There on the platform Ruby bade her to enter. The girl hushed and looked into her eyes. Ruby could hear the echo of her tiny heart and suddenly the baby slipped as if soapy from a bath, and fell hard into Ruby’s chest.
Ruby stumbled back, tripping over her bags. She struggled to right herself and her feet caught the handle of a bag and she fell down again. Then Ruby wept. Huge black tears that plopped onto the sky blue of her dress.
The Red Cap was back, hand on her arm, face crunched like a fist with worry, the Station Master was looming behind him. A small crowd of White folks pushed forward.
The Station Master boomed over her, “What’s the problem here, Jonah?”
Ruby looked around, liquid liner running down her cheek.
The Red Cap, Jonah, knew something. Was it about the child? Had he seen it too?
Jonah threw out a rope. “She just trip and fall is all Suh.”
Ruby took it. “Yes, I’m sorry, I just tripped. Over my bag. I’m so sorry.” Ruby began standing, straightening her dress.
The Station Master took a step forward.
“You drunk, gal?” The White man was less than a foot away.
Ruby knew if she looked at him she would be taken. So she stood, slumped her shoulders, stared at the ground and answered the White man, “No, Sir, No. I’m sorry, so sorry.” She spit out, “I’m on my way home — my cousin is dead.” Ruby cut the truth out of her gut and sliced it up to save herself. “She — her funeral was a month ago. I just found out, Sir. Yesterday, Sir. I’m just — just got upset is all.”
The air was close to boiling. Ruby searched the platform. Her purse lay on its side. She reached down and grabbed the telegram, the one Western Union had tried to deliver to three old addresses before they found her. She pushed it in the Red Cap’s face. He handed it over to the Station Master. He scanned it, lips tight.
Jonah put the nail on the thing. “You know how emotional we be sometime, Suh.”
Nearly satisfied, the Station Master stepped away, throwing the telegram in Ruby’s direction, “One thing I don’t need is another drunk nigger. They been leaving from here all week for that monkey march, I swear to God as drunk as Moses.” His associates chuckled. The rest of the White folk turned on his cue, retreating into cool shade and ice cold soda pops of the Whites Only Waiting Area.
Ruby took a breath. Her hand on Jonah’s arm. “Thank you.”
“No need, Miss. How old was she?”
“Thirty-three.”
“What happened?”
“Cardiac arrest, they said.”
Off of his confounded look, Ruby said, “Heart attack.”
He shook his head, “I’m sorry for you.”
“Thank you. Can you — did you find a car?”
He looked to make sure no one was around. “No. I’m sorry Miss, but you best get yourself out this here station if you gots to walk. They be looking for somebody to lynch since Minister King started this here. My nephew be up there. Young men’s church group. Ain’t never had a drop of liquor in his life.” Then he bustled into the station.
Ruby watched his back walking into the building. Fucking Maggie. Ruby collected her pocketbook and walked and sat on the bench next to a withered plum-colored man chewing a wad of tobacco. A bit of the brown juice dripped onto his chin. He wiped it with the edge of his sleeve. She started crying anew. Her fucking heart. Her fucking weak-ass heart. Ruby pulled out her compact, looked in the mirror. Crazy stared back. Black lines like soot across her face. Crimson lipstick on her teeth, chin. Cheeks. Her perfect hair unpinned and sticking straight up. But it was her eyes that finished the job. Blood red, but more than that, there was a new, empty terror spreading from the center. Her eyes had disappeared and these new dead things had emerged. The old man handed her a handkerchief. She silently thanked him and began to wipe her face with shaking hands.
She had cleaned her face as best as she could when the man said, “I ain’t got a car,” then gave her a wink, “but I got me a truck.”
“I can pay you—”
He smiled, bashful but certain. “Yo’ company be payment enough.”
Ruby’s eyebrows lifted a bit. He looked to be about seventy. The few teeth he had left were dark brown with tobacco. He smelled musty with age. She tried to conjure her smile, the one that used to send the New York boys and girls reeling. She tried, but all she managed was a nod.
The old man caught his breath and began dragging her largest bag across the platform, looking back as if he’d just stumbled upon a free steak dinner.
Her little girl shifted inside of her chest and Ruby was forced to step out of the dark room of her mind. Step out and turn off the projector, the one with an old truck pulled over on an abandoned Texas road. And a not so young girl with her head in an old man’s lap, destroying the girl and corrupting the man, whose biggest temptation in all his years had most likely been hard apple cider in his wife’s basement.
Ruby looked up. Gray, when had the sun become so gray?
“You’re in luck lady,” Jonah said. “Train’s coming back.”
“What happened?” the old man with her bag asked plaintively.
“Seems the Rail Manager for Southeastern line’s wife done fell asleep and forgot her stop.”
The railway platform filled with people, surprised at the returning train. The Station Master ran to the doorway flagged by a conductor as the train screeched to its stop, and everyone watched as a drowsy-eyed White woman stepped down. Angry. Embarrassed. Flustered.
Jonah said gently, “Colored car in the rear. Get yourself on and quick.” Ruby flew from the bench, and with his help, gathered her bags and climbed into the designated car. She pushed a ten-dollar bill into his hand. He tried to push it away, but Ruby won out. In seconds the train cranked into movement and headed for the heart of the Black folks’ Liberty.
AN HOUR passed before Ephram returned with two bags of groceries. His forehead was wet and there were dark stains under the arms of his shirt.
Ruby stood, bones stiff from sitting, and nodded towards the house. He waved back and walked towards the porch.
Ruby knew what he would find just inside the door. Refuse, soiled clothes, feces in the corners, caked dirt, flies breeding. Ruby had found that nursing and battling ghosts and the hell of memory was hard work, and keeping house while doing it had proved to be impossible. She was anxious to see how Ephram’s flag of hope fared in such desolate waters. She would not raise hers until she was sure.
She felt saliva rising in her mouth like anger so she spit. Not raise her flag? She’d have to make one first. Hope was a dangerous thing, something best squashed before it became contagious. She looked at Ephram inches from her door and felt a low growl in the pit of her stomach. She doubted he would last the day.
Chapter 10
Celia looked at the rooster clock on the kitchen wall. It was now nine on Sunday morning. The In-His-Name Liberty Township chapter of the Holiness Church was beginning service across town and Celia had not put on the navy dress she had ironed the day before. It rested like a grounded flag on the bed in her room — the fabric, napped and pleated just under the bodice, the scooped high collar and sleeves trimmed in duchess lace — starched hard and pointed.
Two minutes after nine. Her eye began to twitch in anger. Celia stood to make breakfast then sat back down. There wouldn’t be time to eat once Ephram arrived home. They would have to hurry and dress. Celia knew that, whatever else he may have done, her boy would be home this morning, because in forty-five years, Ephram Jennings had never missed Sunday service. He certainly, absolutely would not miss today, the day she had patiently waited for the last twenty-five years. The day of the election for Church Mother. Her name was one of only three on the ballot. She began to pace.