valuable because of the walnut handle. She started waltzing with it. She was graceful, and she smiled at the broom awfully moony. I thought I was going to be embarrassed but she looked so idiotic and happy I had to laugh.

  “Teach me to do that, Ma,” I said.

  I wanted to look moony just like her. So she went and turned the radio on and yanked me into position and said, “OK, one two three, one two three.” May told me where to put my feet, how to be light, how to feel my bones dissolve into thin air. We worked at it for a good half hour. When we were taking a breather, she said next we’d learn the fox trot. She said I was getting the hang of dancing. We didn’t see Matt standing in the hall watching us. We were concentrating but giggling also. May didn’t call me a stupid. She told me I must have her feet because I was catching on so quickly. She said, “You’re getting it, now relax your shoulders.” We were floating around the living room skimming the floor. But when May saw the expression on Matt’s face she got flustered. When she saw the jacket that says “Varsity,” she dropped her hands from my waist. He looked at us like we
were a couple of perverts. He didn’t need to say one thing. He shook his head, went into the bathroom, slammed the door. May frowned and turned the radio off. She walked upstairs. I heard her bed rattle as she climbed in it and adjusted the covers over her head.

  Sometimes I dream we are dancing. We’re wearing dresses that look like they’re made out of the heads of Q-tips. Our skin is scrubbed clean to perfection; we don’t have chapped elbows, and I’m on the homecoming court. After the dance we teach each other hobbies: I show her some of the blind tapes, books I think she’d like, my favorites by the author Charles Dickens. And she can make my feet do steps that aren’t invented yet. We don’t even touch the floor. We trade secrets and guard them. Sometimes, I feel that I’m only just ready to start my life. I know what I need to, to live it a hundred times better. As far as I can see, no one is out there waiting for me with a ticket that says “Try it again.” I’ll probably really figure out exactly how to be alive right when I’m gasping for my last breath.

  In those days I used to look around myself, trying to see farther than Honey Creek. I couldn’t see much beyond the cemetery, and I understood that I wasn’t ever going to go anywhere unless something explosive happened, such as a war in our state. I was going to be cooped up in a building with rows and rows of metal lockers and bad light in the halls, and drinking fountains with green gum sitting on the porcelain like toads, for years to come. When I watched the news on TV with May at supper we saw people getting bombed over in Vietnam. They were having battles while we ate our food. I used to imagine Honey Creek going up in flames and smoke and I wondered who would survive and if they would share their food and if the low would still be low or if the bombings would upset the pecking order.