Four of a Kind: A women's historical fiction (17 page)

Such a beautiful garden and I loved this one chore above all others in seeing my labors come to visible fruition and could proudly display this as eventual sustenance for my family. My lavender bushes along the fence were my other pride, the oil good for mosquito bites, the leaves for a digestive tea, the fragrant blooms for sachets. Wood ash my secret to their growth … I could have spent all my time in the back yard if allowed. Outside the monotony of cooking and ironing, gardening was a learning experiment of when to plant, what to plant, how much to plant for canning and preservation.

Hence, the next time I looked up, it was close to dusk and I was dusted in dirt, my feet caked in it and enjoying this rare solitude in the outdoors. In rising off my knees, some movement caught my eye in the third-story bedroom window. The curtain stirred but nothing was there. This was all very odd. The sun was setting quickly and the house took on a quiet gray gloom.

I returned to the front verandah and felt relieved to see the lamp on in the front parlor window. I knocked and knocked on the front door but although I heard footsteps on the interior stairs and muffled voices inside, no one came to the door. I became completely exasperated. Walking over to the parlor window, I at last saw Robert sitting in his chair, as plain as day, reading the newspaper as if he were deaf and dumb.

“Robert!” I whispered loudly, tapping on the window and caring for once that the neighbors didn’t see me. How embarrassing to be standing outside while your husband cannot simply answer the door!

He looked up from his paper slowly and deliberately, and focused his eyes on me. No, I take that back; he was boring his eyes into me. So, he was still angry. No more secrets, I had decided in the vegetable garden. I would tell him everything. I wanted a relationship like Cady and Thomas had. Perhaps Thomas could come over and talk to Robert … I flinched as he threw his paper to the floor and rose from his chair. The front door opened and he came outside, closing the door behind him. He folded his arms across his chest and stared silently down at me.

“Robert, I am sorry. I can explain everything.”

“No need. I wouldn’t believe you,” he said, low and calm. “You lied to me.

You lied to the children. Worse yet, my mother would turn over in her grave if she saw the state of this house. Dishes, dirt ... look at this shirt, Ruby. Look at it! Two buttons are missing. I came downstairs this morning to find little Bess standing on a bench trying to wash pots bigger than she is. We had strawberry pie for breakfast
and
lunch. I had to take the children downtown to actually
buy
something to eat and that is where I found the disappointment of my life. My own wife marching with men-haters. Which can only mean that you must hate men, too. Which can only mean that you hate your own
husband.
Worse yet, I will be the laughing stock among my customers. But you are not concerned with my life, are you Ruby? Nor with my children. You are not a good wife. You are not a good mother.”

He purposefully eyed me up and down. “And look at you. A poor seamstress with that cheap blouse you are wearing. Cheap and dirty, for all to see. And my God, bare feet as filthy as a beggar. You shame me. My own mother and father built a decent home and reputation in this neighborhood, only for you to tear it down. You ridicule the government for not looking after you when you can’t even look after yourself, let alone your family.”

His words bit deeply, stripping me of my essence as a woman. All I could do was stand there raw and crying, retorts jammed in my unworthy throat. His cold eyes met mine and did not waver. “My
children do not need this sort of upbringing. They deserve better, Ruby.” He pointed his thumb to his chest. “
I
deserve better, Ruby.”

He took another look at my feet, making them feel adulterous. This seemed to decide my fate. “Filthy liars are not welcomed here. This has always been a Christian home. It will remain so. You are to leave my home and these premises.” He turned his back to me and opened the door.

I didn’t understand. I reached out and clutched his shirt. “Robert, what are you saying?” I suddenly thought of Eunice and how everything became a question when her life turned upside down. And of how I had judged her harshly from my secure roost.

“Is that Mama? Where is Mama?” cried Pearl and Jonathan from somewhere within.

“Go to bed!” he yelled around the door to the inside. “I already told you to stay in your rooms and away from the windows! Now GO!”

I made an attempt to step around him to get inside, but his arm shot out and he pushed me hard so that I fell against the rocker and onto the floor. With a fleeting look at neighboring homes, he quickly stepped inside and slammed the door hard. The click of the lock echoed over and over in my ears.

I could only sit there in shock.

More shouts and cries from within pulled back to my feet and I pleaded through the parlor window. “Oh my God, please Robert don’t take this out on the children!” In an absolute frenzy I ran back to the door and banged there. More cries, more shouting. I stopped banging. I was causing my children’s hysterics and whippings and hadn’t I done enough harm already?

I collapsed into the rocker in tears and prayer, landing on something hard. I reached under and brought out the pie plate. I stared dumbly at the leftover crumbs as a new wave of sobbing shook me and the pie plate fell with a loud rattle to the wooden floor. The parade and the picnic seemed like years ago.

“It’s all my fault,” I whispered, banging my knee with my fist. “I hate you, I hate you! You are a bad woman, a bad, bad woman! How could you be so selfish? How could you do this to them? To your
husband, to your children? You don’t deserve such a loving family! You’ve been told how fortunate you are but you wouldn’t listen to your own sister, to your own mother! How will you face Opal and Mama now?”

They all seemed so far away. Everyone who loved me. Would they all stop loving me now? I choked and cried and finally the tears subsided. I wiped my face with the sleeves of my streaked blouse, trying to think of what to do, where to go.

Then, the light went out in the parlor and left me in darkness. Only the fireflies came around to offer their pitiful light. I desperately hoped for one brief moment that Robert would open the door on his way up the stairs. The house had become so quiet that I could hear the creaking of the inner stairs as he climbed to his bedroom.

Fresh tears came as the impact of his words and the cruelty of being left out here in the dark began soaking in. I wrapped my arms around me as the cool night air stirred around me, and I began rocking slowly.

“I hate you, Robert,” I whispered. “How could you do this to me when I have obeyed you every day of our married life? Well, at least until this spring. I cooked you hot suppers every day. I boiled and scrubbed your soiled underwear, I ironed your shirts, I cleaned your house, like the servant I am to you. And never once did you thank me or tell me you loved me. You, your mother, you both only made me feel that
I
am the one who should be thankful. Well, your mother is dead, Robert, and you need to bury her once and for all. She’s starting to stink around here!”

Believe me, I tried hard to still the storm of hateful words to him, to me, tides of anger rising and falling. I had to think clearly about where to go. I looked over at Aimee’s dark house. I could be jumping from the pan to the fire in facing Aimee’s husband, judging by her bruises. Asking for Aimee’s aid any evening with her husband home, was out of the question.

Nor could I walk out to the farm at this hour. It would frighten Mama to death. And the blister wouldn’t permit the three-hour journey by foot.

As my tears dried with the dirt and sweat on my face, I felt a hardening. A hardening that penetrated through and through. I began thinking logically. I resolved that I would eventually find my way back in. Here was where I belonged. Robert remained my husband, who, whether I liked it or not, I took an oath to love, honor and obey. He made an oath, too, to love, honor and keep me, though he needed to work on the ‘keep’ part. These were my children, my own flesh and blood. They were my responsibility. But I would take more control of my life, and of my children’s lives. I had been too trusting of my security within these walls. I would make sure I was never so vulnerable again.

Suddenly it dawned on me what women’s rights were all about. Now I fully understood for the first time what I was marching for. What I was petitioning for. Before this, I had been only a student going through the motions of class participation. Now I was living it. Now I could sympathize with what the other women were saying in their testimonies, and the scars that brought them to the place to fight back. How law must be changed to protect women from the anger of men. In such an exposed state, I saw what they were fighting for so clearly. Robert’s cruelty only strengthened my resolve to support the Ladies Legion all the more.

“If he is attempting to teach me a lesson,” I whispered, “he will be surprised at what I’ve learned.”

I would take it one step at a time. First step: find a place to sleep. I stopped rocking and looked over at the wicker settee, its thin cushion offering little comfort.

“Mercy,” I muttered.

Lying in a fetal position, I was thankful for the first time today for my wool skirt and petticoat layers, for my long thick hair that I unpinned and loosened around my shoulders and arms, for my stockings.

Once back in the house, my mind continued, the first thing I would do is have another key made. Yes that was it.

Take it one step at a time.

My exhausted body finally pulled my mind down into sleep.

I walk down a long empty street. Snow begins to fall, blowing around me, through me, blowing up my skirts, billowing them out like a storm-swept sail. I bend my uncovered head against the wind and push my torso forward, my feet and hands become frigid with colds, leaving only my teeth limber in a wordless chatter. The snow piles quickly as I push my legs, stockings wet and stiff. I must keep moving. My knees rise higher and higher to stay on top of the rising white but I’m moving too slowly. The wind chills my lungs as I breathe in heavily, its release a cloud that looks like something else to have to walk through. I am losing strength. I plow my body through again and again, the icy flakes all with their individual pattern packs into sameness-snow that is now as high as my knees. Keep moving, I repeat over and over. If I stop, I know I will become buried in these cold drifts. No one will ever find me. I push on, the snow now up to my hips. I look beyond the white mounds down to the end of the street. There is no end in sight, just forever and ever. I bring in my shoulders and push forward. Keep moving! The snow is now at my chest that I claw away with stiff unprotected fingers. It is of no use. The snow is only mounting higher. My body is becoming numb to the cold. I’m getting sleepy. It doesn’t seem to matter anymore, this struggle. Why do I struggle so? But the question causes doubt and the doubt causes me to stop, if only for only a moment. A moment I immediately regret, because the snow quickly covers my ears, eyes and last my head. I can only see the white crystals before my eyes. I can no longer be seen. I’m suffocating. Why did I stop? I cry. Tears freeze on my cheeks. I will die here. No one will find me, now that I stopped the struggle. To keep going would have made a trail for my daughter to take safely. I am so angry with myself but it is too late. Why did I stop, why did I stop?….….out of the distance, I hear Papa’s voice. “Ruby, Ruby, wake up! Get up!”

“Is that you, Papa? Papa?”

“No Ruby, it’s Jesse!” My brother was shaking my shoulders hard.

“Jesse?” I mumbled, trying to climb out of my dream. I rubbed at my eyes, crusty and hard to open.

“Ruby, why are you out here?” Jesse’s voice sounded troubled, scolding, like I had lost some sense and had chosen to sleep out here.

Memories of the night before came rushing back and with it more tears. I sat up and tried to focus on Jesse who was leaning over, looking intently at my face, his hand still on my shoulder.

“Ruby, what happened?” His voice was softer now, filled with concern.

Good ol’ Jesse, steadfast and true, always there for family. I couldn’t say any of this.

“Did Robert do this to you?” He shook my shoulder again. “Did he?”

I betrayed Robert and nodded.

“Why?” Jesse asked. He stood up straight and said, “Well, it doesn’t make any difference why, anyway. No kinfolk of mine is left out in the cold like some barn animal! No, not even if you marched with the Confederates!” He took off his cap and slapped his leg with it, his thick curly brown hair unruly. “This ain’t right, Ruby!”

He paced in front of me, his round face and short nose so much like Papa’s, it added tears. His mind made up, he stated matter-of-factly, “Well, you are coming home with me.” Without waiting for a reply, he reached down and picked me up as light as a pillow.

His warm arms felt so comforting around my cold exposed body, I accepted all the pity he had. He carried me down the steps and out to his milk wagon. I looked at his face as he did so. I had never seen him at such close range before. His lips were pinched together and his nostrils flared, whether it was from my weight or anger, I couldn’t tell. Yes, just like Papa.