Mama Ruby Read online

  “Damn!” Othella looked at Ruby in awe. “Damn!” she said again. “That is a good trick—as long as the man don’t already know you’ve been busted by somebody else.”

  “Well, that goes without sayin’. You can’t be fool enough to try and pull a trick like that on a man who already knows your business.”

  “And you sure couldn’t do it if you’ve had a baby, huh? Jesus’s mother was the only woman who was able to pull off a virgin birth.” Othella clucked again.

  “Well, that’s for sure.” Ruby sighed. “I love babies, and I will have me a houseful some day. Papa would beat me to death if I got pregnant before I got married, so I’ll do that douche thing you told me about. I wouldn’t want to end up like your mama. And anyway, how in the world does your mama keep goin’ the way she is? Seven kids and she’s still kind of young. She can’t get a husband, she’s fuckin’ every man that moves, and she ain’t even tryin’ to change her ways.”

  Othella shrugged. “I guess that’s her style. She likes to do it with a lot of men, because she wants to. Even with ones that don’t pay her. And since she ain’t got no pimp makin’ her do it, she must like it! I ain’t never heard her complain about bein’ a whore. Besides, she’s gettin’ paid most of the time.”

  Ruby sniffed. “To tell you the truth, I admire a woman who will do what she wants to do, even fuckin’ for money. It beats cleanin’ toilets for a livin’.”

  “Would you do it?” Othella asked, giving Ruby a guarded look.

  Ruby looked amused. “Who me? I ain’t cleanin’ nobody’s nasty, stinkin’ toilet! Shoot!”

  “I meant, would you go to bed with men for money?”

  Ruby thought about Othella’s words. That thought was taking so long because she really wasn’t sure how she wanted to answer the question. “I hope I never have to stoop that low. But I have to say that it’s better than screwin’ them for free like we do now.”

  “But ain’t you supposed to be saved ... sanctified?”

  “So? I’m still saved and sanctified. Me screwin’ around with all these boys ain’t made me no less a Christian. I’m still the same person that I was before boys got ahold of me, and I still go to church every Sunday. I just have to pray a little harder to cover for all the extra backslidin’ I do now.”

  “I guess that makes good sense,” Othella replied with her head tilted to the side like she was trying to balance her thoughts. “Do you ever worry about gettin’ hurt?”

  “Hurt? Hurt how? It only hurts that first time. We already talked about that.”

  “I mean hurt some other kind of way. Like a jealous boy might beat you up if he finds out you doin’ the big nasty with all of these other boys. Or some jealous girl might jump you for doin’ it with her boyfriend.”

  At this point, Ruby reached inside her bra and removed a switchblade knife with a black and gold handle. It made a loud click when she flicked it open. The four-inch blade was so sharp it could slice a thick piece of sugarcane in two with just one swoop. “I ain’t worried about no jealous boyfriend beatin’ me for bein’ with another boy, or no jealous girl jumpin’ on me for pleasurin’ her boyfriend.”

  “So it’s true. You do carry a knife, just like my mama told me. Where did you get it?”

  “When I was eight, I spent part of my summer vacation with my uncle Mervyn in Slidell. His wife is the one that wanted me there so he wouldn’t beat her so much. He was a real mean old pit bull. He used to beat up folks left and right, until his wife scalded him to death with a pan of hot grease. Anyway, his knife fell out of his pocket one day before he died, and he didn’t know it. I snatched it off the floor, and it’s been mine ever since.”

  “You ever had to use it?” Othella couldn’t take her eyes off the blade. Just the thought of Ruby using it to cut somebody made her flesh crawl.

  “Not yet,” Ruby answered.

  “I hope you never do,” Othella whispered, her voice cracking.

  “I hope I never do neither,” Ruby said, her voice hollow and detached. “But if I ever have to chastise somebody, I wouldn’t hesitate to use it.”

  Othella was concerned and frightened by how casually Ruby talked about “chastising” people. The last thing she wanted was for her to get herself in trouble with that switchblade. “That’s what worries me, Ruby Jean. Honest to God. You might get mad at somebody and hurt them real bad.”

  “Well, as long as nobody messes with me, I ain’t goin’ to mess with nobody.”

  But a couple of weeks later somebody did mess with Ruby, and she had to use that switchblade for the first time.

  CHAPTER 6

  WHEN RUBY TOLD SEVENTEEN-YEAR-OLD LONNIE STARKS that she thought she was carrying his baby, he called her a black cow and then he slapped her face so hard, the barrette holding her braids in place flew halfway across his bedroom.

  The main reason that Ruby had given herself to Lonnie was because he looked a lot like Ike. He was older and more experienced, but he was not even as good a sex partner as Ike. Ruby didn’t let that stop her from being with him several times in the same week.

  The only reason Lonnie gave Ruby the time of day was because he had heard it was easy to get between her thighs. He was a red-blooded American boy, and that’s what red-blooded American boys did. He had no feelings for a plain Jane like her!

  “You ain’t blamin’ no baby on me! You know I got a girlfriend. If she ever finds out I been fuckin’ your stinky black self, she’ll drop me like a bad habit! Now you get your husky black ass up off my bed and get the hell up out of here before I slap you again and then beat your brains—” Lonnie didn’t even get to finish his sentence. Before he realized what was happening, Ruby sliced him across the front of his neck. Othella was outside in Lonnie’s mother’s living room acting as the lookout. She and Ruby took turns doing this favor for each other. As soon as Othella heard the commotion, she burst into the room.

  Ruby was calmly putting her clothes back on. Lonnie was backed up against the wall holding his neck. “That no good bitch cut me,” he said in a weak, raspy voice. He lifted his hand off his neck to show Othella his wound. Her eyes got wide, her jaw dropped. The slash made Lonnie look like he had two mouths.

  “Lord have mercy! Ruby, why did you cut Lonnie?” Othella shrieked, her hands up in the air like somebody had pulled a gun on her.

  “Oh, that crybaby will be all right. I didn’t cut him that deep,” Ruby said casually.

  “But why did you cut Lonnie, Ruby Jean? What did he do to you for you to cut him up like that? His mama’s a school teacher! She’s goin’ to call the police on you!” At the same time, Othella was running around the room pulling out drawers until she found a towel. She ran to Lonnie and used the towel to sop up the blood oozing from his wound.

  “It was his fault. I told him I was fixin’ to have a baby, and he got all crazy on me.”

  Othella froze. “You pregnant? You fixin’ to have a baby?”

  “Yeah. I guess I am,” Ruby muttered with a nervous shrug. “And my daddy is goin’ to kill me dead.”

  Othella had calmed Lonnie down. She had stopped the bleeding and tied the towel around his neck. “You’ll be all right now, Lonnie. You shouldn’t have messed with Ruby Jean.”

  “Y’all better not tell nobody about this,” Lonnie whimpered, tears rolling down both sides of his face.

  “Oh, you ain’t got to worry about me tellin’ nobody about this,” Othella said. “And if you got some turtleneck sweaters, I suggest you wear them until your neck heals up.” She turned to Ruby. “And you, girl, you better come up with a real good story about how you got pregnant.”

  Later that same night a few minutes after eleven, Ruby jumped out of her bedroom window and galloped over to Othella’s house. Simone, with a grin on her flushed face, was entertaining company: a fifty-nine-year-old man with eyes like a fish and skin the color of tar. She had just moved the nervous-looking man, who had her red lipstick all over his cheeks and forehead, from her bedroom to the living ro
om. As the man was buttoning his shirt, he froze when he saw Ruby. He had every reason to be nervous; he was the husband of one of Ruby’s mother’s close friends from church.

  “Ruby Jean, you ain’t supposed to be here,” the busted husband croaked.

  “You ain’t neither,” Ruby said with a smirk.

  Without saying anything else to one another, the married man and Ruby knew that they were on the same page. From what he’d just said, apparently he knew that Ruby’s parents didn’t allow her to be in Simone’s house. And the fact that he was married, and a deacon in her father’s church ... well, there was nothing else for them to say on the subject. He knew that she wouldn’t tattle on him, and she knew that he wouldn’t tattle on her.

  “What you doin’ out here this late, Ruby Jean? Ain’t you got school tomorrow?” Simone snorted, handing her gentleman friend another jar of beer. She wore a short, thin nightgown and it was already hanging off her shoulder like a too-big toga. Even though Simone crossed her legs, Ruby could see that she didn’t have on any panties. Nothing Simone did surprised Ruby. But Ruby had done a lot of things herself lately that surprised Simone. Like busting into her house in the middle of the night on a school night.

  “I need to talk to Othella,” Ruby told her. She was almost out of breath because she had run all the way from her house.

  “She’s in her room.” Simone waved Ruby away and lifted a broom straw off the coffee table and started to pick her teeth. “Don’t you go back there makin’ a lot of racket and wake up all my young’uns.”

  Ruby pranced across the floor and down the narrow hallway to Othella’s bedroom at the end of the hall.

  Othella occupied a metal folding chair in front of a mirror on her bureau, rolling her hair with pieces of a brown paper bag. The three younger sisters that she shared the room with were already in bed, snoozing like newborn puppies.

  “It was a false alarm!” Ruby hollered.

  “Shh!” Othella ordered with a finger pressed against her lips. She motioned toward the bed where her sisters lay. “You don’t want to wake them little monkeys up so they can broadcast your business all over town.”

  Ruby tiptoed over to Othella. She cleared her throat and whispered in Othella’s ear, “It was a false alarm. My monthly just came on a little while ago while I was sittin’ on the commode!”

  Othella rose from her seat, instructing Ruby to remain quiet as she led her out to the back porch.

  Othella closed the kitchen door and looked around the yard to make sure that she and Ruby were alone. When she spoke again, she used a voice that was just above a whisper. “You was lucky this time. But you might not be so lucky the next time. You use that bleach and vinegar and clean yourself out every time after you been with a boy from now on. And to be on the safe side, use some vanilla extract, too. Stir it up real good until it gets real soupy.”

  “All of that’s supposed to keep me from gettin’ pregnant? That’s supposed to work?”

  “Well, it’s been workin’ for me all this time. My mama told me to do it.”

  Ruby gave Othella a curious look. “But it must not work every time if your mama got seven kids.”

  “My mama got seven kids because she wanted seven kids. She likes puttin’ her hands in Uncle Sam’s deep pockets. When you get ready to have kids like she was, and you want to milk that welfare cow, you stop douchin’ mens’ jism out of your pussy. Boom! Them babies start poppin’ out like popcorn.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I’m goin’ to let you in on somethin’ else that you probably don’t know. If you want to be with your man while you on your monthly, all you have to do is that same douche. It’ll stop the blood until you finish your business.”

  “Is that right?” Ruby said, giddy and impressed.

  Othella nodded.

  “You got some bleach and vinegar and vanilla extract that I can use right now?”

  Othella snickered and shook her head. “Who is it this time, Ruby Jean? I sure hope it ain’t that Lonnie again.”

  Ruby shook her head. “I seen your brother Ike peepin’ out his bedroom when I walked by just now... .”

  Ruby had come to the conclusion that sex was the greatest thing that she’d discovered since peanut brittle and beer. When Ike, or any of her other “boyfriends” were not available to satisfy her, she spent time with whoever was. But even then, she was picky. She didn’t believe in screwing ugly boys. She’d done it once on the ground in a cornfield with a long-headed boy who reminded her of an alligator. It had been an unpleasant experience for her. His looks had been too distracting for her to concentrate. The expression on his face had looked so comical when he climaxed, she giggled all the way home from the cornfield behind his daddy’s house. She promised herself that she would never stoop that low again.

  She liked a certain type that was popular among black females in the region at the time—men of color with exotic features. That included light skin and “good” hair, which meant it had to be wavy, straight, or curly. And with all of the Creoles in Shreveport, she didn’t have to worry about running out of partners in that category.

  Now that she was sexually active, Ruby had mellowed out. This was a change that pleased her parents as well as the rest of her family.

  “Ruby Jean, I guess you really are growin’ up,” said Lola Mae, Ruby’s third oldest sister. Lola, her thin, sad-faced husband, Arlester, and their three owl-eyed sons had come to enjoy another Sunday dinner at the Upshaw home. They had all spent the better part of the day in church, listening to Reverend Upshaw deliver one of his fiery sermons. “You actin’ mighty mature these days, girl. You ain’t bickered with my rowdy young’uns one bit today.”

  “She ought to be actin’ mature. She’s fourteen, goin’ on fifteen,” Reverend Upshaw pointed out, giving a stern look to Ruby’s three impish nieces and nephews for snickering and making faces at Ruby.

  “Sure enough. The girl is just glowin’ like a coal oil lamp. Y’all better keep her on a short leash ... all these frisky boys around here lookin’ for some juicy-butt girl like Ruby Jean to dip their tally-wacker in,” Arlester said. Ruby decided that the look on his face and his demeanor was less than brotherly. He was more like a devil’s advocate. “Somebody pass the corn bread.” This man had no shame or class. He was the only person Ruby knew who used a word like “tally-wacker” to refer to a dick.

  Ruby occupied a chair right next to her meddlesome brother-in-law. She was more than happy to pass him the platter that contained a mountain of steaming hot corn bread muffins; anything to divert his attention. For the bag of bones he was, he loved to eat.

  In addition to a gallon-size bowl of collard greens with red peppers and smoked turkey neck parts swimming in the pot liquor, a bowl of black-eyed peas and a huge platter of golden fried chicken sat in the center of the table. Surrounding those treats were a platter of fried green tomatoes, a huge bowl of gravy, a meat loaf the size of a full-grown cat, a mountain of potato salad, and a casserole dish overflowing with a peach cobbler. The mixture of so many different aromas was intoxicating. Except for Ruby, everybody was smacking and chomping on something, looking too happy for words.

  “If I didn’t know no better, I’d swear you was in love, Ruby Jean,” Lola added, looking from the reverend to her mother. “Mama, you sure enough better keep both eyes on this girl,” she teased, grease and butter sliding down her chin.

  Ida Mae was not the least bit amused. “Our girl ain’t crazy. She ain’t thinkin’ about courtin’ no boys yet. She’s into her school books and the church.” Ida Mae paused and turned to Ruby. “Ain’t that right?”

  “Yessum,” Ruby agreed. “Um, Papa, can I be excused. I want to go to my room and do my Bible lesson... .”

  Reverend Upshaw dismissed Ruby with a casual wave, beaming with pride at how well he and Ida Mae had raised the last of their seven daughters. “That girl is goin’ somewhere, someday,” he predicted.

  Ruby was definitely going “somewhere” and it was
today. Earlier that evening when she had run into Ike at the corner store, he had invited her to come to his house after dinner if she wanted to.

  She wanted to, so she did.

  CHAPTER 7

  AS SOON AS RUBY ENTERED HER BEDROOM, SHE LOCKED THE door and wiggled out of the high-necked, mammy-made smock she’d worn to church. Within ten minutes, she had on her jeans and a loose, but low-cut blouse. These were items that she had purchased on the sly with her allowance, but most of her new wardrobe items had come from Othella.

  That Othella. She had so many talents. One, and it was an important talent, was that she was a cunning thief. That made her relationship with Ruby even more valuable. Once she’d realized what a gold mine Othella was, she wanted to kick her own ass for not becoming friends with her sooner!

  Every time Othella went downtown, she came home with all kinds of goodies for her family and for Ruby. And she was no ordinary thief. She didn’t always just slide an item or two into the huge, homemade cloth handbag she carried. Othella was ahead of her time. She would mosey into a high-end store, strutting like a white woman with money. She would focus on what she wanted, or needed, and then she would snatch and run—sometimes three or four items at a time. Every black person who shopped in these particular establishments knew that the white clerks took their time helping them—if at all. The clerks would lollygag or chitchat with the white patrons and practically ignore the black patrons, not waiting on them until they got good and ready. Othella visited these stores only when they were too busy to notice her. And by the time they did, she’d be on her way with hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise.

  Ruby stood in front of her dresser mirror admiring the cute two-piece ensemble that Othella had given to her the day before. Just as she was about to adjust her blouse to make it look even more low-cut, somebody pounded on her bedroom door.

  It was that busybody brother-in-law of hers! “Ruby Jean, your mama and papa and me and Lola was wonderin’ if you’d keep a eye on the young’uns while we go visit Sister May. She’s on her deathbed, and if me and Lola don’t see her before we go back to Bayonne this evenin’, we might not get a chance to say a final farewell to her.”