“You been sippin’ on elderberry wine
again,
Papa,” Ruby accused. It was hard for her to believe that the average man still had not figured out how easy it was for lipstick to get on his clothes or face if he got close enough to a woman. “You got some red stains on your shirt collar . . .
again
.” It was a tone of voice that she rarely used with her father, and she only used it when she knew he would not retaliate.
“Oh?” He rubbed both sides of the collar on his shirt, but all that did was spread the lipstick even more. “I had me a few sips with Sister Blake—medicinal purposes as always,” he eagerly offered. He was sweating profusely as he continued to rub the side of his collar, trying with no success to rub off the red stain.
“It’s stained on both sides this time,” Ruby pointed out. “It is red wine, ain’t it?”
“It sure enough is! What else could it be?” Reverend Upshaw folded his arms and gave Ruby a narrow-eyed look, like he was trying to read her mind. “Now you quit bein’ so nosy and get yourself to bed. You got Bible study tomorrow.”
CHAPTER 25
T
HE SATURDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING
,
RUBY PAID OTHELLA
another visit around midnight. She had accepted the fact that she was losing the most important friend she’d ever had in her life. She didn’t know when, or if, she’d ever see her again after Othella moved to New Orleans. That was why it was so important to Ruby to see Othella as much as she could now.
One thing that Ruby liked about seeing Othella in the middle of the night was that she didn’t have to face Ike. He only spoke to Ruby now when he couldn’t avoid her, like on the street, or at the corner store. He had not returned to school either, so she didn’t have to worry about running into him there. The other boys who had used her had also moved on to other girls. And when she ran into them, they didn’t even acknowledge her.
“I got to find me somebody to marry, Othella, and I got to find him real quick, before I go stone crazy,” Ruby told her friend as they sat on footstools in Simone’s living room, drinking beer and nibbling on cold fried chicken wings.
“You ain’t goin’ to have much luck findin’ one around here. All the good ones have already been snatched up. That’s why I’m goin’ to New Orleans for a fresh start.”
“What if you meet somebody to marry here before you leave? Would you stay then?” Ruby asked with a hopeful look on her tortured face.
A sad look crossed Othella’s face and she rubbed Ruby’s shoulder. “Ruby, ain’t no man in his right mind goin’ to marry me knowin’ who my mama is. I need to go someplace where nobody knows me.”
Ruby had almost given up all hope of changing her life when she found a way out that she never would have expected. That Sunday after her last visit with Othella, Othella came to her bedroom window around two in the morning. She got Ruby’s attention by throwing pebbles at her window.
Ruby stumbled out of bed, lit the kerosene lamp on her dresser, and ran to the window. She lifted it with one hand and leaned out. “What’s wrong with you, girl?” she hissed, propping open the window with one hand, holding the coal oil lamp in the other. “What you doin’ out here this time of night? I just left your house a couple of hours ago. Did I forget and leave somethin’ over there?”
“You need to come back to my house with me. You need to come with me right now!” Othella said in a low steady voice, with a mysterious look on her face. She was rarely this serious, so Ruby knew that something big was going on. And whatever it was, it involved Ruby.
Ruby almost peed on herself because she could only think of one thing important enough for Othella to order her out of bed in the middle of the night: somebody had found out about the baby!
“Oh God! Somebody done told on me!” Ruby hollered, almost in tears. “They know I had a baby!”
“This ain’t got nothin’ to do with your baby!”
“Did—did another man die in the bed on top of your mama?”
“I ain’t got time to explain nothin’, and we need to hurry up before it’s too late! And bring that lamp with you!”
Ruby left the window and grabbed the same off-white shift that she had worn to church earlier in the day. It took her less than two minutes to get dressed. She slid out of the window, hitting the ground so hard she fell, dropping the coal oil lamp at Othella’s feet. Othella helped Ruby up with one hand and picked up the lamp with the other.
“What’s goin’ on?” Ruby asked, brushing off her dress.
“Just follow me!” Othella ordered.
Ruby had a hard time keeping up with Othella as she followed her back to her house. “I want you to know right now that I’m only just findin’ this out myself. But I got a feelin’ it’s been goin’ on for a while,” Othella said, sounding even more serious.
“What?”
“Hush up! Come on with me!”
They tiptoed up the steps to the back porch. As soon as they got inside the kitchen, Othella blew out the lamp. There was enough light coming from another lamp filled to the brim with kerosene on the counter in the kitchen for them to see their way down the hall. Once they reached Simone’s room, Othella stopped and gave Ruby a pitiful look. Then she held her breath and reached for the doorknob. Simone and her lover were so involved in what they were doing, they didn’t even hear the loud squeaky door open.
Ruby almost fainted when she saw the bare back of a large, dark-skinned man on top of Simone. He was humping her so hard, the legs on the cheap bed were rising off the hardwood floor, making a click-clacking noise. Ruby turned to Othella with a puzzled look on her face and shrugged. “You dragged me out of bed to come look at your mama fuckin’ one of her customers ?” Ruby whispered. “Why?”
Instead of answering, Othella cleared her throat as loud as she could. But that still didn’t get any attention from the couple in the bed. So Othella stomped her foot so hard and loud, the Bible on the nightstand fell to the floor.
This was the same room where Ruby had given birth a few months ago. This was the
last
place that she expected to see her daddy. Simone, looking over his shoulder, gave Othella and Ruby one of the dirtiest looks she could manage. If looks could kill, Othella and Ruby would have immediately dropped dead on the spot.
“Aw shit,” Simone complained, tapping Reverend Upshaw on the shoulder. He stopped humping, but he took his time turning around and rolling off her. Had he seen the Devil himself, he couldn’t have looked more frightened or busted.
The funny thing about a married man who gets caught in bed with another woman is that the first thing out of his mouth is usually the universal line:
“This ain’t what it looks like—I can explain!”
Those were the exact words that shot out of Reverend Upshaw’s mouth like a cannonball. Still huffing and puffing, he scrambled off the bed, his huge bare feet hitting the floor with a loud thud. He pulled the flowered sheet with him, wrapping it around his waist with both hands. “I DECLARE!” he began with his eyes as wide open as they could get. “Ruby Jean, you—you ain’t got no—no business bein’ up in Simone’s bedroom this time of night!” he stammered. “I DECLARE!”
“I declare, you ain’t neither,” Ruby retorted. She was so stunned, she could barely breathe. For a split second, she thought she was going to have a serious panic attack. She was glad that didn’t happen, and that she managed to remain somewhat composed. “At least not like this.”
“This ain’t what it looks like, Ruby Jean. You know me. This is just business,” Simone said, rising. She swung her freshly shaven legs to the side of the bed and didn’t even bother to hide her nakedness.
“I can see that!” Ruby screeched, blinking and breathing hard. She could not believe her eyes. Either she was having a bad dream or her eyes were playing tricks on her. But she was not dreaming, and her mind was not playing tricks on her. This was as real as it could get. The room even smelled like hot sex. That was one smell that she’d recognize anywhere. She rubbed her eyes as she moved a few steps closer to the bed. She recognized the Bible on the floor, which had fallen off the nightstand. It was the same one that her father took with him when he made his house calls.
“LORD HAVE MERCY!” Reverend Upshaw roared, his eyes bugged out so far, it looked like they were about to roll down the front of his burning face. This was the last thing that he thought he’d ever have to deal with! It was not the first time he’d been unfaithful, and, it wouldn’t be the last. But right now this was the only transgression that required some immediate damage control. “Ruby Jean . . . I . . . Lord Jesus!” he yelled, his voice so hoarse his words almost sounded like a foreign language.
“You better call on the Lord, and I hope you don’t have the nerve to tell him ‘this ain’t what it looks like,’ because He knows better, and so do I,” Ruby snarled.
“Now look . . . this . . . uh.” Reverend Upshaw stood by the bed as stiff as an oak tree. “See, I come over here on spiritual business . . . and . . . but you see, it just happened. Satan has a way of leadin’ us so astray. . . .” The reverend stopped talking and ran his trembling fingers through his wild hair.
“I hope my mama thinks it was just
spiritual business,
and I hope she holds Satan responsible,” Ruby quipped.
“Now look,” he began again, a hand in the air. It was funny how the light from the kerosene lamp on the nightstand seemed to shine more on the gold wedding band on his thick finger than anything else in the room. The sheet slipped, and for the first time in her life, Ruby saw her father’s dick. It was long and thick, like the kind
she
liked herself. She could understand why a woman like Simone would want to hop into bed with him.
And how many other women?
she wondered.
“Your mama ain’t got to know nothin’ about this! She got a weak heart and high blood pressure. This could kill her!”
Ruby had never seen her father look so desperate and frantic before in her life. Seeing him this way now made her want to throw up. She would never look at him the same way again. It was one thing for her to be a hypocrite; she was too young and stupid to know better. But he was a man of God, and he was supposed to be setting an example for her and everybody else. If preachers were this trifling, what did she have to expect from regular men? Those thoughts made her shudder.
Mumbling under his breath, Reverend Upshaw leaned down and picked up the sheet and wrapped it back around his trembling body.
“If you so concerned about Mama’s weak heart and high blood pressure, how come you are over here like this?” Ruby asked, making a sweeping gesture with her hand. “If this is the kind of stuff you been tryin’ to keep me from doin’, why are you here doin’ it?”
Reverend Upshaw blinked and then he snatched a damp napkin off the nightstand and honked into it. “I’ll say this much,” he continued. “Don’t you raise your voice to me, girl! I’m still your daddy, and as long as I’m alive and kickin’, I’m the one in charge! How many times I got to remind you to do as I say, not as I do?”
His last sentence made Othella and Simone snicker.
“You won’t have to worry about me for long, Papa. I am goin’ to see to it!” Ruby taunted, clearing her throat. Amazingly, she grinned and batted her eyelashes.
What she’d just said almost made her father, the strongest man she knew, piss his pants. “What do you mean by that, Ruby Jean?” he asked, pressing his legs together to keep his bladder under control.
“You’ll find out soon enough, Daddy. Othella, can I get a little bit of beer before I leave? If I ever needed a drink, it’s now.” Ruby looked at her daddy, expecting him to comment on her request for beer.
But the disgraced preacher just dropped his head and remained silent. He knew that he had lost the battle with his youngest daughter, and that it was time for him to give in to her demands.
CHAPTER 26
“W
HAT’S THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN
?”
REVEREND UPSHAW
asked Ruby, his teeth clattering and his voice trembling like he’d just waded through an ice-cold puddle of water with his bare feet.
Even though Ruby was angry and upset, she had to hold her breath to keep from snickering. She loved her father and didn’t like to see him in such a state of panic. But under the circumstances, how could she not find some humor in the mess he’d gotten himself into?
“When Othella leaves for New Orleans, I’m goin’ with her?” It was a statement and a question. And it was one that the reverend didn’t respond to because he knew that there was nothing he could say or do now to stop his daughter from leaving home.
“With what for money?” Reverend Upshaw asked, reaching for his pants. The sheet fell to the floor again, but this time he acted like he didn’t care if his daughter and her friend saw him naked. He took his time sliding his legs into his pants. Brushing off his shirt, which had lipstick stains on the collar, he put it on so fast, it was on inside out. “You can’t go nowhere with no money, missy. Now we can talk this, uh, little incident here through. Me and you. You ain’t got to let somethin’ like this make fools out of us both.”
“I’ll get some money from somewhere,” Ruby vowed, looking at Othella. “I can babysit, clean houses, walk dogs, and I’ll dig ditches if I have to. I can even cook pies for that restaurant like Mama.”
“Ruby Jean, you ain’t got to do all of that. I’m pretty sure I got enough for both of us till we get jobs,” Othella said.
Bless her,
Ruby thought. Othella was well on the way to redeeming herself for the mess involving Ruby’s secret baby.
Ruby smiled and moved closer to her friend. “Papa, what you do is your business. I realize that now. But I wouldn’t want this to get to Mama, whether she has a weak heart or high blood pressure or not. After all she done for you and the rest of us, she don’t deserve to be hit with a scandal like this.”
Simone sneered. “I got news for you, girl. Your mama ain’t no fool. If you think she don’t know that the reverend is been suckin’ and fuckin’ women for years, you dumber than you look.”
Ruby looked in her father’s burning face and he promptly dropped his head. She knew that what Simone had just said was true. She didn’t want him to confirm it, but the look on his face did just that. For such a big man, he suddenly looked very small in Ruby’s eyes. And, unfortunately, he also now looked like the Devil. He was a man and like most men, even some of the ones in the Bible, he liked to look at women. She could live with that. But he was the last man on the planet that she expected to cheat on his wife.
And Othella’s mother was the last woman on the planet that Ruby expected her father to cheat with.
If he was low-down and funky enough to fuck a prostitute, what else would he do? she wondered. She refused to allow herself to think about that for too long, because there were so many other things worse than adultery that her father could have been involved in. It broke her heart. The man she thought she knew better than she knew herself was actually a stranger to her. As far as she was concerned, she didn’t know him after all.
To say that Simone had let the cat out of the bag was an understatement. She’d let a lion out of the bag, but she didn’t stop there. “You should have seen him last week! He licked my muff so much, his face looked like a glazed donut by the time he got off me!”
It got worse.
Ruby saw her father do something else for the first time in her life: he slapped Simone’s face so hard snot squirted out of her nose. This was the same man who preached on a regular basis that it was a sin and a shame for a man to strike a woman. Here he was doing just that. “Shet up, woman!” Reverend Upshaw hollered at Simone, raising his hand to slap her again. “Ain’t you done enough damage already?”
Ruby and Othella yelped at the same time.
Simone had to shake her head to regain her composure before she could speak again. “Preacher Man, if you tetch me again, I will bite your balls clean off and hand ’em to you on a fork!” Simone threatened, glaring at Reverend Upshaw. She massaged her cheek where he had hit her. With a mighty grunt, she spat out some blood. It landed on the floor, missing his foot by a couple of inches.
“Ruby, you ready to leave?” Othella asked, her voice shaking.
Ruby was too horrified and stunned to speak or move. She couldn’t believe what she had just witnessed. Her father stood stock still, literally trembling. There was so much sweat on his body, it looked like he had just stepped out of the baptismal pool in his church.
Simone rubbed her face some more and gave Reverend Upshaw another dirty look. “Ruby Jean,” she said, “I’ll tell you like I been tellin’ my girl all of her life. Do whatever you have to do to get what you want. You ain’t no Queen of Sheba, but you got the same thing between your legs that me and Othella got,” Simone said.
“Simone, that’s my daughter you feedin’ all of that worldly slop to! I don’t want her to end up like you and Othella!” Reverend Upshaw yelled, stumbling around on the floor looking for his shoes. He wanted to slap Simone again, but he knew better. He didn’t want to call her bluff and have her bite off his balls. He knew that she was the kind of she-devil who would actually attempt to commit such a vile act of violence.
“That’s your problem, Reverend Hot Stuff,” Othella said. “You didn’t want Ruby to be like me? You didn’t want her to get the Devil in her? Well, I got news for you. Satan done paid Ruby a visit and gone. What would you say if you knew—” Othella caught herself.
The room was so quiet, they could hear the crickets and the other night creatures serenading one another outside Simone’s open window.
“Hush up, Othella! You done said enough!” Simone warned, giving her daughter a murderous look.
“No, I ain’t goin’ to hush up. It’s high time this man knows—” Othella yelled.
“He knows all he needs to know!” Ruby said quickly, cutting Othella off. Despite the developments that had just unfolded in the last few minutes, she still didn’t want her father to know that for years she’d been one of the biggest whores in the neighborhood.
Reverend Upshaw plopped down onto the side of the bed, struggling to put his shoes back on. The whole time that he was doing that, he was shaking his head and mumbling under his breath. When he stood up, he removed his shirt. He put it on right side out, then he raked his fingers through his hair for the fifth or sixth time. He didn’t like the fact that the three females remained silent, watching him as if they were waiting to see if he had any more stupid comments to offer. He didn’t make them wait long.
“Y’all women don’t understand these things!” Reverend Upshaw said, almost losing his breath. He had to pause and cough a few times. “Y’all don’t see things the way we men do,” he admitted.
“I do. And I know my girl do, too,” Simone assured him. “I ain’t worried about her makin’ her way when she gets to New Orleans.”
“Well, I’m worried about my daughter makin’ her way in a Babylon like New Orleans,” Reverend Upshaw yelled.
“Keep your voice down! You want to wake up the rest of them kids of mine so they can know your monkey business, too?” Simone said sharply, rising off the bed. She moved to the window with her long, deflated breasts flapping against the map of stretch marks on her belly. After she’d closed the window, she grabbed a thin gown hanging from a wire hanger on the wall. Turning to Reverend Upshaw, she said, “I know you didn’t finish, but I still expect to get paid. And let me remind you, you ain’t paid your bill all month. . . .”
This piece of information was another major blow to Ruby.
Damn his soul! He was
paying
for a piece of ass! This was way worse than Ruby realized. She didn’t know how to react to the fact that even though her father was still attractive for a man his age, he still had to pay for sex.
Ruby was so hot with anger, it felt like somebody was holding a flame thrower in front of her face. She was severely disappointed in her father, and it hurt. Her stomach was in knots, her head was spinning. Even her eyes hurt. Just looking at him made them burn. She thought about how he balked when she or her mother, or anybody else in the family, asked him for money. “I ain’t got no money to be buyin’ you another frock you don’t need. Money don’t grow on trees, girl,” he’d told her last week. She’d asked him to buy her a frilly pink dress that she’d seen in the window of one of the few downtown boutiques that Othella was too afraid to steal from.
It also saddened Ruby to know that one of the reasons her mother had to pinch pennies was because her daddy had an ongoing sex-on-credit account with Simone to maintain, and probably other women as well.
“Ruby Jean, go on back home. You done seen enough here tonight,” Reverend Upshaw said, finally speaking in a low voice, and looking sincerely remorseful.
“I’ll wait for you,” she told him with a snort.
Reverend Upshaw gasped, and then his jaw dropped. “You ain’t got to wait on me. We done said all we need to say on this thing here.”
“All right, Papa. I’ll see you back at the house in a few minutes.” She paused and swallowed hard. “Unless you got another stop to make . . .” Reverend Upshaw didn’t respond to her sarcastic comment.
Ruby turned to Othella and asked, “When are we leavin’ for New Orleans?”