Mama Ruby Read online

  “You leavin’? Why—I can’t believe what I’m hearin’!” Ruby hollered, her eyes opened so wide it looked like they were going to roll out of their sockets. She stood up and faced Othella with her hands on her hips. “You can’t do that! You can’t just run off like that lookin’ for a husband!”

  “You just watch me!” Othella retorted, rising. She placed her hands on her hips and got so close to Ruby’s face, Ruby could smell the homemade wine on her breath. “I’m sick of livin’ the way I been livin’ with my mama. She ain’t never goin’ to change for the better. I’m just fifteen but I feel like I’m fifty, cookin’, cleanin’, and takin’ care of all them brothers and sisters of mine while Mama’s havin’ a good time with her men friends.”

  Ruby’s lips moved, but no words came out. Suddenly, she started gasping for breath so hard that Othella clapped her on her back. “Ruby, you ain’t all the way healed from havin’ that baby. You don’t need to be makin’ yourself upset.” Othella wrapped her arm around Ruby’s shoulder and guided her back down on the steps. Othella eased onto the steps, patting Ruby’s knee.

  “What about me?” Ruby rasped, blinking to hold back her tears.

  “What about you?”

  Ruby gave Othella a desperate look. “What will I do with myself when you leave here?”

  “Ruby, me and you are real good friends. You are the best girlfriend I ever had in my life. But we ain’t joined at the hip; we had to part company sooner or later. I love you to death, but it’s time for me to move on. Now if you want to come with me, that’s fine with me. But I am leavin’ this place.”

  “I can come with you?”

  “It’s all right with me. But you and me both know, Reverend Upshaw and your mama ain’t goin’ to let you run off with me! They don’t even allow you to walk the street here with me! And don’t even think about runnin’ away without tellin’ them. The last thing I want to have to deal with is the law. Knowin’ your papa, he’ll send the Man after us so fast it’d make your head spin clean off your neck.”

  “But if he say I can go with you, I will.”

  Othella gave Ruby a pitiful look and then she shook her head. “What did I just say? Your daddy would never in a million years let you leave town with me.”

  “When are you leavin’?” Ruby asked in a meek voice. She was so terrified of losing her friend that she didn’t know what she was going to do, if and when that happened.

  “I don’t know yet. I got a few dollars saved up, but I need a few more. I figured if I could boost a few more frocks out of that boutique on Saint James Boulevard, I can sell them to get the rest of the money. If so, I think I’ll be leavin’ right after Thanksgivin’.”

  “You ain’t goin’ to stay around to celebrate Christmas with your family?”

  “I don’t think I can wait that long. Mama is gettin’ lazier and crazier by the day, and I am sick of tendin’ to my baby sisters and cleanin’ and cookin’ and dodgin’ Mama’s men friends. I need a break from this life.”

  “I see,” Ruby muttered. She rose without another word and headed home. She crawled back through her bedroom window, crying so hard she could barely see her bed through her tears. Othella’s news had upset her so profoundly, she forgot to say her prayers. She climbed into bed fully clothed and cried herself to sleep. Now she had something else to be depressed about.

  When Ruby’s mother got up to fix breakfast the next morning, Ruby was already in the living room staring at the wall.

  “What you doin’ up so early, Ruby Jean?” Ida Mae asked. “I’m about to fix breakfast. You want grits, rice, or oatmeal? Ham, sausages, or bacon? White bread, rolls, or biscuits?”

  “That’s all right, Mama. I’ll eat somethin’ later,” Ruby said with a weak smile, shaking her head. “I got a lot of things on my mind, so I ain’t got no appetite right now.”

  Reverend Upshaw sauntered into the room. He was still in his bathrobe, his face was unshaven, and his hair resembled a burning bush. “What things you got on your mind, girl?” he asked, a grim look on his face. “You ready to talk about why you been cryin’ so much your eyes is red and swollen, and why you been so down in the dumps lately?”

  Ruby remained silent for at least a whole minute with her eyes looking down at the floor. Her parents stood side by side, a few feet in front of her. When Reverend Upshaw cleared his throat, Ruby looked up and began to talk in a slow, mechanical manner. “Most of my good friends done moved away, so I ain’t hardly got nobody to hang out with.”

  “What about us? What about your family? And Lola and Arlester offered to let you come stay with them at their house for a couple of weeks, if you think that would cheer you up,” Reverend Upshaw said, trying to sound cheerful. “You can spend your whole Christmas vacation from school with them.” He added a smile.

  The thought of living in the same house with Lola and Arlester for two weeks made Ruby cringe. She would rather spend her vacation in a dog house! And she didn’t care who knew it.

  “I wouldn’t be found dead in the same house with Arlester,” Ruby growled, her lips barely moving. There were times when Ruby actually frightened her parents. She was a good girl, they firmly believed that, but she had inherited some personality traits from a few less than holy members of the family, on both sides. She was moody like her mother’s brother Preston in Slidell. She was opinionated like her father’s deceased sister Della. She walked, talked, and sometimes laughed in the same high pitched way that her father’s oldest brother Moses did. He was in prison for life for killing his wife when she attempted to leave him. Moses was so mean and violent, his own mother had encouraged the district attorney to lock him away for life. Ruby was only four years old when Uncle Moses went to prison, but she had still picked up some of his traits. That was what frightened her parents the most.

  “Arlester is a fool,” Ruby added, her lips snapping brutally over each word. “If he don’t stop runnin’ off at the mouth, sayin’ all kinds of stupid stuff to people, somebody is goin’ to hurt him real bad.”

  “Well now. That’s one thing that me and Mother agree with you on. I just hope that you ain’t that person to hurt Arlester, or anybody else, real bad. And don’t you worry about all of them outlandish things that Arlester says about you in front of us. Me and Mother don’t buy none of it. We know you better. Don’t we, Mother?” Reverend Upshaw turned to his wife with a stern look on his face. It was the kind of look that made her agree with him, whether she did or not. She agreed with him this time, and the stern look from him had nothing to do with it.

  “We want you to be happy, Ruby Jean. Now I know we been real strict with you and that’s because you are our baby. We know when you leave home, we are goin’ to have to get used to a completely empty nest, and that ain’t goin’ to be easy for a couple of old birds like us,” Ida Mae said, her voice cracking. “Now we know you want to start courtin’, but what else do you want to do that might help bring you out of them doldrums you been in lately?”

  Ruby swallowed hard. She had already rehearsed what she wanted to say. “Simone’s havin’ a backyard cookout next Friday, and I want to go.” As soon as she’d released the last word, she held her breath. “Uh, I ran into Othella at the store, and she invited me.”

  Ruby’s parents were still standing side by side, still staring at her. Their bodies looked as stiff as pillars of salt, and their faces looked like they’d turned to wood.

  “I know y’all hate Othella, but she’s always been nice to me in school and when I run into her at the store and stuff. And I think I’m old enough now to decide who I want to be friends with.” Ruby surprised herself at how easy she was able to speak her mind on such an unpopular subject in her parents’ house. And even though she was acting and looking bold and confident, inside she was trembling like a leaf. She didn’t know what to expect from her parents. “With everybody else married and out of the house now, I feel like a loose wheel.”

  “What about them Donaldson boys?” Ida Mae asked.


  “I wouldn’t go to a dog fight with one of them Donaldson boys! They don’t even use deodorant!” Ruby hollered. She was surprised to see such a frightened look on both of her parents’ faces. “At the rate I’m goin’, I’m goin’ to be a old maid with not a friend in the world. I’ll grow old and die alone. And I wouldn’t have had no real fun in my life.”

  The room got so quiet, Ruby could hear the small clock ticking on the wall above the couch. It was like everything in the house and outside had stopped. She couldn’t hear the neighbors laughing and talking back and forth like she did almost every other morning. No cars with loud mufflers, like so many in the neighborhood had, were driving down the street. The chickens in the backyard, which could usually be heard clucking all hours of the day, had suddenly stopped. Reverend Upshaw’s lazy old nameless coon dog was usually barking at something or somebody from the back porch, all hours of the day and night. Well, Ruby couldn’t hear a peep out of that mangy creature now. It was like the whole world had come to a complete standstill, and everybody and everything in it had become mute. But that was not the case. Ruby’s mind had tuned everything out, and it remained that way for at least a full minute. As soon as her mother spoke again, all of the sounds inside and outside the house resumed.

  “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

  GETTING 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 fo
rever.”

  “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.