Mama Ruby Read online

  “Especially since you parade around town in them skin-tight, low-cut blouses, showin’ off your big titties,” Othella sneered. “Reverend Upshaw will probably even say you was beggin’ for trouble because you tempted that rapist by wearin’ one of them low-cut blouses.”

  “Othella’s right,” Simone declared. Her voice had softened.

  Ruby gave Simone a helpless look, and she gave some serious thought to what she had just heard.

  “The bottom line is, you got yourself pregnant. If you hadn’t been where you was at when it happened, you wouldn’t have got pregnant,” Simone told Ruby in a voice so soft, shaky, and gentle now, you would have thought that Simone was the one in trouble.

  “But what if a maniac had knocked me over the head and dragged me into some bushes for real?”

  “Ruby Jean, it don’t matter—”

  “But what if that was what really happened?” Ruby interrupted.

  Othella shook her head and sucked on her teeth. “Like Mama just said, even if that was true, wherever you was at when it happened, you shouldn’t have been there,” Othella said. “That’s what your daddy will eventually say. Your daddy is a man, and believe you me, most men think we females are responsible when one of them pesters us against our will. And some women feel the same way.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “MY GIRL’S RIGHT AGAIN. MOST MEN, AND A LOT OF women, believe that if a female didn’t put herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she wouldn’t get raped,” Simon declared. “Men are naturally lusty and can’t control themselves. That’s a well-known, scientific fact; so it’s our burden to stay out of their way when they need some affection bad enough to take it by force.”

  Ruby wondered if that was what Simone believed about her own grandfather when he had repeatedly raped her mother and her sisters for so many years.

  “Now you listen to me, girl. Let’s lay this rapist bullshit to rest. If you smart and do the smart thing, there won’t be no need for you to tell that ridiculous story. Enough on that subject.” Simone paused to clear her throat. “I know this baby would be better off in that asylum, and you’d be better off if your folks never find out you had a baby. I been around the block a few thousand times, so I know what I’m talkin’ about. You let me take care of everything. You are still a young girl. In time, you can forget about this baby. Find yourself a sport, marry him, and let him pester you in the bedroom as often as he wants to. Sooner or later, you’ll have more babies than you’ll know what to do with.”

  “But I want this one,” Ruby wailed. “This is my firstborn—that’s somethin’ special to a woman! And this ain’t your baby, so you ain’t got no say-so in the matter, Simone.” Ruby leaned toward the side of the bed, looking around the floor. “Othella, where my shoes at?”

  Simone hoisted the baby up on her shoulder and leaned forward. Mumbling profanities under her breath, she slapped Ruby’s face so hard, Ruby saw stars. “Hush up! I done already decided what’s best for this baby! From what Othella done told me, and from the way I seen you and my boy Ike lookin’ at one another, this could be my grandbaby. And if that’s the case, I got a say-so in this matter.”

  “You ... can’t,” Ruby bleated, rubbing the spot on her face where she’d been slapped.

  “I said hush up, girl!” Simone stomped her foot so hard, the whiskey bottle on the nightstand shook and rattled. “Now I’m goin’ to go get a tub of hot water. We’ll clean you up and send you home. Ain’t nobody got to know nothin’ about this baby. I’m goin’ to get Reverend Meacham to bless this baby before I take her to that asylum,” Simone announced.

  “Reverend Meacham? Didn’t you just say that nobody else was goin’ to know about this baby? What do you plan on tellin’ Reverend Meacham?” Ruby asked with her eyes stretched open wide.

  “You let me worry about that. I’ll come up with a real good story,” Simone said as she reached for the whiskey bottle on the nightstand. She took a long drink and let out a mighty belch. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she continued, “Then I’m goin’ to drive this child to that asylum myself tonight in that old jalopy of mine.” She paused and turned to Othella, giving her a sharp look. “Go make sure none of my tires is flat. Then go make sure them kids in the livin’ room is behavin’ like they got some sense. After you do that, trot down to Reverend Meacham’s house and bring him here to me. He owes me a few favors, so I know he won’t turn me down. I might even get him to drive me to that asylum so I can save my gas.” Simone shifted the baby’s position in her arms and then she turned back to Ruby. “And that’s where this baby will be brought up. Case closed.”

  “Don’t you worry none, Ruby Jean. Your baby will be took care of real good by them nuns,” Othella added.

  Ruby felt so defeated, she didn’t even know what else to say next. All she wanted now was for Othella and Simone to stop ganging up on her, trying to convince her that their decision was the only one to consider.

  “Ruby, I know what’s best for you. I am your best friend. And I am here to tell you, you ain’t got no business tryin’ to raise no baby. What can you give a baby?” Othella asked with a weary voice. There was almost as much sweat on her face as there was on Ruby’s, and she looked just as tired.

  Just when Ruby didn’t think she had any more fight left in her, she realized she did. In a strong voice, one that seemed to begin in her toes and work its way up to her lips, she said, “I can give my child my love.” The words spilled out of her mouth like lava. “I love kids,” she whimpered. She was immediately sorry that she had opened her mouth again to say anything. At the rate things were going, Simone and Othella were going to badger her into the ground with their “We know what’s best for you” talk.

  “That don’t mean nothin’! The witch that tried to eat up Hansel and Gretel loved kids, too. You ain’t in no shape to be tryin’ to raise no baby and you know it! Now you look, girl. I am your best friend. I am way smarter than you when it comes to things like this here, so I know what I am talkin’ about. You ain’t got what it takes to raise no baby yet. Your daddy, with all of his preachin’ and Bible thumpin’, he’ll ride your back like he’s ridin’ a mule, and preach your funeral every time he even thinks you tempted and provoked another man. That’s the way men’s minds work. They can’t help it. I’m way more worldly than you, so I know what I’m talkin’ about. Now you got that?”

  “I ... I ... got ... got that,” Ruby stuttered with a heavy nod.

  Othella was worldly; she knew things a lot of girls her age didn’t know yet. But that didn’t bother Ruby much. As far as she was concerned, she was a few steps above Othella. She lived in a nice house with an indoor toilet and two loving and stable parents. She was one of the few black youngsters in the community in such an enviable position. Unfortunately, Ruby’s enviable position meant very little to Othella. The only thing Ruby had that Othella envied was an ample bosom. Othella had promised Ruby that one day she’d have enough money to buy herself a pair of those fake foam titties that they advertised in the back of the sleazy magazines that Simone purchased every week. Ruby didn’t know why she was wasting time and energy thinking about Othella’s flat chest when she had a baby to be thinking about. A beautiful baby girl ...

  Ruby nodded again. She couldn’t take her eyes off the bundle in Simone’s arms; her first baby. Maybe even her only baby.

  However, she had to remind herself that if Simone was right, she’d eventually have a house full of children. That was the only thing that she had said all night that kept Ruby from losing her mind.

  “All right, y’all. I’ll ... I’ll ... I’ll forget about this one baby somehow,” she rasped, her voice cracking.

  But she wouldn’t. Ruby Jean Upshaw would think about her first baby every day for the rest of her life. And, she knew that somehow, some day, somewhere, she would make Othella pay for what she was helping her mother make her do tonight.

  Ruby was so distracted by the thoughts swimming around in her mind, she didn�
�t hear Simone’s voice again until Simone slapped the side of her head. “You done gone deaf or what? I’ve asked you three times in the last few seconds, who the daddy of this baby is. Or who you think it is? Who you been courtin’ the most? Was it really my boy Ike? Was he your boyfriend?”

  “I ain’t got no boyfriend.” Ruby sniffed.

  “Yes, you do!” Othella hollered. “You got all kinds of boyfriends, girl. Almost as many as me.”

  Simone looked from her daughter to Ruby, giving her one of her notorious “you better come clean with me or else” looks. “If you decide to change your mind about lettin’ me take care of this baby, I need to know who this baby’s daddy is. We need to cover all the bases. Your folks will want to know who done it, too, Ruby.”

  “I swear to God, I don’t know which one done it,” Ruby admitted. “But I can’t tell my mama and daddy that! Y’all know I can’t!”

  “Well, you got to tell them somethin’, girl. Like I said, if you don’t let me take care of this child, you can’t go home with a newborn baby and expect your folks not to want to know the details,” Simone assured her.

  “What difference does it matter who got me pregnant now? Ain’t you takin’ the baby to that asylum place tonight? Ain’t we keepin’ this a big secret from everybody?”

  “In case you change your mind about lettin’ me handle this situation, we need to have a backup plan. Now, you tell me, who do you think got you pregnant, Ruby Jean? Give me the name of the boy you think done it.”

  A confused look crossed Ruby’s face. “A name? Why?”

  “I’ll tell you the reason why. If you keep this baby, the daddy should know about it so he can do his part to help raise it. Another reason you need to give up his name is so your daddy can approach the boy for a man-to-man showdown. If my son is the culprit, I want him to know so he can be prepared when your daddy comes after him,” Simone snapped.

  “Comes after him? What do you mean by that?” Ruby held her breath.

  “Everybody in this part of Shreveport knows that your daddy don’t take no mess off nobody when it comes to his daughters. He ain’t goin’ to sit back and let his grandbaby’s daddy off the hook without a confrontation. You and Othella is too young to remember, but years ago a musician came through here from Bayonne to blow on his saxophone at the grand openin’ of a new juke joint. He already had a wife, but he still tried to pester your big sister Bessie Mae while she was babysittin’ his sister’s kids. She was sleepin’ on a couch that night, mindin’ her own business, and that man tore her nightgown clean off her body. If the man’s sister hadn’t come home when she did, Bessie Mae might have ended up in the same mess you in now. The next mornin’, your daddy went after that filthy-minded musician with his shotgun and run him out of town.”

  Ruby’s eyes got big. “Oh Lord! I think your boy Ike is the one,” she whispered. “I don’t want my daddy to shoot poor Ike!”

  CHAPTER 15

  “I WAS SCARED THAT YOU WAS GOIN’ TO DRAG MY BOY INTO this mess.” Simone sighed. She looked confused, impatient, and disgusted at the same time. “And what a mess it is!”

  “It’s my mess, Simone,” Ruby said evenly. She wanted to get up off that bed, grab her baby, and run. Years later, when she would recall this night, she would wish that she had done just that. Unfortunately, she was too tired and weak to do something that drastic. She could barely stand up straight, so running was out of the question.

  “Your mess? Yeah, it’s your mess, girl. But let me tell you somethin’. If my boy is the one that done this to you, it is my mess. Can’t you see that?”

  “You could send Ike to Uncle Laurent’s place out on the bayou where he’ll be safe, Mama,” Othella suggested in a quiet voice.

  “I ain’t sendin’ my baby no place! I’m his mama and I love him! This is his home and he is goin’ to stay here until he gets old enough to take care of hisself,” Simone shouted, looking at Othella like she had sprouted horns.

  Ruby felt like she’d just been beaten over the head with a sledgehammer. That was how hard her head was pounding now. She couldn’t believe what Simone had just said. Here she was ranting and raving about how she wouldn’t give up one of her babies, but she wanted Ruby to give up hers. What a selfish bitch, Ruby thought, glaring at Simone as she stood there holding the baby that should have been in Ruby’s arms. It made no sense at all to her. But despite Simone’s attitude, Ruby had to seriously consider the consequences of her actions if she kept her baby. She loved Ike. She did not want Simone to send him to live with the Cajun relatives on the bayou. And she sure as hell did not want him to be beaten or shot by her daddy.

  “You think my daddy would do somethin’ to my baby’s real daddy if I keep the baby and he found out the truth?” Ruby wanted to know. Not only was she extremely worried, she was just as frightened. “He likes Ike, but if he suspects Ike pestered me and got me pregnant, y’all think he really would shoot him or somethin’?”

  “I don’t know what he’d do if he found out the truth. But you need to think about all of that.” Simone paused to let her words sink in, but that was no longer necessary. Ruby had already surrendered completely. Under the circumstances, there was no way she could keep her baby. All she wanted to do now was get up, hold and hug and kiss her baby one last time, and then go home to her own bed. She figured that the sooner she did that, the better off she’d be.

  Simone could see that Ruby had almost run out of steam, and that there was hardly any more fight left in her. She was about to roll over like a pig in a mud puddle. But Simone kept talking anyway. “And what if the baby ends up lookin’ exactly like the real daddy so much that you can’t deny the truth? Folks is smart these days; they’ll put two and two together in no time, girl! Why, just look at me and Othella. Except for her bein’ a few shades darker than me, me and her could be twins. There is no way I could deny that she is my blood child.” It was true. Simone and Othella, two of the most beautiful women Ruby knew, were almost identical. They had the same large brown eyes, high cheekbones, full lips, and long straight black hair. And when they spoke, their lips curled up at each corner. Even though Simone was in her midthirties and had lived a rough life—and was still living a rough life—she had to practically beat the men off with a stick.

  Simone sat down on the bed, at the foot so she wouldn’t be close enough for Ruby to snatch the baby away from her. “Listen here, Ruby. By now, me, you, and Othella, we are all in agreement. I done laid out all of the particulars of what could or couldn’t happen if you keep this baby.” Simone stared at Ruby long and hard. Ruby thought she was trying to stare a hole in her and that weakened her even more. All she could do was nod.

  “Ain’t nobody never goin’ to find out that you had no baby here tonight, right?” Simone said, wagging her finger like a dog’s tail in Ruby’s burning face.

  “All right! I give up!” Ruby hollered, waving her hands high above her head. “Leave me alone—y’all win! I’m too tired to keep goin’ at this. Simone, you do what you have to do, and let’s hurry up and put this all behind us.”

  CHAPTER 16

  “RUBY JEAN, I AM SO GLAD THAT YOU ARE WILLIN’ TO LET this child have a chance,” Simone said. “This baby don’t need to be around people who might not accept her in the long run. Even if you had changed your mind and decided to keep her, and convinced everybody that her daddy is that escaped convict, that plan could have still backfired. Thinkin’ she’s a convict’s child, other kids would tease her comin’ and goin’. She’d be self-conscious and lost in a world that’s already gone mad. And the good Lord knows that people would be watchin’ every move she made, day and night. She’d be miserable.”

  Simone paused and made a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Look at me. Everybody knows that my granddaddy is also my papa. My very own mama’s papa. He raped and had babies with my mama and some of her sisters. He started eye-ballin’ me, sizin’ me up when I was eleven. I do believe that he would have pestered me, too, if I hadn’t got
out of that house in time. With a background like that, how could I expect people to accept me and treat me decent? Trust me, you don’t want that for your baby girl, Ruby Jean. She’d eventually go crazy, and you would, too.”

  Ruby couldn’t help but feel sorry for Simone. Under different circumstances, she would have offered her a big hug. Simone knew from the frozen look on Ruby’s face, that she had made her point. But she kept talking anyway. “I know I’m white Cajun trash, and that’s why I do what I do. It’s my nature. I’m a bad seed and so is the child you just had here tonight. If this is my grandchild, well, bad seeds can’t produce nothin’ good... .”

  After Simone had haphazardly wiped Ruby off, Ruby put her dress back on and sat down on the side of the bed, her eyes on the baby’s face as she lay on the bed looking more like a store-bought doll than a real child.

  “I hadn’t thought about all of that,” Ruby admitted. “I wouldn’t want my baby to feel that she wasn’t as good as everybody else.”

  “Well, I’m tellin’ you, if you tell people she’s the child of a fugitive rapist, they won’t treat her as good as they treat everybody else. Now hand her here so I can check her out some more. I need to make sure she’s breathin’ all right, and that she ain’t got no other complications that I might have to deal with before I carry her off.”

  Ruby kissed her daughter on the forehead for the tenth time in the last five minutes. “Since I won’t never see my baby again after tonight, can I at least name her?”