Miss Barbara was there just under the surface, offering Ruby her hand.
HER NAILS were bright pink and long like possum claws so Ruby hung back. When she smiled it frightened her more. Ruby could not stop staring at her teeth. It looked like a rat had gnawed at their dark edges.
“Gawd don’t like a scaredy-cat.” Her voice was high and sweet like they were old friends. Then she winked at Ruby and held out her hand again. Since there was no place else to hold on to Ruby gave her two fingers and Miss Barbara pulled her into the building. The room was a cloud of smoke, as if the chimney flue had been closed. Then there was the stink of it. It smelled just like a well that a water moccasin had died in, with something sticky sweet sprayed over it. The ashtrays were full of butts and empty Coca-Cola bottles sat beside them. The lights buzzed and flicked over her head and a gray sofa sat in the middle of the floor like a cat with crumbs on its whiskers. Magazines were spread out on the coffee table, Life, Look, Movie Time. A half-eaten sandwich let Ruby remember that she was hungry. Ruby didn’t know for sure but it seemed to be some kind of a waiting room, but Miss Barbara kept walking through into a long dark hallway. Ruby felt her chest moving fast as she followed. She felt like she was getting smaller the farther she went into the hall. The smell got stronger. The floor was sticky and black under her feet. There were doors on either side, most closed. The first open one Ruby walked by she saw a little White girl’s legs dangling from the edge of a bed. Ruby peeked around and saw her face. She looked like a baby doll Ruby had seen in the window of the Newton five-and-dime, same blue eyes and long blond hair except the girl’s was tangled high and wild. She looked bored until she noticed Ruby and stuck out her tongue.
Miss Barbara patted Ruby’s back to hurry her along. There were sounds coming from behind the closed doors. Cottony voices that made Ruby’s throat close tight. Miss Barbara led her to a little room then spoke to the smoke rising up from her hands.
“This here’s your room sweetheart. Bathroom’s down the hall but seeing how you’re Colored you’ll have to use the one outside. Mighty inconvenient if you ask me, but thems the rules, you just got to ask permission first. And don’t go touching this here lamp, it lets folks know what’s what, all right? I’m gonna call you Bunny. You got any questions just ask for me, Miss Barbara.”
She gave Ruby a good long look then she walked away. Ruby was alone in the tiny room. Something about the alone took all the air out of her so she fell down to her hands and knees, gulping in and out. She got light-headed until her gut told her to slow her heart. Ruby put her hands over her chest and pushed in there, stroking like she would a cat and after a time her heart slowed itself to normal. She kept doing this as she took in the room. It was almost empty save a strange bunk bed with its top half sawed away. That is when Ruby decided she was having a dream. Then the nightstand was a dream nightstand. With a dream ugly lamp without a shade. A dream empty candy dish beside it too. The dream walls were tall and dark yellow with paper bubbling all the way up to the ceiling.
After a while Ruby grew tired of standing and started biting her mouth. She’d discovered it was a way to pass the time while she sat in church, nibbling at the soft inside of her mouth. She placed her crooked finger on the outside and pushed the soft inside into her teeth. Then she stopped because she could feel it, and in a dream you can’t feel anything. Her tummy grumbled a make-believe dreamy rumble, then started flipping and her legs got tired so she sat in the only place there was to sit. Climbing up onto the bed and letting her legs hang over the edge, her shoes thumping lightly on the wooden frame. When the door creaked. Ruby’s heart pushed up into her mouth.
A tan mulatto girl was standing in her door, no more than seven. She slipped in and stood eyeing Ruby, then looked in the candy dish. Her hair was reddish like Ruby’s mama’s but with sparks of blond. Her eyes were light gray and she had a dimple under her left cheek.
“Ain’t you had no friends yet?”
Ruby looked back in answer.
“You get to keep your change. Don’t let nobody tell you different. Tried to take mine ’til I learned better.”
They stared at each other for a long stretch.
Then the girl said, “Don’t never tell them your name.”
Ruby didn’t understand but something inside her felt like she’d just heard gospel.
Ruby nodded back as Miss Barbara stepped in the door with a lampshade. Her face tight she said, “Tanny now get back in your own room.” Tanny ducked under her arm and made a funny face, which smoothed out the terror rising like water. Then she ducked out of the door.
Miss Barbara’s eyes stabbed into Ruby. “Mind you keep that one out of your room. She’s a bad influence.”
Then Miss Barbara let a smile land upon her face as she fitted the shade over the lamp and quickly disappeared. A man with a big square head came in — the top and the bottom of it almost had corners. He was paste white with red-water eyes. He smelled sour like the rye Papa Bell kept for Sundays. His necktie was loose. Ruby thought about how it looked like a scarf her Auntie Girdie used to wear before she moved to Kansas to marry that porter and how dreams made you think of all kinds of funny things from all kinds of places. Like how real-life men didn’t walk around with tiny little bodies or with square heads. The man nodded that he wanted to sit beside Ruby so she let go of the scarf and Auntie Girdie and scooted over. Her heart was beating behind her eyes so hard she was sure she would wake up. And then she wanted, needed to wake up, because something in the quiet man beside her was more terrible than any monster she had ever imagined, and so she started pinching her arm. She started pinching it harder and harder but still he kept sitting, hands pressed together between his legs, head down. Ruby pinched again and again, her eyes watching his fingers, his square thumbs, the brown stains along the inside of them. Ruby wiped away the little welts of blood as they popped through her skin and kept pinching as they sat and sat and sat. She stopped when she saw his body begin to shake, saw his hands fly up to his face as if to stop a running pump. He was bawling, snot and tears running through his fingers, down his arms. Loud like a little baby. Singy song cries and big gulps of air. Ruby thought it would stop, but it got worse until he crumbled up on himself, clutched at his belly like someone had punched him, and hid his face from the lamplight. He cried like the whole wide world had split in two, cried like he had lost his first child and his mama and his best friend. Ruby had never seen a body that sad, not even Great-Uncle Tippy after he lost his dog Pete after sixteen years. Or even Papa Bell when he talked about Neva. The square-head man’s sorrow broke through her. Ruby breathed in the sweet and the sour of him, so that it filled her lungs and pushed tears from her own eyes. Until she felt so sorry for him that she made the mistake of reaching out to help him, and he turned on her.
The things he did to her hurt worse than anything she knew, than any way she imagined she could be hurt. But the things he called her hurt worse, words she didn’t know the meaning of but felt slugging through her, moving into her like poison. Slut, and cock-tease and whore. His stained fingers grabbing, opening, licking all the while, moving his hand inside of her pants, then pushing her down, hands like lobster claws. Anger sweating from his body, entering hers, his words spoken to the center of her own skull. Horny bitch. Fucking slut.