Ruby by Cynthia Bond Read Free Book Online Page A

like a mother cat.
    “Me? I am not long here, you see that, yes? I take in too many people sin when I was young and didn’t know where to put themdown. So my nails and eyes yellow like piss in the sun. Some things you cannot be fix. Some can. Too early to tell how it turn for you.” Ma Tante wrapped Ruby in a furry blanket.
    She rocked her like a baby against her chest until Ruby had fallen into sleep, then set her gently on the daybed and opened the front door.
    Ma Tante looked onto the porch through the screen. “Maggie, help dat boy up and quick.”
    Maggie rose and walked to where Ephram lay, surrounded by flashing stars. “Get up.” Maggie puffed and reached her hand under the crook of his shoulder. Ephram wobbled up, leaning against Maggie. Ma Tante supervised from the porch. The rain had started again. Harder than before. The crows were complaining in the trees as Maggie sat Ephram down on the steps. For Ephram, the world was dizzy with lights and the sound of waves.
    “Come in boy.” Ma Tante waved him in. “N’, Margaret, you best sit out there ’til you can think to act right.” Maggie flicked her cigarette into the rain. Got up to leave and turned around.
    “I ain’t leavin’ ’thout Ruby.”
    “Then I guess you ain’t leavin’.”
    Maggie huffed as Ephram stumbled alongside Ma Tante into the house.
    R UBY WOKE up to the smell of cocoa. Her face sticky with dried juice and the old woman’s spit, her cheek swollen from where she’d been slapped. Miss Barbara would be mad about that. So would her grandmother. Ruby peeked out from the moldy-smelling daybed. She would fake sleep a little while longer. Ruby couldn’t get a proper look at the boy from where she lay but shesaw Ma Tante rattling around, her skirt swishing against the floor like a broom. She was fiddling with something on the table—Ruby hoped she wasn’t slipping the bones out of a live bird, as Maggie had seen her do, or cutting a hex out of a horny toad. After what she had seen, Ruby didn’t doubt a word Maggie had said. Those yellow eyes had seen the thing Ruby hid, even from herself. And when two people see a thing, for better or worse, it becomes real. Ruby felt that knowing smooth over her like tree sap and fill in a little of the ache.
    The boy Ephram fidgeted in a chair. The light caught his face and Ruby saw him, eye purple and swollen shut. Two fat lips. Nose busted for sure. Cotton balls stuffed up in it. Hand bandaged. He sat like he’d wet himself in front of class. Shamed like that.
Damn Maggie
.
    “Hot chocolate, y’all share,” Ruby heard Ma Tante say to Ephram. Ruby could smell the sweet bitter before it reached her and she pretended to wake.
    Ma Tante set the cup down on a side table and wiped Ruby clean with a wet towel.
    Then she handed the cup over to Ruby and turned to Ephram, “Come on over here, son.” Ephram carefully lifted himself onto the far end of the bed and sat there quiet. Ruby caught the tail end of his silence and let it settle across her lap. She sipped the hot cocoa. There was a knock on the door.
    “You ain’t ready yet,” Ma Tante called and Ruby could hear Maggie stomp across the porch and sit hard. Ruby handed the cup to Ephram.
    He waited, then took hold of the handle with his good hand. “Thank you.”
    “Maggie give me this,” Ruby said after a pause and pulled a silver thimble from her dress pocket. “From P & K. She got that five finger discount.”
    “Hmmm.”
    “She do that for me sometime. Steal me treasure. She ain’t always like that, how she were with you. She get jealous is all … that, and she ain’t too fond of your daddy, the Reverend.”
    He was quiet in a way that seemed to say that he understood very well how someone might come to dislike his papa.
    Ruby took in the wreck of his face up close. Bits where Maggie’s knuckles had busted the skin on his cheek wide open. His limp right hand swollen and wrapped like a splint.
    Damn
.
    Ruby felt the lonely