Ruth’s question sounded vaguely disloyal, maybe because any true answer would be pointedly disloyal. “She’s got a bad back. Says long trips make it worse. Have you seen her? Any of them?”
Her face brightened. “In the Sav-Mor Market a couple of Fridays ago I heard this little voice a-calling, ‘Ruth! Ruth!’ and when I turns around sweet little Sharon comes a-rushing to my arms. ‘Ruth,’ she says to me, ‘where you been so long?’” She shook her head like she was still short an answer. “Poor little thing, and her all the time asking, ‘Where you been so long?’”
“You saw my mother too?”
“I surely did. She was nice to me too, said she was glad to see I was gettin’ on all right. I ’members more’n fifteen years ago when your folks moved to Jenkinsville to open the store. Folks, white and colored, said Miz Bergen was the best lookin’ woman to ever come to town, and I reckon she still is.”
“She say anything, Ruth? I mean, did she mention me at all?”
Ruth looked surprised. “Why, shore she did, Honey. You her daughter, ain’t you?”
“What did she say?”
“Why, she said ’bout what any mother would say.”
I waited to see if Ruth was going to add anything more ’cause vagueness wasn’t exactly her natural state. I watched while she looked down and began adjusting the gold band on her left hand.
“Ruth, I would very much appreciate your telling me the truth. The whole truth. Please!”
“Patty, Honey, I ain’t never lied to you and I ain’t gonna start lying now, but the truth be known, Miz Bergen didn’t say too much. But I’ll tell you everything I recollect. Well, let’s see now,” she said, warming up. “Told me she gets letters from you and how you always say you’re getting along fine.”
I nodded Yes.
“And she told me how she had just sent off a sweater to you through the mails.”
“It’s the one I’m wearing.”
Ruth looked at the sweater and I hoped that I hadn’t distracted her. Then she gave me a look like she had turned a little shy. “And Miz Bergen said”—Ruth gave her wedding band a full turn—“she said I was the only one knows how to handle you.”
Anger blazed within me. “That’s all they ever think about—handling me, controlling me! Why can’t they just let me be?”
I watched Ruth shake her head like she didn’t quite know what to say anymore. But I felt like I just had to ask her the question I was always asking myself.
“Ruth, I want you to tell me something. You know me better than anybody else. What’s really wrong with me?”
“Oh, Honey Babe!” Ruth shook her head like she was trying to shake my words from her ears. “There ain’t nothing wrong with you—nothing a few years and a few pounds won’t take care of.”
“There’s gotta be!” My voice was high enough for scaling mountains. “There’s just gotta be something or I wouldn’t always be getting into trouble, having people hate me.”
“When you get older you’re gonna see that sometimes it looks like most of the good folks done gone and acquired most of the troubles. Yes, siree! Even the Lord Jesus could’ve ’voided getting himself crucified if he could’ve learned to stay out of trouble.” It sounded as though Ruth was pretty close to blasphemy, and I searched her face for a secret sign made only to God that she was just kidding. She gave me a squeeze. “Sometimes I shore wish you knew how to go pussyfooting around your pa and your ma, but then I says to myself, if Patty learned pussyfooting then it wouldn’t hardly be Patty no more.”
“Even if you don’t know for 100 per cent positive sure,” I encouraged, “there must be things that you suspect about me. And if I knew I’d begin working on ridding myself of them. Only first I’ve got to be sure what’s wrong.”
“Don’t ask me to tell you something I don’t know. There ain’t nothing bad about you, and that’s the God’s truth. I’ve cared for chillun white and I’ve cared for chillun black. I’ve loved every single one of them, but nary a one as much as you, Patty Babe. Nary a single one.”
“You couldn’t love me as much as you do Sharon.”
“Don’t you go telling me what I couldn’t do! ’Cause I knows what I knows. And from that first day I walked into your house I loved you the most, and I loves you the most today.”
“It’s so hard to believe.”
“Why, I ain’t even the only one. He loved you. Anton did. With my own eyes I saw that man come rushing out of his hiding place to save you. And I saw his face, and I ain’t never gonna forget what was written there. ’Cause it said: ‘I’d give my own life to save her.’”
“Maybe that’s true. He gave me his ring so I’d never forget that he loved me, and that I was a person of value. Only thing is I lost the ring, and then gradually I guess I lost its meaning.”
Ruth snapped open her pocketbook. “Honey Babe, you didn’t lose your ring. I heard you tell that to the man from the FBI and you musta told that story so many times, you come to believe it.” She held up the ring. “You gave me this for safekeeping when I told you your pa was coming home to see you. Remember?”
I brought his ring to my lips, barely believing it. “He did love me,” I said to Ruth. “And maybe one day my mother and father will too.”
Ruth’s eyes came level with mine and I could feel her resources rushing forward like front line soldiers to battle. “I ain’t nevah ’fore cast me no ’spersions on other folks’ folks,” she said slowly, “but your folks ain’t nevah gonna feel nothing good regarding you. And they ain’t the number one best quality folks neither. They shore ain’t. When I goes shoppin’ and I sees the label stamped, ‘Irregular’ or ‘Seconds,’ then I knows I won’t have to pay so much for it. But you’ve got yourself some irregular seconds folks, and you’ve been paying more’n top dollar for them. So jest don’t go a-wishing for what ain’t nevah gonna be.”
“But I always thought it was me. Because I was bad.”
“You ain’t bad!”
I kissed my ring again, and then gave Ruth the strongest squeeze I could manage. “Nothing has changed, but I feel different. Good. Like a good person! And that was what all the whispering was about!”
“What whispering you talkin’ bout?”
“Every so often, there’s this whispering going on inside me. And whispering’s always so soft I could never make it out before.”
“Was it God a-speakin’ to you?” asked Ruth, her eyes wide.
I never thought about it being God. What would God be wasting his time with a twelve-year-old for? “I don’t think,” I said, “that God would whisper, do you?”
Ruth pressed her lips together. “The ways of the Lord are filled with wonder and mystery.”
“Well, just the same, it didn’t sound like God. I think, actually, it was truth. Truth growing inside like a baby, and for a long time it was just too little, too weak to say anything. But day by day it gains strength.”
“And to what use is you gonna put this truth?”
“Well, maybe, I don’t know right at this moment, but I do know that in spite of everything I did and everything people say about me I don’t feel bad, not anymore. I’m not bad, and right now that seems important.”
Ruth drew me to her and I could tell that she understood too.
21. Rise up singing
TOGETHER WE WATCHED an icy rain make slapping sounds against the window. After a while Ruth said something, something about her galoshes which I didn’t quite hear, probably because I had become too deeply encased in comfort. With my eyes closed, feeling the warmth of Ruth against me, I could believe in so many things. Ruth had never been fired; I had never been found out; and Anton had never been killed. He was waiting for me now, alive in the hide-out, and when night came, we’d go away. Morocco or Mexico. Somewhere, anywhere, together.
“And I was halfways out the door when I said to myself, ain’t no guarantees about no weather so I went right back and got ’em.”
“Good idea,” I said. “I?
??m glad you remembered.”
We fell into quiet again, and it was comfortable. Then Ruth began humming and soon she found the words, “Nobody knows the troubles I’ve seen. Glory hallelujah.”
“I don’t want to go home again,” I said with a suddenness that surprised even me.
“Well, you ain’t got nowhere else for going. You’s too old for ’dopting and too young for marrying.”
“Even so—”
She looked me full in the face. “Even so what? What you planning on doing, girl?”
“I ain’t—I’m not planning on anything ’cause I can’t think of anything to plan on! I just don’t want to look back. If they didn’t like me before all this happened, they’re sure not going to love me now. So what I was thinking was I might get a job. Go somewhere.”
“So you thought you’d up and run away and find yourself a job, that what you thought, girl?” I recognized her I-ain’t-gonna-listen-to-none-of-your-nonsense voice. “Well, now I’m right glad you told me ’cause ole Ruth can tell you something. I keeps a clean house, minds the chillun, and cooks the evening supper, and for doing all these things it takes me six workdays to earn seven dollars and fifty cents. Now how many of those things can you do? And how much you reckon you’d be earning for doing them?”
“There are other jobs.”
“There’s plenty more jobs. They got judges, doctors, and sheriffs. Which one you qualified for, girl?”
“There has to be something.”
“There is something. Now, you listen hard ’cause Ruth gonna tell you jest like I’d tell my own child, which you is! You is goin’ back home and finishing up with your high school education. Nevah you mind what folks say, most folks don’t know what they is saying nohow. Then you tells your daddy that you wants to go ’way to college to be somethin’. And you bees somethin’! A teacher or a nurse, don’t matter what you takes a notion to being as long as it’s something.”
“I know the something I’d like to be,” I said, pausing just long enough to build interest. “A reporter. I already have my first assignment and my nom de plume too.”
“Your what?”
“Nom de plume. Pen name. What do you think of Antonia Alexander?”
“Antonia Alexander,” repeated Ruth, like she was tasting the words. “Mighty fancy.”
I was pleased that its elegance hadn’t escaped her. “I got the Antonia from Anton, and I picked Alexander because of the alliteration, both names starting with the same letter.”
“What is you fixin’ to write?”
“An article about the conditions at the Bolton Reformatory for the Memphis Commercial Appeal.” I checked Ruth’s face to see if she was as impressed as I was. “Charlene Madlee said if it was good, they’d run the story in their Arkansas edition.”
“I’se glad, Honey Babe. You shore is gonna be somethin’.” Ruth gave a sigh filled with pride for my future accomplishments. “And then you won’t have to go home ever again, less’n you want to.”
“I guess sometime I’ll have to come home again to see you.”
I heard the footsteps first and then the rattling of keys.
Miss Laud appeared in the archway. “Visiting time is over. Separate and leave immediately.”
“Not yet, Miss Laud, please. Ruth just now got here.”
“She has been here for thirty minutes. Her time is up. Leave immediately.”
I knew I was going to beg. “Miss Laud, please, she came so far. She’s the only visitor I’ve had since I’ve been here, and she’s the only one I’m gonna get, I know.” The cracks sounded in my voice.
“Miss Laud, if you’d kindly be so kind—” Ruth knew what to say. She’d listen to Ruth—“as to give us a few more minutes to say our last minute things, that’d help make the parting less hurtful.”
Miss Laud’s eyes jumped, all the time jumping from Ruth to me and back again. Something about them I saw for the first time. There was the palest circle of blue surrounding pupils the size of points on an ice pick. Miss Laud raised a trembling finger and pointed it toward me. “That’s why you’re in trouble. Not happy getting what others got, are you?” She shook her head. “Trouble is you’re a greedy, spoiled girl. Don’t like anything we try to give you, do you? Don’t like our religion, don’t like our laundry, and you don’t think our food is worth eating. You told that to one of the girls, didn’t you? Tell the truth!”
She waited for me to answer her charges, but the only answer I gave was a direct stare.
She wet her lips with her tongue. “Truth is you only like Nigras and Nazis!”
“Miss Laud!” said Ruth in as loud a voice as I’d ever heard her use. “Leave the child alone! I’se goin’ now. See me goin’?”
I threw my arms around Ruth’s neck. “Take me with you. Find a way to take me with you!”
“Shush, Honey Babe, shush now.”
“Don’t leave me here, Ruth! Please, please don’t leave me alone.”
“Honey Babe, you know better’n to ask Ruth to do what she jest ain’t got the power to do.” Ruth patted my cheeks as she wiped away the wetness. “Everything gonna be all right,” she whispered. “One fine day, you is gonna wake up and your heart gonna rise up singing, everything gonna be all right.”
“Wallace!” shouted Miss Laud. “Wallace, Rogers! Here! Come here!”
I hung onto Ruth with all my might; she was my life raft and without her the icy waters were waiting to pull me under.
Footsteps raced across linoleum. As Matron Wallace and Matron Rogers came through the archway Ruth raised her hand as though she were stopping traffic. “You leave this child be! Now, I’m a-telling you, jest leave this child be!”
The traffic stopped short. The matrons looked as though their very breath had been sucked out of them.
“Jest seems like,” said Ruth under her breath, yet loud enough for hearing, “some white folks ain’t nevah learned how to be decent.”
And with her arm around my waist and her strength supporting my weakness she led me through the archway and into the center hall. “Go on back to your room, Patty Babe,” she whispered. “Go on back.”
The three matrons had followed us at a respectful distance, but Miss Laud’s distance was the most respectful of all. Suddenly, Ruth whirled on her. “Miss Laud, the red shopping bag in the waiting room. Patty’s Christmas. Would you fetch it, please?”
The head matron looked confused. She turned to Matron Wallace. “Well, get it, Wallace! Don’t just stand there. Go get the bag!” Then Miss Laud started up the flight of stairs followed closely by Miss Rogers.
As soon as Miss Wallace dropped the bag at Ruth’s feet she took the stairs, two at a time. And it was just Ruth and me.
“I reckon they is gonna give us our good-bye time, after all,” said Ruth.
I tried to sound all put back together. “Well, Ruth, I sure do appreciate your visit.”
She gave me some gentle pats on the back. “And you be strong and don’t let them folks get you down ’cause better times a-coming for you. I feels it in my bones.”
“Do you really? You really and truly think so?”
“I shore enough do.”
Yet Ruth’s face was filled with the deepest kind of sadness.
“And for you, Ruth, are better times coming for you too?”
“Mostly things don’t get no better for old colored ladies.”
“Oh, but I want them to be. I want everything to be good for you. Everything!”
She turned her head. “Good-bye, Honey Babe.” She released her hold on me and where her arms had been turned cold. It felt as though something inside me were being torn away. I watched her walk with careful steps back to the bench where she had left her belongings. And watching her, she seemed older and more fragile than I had remembered.
Suddenly I had to give her something, something like the world! I quickly indexed the valuables from my upstairs room—the blue Schaeffer pen and pencil set (a birthday present from my grandparents),
a collection of the short stories of Guy de Maupassant, and Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary. Nothing there for Ruth. She moved slowly towards the door, buttoning her gray coat.
“I don’t have anything to give you,” I said. “I have nothing at all to give you.”
“You got love to give, Honey Babe, ain’t nothing better’n that.”
“Just the same, I wish I could—say, how about taking back some of the chicken breasts to eat on the bus?”
She clicked open her simulated alligator pocketbook, giving me a view of the inside. “I got me a tuna-fish sandwich and a hard-boiled egg, and I reckon that’s plenty for me. Thank you kindly.” Then Ruth reached out, patted my cheek, and with aging steps moved towards the door.
I watched her. It was like watching my very own life raft floating away towards the open sea. And yet somewhere in my mind’s eye I thought I could see the faintest outline of land. Then it came to me that maybe that’s the only thing life rafts are supposed to do. Taking the shipwrecked, not exactly to the land, but only in view of land. The final mile being theirs alone to swim.
As Ruth pulled open the heavy front door my heart felt as though it was spilling over with so many things I wanted to say, but I didn’t have the words for a single one of them. For a moment I thought I was about to call out, “Good-bye,” but I didn’t. The door closed. And the moment and Ruth were gone.
For moments or minutes I stood there. Not really moving. Barely managing to tread water. Was it possible for a beginning swimmer to actually make it to shore? It might take me my whole lifetime to find out.
Sneak Preview
Morning is a Long Time Coming
1
AT THE VERY MOMENT MRS TURNER BEGAN PIANO PLAYING “Pomp and Circumstance,” we graduates were given the nod to march on “with dignity.” Our gym was divided for the occasion into two equal sections of people, most of whose behinds overlapped their narrow metal folding chairs. Even though a gym is always a gym, the freshly strung crepe paper, along with the grandeur of Sir Edward Elgar’s music, made it feel as though this was a place where something important was about to happen.