The Book of Ruth

by Jane Hamilton

  Here was something she could really be a star at, being an old grandma. It isn’t as hard as being a mother because you don’t have to be responsible. You simply watch someone else doing most of the work, and you give them suggestions, tell them what they’re doing wrong. May was sure Justy smiled at her first, but she didn’t know what she was talking about. I know for a fact that he grinned at me about a month before he even gave May the time of day.

  So we went out into the winter evenings and collected eggs, and if time allowed we walked in the woods, all the while thinking about our Justin. We held hands, Ruby smoked a joint, and we told each other our thoughts, mainly, what we wanted our son to be like when he got older. Ruby said with them hunky shoulders he’d make a sensational quarterback. I said maybe Ruby could teach Justy to build houses, do work with his hands. Justy has long tapered fingers, like candlesticks, the shape of May’s before hers got twisted. They look like hands that could build sculptures or bridges. It burned me up that Ruby stopped making birdhouses. He stopped in his tracks when I mentioned the woodwork. It was still a sore spot with him—the way all those months before, May had called him a moron for building birdiehouses. We walked along silently, both of us thinking back to that night-mare when we walked into Hazel’s house and she gave me the snake.

  In the middle of the night, when I was by myself feeding Justin, I had a few new thoughts. My ideas didn’t have anything to do with Jesus and savages, I can tell you that much. It came to me that we were nothing more than two human beings, Justin and I—he wasn’t so much younger than me, and I was helping him along in life, just as somebody else helped me a while back. We were all supposed to be humans helping each other.

  I also realized that we three adults were changing. I couldn’t see how right then, but I knew it was happening. For one thing, it seemed as if Ruby must have wanted to have a son all his life, there in his subconscious brain. He finally saw what it was that could make him happy. He was proud of his family; anyone could see by the way he acted in church. He walked straight, he always wanted to be the one to carry Justy, and he sang out clearly, as if with song he could celebrate our lives together. I had to hand Justy over the minute we were in public because he wanted people to know he was the father. I teased Ruby constantly, about how he was going to spoil his baby rotten. He used to come in from outside shouting, “Hey, Justy, look at this!” Justy’s only about twelve weeks old and Ruby’s showing him a warty toad or a robin’s egg. With a baby you have to look at the world as if someone has just given you a pair of eyes for the first time.

  When Justy was almost three months old, May said we sure were running low on cash. She was ready for me to get off my high horse and get back to work. She reminded me every day that my time was almost up. I knew we were flat broke. I said, “I’m going back in two short weeks, Ma, it’s in my plan”—but I didn’t ever want to work at Trim ’N Tidy again. I wanted to stay home for the rest of my life and have about ten babies. Here was something I was good at, finally. I was never any good at subjects or sports at school. Besides bowling and dry cleaning, having handsome babies was the job I could do with the hope of success.

  Artie called me a week earlier than he was supposed to and said they needed me because they were all getting the flu, not to mention the fact that I was the best spotter in the city. I didn’t care about being a sensational spotter any more, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. May said we had a dollar fifty in the checking account. I also have the habit of being meek and mild, which is one of the reasons I’m going to inherit the earth, if the Bible is correct. May sat me down at the table and figured it out. We decided we were both going to go part time. Since I made a higher wage than May I worked more than she did. She would put in about fifteen hours. It didn’t bother her to cut back. Artie felt sorry enough for us to give Ruby a job, and Ruby was still the can man every other weekend. At Trim ’N Tidy Ruby waited on people at the counter and wrapped up the clothes in plastic, like May did. They were both finishers. When Ruby does jobs he’s not just wild about he complains a little. I told him he had to support a family now and that fact shut him up, temporarily. We were on a crazy schedule of either coming or going, like bees running off to the hottest flower and then coming back to agitate in the hive. We didn’t ever stay put to catch our breath or gather our wits. But there was always someone at home; if I went to work May and Ruby stayed home, or May, solo; and when May worked it was me, alone or with Ruby. Somehow it came out that Ruby wasn’t home by himself with Justy for more than two hours during the week. If I had to point a finger I’d say May figured it that way, deliberately.

  The truth is I’d get jealous of May. When I’d come home there she always was in the living room walking around with Justy in her arms, and she never handed him over right away. I had to ask her. I had a stone near my heart, a large jagged black rock. It was crushing my organs while I watched May kissing Justy on his cheeks, saying, “Hush-a-bye, hush-a-bye.” I hinted around. I’d say, “I bet it’s time to feed Justy,” and she’d say, “No, it ain’t, I just gave him his formula.”

  I wanted to shout, I hate formula! I’ve got what Justy needs right here in my own breasts.

  I didn’t say anything. I stood sulkily, noticing how her pinched-up mouth was smiling for once. The stone would pierce my heart once and then retreat. She was cooing to Justy so tenderly. So I’d say, as quietly and forcefully as I could, “Ma, let me hold him for a little, and then I’ll give him back to you, OK?”

  Sometimes she said pleasing phrases the way Ruby did, such as “Here’s your mama,” and then I was satisfied for a while.

  We were going along, Ma and Ruby and Justy and me, maintaining life. Ruby didn’t like the smell at Trim ’N Tidy much. He said the plastic made him itch; he said Artie gave him a hard time, telling him to shape up every other minute. I prayed that he wouldn’t get fired; I actually sat down and prayed to Jesus Christ. There’s all those lines in the Bible when Jesus says, “Ask and it shall be given you.” Sometimes a person gets desperate and they’ll try any trick in the book.

  Dee Dee came over every day, without fail. She and May sat in the kitchen drinking gallons of spiked lemonade. Ruby and I stayed in the living room, within earshot of the gossip. We walked Justy around when he was fussy, keeping our eye on the TV shows. Dee Dee always brought me news of Daisy down in Peoria. People kept coming back to the beauty college asking for Daisy since she was the best student in the entire school. Never failed, her wastebasket had the most hair in it at the end of the day. I guessed she must have given up drinking because you’d probably cut hair crooked if you were loaded.

  I missed her eyes with the Martian-green lids, and her laugh—she howled at everything. Nothing ever seemed sad to Daisy. Before the baptism I said to Ruby, “How about making Daisy Justy’s godmother?” and he said, “Sure.”

  “You tell Daisy she’s Justy’s godmother, OK, Dee Dee?” I hollered into the kitchen. She came and collapsed on the sofa. She said she couldn’t imagine Daisy being a god anything, but maybe she was shaping up now.

  “Dee Dee,” I said, “you know your Daisy has a heart of pure gold.”

  “I guess that’s true,” Dee Dee said, cracking up, “that’s why all the men are after her.” We chuckled to ourselves over Daisy and what a nice slut she was.

  Sometimes, in the night, I woke up, scared that Justy was dead. Once I sat straight up in my sleep. My heart was broken loose from its regular spot, making its way along my throat. When I opened my eyes the darkness was thick like marsh honey. I pawed through the night to Justy’s room to make sure he was still breathing. When I got to the door and looked I was so frightened my chilled blood vessels snapped and I felt pins stuck on my face. I stood in the door staring at the huge unnatural shape in there. I couldn’t move my feet. The ogre was making his move to bite off Justin’s head, crunch up the skull with tiny sharp teeth. I almost fell to my knees in prayer. I had no power to scream; there was nothing left but prayer
.

  When I realized it was May I swore under my breath at her, for standing by the crib, for scaring me to the point of religious conviction. She didn’t pay attention. She was hanging over Justy’s crib, looking at him, arranging his covers, and taking his thumb out of his mouth. We didn’t say one word to each other as we looked at him. He was sleeping, twitching his lips with dreaming. I wished, with my fists clenched, that May would sleep through the night. I turned around and felt back through the dark, back to our room. I couldn’t get comfortable. Something didn’t feel right. Perhaps it was the stone traveling through my body, making reservations to stay in my heart, permanently. May was in Justy’s room the whole night, for all I know, whispering, “Say Grandma.”

  Sixteen

  WHEN Ruby and I were sitting on the couch with our Justy I told him about Miss Finch’s books and the islands she went to. They had white sand and calm ocean water untroubled by dangerous creatures. I only told Ruby about the books where people were happy in the end, such as Great Expectations. In the last scene, when Pip and his girl walked out into the night, the evening mist was coming on, and though the two of them had been busted to pieces, they looked out to the stars and they were healed by the prospect of the future. I can see us at that moment, our arms around each other, telling stories, while Justy drooled on my lap.

  There isn’t any way around the bad parts, unless I lie. Our lives haven’t been terrible up until now. I occasionally told myself about how strange I felt, as Justy got older, how I didn’t feel as if there was a person moving around underneath my skin. I had conversations with myself on the subject of some of the events that had taken place in my twenty-one years. After a while, all the monologues ending up nowhere, I stopped my thoughts mid-course and said, “This must be what life is—so strange you can’t believe it—and a person has to go along with it.” I kept saying to myself, “Are you ready for the ride?” I didn’t have a choice in the matter so I held fast, tried to keep my seat.

  After we all went back to work, after we had been carefree for those initial months, our routine didn’t go so smoothly. Ruby and May were home together for the whole day, twice a week. I don’t know what materials scientists put in bombs but it seems as if they wouldn’t need anything more than two personalities who don’t get along so wonderfully. May wouldn’t let Ruby nurture Justy. She had to hold the baby and diaper him and feed him. She didn’t let Ruby be the father he dreamed of being. She sent him down to the basement to put the diapers in the washing machine, like it’s the glamour job of the century. To her way of thinking there were millions of things in the environment that weren’t healthy for a baby such as the TV blaring for one and Ruby not putting enough detergent in the washer According to May, the diapers came out stinking worse than when they went in.

  It was true that Ruby didn’t have the best method for diapering. If Justy wet his pants, he was wet from his waist down, and May being how she is would not let Ruby forget such a travesty. All of a sudden May was an expert on babies—she had fooled us for years. It’s a good thing she’s not here to listen to me because she’d use her four-letter words, and then she’d get on the phone with her best friend and with tears in her voice she would say how rotten her whole family was behaving. If it weren’t so awful, it’d almost be funny, in a crazy way, like sad clowns dancing at a circus.

  In the spring evenings I came in the back door after Artie dropped me off and I stood quietly in the hall, listening to Ruby and May, and watching. I had an adequate view of the living room, more than I wanted to see, as a matter of fact. I could see May feeding the baby, and I could hear Ruby saying it was his baby, and he wanted to feed him now, and May, first looking at Justy, pursing her lips to convey her special love, and then taking time out to glare up at Ruby, would say, “You can’t do nothin’ right, Mr. Can Man—you diaper Justy and he gets a rash up and down his legs. You don’t burp him good and his little stomach aches so terrible.” She laughed at Ruby standing around, shirting from his right foot to his left.

  Justy lay in her arms, in his jammies that were way too big, flapping his arms like the wounded blackbird I tried to save once. He flailed around like those wings of his were always going to be crippled.

  Around about now I always said, “I’m home.”

  Ruby usually came into the kitchen and sat down at the table. He put his head into his hands. I knew May had called him many names throughout the day while they cared for Justy, terms that are more appropriate for barnyard animals and their urges. She couldn’t stand to see Ruby tossing Justy up into the air, especially when she said he drank constantly. As we all knew, she never touched a drop. What made her desperate was the sight of Justy laughing at Ruby’s antics. She was fearful, fearful of losing what she saw as queen mother status.

  I’ve seen other fathers throwing their boys around. It’s something natural they do. Ruby was careful, I know he was. His gymnastics weren’t a major problem. May also despised the dirty animals he brought in to show Justy, and she wasn’t crazy about Ruby’s consuming interest in TV programs. Sitting directly in front of the set he never heard a thing, even if the end of the world was being heralded by sirens. He often didn’t hear Justy crying from his crib upstairs. She said it was lucky Ruby wasn’t home alone with the baby because Justy would be found floating face down in a crib full of his own tears.

  The idea came to me fairly recently that all of May’s griping was born from love. But if something so simple as the love for a child could be the source of our trials I’d say it’s a cruel joke on Ruby and Justy and me. Call May’s predicament love gone haywire, more like it. To confound matters May didn’t know certain rules about human beings. I’ve got some of them figured out and I know for certain that I’ve more to learn. The key lesson is trust: if you trust a person—someone like Ruby or me—usually we do a good job. As I said before, we’re dying to follow directions perfectly, even for the simple tasks, so we can do remarkably well. May’s main point was that since Ruby complained about washing the clothes and taking the garbage out, he didn’t deserve to care for Justy. She must have thought he was no older than fifteen. She acted as if he weren’t a grown man or a father. Perhaps her vision was out of kilter and she couldn’t see the stubble on his face.

  So most often Ruby sat at the kitchen table, his arms around my waist. I stood and he cried into my slacks.

  “I can’t do nothin’ right,” he always said to me. “I’m such a dumb person. I can’t even feed my own baby, he gets stomachaches.”

  I whispered to him, “You have a fine brain, Ruby; don’t call yourself dumb—give yourself some credit.”

  Sometimes I made him a peanut butter sandwich to make him feel a little better. While he ate I marched into the living room and said to May, “Let me have Justy, it’s my turn now,” and of course she had to say, “You’re not holding him right, watch out for his head there.”

  Then Ruby and I took Justy outside and played with him in the sand pile Ruby had made for him. We breathed in and out; we kicked dirt and slapped sand. Ruby dug holes in the mountains and watched them collapse. While we were together outdoors May cooked supper. We could smell the food frying; we could hear her clattering around setting the table. Justy’s favorite entertainment back in June was grasping toys. He loved holding on to common objects and grunting at them. Everything he saw went into his mouth—May was continually yanking things which she thought were far too filthy from his grip. When Ruby and I were alone with the baby I tried to let Ruby be in charge. Yes, there were a few times when I held my breath, when Ruby tossed Justy high over his head, but there weren’t ever any accidents. Ruby knew what he was doing. Justy laughed so hard, so appreciatively. He had a deep belly laugh that sounded like it was coming from an old man who had smoked cigars all his life.

  When May and I were home together with Justy it worked out ideally because I was dead tired half the time. I could take a nap if I wanted to, or do the wash. There were buckets filled with dirty diapers, and
May was happy to watch her grandson while I dragged the pail down the basement stairs. She was literally happy. About every other day I had to think to myself, How would I manage without May? I always wondered how I would cope when I lay down to sleep in the middle of the afternoon and I could hear her playing with Justy. What would we do if May lived in Texas?

  May and I didn’t know the thoughts that we stored deep in our hearts; we didn’t confess our secrets, but we were familiar with each other. Usually I’d forget that she was so bossy. To me she was only being May. It was when Ruby came home that I had to see her through his eyes, and feel how stingy she could get. She reminded me of the mother coons protecting their young. If you stumble upon a nest the mothers look like they’d be glad to chew your body into bite-size pieces. They don’t like anyone tampering with their babies.

  Expert May declared that we should start feeding Justy solid food when he was eight weeks old, despite the doctor telling me it was too early and unnecessary. He had current facts about how real food prematurely fouled up babies’ digestive systems. But May thought she was Mother Earth herself, and she said doctors with their new theories every five minutes didn’t know what they were talking about. She started shoving mashed green beans down Justy’s throat, and chicken liver, and canned peaches. She was going to make sure he had the biggest brain in his class. He spat it up, naturally. He knew he wasn’t ready for her cooking, that he might not ever be ready. Still, I couldn’t figure out how to get May to stop. She was positive Justy needed the extra nutrition. It made me so mad I had to go outside and walk in the woods. I had to observe all the new buds about to burst. The tender young leaves looked like something frail and old, not like something new and vigorous. I had to concentrate on green leaves and flowers to take my mind off certain people and their theories.