Mama Ruby Read online

  “Then why do you have that hang-dog look on your face?”

  Ruby swallowed hard and looked Maureen in the face, staring at her in a way that made the madam uncomfortable. “Miss Mo’reen, you know any other men that want to pay to be with a virgin?” Ruby asked, speaking in a slow manner, shifting her weight from one foot to the other.

  Maureen was pleased to see that Ruby had put on her apron, something she had to be reminded to do from time to time. She was going to suggest to her that she might also consider wearing a checked scarf on her head like Mazel. Maybe that would help her remember her place.

  Maureen dipped her head and narrowed her eyes as she gazed up at Ruby, wondering what kind of business deal this oafish youngster needed to discuss with her. “Uh ... why?”

  “Because I know now how bad some men want to be with virgins.” Ruby paused, pleased to see a smile forming on the madam’s face.

  Maureen sat up ramrod straight and gave Ruby a critical look. She didn’t know Ruby that well, but just from interacting with her on a limited basis, she knew that Ruby was not retarded. Now she was not so sure. “Well, I got news for you, darlin’. You ain’t a virgin but one time in your life. Unless you know somethin’ the rest of us don’t know.”

  Ruby pressed her lips together to keep from looking too smug. “That’s just it, Miss Mo’reen.” She blinked. “I do... .”

  “I get the feelin’ that you are tryin’ to tell me somethin’. Whatever it is, you better spit it out soon. I don’t have all day.”

  “Miss Mo’reen, I know I can trust you, so I will tell you. See, my sisters told me about a trick with some capsules, the ones I take for my cramps every month, and some chicken blood. A woman can put the capsule, with some of the blood in it, up in her, uh, female area. When the man, uh, pesters her, she bleeds like a virgin.” Ruby paused and rolled her eyes. “One more thing—the woman should probably douche with some alum, too, just so she’ll be tight like a virgin.”

  Maureen looked at Ruby with great interest. She cleared her throat and attempted to look more authoritative. But Ruby could tell from the amused look on the madam’s face that she was definitely intrigued. “My dear, men are as stupid as hell in the bedroom, but not that stupid. Do you think you can fool a man like that?”

  “I fooled Mr. Dobie,” Ruby reported. “My sisters’ husbands thought they were virgins when they married them.”

  “Do you mean to tell me ... you”—Maureen stopped talking and stared at Ruby, looking her up and down like she was inspecting a hog—“you wasn’t no virgin when you got in that bed with Dobie Boyle?”

  “I ain’t been a virgin in a while, Miss Mo’reen. I’ve probably been pestered as many times as one of your girls, and I ain’t even a prostitute. Well, I wasn’t until I done it with that nice, one-eyed Mr. Dobie for money last night.”

  “Where did this chicken blood thing come from? One of them jungle tribal things that the slaves passed on? Like they done with that voodoo?”

  “No, ma’am. It ain’t got nothin’ to do with no jungle people that I know of. My sister told me that the women in Europe started it, and have been doin’ it for years. I am surprised that a sophisticated white woman like you don’t know about it... .”

  Maureen gave Ruby a thoughtful look. “This European woman ain’t never heard of such a thing until just now.” Maureen laughed. “And you think that we can milk this cow?”

  “I don’t see why not. As long as we watch our step, this is one cow that we can milk dry. A lot of men passin’ through town come here once and never come back. We have to do it only with them. Othella knows about it, but I don’t think this is somethin’ the other girls need to know.”

  “That’s for sure. But the thing is, not all of my clients want to spend time with a gal like you, you know.”

  “Miss Mo’reen, you don’t have to keep remindin’ me that I ain’t no beauty queen. I hear that enough from everybody else. But it didn’t bother Mr. Dobie, and I know there must be other men that will overlook the issue, too. And if anybody can steer them men in my direction, it’s you. We can work real good together, me and you. I know my stuff, and if you can round up a few more men that want what Mr. Dobie wanted, we can make a few more dollars.”

  Maureen bit her bottom lip and gave Ruby a guarded look. For about half a minute, the two women just stared at one another. Ruby broke the silence.

  “Now you think on it and let me know, hear?”

  “I’ll think on it, Mama Ruby.” Maureen winked, something she rarely did to anybody other than a client she was sizing up. This was a good sign, a real good sign, Ruby decided.

  “I’ll get your mornin’ coffee for you, Miss Mo’reen,” Ruby said, already opening the door.

  “Good. And bring a cup for yourself so you can keep me company. Things just might get real busy around this house for you, and I want to make sure that you and I are always companionable,” Maureen said, already counting the money in her mind that men would pay to be with a virgin.

  CHAPTER 43

  “YOUR FOLKS WANT TO KNOW HOW COME YOU DON’T never write,” Othella informed Ruby. “Every time I get a letter from my mama, she tells me that your daddy always asks her that.”

  “I will write to my folks when I get a chance,” Ruby answered, annoyed. “I been real busy since we left Shreveport.”

  “That was a few months ago, and you ain’t been no busier than me. I find time to write letters to my mama a couple of times a month.”

  “When you write her the next letter, tell her I said to tell my mama and my daddy that I’m a real big success. Tell ’em that I’m doin’ real good and that I miss them.”

  “How come you can’t do that yourself?”

  “I ain’t got no stamps,” Ruby said with a pout. “Uh, you got some garters I can borrow? They make me feel real sexy.”

  “What happened to them garters I gave you last week when you was entertainin’ that doctor man?”

  “He liked ’em so much, he wanted to take them for a souvenir,” Ruby explained. “Bless his horny heart.”

  She and Othella were in the dreary little room that Ruby shared with Mazel, sitting on the side of the bed. Ruby still didn’t like sharing a room, or a bed, with that beastly, musty, snoring-ass Mazel. She woke up almost every morning with a cramp in her neck from sleeping on her side in that roll-away bed. And she didn’t like the fact that Mazel was still trying to find out her business.

  “What’s wrong with you, woman? I don’t get involved in none of the things that go on in this place that don’t concern me,” Al told Mazel the last time she asked him if he knew anything about Ruby. “Why do you care?”

  “I just like to know what’s goin’ on around here when it involves us.”

  “Us who? If you mean Mama Ruby and Othella, I can tell you now to your face, they done become Miss Mo’reen’s pet monkeys. You don’t want to make neither one of them mad enough so that they complain to that white woman. By the way, Mama Ruby just told me to tell you to run out in the backyard and wring a chicken’s neck. Then bring the carcass in the kitchen and drip the blood into a cup.”

  “Again?” Mazel rolled her eyes.

  Al’s lips curled up at the ends. He scratched his chin. “You ain’t goin’ to ask me why? Not that I know what she always needin’ chicken blood for anyway.”

  “If it’s what I think it is, you don’t want to know why.” Mazel knew about the chicken blood in a capsule trick. She’d done it to make her first and third husbands, both long dead now, think that she was a virgin on her wedding night. And, if the people she associated with outside of Maureen’s place didn’t know that she had given birth to four kids, all grown now, she wouldn’t hesitate to kill a few more chickens for her own use again.

  “Ruby, how many more times do you think you can pull off this virgin trick? You’ve done it eight times now. And is it safe to be puttin’ chicken blood up in your coochie? Chickens is pretty nasty out there cluckin’ around, eatin’ bugs o
ff the ground and stuff.”

  Ruby gave Othella a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it. I ain’t never heard of no chicken causin’ nobody to get a cancer or no other disease. Besides, they can’t be too dangerous if we all eat ’em four to five times a week.”

  “Well, if you ain’t worried about the chicken causin’ you no difficulties, what about them silly horny men?”

  Ruby threw her head back and laughed. “Look, Othella. Them poor devils. They ain’t as dumb as we think, but they are less to worry about than them chickens. Anyway, Miss Mo’reen got it all figured out. We only do it with a first-time, one-time only client.” Ruby gave Othella a curious look. “What I don’t understand is, why would a man want a virgin so bad, when she supposed to be so naive that all she can do is lay there and holler? That don’t sound like much fun to me.”

  “Just lay there and holler? Is that all you have to do?”

  “That’s all so far. Oh, there was that one man from Baton Rouge that wanted me to pee on him, too,” Ruby snickered.

  Othella gasped. “That nasty dog! What’s pee got to do with sex?”

  Ruby shook her head. “Beats me! That just goes to show you how confused men are, generally speaking. That same man asked me to suck on his titties. But you know what the best part of bein’ with him was? His pecker was so stubby, he couldn’t even reach my, you know, what was supposed to be my cherry.”

  “If that’s the case, what’s the point of him wantin’ a virgin? If he can’t even do the deed properly.”

  “That poor thing. He was so embarrassed about that little nub between his legs, he thought a virgin would be the only female that wouldn’t poke fun at him. But do you know what? I told him he was lucky. I told him that havin’ a big dick is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “If he thought you was a virgin, didn’t he ask you how you knew all of that?”

  “I told him that I’d heard so much about how rough men with big dicks could be, and how the girls hated havin’ to be with them, that that was the reason I was still a virgin. Boy did he get bug-eyed and frisky, thinkin’ that I’d been savin’ myself for a man like him.” Ruby gave Othella a wan look. “I am so glad I wasn’t born a boy. They are so dumb and gullible. That’s why I want me a girl baby so bad... .”

  It had been a while since Othella had had to suffer through another one of Ruby’s “I want me a baby girl” conversations. She decided right away not to go there with her end of the conversation.

  “What if that man decides to come back to the house and gets wind of you tryin’ to fool another man into thinkin’ you still got your cherry? This is a small town, you know. Look how fast we ran into that man whose dick you chopped half in two.”

  “Like I said, Miss Mo’reen got this thing worked out, sewed up like a goose-down pillow. She don’t let the same man that’s been here for a virgin come back no more. She ain’t stupid, and she done told you that you better not blab, or you will be right out there where Cat Fish is—wherever that is.”

  “I don’t like this trick that you and Miss Mo’reen keep runnin’ on them men. It don’t feel right. Especially since the ones who come here lookin’ for virgins seem so nice and easy.”

  “You let me and Miss Mo’reen worry about it, hear? We ain’t goin’ to do it too much longer. It is gettin’ kind of risky, I guess.”

  Two days after that conversation, Ruby found herself inserting one of her cramp capsules filled with chicken blood into her vagina for the ninth time.

  “I got a real nice strappin’ brunette,” Maureen told Dr. Charles Ligget, handing him a large hot toddy. He’d been to the house only a few times before, five years ago. As far as Maureen was concerned, he was like a new client. It was safe to use the virgin trick on him. If he came back after that, Maureen would keep Ruby out of sight. Now that his wife had died of breast cancer, after suffering for two long years under his care, Dr. Ligget had a lot of catching up to do. He was not a good-looking man. In fact, he was fiercely ugly with his mulish face, crooked teeth, and droopy eyes. The only saving grace on him was his thick head of silver hair, but he was smart enough to know that it took more than that these days for him to attract a woman. The only reason his wife had married him in the first place twenty years ago was because she had also looked very much like a mule herself. They’d been a good match and he’d been faithful, most of the time. Well, he was lonely now and since his wife had not been able to perform her wifely duties in the bedroom throughout her illness, he was severely horny also. And after closing an important business deal earlier that day, he wanted to reward himself by spending some time with a virgin.

  “As long as she’s patient with me, I’ll be patient with her,” Charles Ligget grinned. “I suspect that girl of Marielle’s ought to be about the right age now? Sookie is her name, right?”

  “Sookie’s thirteen now,” Maureen told Dr. Ligget. “But she’s already been used up. She got her cherry busted last year. But she ain’t workin’ here no more, no how. Believe it or not, the same joker that busted her married her a month later. I don’t know what this world is comin’ to.”

  One of the things that Ruby and Maureen had agreed upon was to keep Ruby’s virgin ruse a secret from the other girls. Othella knew about it, but she knew to keep her mouth shut. Maureen couldn’t risk the other girls running out to buy themselves some capsules, killing her chickens for their blood, and then passing themselves off as virgins. It wouldn’t take long for that information to leak to the wrong person.

  “I see. Well, I know none of your regular girls fit the bill. But if you do know of somebody, say a nearby relation or a gal at one of the other houses in the District that’s free tonight, I’d be much obliged.”

  “Now Dr. Ligget. I know you’ve been out of circulation for a while, but this is America. You know how we do things here when it comes to sportin’. I don’t do business with that damn bitch Jeanette Ledbetter across the street, or most of the other District madams. That ain’t never goin’ to change. You ought to know better.”

  “Suit yourself, darlin’. I was willin’ to pay you a right generous finder’s fee... .”

  Maureen shook her head and looked around. Then she leaned over and whispered into Dr. Ligget’s ear, “You still into dark meat, darlin’? I hope you say you are. If so, you ain’t got to wait till Thanksgivin’ to get a piece.”

  “Lady, my dearly departed wife and I spent the better part of a year, a few years ago, in a place where there was nothin’ but dark meat. And I do mean DARK meat. Senegal. The girls down there run around half naked, with their big asses jigglin’ like hog-head cheese! Mercy me. I had no choice but to mount a few from time to time,” Dr. Ligget answered with a gleam in his eye. “But it was acceptable down there. Why do you ask me that?”

  Maureen looked like she had swallowed three canaries. She was as close to heaven as she would ever get. “It’s acceptable in my place, too. Come let me find my girl Mama Ruby. Now I have to warn you up front, she ain’t no Nefertiti—and what the hell kind of name is that?—or whatever that jungle queen was named. But my Mama Ruby’s got everything else you need.”

  “Mama Ruby?” Dr. Ligget gave Maureen a suspicious look. “How old is this Mama Ruby? From her name, I suspect she may be a bit long in the tooth.”

  “She ain’t but fifteen, and she’s so ripe she’s about to bust open on her own,” Maureen quipped. “And she’s got such a sweet, docile disposition, you’d think she was brain dead.”

  “Oh? Well, for goodness sakes, woman—bring her to me!” Dr. Ligget said, rubbing his hands together like he was about to devour a meal fit for a king.

  CHAPTER 44

  RUBY COULDN’T BELIEVE HOW POPULAR SHE HAD BECOME IN such a short period of time. Had she finally struck gold? It seemed that way to her. Here she was having sex on a regular basis—three virgin hunters in the last week—and she was getting paid! And, unlike the first time when Maureen had given her only ten dollars, Ruby’s cut had multiplied considerabl
y by now. Earning half of the four hundred dollars for each hit was enough of a bonus. And as long as she drank enough beer to dull her senses and make her less inhibited, she was enjoying it. However, the men who patronized Maureen’s brothel were typically not as good in bed as some of the other men, or boys, whom Ruby had been with back home in Shreveport. Othella’s mama Simone had told her last year, “Sex is like gumbo: even when it’s bad, it’s still good.” Ruby had decided that that was a damn lie. Maybe that was the case with men, but it was not the case with women. Bad sex was bad sex, period. It didn’t take long for her to get to the point where she hated sleeping with strange men for money.

  As time went on, she began to hate tricking the men into thinking she was a virgin. It became just another household chore to her, like mopping the kitchen and emptying the spittoons and slop jars. But Ruby continued to do it because she and Othella needed enough money to pack up and move on. She also continued to do it because Maureen kept telling her how “lucky” she was to be so popular.

  Ruby prayed that her luck wouldn’t run out.

  But it did, and in more ways than one.

  She didn’t really know what “bad luck” was until she got involved with a pit bull of a lawyer in a suit and a Stetson hat named Wally Yoakum.

  Even the smartest madams made stupid mistakes. Maureen O’Leary was no exception. She didn’t know when to stop using Ruby for her virgin scam. Even after Ruby had suggested that maybe they were “milking that cow” too much and should consider using another girl for the same purpose, Maureen rejected Ruby’s request.

  “Hog wash! My girls are too well known, and they blab too much. Besides, most men are too stupid for their own good. Anybody who would pay four hundred dollars for some fresh poontang has to be as crazy as a Bessie bug. As long as we are careful, we don’t have a thing to worry about,” Maureen squealed. “Now run out to the backyard yonder. Pick us out a chicken, a real nice plump one with enough blood for at least two dates. With them military men comin’ in left and right, I’m goin’ to line us up some pigeons for the weekend. In the meantime, I got a true gentleman in the parlor right now. He’s here to celebrate his fiftieth birthday in style. Wally Yoakum seems like a decent man, so I expect you to show him a nice time. And don’t you forget what I told you; no matter how good it feels inside you, act real surprised, boo-hoo for just a few minutes. Then when he gets all apologetic and gentle, you start humpin’ like hell. Make him think that he’s a straight-up Romeo and that he’s doin’ such a good job, you can’t control yourself. That way, he will think you are havin’ the time of your life, and all because of him. The damn fool.” Maureen snickered. “The better you make him feel, the bigger the tip he’ll leave.”