Ruby
This story is loosely based on the story of my great-Aunt Ruby, who died in childbirth at the age of 21. Somewhere there is a picture of her swinging herself around a front porch pillar and mischievously peeking out. You can only see her eyes, and her beautiful dark hair, and feel her grace and youth and beauty. My great uncle Durant referred to her death as “the first of our great family tragedies”. The second of which was “when Johnny Poland stole Estelle” — that is, my own sixteen-year-old grandmother ran off and married someone “unsuitable” and was then disinherited during the quasi-Victorian times of the early 1900s. Like much good fiction, it mixes up a lot of different stories and voices in the interest of an emotional truth. Oh, and Daddy, thanks for the few regional dialect corrections.
Well, I’d run down there fast as I was told. Mama’s harsh words ran me as fast as the sheer joy of running, bare feet in the soft dirt of the road. She didn’t never quite speak like that, so I never doubted that I should MOVE, just as she’s said — “Sukie MOVE, go on down git Doc Watson.”
It won’t the first time I’d seen a girl turned crazy with a baby coming. But Ruby’d been going on so long and had become weary in her shouting with still no baby even trying to come out.
So I ran, happy to have something fast to do, something free to do, happy to be out of that cramped dark sweaty house, out of the fading screaming, and out of the fading duty of Mama and Auntie Belle and the very first beginnings of the possibility that maybe they didn’t know enough to hold back the will of God.
Doc Watson was down to the river bringing in a calf. He took one look at Polly’s daughter with mud past the knee and starched dress browned past recognition and started to clean off his hands in the water pump. “Bertie,” he said to the farmer standing by, “this calf will come in sure enough. Looks like Ruby Lewis needs my attention now.”
He started up his old Model A and drove me bumptity bumpity back over the dirt roads. As we got close to home I could hear Auntie Belle praying up a storm in her dark rich voice “oh Lord, oh Lord, deliver our little girl.” And a cold dark snake, a lack of faith, creeped up into the pit of my stomach. But I would pray and give it over to God lest I be a burden to Doc Watson and the others.
Ruby was still as a graveyard statue with hair sweat glued to her face and neck. I could barely see her breathing through her white white lips. “Get this child out of here,” said Doc Watson, not his usual courtly self. Auntie Belle took me out to the yard where we played with the little biddies — those sweet baby chicks. They were like like little bits of fluff, so dear, though they would peck.
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Once I’d been good and bored for a while — and endured more than one of Auntie’s smacks on trying to re-enter the house, Mama come back out, drying her hands in a fresh apron.
But she didn’t tell me anything just yet. Mama wanted to just set in the sliding chair. “Baby,” she said into my hair, “Thank God for sending my last little one safe and free of harm.” This was something I heard often and as it contained no news, I slid back down into the garden to play with the biddies. I could feel Mama and Auntie share a glance over my head. The silence from the house was scarier than any screams could ever be. If you knew about babies coming, that is.
Doc Watson come out with a little bundle. Auntie and Mama jumped up. “Here’s a little boy,” he said. Mama’s voice come out like a screech that went up and down “And Ruby?” she asked. Doc took her hand and walked her off into the field next to the house as Auntie took the baby.
Now this is what I saw. I was just a child and no one saw fit to explain anything to me. So I knew from years of guessing at grown folks’ doings that when Doc just walked off with Mama that something terrible had happened to Ruby. I had to see her, touch her. Might not seem much to you, but I was the last of six. And Ruby was the only one ever paid much attention to me.
Auntie was busy with the new baby, and Mama was off with Doc. Years of switchings hesitated me for a tiny bit, but I slipped into the house.
The quiet weighed on me. I crept to the front bed room. Have you ever seen a department store mannequin? It almost seemed that spread across Mamas’s pressed and ironed sheets was a mannequin. A mannequin with blood drenched everywhere between her legs, but I didn’t notice that at first. At first I saw Ruby’s face, whiter and stiller than I’d ever seen it before. She was so still that I noticed for the first time she was beautiful. My laughing singing Ruby. It was usually hard to catch a glimpse of her in all her busyness doing whatever needed doing around two houses.
Even so I almost expected her to ask me about my chores or about school or even about dolls. But she was stiller than sleep. Only years later did I remember the gash across her belly — of course good Doc Watson had not yet had a chance to clean up. But there was my Ruby. So still. And who would listen to me now that she was gone?
I tried to be good. I really and truly did. The adult folks had better things to worry about than me. But a wail took force from my lungs. And when I tried to make her decent — put her legs back together and put a sheet over her — it was so much harder than I reckoned. There was blood on my hands and on my dress and I heard an unearthly keening. It was only when Auntie Belle come back in and said “Child, child, what are you doing?” that I realized that horrible demon sound was me. And Mama come to the doorway fit to switch me, but Belle calmed her down. Doc Watson was gone by then.
He had gone to git Ruby’s husband Jerome. And really, all the sadness belonged to Jerome and Mama. My sadness was just nothing compared to theirs if you think of it. Mama and husband. Who is little baby sister in all of that?
Auntie Belle took care of the baby. And I took a mind to hate it. To send it back to wherever it came from blood and mud to snatch our Ruby. But I could not. The grown ups were so busy that it was just me and the unnamed baby. I called him Arthur after a while. King Arthur. No one else had seen fit to name him that day, so he was mine.
