“Will Simone stick around to supervise things at this cookout ?” Ida Mae asked, talking loud enough to be heard over the coon dog barking at the chickens clucking. It pleased Ruby to see her mother’s hard face soften by degrees, right before her eyes.
“Simone can’t supervise herself,” Ruby said quickly.
Ida Mae and the reverend both laughed and nodded in agreement.
“The cookout will be in the daytime, and I won’t stay more than a hour or two,” Ruby added.
Her parents looked from her to one another and shrugged. This was usually a sign of surrender on their part.
“There ain’t goin’ to be no alcohol served at this shindig, is there?” the reverend asked, his face softening, too.
“If there is, I ain’t goin’ to drink none. Honest to God,” Ruby said, “I swear I won’t.”
“I’ll think on it,” Reverend Upshaw told her, turning to leave the room. With a great sigh, his wife followed behind him.
Before Ruby could make it back to her bedroom, Reverend Upshaw yelled from the kitchen, “You can go to that cookout, but you better behave yourself or you will
suffer.
. . .”
Ruby covered her mouth to keep from giggling and it was a good thing she did. Reverend Upshaw appeared in her bedroom doorway within a matter of seconds.
“One more thing,” he said, waving a finger in the air.
Ruby gasped and stood trembling by the side of her bed. “What’s that, Papa?”
“This ain’t no license for you to start runnin’ the streets all hours of the day and night with Othella. Me and Mother still don’t approve of the way that girl dresses or behaves. If you ain’t careful, she could lead you down a real dark path like a Judas goat. However”—he paused and rubbed the side of his sweaty face and neck and then he continued, talking in a loud voice—“I guess you can be
casual
friends with her and still maintain your dignity. When and if she do somethin’ unholy in your presence, you remember the way you was brought up, hear?”
“You and Mama ain’t got nothin’ to worry about. I know right from wrong,” Ruby said.
CHAPTER 24
G
ETTING HER PARENTS’ PERMISSION TO VISIT OTHELLA WAS
a major move forward in Ruby’s life. Her attitude changed immediately. She started to eat right again, she smiled more, and she behaved in a manner that pleased her parents. And, she did not miss climbing in and out of her window to sneak to Othella’s house after her parents had gone to bed.
When Ruby went to Othella’s house now, she didn’t do anything that was hot enough for anybody to report to her parents. And she always returned home when she was supposed to.
She eventually got over Ike, and all of the other boys who now shunned her. She had found a couple of new ones that she liked enough to spend time with, anyway.
However, despite all of these new changes in Ruby’s life, there was still one thing from her past that haunted her on a daily basis: the baby girl that she had given up. There were times when she was so broken up about it that she prayed that she’d get pregnant again with another baby girl to replace the one she’d lost. She didn’t care who fathered her, what she looked like, or even if she came with two heads and hooves. Ruby had convinced herself that she’d never be whole again until she made up for her loss. She prayed that in some way Othella would make up for her role in the deception so she could “forgive” her.
It did Ruby no good to try and find out from Simone the name and location of the asylum where she said she had dropped off her baby. She had tried repeatedly, but no matter how much she begged and pleaded, Simone refused to reveal that information.
Othella had not mentioned moving to New Orleans again since that night she had told Ruby. When school started that September, Othella didn’t show up. Ruby couldn’t catch her at home, and she didn’t respond to any of the messages that Ruby had left with her siblings for her to come see her.
Ruby eventually found out from Othella’s twin, O’Henry, that she was doing domestic work for rich white women in the suburbs to get enough money to leave home with. Not only did Ruby’s depression return, but she panicked. She could not even think rationally.
Without giving it much thought, she told her parents in an “Oh by the way” manner, “I’m goin’ to drop out of school and move to New Orleans with Othella so I can find me a husband, y’all.”
Ruby had seen some expressions on her parents’ faces over the years that would have frightened Satan. But there were no words to describe the looks on their faces this time. Her mother’s eyes looked like they had doubled in size. Her lips looked like they had disappeared. She even looked two shades lighter. The reverend’s nose flared like a bull’s. His mouth dropped open and his lips quivered in a way that made his teeth click.
“What?” Ruby said dumbly. “Why are y’all lookin’ at me like I’m crazy?”
Reverend Upshaw’s lips were still quivering, his teeth still clicking. He and his wife both remained quiet for a few more moments as they continued to stare at Ruby in stunned disbelief.
Finally, Ida Mae spoke. “Ruby Jean Upshaw, how did you get from wantin’ to be friends with Othella and goin’ to her cookouts every now and then, to wantin’ to run off to New Orleans with her to find a husband? What’s got into you now?”
Before Ruby could respond, her father spoke. His voice was so hoarse and deep, it sounded almost like a demonic growl. “Have you lost your mind, girl? YOU AIN’T GOIN’ NO PLACE!”
“No, I ain’t lost my mind! I—” Ruby began, but she was abruptly cut off by her mother.
“You must have! In the first place, you ain’t goin’ to quit school! Any colored kid who can go to school these days at all, and not have to drop out to work, is lucky. That’s one thing. Quittin’ school to run off with a Jezebel like Othella is another thing.”
“Go get a switch, Ruby Jean!” Reverend Upshaw ordered, pointing toward the door. “Get your tail out yonder to that chinaberry tree and break off a switch, because I’m fixin’ to whup you like you stole somethin’!”
Ruby slunk out of the room, but she did not go to the chinaberry tree in the yard to break off a switch for her whupping like she’d done so many times in the past. Instead, she galloped over to Othella’s house to tell her about her parents’ reaction to her desire to quit school and leave home. She knew that she had a serious whupping coming when she got back home, but she didn’t care.
“I ain’t the least bit surprised,” Othella told her as she massaged her mother’s feet.
Simone occupied a wobbly chair at the kitchen table. As usual, there was a large jar of liquor in her hand. She grunted. “Ruby Jean, if I was you, I’d do what I wanted to do. It’s time for you to stand up to your mama and papa. They can’t run your life forever.”
“They keep goin’ on and on about how they want me to make somethin’ out of myself,” Ruby said. “Be a school teacher or a nurse or somethin’, even though that ain’t what I want to do with my life.”
“The bottom line is, they got to turn you loose, sooner or later. Most of the girls around this place leave home around fifteen or sixteen anyway. Ask your mama how old she was when she left home,” Othella said with a smug look. “You ain’t no better than the rest of us. School teacher, nurse—my ass. You wouldn’t like doin’ nothin’ that dull, Ruby. You and me is like birds of a feather. We want to have some fun, huh, Mama?”
“Sure enough,” Simone agreed. “I didn’t let my folks rule my life. Especially after they was the ones that got me on the road to ruin in the first place. I got treated so much better in that asylum than I did at home.”
The mention of the asylum made Ruby give Simone a sharp look. But the look that Simone shot back made Ruby reconsider what she wanted to say. As tense as things were about her desire to leave home, Ruby didn’t want to deal with the subject of Simone leaving her baby in that asylum again right now, too. If that was what she really did. For all Ruby knew, Simone could have given her precious baby to one of her relatives. Or, she could have even sold it to some desperate childless couple. After all, the baby was fair skinned, healthy looking, and attractive. What childless colored couple wouldn’t want such a child? And knowing Simone, she would have sold that baby for the price of a few drinks. Ruby considered the possibility that that was the real reason Simone wouldn’t even tell Ruby the name and location of the asylum.
From the angry look on Simone’s face, Ruby knew not to bring up the subject. When she looked at Othella’s face, the angry look on hers was just as severe as the one on her mother’s.
“I’ll miss you, Ruby,” Othella said. “I’ll send you a letter as soon as I get settled in New Orleans. Maybe you can come visit when you graduate from school . . . on your way to that colored college your folks want you to go to.”
“I’ll probably get a whuppin’ when I get home today,” Ruby sighed, moving toward the door.
And she did. As soon as she entered the living room front door, Reverend Upshaw lit into her with his belt.
For the next few weeks, Ruby moped around the house like a woman in mourning. She went to school in a daze and came home in a daze. Her homework suffered, she suffered. One day she was so distraught, she had a severe panic attack at the dinner table in front of her parents, her sister Lola, and Lola’s busybody husband, Arlester. Not knowing what was really happening, Ruby’s mother assumed she’d choked on a fish bone so Ruby went along with that.
“If you goin’ to eat fried fish without chokin’, you need to eat slower, Ruby Jean,” Ida Mae said, clapping Ruby on the back until she stopped hyperventilating. “I thought you was old enough to know that.”
“Swallow some corn bread. That’ll absorb that fish bone,” Reverend Upshaw advised Ruby before he carefully bit a tail in two, his favorite part on a fish.
“I’m all right,” Ruby sputtered, still having a hard time trying to catch her breath. Once she’d composed herself, she actually smiled.
“Ruby Jean, the more I see you, the more I think you tryin’ to hide somethin’ real serious,” Arlester said. That signifying monkey sat at the table, spilling his red wine all over Ida Mae’s brand new white linen tablecloth. His comments made Ruby so uneasy, her butt started to itch like she’d sat in a bucket of fleas. “You want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to talk about nothin’,” Ruby snapped, giving her brother-in-law a look so sharp he flinched and wiggled in his seat, like his butt was itching, too. “And if you don’t mind, please stop tellin’ me how bad I look, or how you think I’m tryin’ to hide somethin’, ’cause I ain’t. Pass the gravy, please.”
The conversation shifted abruptly to an upcoming church event, but Arlester continued giving Ruby suspicious looks and shaking his triangle-shaped head. The looks that she shot back at him must have been pretty effective because he didn’t mess with her again for the rest of the evening. However, as he was preparing to leave, he took her aside and told her, “Baby girl, if you ever want to confide in me, all you need to do is let me know. I ain’t no expert, like a psychiatrist or preacher, but I been around enough to know a little bit of somethin’ about everything. Maybe I can turn you around.”
“Arlester, I don’t need to be turned around or nothin’ else. Now you have a blessed evenin’,” Ruby told him, closing the front door so fast behind him and Lola that she caught the tail of his jacket in it.
The closer it got to Othella’s departure date, which Othella had estimated to be the week after Thanksgiving, or at least before Christmas, Ruby was almost as robotic as a zombie.
On Thanksgiving Day, when all of her six sisters and their families and a few members of Reverend Upshaw’s congregation showed up for dinner, Ruby remained in her room the whole day. Beulah, knowing how much Ruby liked to eat, and feeling sorry for her, fixed her a huge plate of black-eyed peas, corn bread, rice and gravy, turkey necks so tender the meat was falling off the bones, and yams. She delivered the feast to Ruby on a platter.
When Beulah entered Ruby’s bedroom a few hours later, the plate was still on top of Ruby’s dresser where she’d left it, and none of the food had been eaten.
The day after Thanksgiving, while Ida Mae was cleaning up the mess that her guests had made, Ruby finally stumbled out of her room and into the kitchen.
“Ruby Jean, you need to get a grip on yourself. You know we love you and we only want you to be happy,” Ida Mae said to Ruby in a gentle voice, rubbing her shoulder.
Ruby had been crying off and on for hours. Her eyes were bloodshot and almost swollen shut. “I ain’t never goin’ to be happy in this house,” she sobbed, blinking hard to hold back her tears. “I am goin’ to marry the first man that asks me, so I can get up out of here!” she threatened, pouring herself a large glass of goat’s milk, wishing it was beer.
“You do that and you’ll be back home in no time. You think you miserable now because you’re livin’ by our rules? Just wait until you get married and have to live by your husband’s rules! You’ll come runnin’ back here lickety-split—just like all of your sisters keep threatenin’ to do. Life ain’t easy, girl. Me and your daddy, we are simply tryin’ to keep you from experiencin’ just how evil and ugly the world really is, for as long as we can.” Ida Mae gave Ruby a guarded look as she continued to rub her on the shoulder. “You need to think about somebody other than yourself for a change. Like your daddy, and how hard he works to keep folks around here on the straight and narrow. Do you think he likes spendin’ so many evenin’s a week visitin’ folks so he can minister them, like he’s doin’ right now as we speak? And the poor soul is another one of them wretched worldly women that done lost her way. Do you think your daddy likes that?” Ida Mae didn’t give Ruby time to answer her question. “No. No, he don’t like roamin’ from the house of one wench to another like he’s been doin’ so much of lately. Don’t make his burden no harder than it already is.”
This was not the first time that Ida Mae had complained about Reverend Upshaw making “house calls” and Ruby knew it wouldn’t be the last. For one thing, according to Beulah, and a couple of her other sisters, Ida Mae was uncomfortable with her husband spending so much of his time administering spiritual comfort to single women, especially the ones with bad reputations. It seemed like the younger and prettier those women were, the more spiritual comfort they required.
Ida Mae was in bed by the time her husband returned home. He was surprised to see Ruby still up, sitting in the living room enjoying some of what was left of the huge Thanksgiving feast that Ida Mae had prepared.
“Ruby Jean! What—ain’t you supposed to be in the bed by now?” Reverend Upshaw exclaimed as he stumbled in the front door. He looked flushed and tired. “Uh, are you all right, sugar?”
Ruby nodded. “Daddy, I told Mama that I can’t wait to get married so I can get up out of this house,” she muttered.
“Uh, to be honest with you, I can’t wait for you to get married, too. The sooner you learn about life, the better off we’ll all be,” Reverend Upshaw said, as he stood in the middle of the floor moping sweat off his face with the back of his hand.
Ruby noticed that his shirt was buttoned wrong, and the fly on his pants was open. With a stony expression on her face, she looked her father up and down. She wrestled with her thoughts, because she didn’t want to believe the obvious: either her daddy was fooling around with other women, or he was one hell of a clumsy ox who had bumped against a woman so hard she left lipstick on his collar.