Ephram called from behind the closed door, “Ruby? You all right?”
“Child, how you keeping yourself?” Supra started, her hands petting Ruby along her shoulders until Ruby felt a snarl at the base of her gut.
“Yes, how you been making out?” Righteous twilled in a remarkably high voice.
Ephram tried the door but the women pressed against it.
Tressie Renfolk, a girl-faced matron, kept her lips in a tight line and awkwardly handed the potato salad to Ruby. “We brung this from the Women’s Auxiliary.”
Righteous gentled the thing. “Was already cookin’ aplenty what with Junie Rankin’s wake tonight, so we figured we bring some on over to you.”
Verde Rankin added, “This too.” She thrust a worn Bible into Ruby’s hands.
Righteous produced her Bible from her purse. “Figured we might do a little study while we’re here, if that’s all right with you.”
Ephram pushed against the door until they all peeled away. He took Ruby’s hand: “What y’all want here?”
All four women, as if on cue, slit their eyes at the sight of him. Supra put her arm around Ruby and stepped past Ephram as if he were not there. These four women had petted and praised Ephram since he was a child. He had stood, in his forty-five years, as a perfect example of Christian manhood. Ephram felt their cold shoulder like ice cream on a cavity.
As the women crossed the threshold, they stopped and took in the state of the house. A broom lay by a bucket, black with God knew what. Scraps of filth still affixed themselves to the floors. Rags lay used, every inch the color of tar.
Righteous let out a “Lord have mercy!” Verde pulled out her handkerchief and held it tight to her nose and mouth.
Supra mumbled a prayer against the demon filth. “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.”
She looked at Ruby, distracted, the Bible and salad tilting in her bone arms. “Child, we been meaning to come out, check to see how you doing. See you surely in need of ministering.”
Righteous fell in step on Ruby’s left flank. “Yes we sho’ been meaning to do that. How are you doing girl?”
Verde looked about the house. “I see you been doing some cleaning.”
Ruby’s lip was twitching, her eyes full and wild. Her body began to shake then, began to topple. Supra caught her before she slipped to the ground.
Ephram took Ruby’s elbow, eased her away from Supra and said, “I’d like to thank you ladies for stoppin’ by today to visit with Ruby but as y’all can see she awfully busy—”
Supra shot back under her breath, “You already done enough busy-making last night, ain’t you?”
Tressie pelted him with disgust. “We’ll take it from here, Ephram.”
Righteous spit out softly, “Ain’t you got a home to go to?”
The shame caught Ephram by surprise and made his tongue grow thick in his throat.
Then Supra set Ruby’s potato salad down on the sideboard. The other women followed suit. She took Ruby’s hands in her own and started, “Ruby, I knew your mama and I called your grandmama my friend so I hope you know I’m speaking from my heart when I say this. The Devil got ahold of you and he’s just like a tar baby, anyplace you touch him he stick, and if you tries to unloose him with your own hand you just gonna get more twisted and stuck.”
“Amen,” Righteous whispered.
Supra looked hard at Ephram. “And them who come up to that tar baby with good deeds on they lips but sin in they heart gone git stuck just the same.”
Ephram saw Ruby try to say something with her eyes but Supra rolled right over it. “Now mores the shame we ain’t been out here sooner, but livin’ in a world of sin you get tired of fighting fires with thimbles and just start tending to your own backyard, your own good family. But when my friend Celia break down and cry her heart out in church, well then we talk to the Pastor and he agreed to meet us down to the lake.”
Tressie’s girlish face cut through with concern. “We would greatly appreciate your company to the lake for a baptism. Wash your spirit clean in the blood of the Lamb.”
Verde grumbled under her handkerchief, “Washing her ass clean be a start.”
Righteous piped in, “We got three deacons and our new Church Mother Celia waiting down there as well. She don’t bear no grudge for nobody for nothing. That’s just how she be.”
Tressie added, her face somber, “They praying down there while we come up here to get you. If we ain’t down there directly, they might just come up here and take you.”
Ephram broke in, “Ruby — she’s not going nowhere.”
The women promptly ignored him.
“Celia say that the Devil been content with your soul, but now,” Righteous shook her full face in concern, her skin as smooth as a river stone. “He’s interested in pulling the rest of Liberty, one by one, down into hell and can’t nobody let that happen. She say when he can grab hold a good man like Ephram Jennings, then ain’t none of us safe.”
Supra pulled Ruby towards the door. “Come on now, child, it ain’t a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”
Ruby found herself, felt Ephram’s eyes strong against her, yanked her hand out of Supra’s. The woman’s fingers were like ice. Ruby felt the whole of her arm growing into one long icicle. In a moment she knew she would smash her fist into the woman. In a moment she knew she would scream.
Ephram quickly swallowed the silencing shame into his gut where it belonged. “I’m sorry but y’all got to leave.”
Supra took a stand. “I wasn’t talking to you Ephram Jennings. You sound like you been batter-dipped and fried in wrongfulness. I was talking to this poor bedeviled child.”
“Excuse me, Mrs. Rankin,” Ephram managed, “but it took y’all eleven years to get here, another day or two won’t make no difference.”
“How long it take you?” she shot back.
He looked at Ruby. She let him catch her eye. “Too long.” A calm washed over her and the ice melted.
Verde whined through her kerchief, “Mama, can we just go? You can cut the funk up in this place with a knife.”
Supra then put her hand on Ruby’s face. “Child, your mama might of fallen from grace but that don’t mean you got to follow. You got to choose right, else evil win every time.”
Verde started stacking the Tupperware tubs against her chest.
Supra glowered at Verde. She turned to Ruby and said deathly quiet, “Folks ain’t going to leave this thing to buckle the weave of the town. You come to us or we come to you, but we gone have your salvation come Sunday.” Then between gritted teeth to Verde, “Leave them things.”
Ruby finally spoke. She turned to Verde and said, “Leave everything but the cod peas.”
Verde greedily eyed the cobbler and the chicken, then her mother, who nodded yes. Verde fumed out of the house with the cod peas, followed by Righteous, Tressie and finally Supra.
When the door closed Ruby looked at Ephram. She breathed out, let the floorboards steady her and managed, “I always did hate cod peas.”
“They never did one thing for my salvation neither.”
Ephram put on a smile, so Ruby found hers and dusted it off. They looked straight at each other long enough for her grin to settle.
Then Ruby pulled away from Ephram, from Papa Bell’s house, and walked into the pines. She found the narrow pathway she had taken so many times as a child, all the way to the far side of Wilkins land, where they buried their kin, even after they had all moved to Beaumont. All but Maggie. Ruby saw the grave in the distance, flecked with thin, curling willow leaves. She wished Maggie had a headstone. She deserved at least that, with something sweet and secret etched on the front — but the sisters had built the cross nice and sturdy. Ruby knelt there for a time, her hand flat upon the soil. Then she lay down not three yards away, near a waving cluster of jonquils. She had come there for answers, but since she wasn’t sure of the questions, she breathed in the sweetness — then erupted into a hundred little yellow blossoms and slept the afternoon into evening.