Ruby by Cynthia Bond Read Free Book Online

rounded back against Ephram. She held the nap of his hair and hit his jaw with all of her might. Ephram began speaking in tongues. Strange words muttered into the gray world. Maggie paused for a moment. Leaned in.
Pam!
Ephram hit her face. He was on top of her. He crashed into her head. Her neck. The mud. Maggie had rolled away just in time. He heard a hairline snap as his fingers crashed into stone.
    Inside, the walls leaned towards the two.
“Rompre le lien! Rompre le lien!”
Ma Tante snarled. Ruby looked up as Ma Tante lifted the knife and brought it down hard, halving a pomegranate on the floor beside them.
    Ephram grabbed at his hand, the pain cutting like nails. Maggie was up in a flash, wheeling back her foot then
pop
into Ephram’s cheek. Ephram lay still, moon eyes walled, then fluttering, then soft and still. Head tilted into the mud.
    The juice dribbled down the part and into Ruby’s hair. Ma Tante tore open a glut of seeds and squeezed the fruit until a crown of red streamed down the young girl’s face.
    Maggie walked back to the porch as the wind brought another blanket of feathery rain. The sky sweetened and thinned as sunlight sprinkled through. She took note of the fact that Ephram was still breathing.
    Ruby held the juice against her tongue and the roof of her mouth while the old woman smoothed it into her skin, still clucking words from a fold in the black of time:
“Tumulong potrebno … Duboko haja Gu-semerera esivanemad … O-negai shimasu. min faDlik Apsaugoti savo … en smeken Era berean seo Faoi deara …”
    Maggie lit a new cigarette from her porch vantage. Bent but still intact.
    “There, there, child … there, there …” Ma Tante hoisted Ruby upon her lap. Ruby looked into her yolk eyes. “I don’ mean no harm.”
    Outside, Ma Tante’s yellow cat found its way from under the house, hopped onto Maggie’s thighs and purred into her chest. Maggie petted the cat, blew out smoke and pretended not to shake.
    Ma Tante petted Ruby’s head. “I try to make it harder fo’ them to steal your soul’s purse. They’s things that happen out in them woods under the blood moon. Nights when a child like you need to stay behind locked doors. But it’s too late for that, ain’t it?”
    Ruby nodded yes.
    “They already dragged you out to they pit fire, ain’t they?”
    Ruby nodded again.
    “Already cracked open your spirit like a walnut and try to stuff they rot in there. Dat’s why them spirits pester you so. They like openings and you a sieve. You got to know they two kinds of spirits—haints is like leeches, hang on, but can’t swallow you whole. Dyboù something different. Ain’t content with nothing but snuffing out all you is—smell like a burned out candle when it come.
    “I try to suck the poison of the pit fire out. I try. Girl, you got to fly off next time they take you down there. Don’t hold fort in your body, surrender it so you can come back when they done. I’m afraid they’ll whittle you down to nothing if you keep on fightin’ ’em. Won’t be nothing left of you.” She motioned towards the door. “You tell her?”
    Ruby shook her head no.
    “Good. Don’t. She too stiff a tree to take that weight.”
    Ruby let her long neck soften and bend. Let her lungs push air out and sat there empty, until nature nudged her to breathe in.
    Ma Tante rubbed Ruby’s back, lifting only an ounce of the weight in her chest—but it was something. “Lawd, Lawd. Man and magic wasn’t never meant to go together. Dey got to rule ovah things. And magic be the ocean say you ride my wave. But when you know man be content to ride nothing ’thout breakin it first?”
    She petted Ruby’s head. “Child, they’s a rainbow of doings in this here world, but man, he only see the black and the white of it. Do good work with his right, and the Devil work with his left. Stay way from that left hand as much as you able.” Ma Tante spit into her apron and wiped Ruby’s skin clean