THE REST of the day the road in front of Bell land had more business than it had in years. Ephram walked the road exactly four times, once to borrow a bath tin and a change of clothes from Rupert Shankle, once to find a trim of fallen cedar to chop into cooking wood, twice to buy things on credit at P & K. He’d already used up the ten dollars he’d won from Gubber and he wasn’t yet ready to face Celia for his wallet. He cursed himself for having forgotten the lamp oil the second time. Both times he walked past the crowd at P & K in silence, each time causing a stir as he left.
Then there were the children who’d been in church that morning when Sister Jennings — now Mother Jennings — had told the congregation that the Devil was living out on Bell land. Never having seen the Devil in person, about six of them perched on the fence across the road from the Bell house and waited for him to show his face.
About twenty other people found themselves wandering the back road to Bell land that day to see if Ephram would fall down and start foaming the evil out of his mouth. Instead they watched a lone man clean and tote and haul. But it was still more than enough. It wasn’t just the exhibition of sin that Celia Jennings had painted so beautifully during testimony that morning, it was the pure, unadulterated, juicy, unholy spectacle of the thing. The scarecrow crazy whore of Liberty had taken up with the township’s mule of a deacon. It was the best piece of gossip the town had had to chew on in twenty-three years.
Chauncy Rankin and his brother drove by slowly as evening gave way to night on the way to their uncle’s wake. They parked just up the road and watched the glow of the house. Chauncy wondered why it hadn’t occurred to him to clean the gal and the place up proper so that he and Percy could have her on tap whenever they got the itch. He quietly cursed Ephram Jennings, and realized he hadn’t, in all the years he’d known him, given the man his due.
Evening found Ruby leaving Maggie’s grave. The perfume of tiny cream flowers still drifting from her pores. Then she made her way through the silent, watching pines. When she reached her home its windows shone with amber light. The water pump held moon light.
Ruby imagined Ephram inside and felt a gentle hand upon her heart. But her children were calling to her, so she went to the chinaberry and knelt. Their voices rose like music from the earth, violas and flutes, weaving into one song. Then she felt the many small ghosts who were still hidden in her body. The ones she had yet to give birth to. They turned and shifted within her. Ruby looked at the last whispers of dark blue evening and felt compelled to dig not only one grave, but another and another. Then she waited for the pain, the pushing to begin — seeing yet another murder.
Suddenly each child, still roaming her body, looked towards the small graves of sifted earth. Something was different. They moved in unison. Ruby knew it was time. They did not tear through her as they had every night for years. Instead each one simply floated from her belly, soft as a puff of talcum powder. It was not a birth, but a gentle exodus.
The last to leave was her own baby. The one who had followed her from New York, who had come to her on the train platform.
Her own child. The sweet baby girl she never named. The child Ruby had at Miss Barbara’s when she was fourteen. When, pregnant and round, men still took her body gently, or sometimes with an amazing brutality, in spite of, and at times because of her condition.
Ruby looked up. It seemed that there were more stars peeking above her, moving into position, the Dipper and the Southern Cross.
The little spirit paused at the small precipice. She looked at Ruby. She wanted Ruby to remember, so Ruby saw it all. Her old room, after a man had left, before another entered. Ruby remembered how she had felt, full of hopeful life. The morning sickness had stopped. Now, at eight months, her girl was strong within her, in spite of the fact that Ruby had never seen a doctor. It was as if the child knew she would have to build and grow without a kind or knowing hand. Ruby’s child was the strongest part of her, until one night Ruby was knocked down by a crushing punch into her gut by a john, who paid a little extra. Always a little extra. Ruby curling, holding, protecting as he kicked with a brown boot. Again and again. Then acted out a rape, a brutal rape of a soon-to-be-mother, which is what he had come for. One day after he left, the contractions came. The ripping unbearable pain. No hospital. Nothing. Pushing, screaming, with not a single soft eye upon her. Still her baby fighting, then slipping out of her. Someone caught her child and dropped her onto Ruby as if the infant were soiled laundry. Ruby saw the top of the baby’s head, wet, red dotted with white. Little hands … ten little chubby miracles. The child was crying, laying upon her. Crying. Then coughing. Coughing as if she had swallowed Marion Lake. Hands taking her away. Ruby reaching out. Her baby coughing so hard. Then soft. Then little gasps of air. Then she was quiet in another person’s arms. Until the silence grew heavy with meaning.
The only words Ruby heard were, “She dead.” Which is how Ruby knew she was a girl.
On the rise of the hill, under the sky, the little spirit turned away from Ruby. She seemed satisfied. Her mama had not forgotten her. She lay herself down and let herself be covered with earth.
Ruby kept her hand upon the mound for a long time. She let out a sigh. It was safer there — the womb or the earth. The womb or the earth. Ruby realized sitting next to all of her children that the soil was both. The world would hold them.
Ruby knew they would still leap and play. She would still visit them come sundown, have them lean up and listen to bedtime stories. Even play hopscotch and freeze tag during the day. But at night they would sleep in their graves. At night they would be safe. She bent down and kissed the kind earth and went towards the warmth of the house.
When Ruby walked through the doorway the first thing she noticed was that the house smelled of cedar.
There were two kettles of water boiling and a huge tin tub full of bathwater on the floor. Ephram stood in the center of the kitchen, washed and wearing a pair of overalls two sizes too big.
The house was clean. A few furtive stains remained in the grooves of the floor, but the walls, the baseboards, the window frames, all of the wood seemed to glow like bronze. The belly of the stove was alive with flames. The six kerosene lamps threw saffron rays onto the walls. A full plate of chicken and potato salad sat on the sideboard. The steam rising from the bath and the kettles was doing something magical and luminous with the light. Crickets and owls harmonized in the blackness outside.
There was a clean sheet folded near the tub.
Ephram motioned towards it. “I’ll be outside drawing plenty water. You eat your fill, then get in that water, have yourself a good soap, then drape that sheet over the tub. I’ll be in directly.” And he stepped into the night. Ruby did just that. The food, though seasoned a little heavily with judgment, went down just fine.
The water was almost too warm against her skin and its waves held her. She looked and found the Dove soap on the floor. The white turned tan where it touched her skin. She washed her face. Her neck. The water was just right now, so warm under her arms and between her thighs, her long, long legs, her breasts, her cocoa nipples, her belly. She dunked her hair under its surface and brought it out steaming, stretched the sheet over the tub and softly called to him.