The Book of Ruth (30 page)

When May and I were home together with Justy it worked out ideally because I was dead tired half the time. I could take a nap if I wanted to, or do the wash. There were buckets filled with dirty diapers, and May was happy to watch her grandson while I dragged the pail down the basement stairs. She was literally happy. About every other day I had to think to myself, How would I manage without May? I always wondered how I would cope when I lay down to sleep in the middle of the afternoon and I could hear her playing with Justy. What would we do if May lived in Texas?

May and I didn’t know the thoughts that we stored deep in our hearts; we didn’t confess our secrets, but we were familiar with each other. Usually I’d forget that she was so bossy. To me she was only being May. It was when Ruby came home that I had to see her through his eyes, and feel how stingy she could get. She reminded me of the mother coons protecting their young. If you stumble upon a nest the mothers look like they’d be glad to chew your body into bite-size pieces. They don’t like anyone tampering with their babies.

Expert May declared that we should start feeding Justy solid food when he was eight weeks old, despite the doctor telling me it was too early and unnecessary. He had current facts about how real food prematurely fouled up babies’ digestive systems. But May thought she was Mother Earth herself, and she said doctors with their new theories every five minutes didn’t know what they were talking about. She started shoving mashed green beans down Justy’s throat, and chicken liver, and canned peaches. She was going to make sure he had the biggest brain in his class. He spat it up, naturally. He knew he wasn’t ready for her cooking, that he might not ever be ready. Still, I couldn’t figure out how to get May to stop. She was positive Justy needed the extra nutrition. It made me so mad I had to go outside and walk in the woods. I had to observe all the new buds about to burst. The tender young leaves looked like something frail and old, not like something new and vigorous. I had to concentrate on green leaves and flowers to take my mind off certain people and their theories.

Once I asked Dee Dee what she thought about feeding Justy solid food and Dee Dee said May knew the best way, without a doubt.

“My kids ain’t Grade A examples,” she said, shaking her head.

She didn’t help me one single bit. Dee Dee wasn’t about to cross her best friend. It didn’t matter what I said—when I came in from chores I could see that May had fed Justy something fried and mashed. I could see the diapers he had spit up on in the clothes hamper.

There was one night in June when Ruby didn’t come to bed, and finally at two in the morning I went downstairs. He was sitting in front of the TV, staring. His eyes grew so wide and stayed that way, when he watched shows. He was flipping through a book without even looking at the pages.

“What are you up to, Ruby?” My tired voice sounded like there were barbs in my throat, catching the words before they came out.

He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. After a minute he said, “You know last Sunday when the Rev was telling about the little boy?”

“What little boy?” I asked, making no effort to disguise my irritation. I didn’t usually remember the Rev’s topics; there were only certain phrases which remained.

“The boy who had the devil in him,” he said. “And his father wanted Jesus to come take it out. None of the disciples could do it but then Jesus arrived, and man, that devil got out fast. Jesus can get devils out easy. I just got to find that story in the Bible. I been searching all night but I can’t find it, I just can’t find it.”

I kneeled down and made Ruby look at me. I said, “That’s nothing but a dumb story. Don’t think thoughts like that, Ruby—it ain’t the kind of thing to dwell on before bedtime. Come to sleep with me.”

He didn’t pay attention. He said, “Baby, I’m watching this show, see, there’s this man, he can’t do nothin’ right, he’s in a boys’ school, you can tell he’s letting the devil come in. You watch, he’s gonna do somethin’—”

“It’s a trashy movie, Ruby. Turn it off.”

I didn’t have patience with late-night TV. I was so tired; why didn’t people sleep when they were supposed to? He didn’t want to leave his movie because he had to see how it worked out, who was going to get murdered.

Ruby’s favorite program was the late-night rerun of
Bewitched.
He liked to see the characters wiggling their noses and then plates of candy would come over right by their sides. He had knots in his stomach, I know he did, staying up all night to watch programs that aren’t healthy. I know he wished he was married to someone like Samantha. He was always saying his belly killed him. I knew it was May driving him into the television. He didn’t ever stand up to her. He didn’t even call her names any more; he didn’t say that she was a thousand miles of fart. He cried into my slacks and wanted to live in TV land. Sometimes he was in his chair until the birds started to sing and then when he went to Trim ’N Tidy he wasn’t worth a hot dog. You’d see him in the chair by the register, sound asleep, with his mouth hanging open, drool slipping over the edge of his pouting lips All he really wanted to do was take Justy for walks, teach him a little something about Honey Creek, and the world.

A few days after Ruby was trying to find the devil story in the Bible, he came home early from Trim ’N Tidy. Summer is a slow time of year, because people aren’t thinking about getting woolens clean when it’s ninety degrees in the shade. Ruby wanted to play with Justy first thing when he walked in the door, because fathers miss their sons desperately when they’re out in the work force. He couldn’t stand hearing that Justy was still down for his nap. When I told him, his face fell and he kicked the chair. He didn’t like the news so he tiptoed up to the baby’s room and tickled him gently trying to wake him up and of course Justy started to bawl.

Next thing you know May is storming upstairs. She’s wearing a hot pink cotton dress from Goodwill, makes her look like a lipstick out of its tube.

“You hear what you just did?” she yelled. “You’re making him cry. Don’t you ever use that brain of yours?”

They stood at opposite ends of the crib and she hollered, “You woke him up! I bet that’s going to put him in a cheerful mood.”

She didn’t mention that screaming and yelling might turn an infant into a deaf apple picker. She scooped up Justy and crooned at him. “Poor baby, poor little Justin, hush-a-bye, go back to sleep now, that’s my boy.”

I didn’t like Ruby waking Justy too much either, but it wasn’t worth rocking the boat. There were going to be other naps in Justy’s life. It even made me smile a little at first, that Ruby missed Justy so much he couldn’t wait to see him. It’s natural for parents to be that way. It doesn’t mean that Ruby wasn’t using his brain. But May had to be nearby, ready to strike if her master plan was in some way altered. She stayed upstairs, cradling Justin. He was all sweaty as a result of flailing his arms and screaming.

Ruby walked downstairs. He had to stop every three steps because he was thinking to himself. He walked slowly into the kitchen. He stood in the middle of the room for a few minutes, listening to Justy, and then he reached into the dark cupboard. His hands found what they wanted. He held up one of May’s quarts of tomato juice—and slammed it against the wall. In our life together there were quite a few objects Ruby pounded into the wall. The jar shattered; the glass went into the darkest corners of the kitchen. All the juice gushed down, as if it were angry and flashing its temper.

May came down with Justy in her arms. She stopped in her tracks when she saw me sweeping the glass away. She was dumbstruck at the mess. I could tell it was going to take her a few seconds to speak so I quickly said, “Be quiet,” with warning in my tone.

She patted Justy harder than she should have while she muttered the phrases of hers. I used to think the one about cocks meant rooster until I learned better. The tomato drip marks were there for days. No one bothered to clean them up. Perhaps we were all afraid they were cursed.

When Ruby came in for supper May had her speech prepared but I said, “If anyone says one single thing I’m going to clobber both of you.”

I couldn’t stand the fighting. While we ate the clanking of our silverware filled the room and covered our silence. We had Justy in his baby seat on the table, so he could watch us and see how adults behaved.

Ruby went to his counselor twice a month and Sherry said time and time again, “Ruby, you have to find a way to move out on your own, with your wife and son.” She said he had to get a full-time job that paid better, but he was slow, even down at Trim ’N Tidy. He wasn’t the world’s greatest employee. She probably told him he should set up a dentist’s office. She ignored the fact that he had problems on occasion. He drifted away sometimes: if he was writing up a bill for a customer he might all of a sudden stop and stare at the poinsettias in the window. Artie got them cheap after Christmas about seven years ago and never took them out. Ruby would say later in bed how the plants looked as huge as palm trees and he couldn’t stop staring at the leaves. It was the marijuana he smoked, and the pills he popped. Sherry told him he had to quit taking drugs and he always said, “Sure, OK, I will.” For a while he tried to get me to smoke a joint; he said, “Baby, it’s fun, you got to try it.”

I had stopped smoking cigarettes because of Justy. I wasn’t about to start another habit. I wished Ruby could have refrained, but he said it helped him get through his day. I knew if it weren’t for me, Artie would have fired him first thing.

Ruby said the poinsettias looked gigantic because he was wishing we could live in California. He told me you can have a house with the ocean in your back yard, and they grow pineapples and lemons in the parks—you can grab them off the vines and stuff them in your pockets. Girls, he said, don’t wear anything but bikinis and men don’t drive Fords, only 12-cylinder cars that shift like melting chocolate.

It didn’t take any counselor to figure out that Ruby saw the world on a different scale from other people. Images in his extra-special imagination occurred to him with awful clarity. When he came home from his sessions with Sherry he always told me what she said. I couldn’t help being infuriated with the big old smart counselor who lived in a brick mansion with her husband. He was a car salesman. She didn’t have any problems. All she had to do was tell everyone else how to act. How were we going to move out on our own, without May to baby-sit? And Ruby—with drugs it’s as if his brain was spinning into outer space. Matt, in his observatory, probably thought he was discovering another planet, Planet Matt. It’s fine for Sherry to say “Ruby, move away on your own,” but she didn’t know the details of the situation. I thought I was an expert on the drama seeing as I was stuck in the middle of hostilities, just like people all over the world on television news. I felt as if I had to be the anchor. If I could only try to be a good person and take care of my family, it was going to be OK. The Rev’s words came to me when I was confused: “Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted.” And of course, “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.” Those sentences always made me feel that I could carry on, that someday I was going to get what I deserved.

Ruby said, in the middle of the hottest July night, “Baby, do you think there’s devils in the world getting inside of people?”

I was asleep. I said, “I don’t know about any of that, Ruby. Don’t ask me about devils. I don’t like to think about them.”

I could hear him tossing the rest of the night. I was so tired I could hardly comfort him, but I knew he was worried about demons and how they take over a human heart.

There were the good times that summer, particularly when Daisy came home after she got her beautician’s license. She had a real strange haircut. It was short, as usual, but it was cut to points in front of her ears and then in back it came sharp to the nape of her neck. There was something pointy to the way she looked, as if she were an instrument that could cleave rocks to exact specifications. When she came to our house she had pajamas for Justy with a painting of a basset hound on the shirt. She looked at him, picked him up, and shouted, “Hey, everybody, this is my godson.”

Then she said he needed a haircut, which cracked us up because Justy didn’t have any hair at that stage. She said to me, “I’m going to do a job on you right now, just like I promised all them years ago when I first knew you. I don’t break promises, that ain’t in my nature.”

She took her smart leather scissor case out of her purse and sat me down on the kitchen stool. Everyone stood around and watched her do her craft. It was a free show. Daisy said now that she had a college degree she knew what was best for me and my shape. I have quite a bit of curly hair, which looks like a hedgerow people can’t see over. My expert hairdresser thinned it, cut it, and wrapped each strand around an electric stick. Some of the curls unwound a little, so my head became soft and fluffy. Then she put black mud on my face. I loved her firm touch on my cheeks and eyelids, and every now and then her fingers swept across my lips. After she washed the mud off she put colors on my eyelids, “earth tones,” she told me, brown and rust, and some shiny red lipgloss on my mouth. She took me upstairs to the mirror we have in our room. I couldn’t find myself in the looking glass. I could not believe I was the girl. I resembled marine fish with big puckered lips opening and closing right up close to the window of their tank.

“Finally you look like you belong in this century,” Daisy said. “I always knew we could turn you into something.”

Ruby stared blankly at me and then he said, “Baby, you and me are gonna start a rock band. You look just like a drummer should.”

We sat around that night on the steps and ate pretzels. Daisy told us about Peoria and the girls she worked with. None of them were too crazy about her, because she was the number-one star hair stylist. She explained how she was going to fly out to Los Angeles in a little while, after she got some experience. She held Justy the whole time. He had to stare at her—he was your average hot-blooded male already. He was fascinated by those extraterrestrial eyes of hers, plus her large breasts did not pass unnoticed. He patted them so tenderly.