Mama Ruby Read online

  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

  “WHAT’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 c
an 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?”

  CHAPTER 27

  “OLD MAN, IF I DIDN’T KNOW NO BETTER, I’D SWEAR somebody done worked some world-beatin’ voodoo on you. How did we get from Ruby Jean barely bein’ allowed to even visit Othella’s house to Ruby fixin’ to drop out of school and run off to New Orleans with her?”

  Of all of the outrageous things that Ida Mae had heard in her lifetime, what Reverend Upshaw had just told her was the most outrageous. It made no sense at all. If voodoo wasn’t responsible, had the man lost his mind? He must have. He was the one who had held on to Ruby Jean with such a short leash. He was the one who had decided that she was too good and virtuous to associate with worldly people like Othella. And he was the one who wanted her to remain a virgin until he found her a suitable husband like he had done for his other six daughters.

  “No, Mother. I ain’t lost my mind. It’s just that ... well ... see ... I been thinkin’,” Reverend Upshaw replied, scratching the side of his thick, mole-covered neck like he usually did when he was nervous or trying to hide something. “Uh, maybe we bein’ too hard on Ruby Jean. She’s goin’ to find out just how wicked life is anyway, sooner or later. We can’t protect her forever. Um, we need to let her live her life the way she wants to now.”

  Ida Mae stared in slack-jawed amazement at her husband, like he’d just sprouted a second nose. She’d known this man for over fifty years, and she thought she knew him as well as she knew her Bible, which she knew from Genesis to Revelations. Apparently she was wrong. She knew her Bible, but she didn’t know her husband. “How come you singin’ this tune tonight? Just last night you was goin’ on and on about how proud you was to be the daddy of a girl as chaste as our Ruby Jean.”

  “I know, I know ...” He forced a laugh that sounded downright sinister. “Heh heh heh.” He stopped laughing when he saw the exasperated look on his wife’s face. “But you know me... .”

  “Do I?”

  “Huh?”

  “Go on. I’m listenin’.”

  “Anyway, you know I’m the kind of man who will admit when I’m wrong. After givin’ it a lot of thought, I realize we been wrong to be so strict with Ruby Jean.”

  “Roebuck Upshaw, have you been drinkin’ more of that elderberry wine than is acceptable? You drunk?”

  “Naw, I ain’t drunk.”

  “You must be. I want to know what done got into you all of a sudden. When you left this house a few hours ago, after you got back out of bed, to go minister what you told me was a member of the community in desperate need of spiritual assistance, you seemed like a sane man. Now you seem stone crazy.”

  It had only been ten minutes since Reverend Upshaw had returned home from his latest “spiritual visit” to someone in need. He had sent Ruby home a few minutes ahead of him, too stunned and embarrassed to walk the short distance with her. He had ordered Ruby to go to her room and go directly to bed as soon as she got home. That was what she had done, part of it at least. She’d gone to her room, but she had not turned in for the night. Instead, she’d stood by her bedroom door with her ear against it until she heard her father come in. As soon as she heard him enter the master bedroom, she crept down the hall to her parents’ room and put her ear against the door.

  “I been thinkin’ on it a lot lately. I ... uh ... I think Ruby Jean is grown, smart enough to take care of herself,” he stated, his voice cracking over each word.

  “Ruby Jean is still a child. She need to finish school so she can get a good job. You done forgot that? By the way, you’ll be sleepin’ on the couch tonight,” Ida Mae said.

  Reverend Upshaw ignored the comment about the couch. “Ruby Jean can go to Harvard and get the best education in the world. But it still might not do her nary bit of good,” he pointed out, his voice now loud and somewhat angry. “She is still just a colored gal. The white folks is goin’ to control almost everything she do once she leaves home and gets out in the real world. You done forgot that? She needs to experience real life—and the sooner the better.”

  Ruby stood up straight. She’d heard all she needed to hear. Her father always got his way when it came to family matters. Yes, he consulted with his wife, and she fussed up a storm, but it never did any good. Ruby let out a triumphant sigh, gently rubbed her chest, and then she returned to her room. After she said her prayers, she crawled into bed, slid up under her goose down comforter, and slept like a baby.

  She dreamed about a life in New Orleans that only a princess could have imagined. She envisioned herself marrying a handsome, well-to-do, faithful man, landing a glamorous job, owning a lavish home, and the most important thing of all: giving birth to a beautiful daughter—and eventually several more—to replace the one she’d lost.

  She dreamed throughout the night and almost every other night after that, until she and Othella boarded that segregated train to New Orleans the first week in December.

  It didn’t take long for Ruby’s dreams to become nightmares. They had only been in New Orleans for one day before Ruby regretted her decision to accompany Othella.

  It was raining and cold the day of their arrival. They were not dressed for rain, and they didn’t even have umbrellas. They didn’t want to spend money on anything they didn’t need, but when Ruby suggested they find a department store within walking distance of the train station where they could at least buy rain scarves or a cheap umbrella, Othella protested. “We don’t need none of that. It ain’t rainin’ that hard.”

  “You ain’t got to worry about your hair nappin’ up from the rain the way I do,” Ruby remarked, looking at Othella’s naturally straight hair. “But if a drop of water gets on mine, I got to use the hot comb again, and I just did that before I left the house.”

  They stood near the train station ticket counter, receiving cold stares from a few white patrons who were not used to seeing black people up close.
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  “Didn’t you bring your hot comb with you?” Othella asked, forcing herself to smile, hoping it would diffuse the situation. “I got plenty of paper bags in my suitcase that we can cover our hair with.”

  Ruby rolled her eyes and set the large brown suitcase that her father had purchased for her on the ground. “Now what would we look like roamin’ around this city with brown paper bags on our heads? These white folks are already lookin’ at us like we crazy.” Ruby immediately said that after a white man running through the station bumped against her, almost knocking her down. He didn’t excuse himself or even bother to look back. “And with all of these uncouth peckerwoods we done run into so far, it would be just like one of them to make a fuss about two colored girls walkin’ around with paper bags on their heads.”

  Before Othella could respond, a grim-faced security guard approached them. He got so close to their faces they could smell his foul, tobacco chewer’s breath. “You gals got a problem?” he asked, folding his arms.

  “Naw, we ain’t got no problem,” Ruby responded. “Why, you got one?”

  “Y’all can’t loiter around here, and that’s my problem,” the guard informed them.

  “We just piled off the train, sir,” Othella said quickly, moving between the guard and Ruby. She didn’t like the angry look on Ruby’s face, or the guard’s.

  The last thing that they needed on their first day in town was a hostile situation with white folks, Othella told herself. She knew from experience that even the toughest, biggest white man thought that all black people were threatening on some level.

  “We ain’t loiterin’,” Ruby said through clenched teeth, intensifying the angry look on her face. They were near the doorway and Ruby could see that the rain was really coming down hard, like God had turned on a faucet, full force. People with raincoats and umbrellas were running down the street, wading through puddles that looked like small ponds. “We was just waitin’ for it to stop rainin’.”