The Book of Ruth (16 page)

I felt feverish, and couldn’t stop trembling. Finally I had to turn around and shout, “
Stop it, Daisy.
” Tears streamed down my cheeks, into my frowning mouth, past my chin. She couldn’t believe the way I looked. She came behind the counter quickly—regular people aren’t supposed to do that—looking so worried. I loved her wrinkled forehead. She asked, “What’s the matter?” That question uncorked me. I cried my head off on her shoulder. I got her black shirt with the silver letters
B-I-T-C-H
all wet. Daisy went back and told Artie I had to have a little break; she said I was having my period and I needed to walk to distract myself from the pain.

Daisy and I went up the highway to the Dairy Queen. We sat on the picnic benches and I told her what Ruby had done to me and how I was sure I had been sliced in half. I said I didn’t ever want to do that again, and Daisy giggled. She said she couldn’t help it. She explained that the first time
is
like sitting on a spike but there is improvement like you wouldn’t believe. She put her arm around me and said, “Don’t worry, you have that first experience behind you now.” She said, “Ruby likes you so much. He was too crazy for you.”

“How come he’s on probation?” I asked her, blowing my nose on Dairy Queen’s napkins. It was the first time I wondered, seriously, if he had done something against the law, but she said, “He ain’t on probation. He got a little kooky after his old ma died, and went around smashing stuff, nothin’ major. He just goes to that same class I do for drunk drivers. The teacher likes him because he don’t mouth off. He sits so quiet. I ain’t sure what he did before,” she said, handing me another napkin, “but it wasn’t anything too terrible.”

Drunk driving didn’t bother me. I know it isn’t responsible, but just about everyone in Honey Creek, including May, drives around smashed now and then. The bars are all out of town so you can’t help driving home a little tipsy. Most of all, I was worried that he went around showing hundreds of girls his little one-eyed snake, but Daisy said, “Far as I know he don’t have a girlfriend, besides you.

“Don’t kill me, OK?” she said, trying not to crack a smile.

“I won’t,” I said, even though I had the feeling I might want to.

“I told Ruby where you worked, and about league night—I’ve never seen a man wanting to know a girl so bad. I told him he should take something into Trim ’N Tidy to get cleaned. I was his coach, see. He really thinks you’re a hot little number.”

“Thanks, Daisy,” I said, trying to scowl.

She bought me an ice cream to make up for it. I didn’t mention to her that somewhere inside of me I kept saying the words over and over to myself: “He thinks you’re a hot little number.” I went into the ladies’ room and looked at my face, trying to see it through Ruby’s eyes. I had hives all over from crying, and my eyes were puffy. I wasn’t exactly at my best.

We walked slowly up the road. I knew I was going to be embarrassed talking to Artie. He thought it was the time of the month for me. He didn’t do anything but pat my shoulder once as he rushed by.

All afternoon I pictured Daisy and the girls she told me about who went out with men and let them perform all types of maneuvers on and in their bodies. Daisy described some of the details. She didn’t blush. She said on her dates sometimes she kneeled on the floor of the truck and put her mouth places I wouldn’t think could taste—good; that’s putting it mildly. Still, Daisy and her acquaintances didn’t look so happy for the fancy sensations. It isn’t nice to say of my best friend, but I knew Daisy was a cheap girl. There wasn’t anyone who truly loved her. She didn’t have strong attachments to her partners either. She used her men for their money and their certain body parts, and if she was lucky she was finished with them before they got tired of her. She gave herself away to millions; she sucked on them like they were food for life and then she spat it out. Even though I wasn’t an expert on men I understood that she didn’t have perfect bliss in life. She was restless without knowing why.

It was true that I didn’t have experience with men, except for Elmer, and he doesn’t count. And Matt, of course, but he never had much of a body; he was a brain stuck on a pole. Artie, my boss, was one man I liked. He called his wife Dumpling—always made me smile to hear it. Also, I tolerated the Rev. He isn’t too bad, if you don’t consider the crazy stories he believes in.

However, Mr. Darcy was the man I truly admired. I see him clearly. He is exceptionally tall, and his head is covered with black curly hair. He looks serious except when he smiles at you; it knocks you right straight across the room. His smile is that brilliant. He doesn’t ever do anything to hurt girls. I longed for him to walk out of his book and reach for my hand.

I didn’t see Ruby for the longest time, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. There was something woke up in me—I started saying to myself, in bed, “If Ruby doesn’t kiss me by tomorrow night, I’m going to actually die.” I reminded myself of the wild dogs who attack and kill sheep. Once the dogs get the taste of blood in their mouths they keep coming back to injure the poor innocent animals. I had learned a new sensation and I had to have some more of it instantly. I wanted terribly to kiss Ruby’s mouth, more than eating food, or drinking, or sleeping. It was the craziest predicament, because first I never wanted to see him again, after the trick he played on me, but then he crept into my head, thinking, as he did, that I was a hot number. His opinion of me had to make me see him in a slightly different light. He noticed I had good points. Maybe he liked my nose, it isn’t so bad, and the tone of my voice, and the way I teased him a little. Daisy said he couldn’t help himself, that he was attracted to me. Far as I know, he was the first man in the history of the universe who noticed that I had a feminine lure.

I ate breakfast with my spoon in the cereal bowl stirring around, not knowing what my hand was up to. All I saw was blue eyes. I had to hope against all hope that Ruby’s pizza became my face when he sat down to eat. To tell the truth, I wanted him to think of me, and only me, continuously. I made a big request to the Maker, that this be so. Each night I went up to the plateau to talk, not to the stars or God, but to Ruby. He was listening to me, I knew he was. I repeatedly relived the beers we drank, and the words we said, and the kiss we gave each other in his car—only I didn’t go one step farther than the kiss. I re-created history: I had Ruby telling me I was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen; he couldn’t keep himself away, he just couldn’t help loving me, and then we stared at each other indefinitely—until we almost dropped dead. When he drove me home we met May on the doorstep and we all had to laugh over how stifling the weather was, how miserable the entire summer had been.

In the night I dreamed I was just like Daisy, kneeling on the floor of his car, making him cry out, and he always did the same thing to me with his expert tongue.

Then, about three weeks after our date, he walked into Trim ’N Tidy. The blood drained from my legs, every single last drop. I felt it wanting to seep out my toenails. There I stood like I didn’t have limbs, like there was nothing to my body except a fierce heart, thumping out of sync. The Madame Bovary hot juicy flashes came over me. I didn’t invite the feelings, but they were present nonetheless. Ruby grinned at me from the door and stared sweetly with his wide eyes. They weren’t blinking much. When he started to talk he blinked numerous times, to make up for all the seconds when his eyeballs didn’t have moisture washing over them.

“Do you want to get a drink at Mabel’s?” he asked, and I murmured weakly, “Sure.”

When we sat down at our spot in the bar I looked at him, and even though I wanted to go straight to the back seat of his car and try what he did before, because Daisy said I’d got my first experience out of the way, I mumbled, “I’m not about to handle that one-eyed snake of yours.”

It took all my gumption to speak. My teeth were loose and chattering inside my closed mouth.

I think I expected him to grin at me forever, but he didn’t. He looked down at his hands and frowned. He couldn’t say anything. I tried to peek under, to see his face. His head was bowed so low it practically touched the table.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“You don’t like me no more,” he said, turning away.

I had to laugh because he was such a bashful person behind his cocky walk. Without thinking I took his hands in mine. He had long slim fingers that curled around my hand the instant we touched, as if he’d been waiting for something to hold on to for a long time.

“Course I like you, Ruby,” I whispered. “I want to know you so bad.”

His face changed gradually. He wasn’t positive I meant it, but after I said the words again his big old grin came back, like the sun on the rise: first you see a ray of light and it gets brighter until finally there’s this burst, and it’s morning. I was powerfully strong, capable of making a person feel brilliant and sure. And for the first time I had nerve. For once in my life I wasn’t going to let people pull up my dress and look underneath.

I said to Ruby, “I like discussing the river but I just ain’t ready for . . .” I couldn’t say exactly, but he knew what I was talking about. I said I wanted all the sensations in my body to go slowly. I didn’t want to miss out on one feeling. Then I had to whisper in his defective ears, “You can kiss me all you want,” and he did, right away, there in the bar. He kissed me all over my face while I sat still and shivered. I loved his face so close to mine.

He said he was sorry for hurting me in the car. He said, “Baby, I thought you maybe done that millions of times!”

“I never had no boyfriend before,” I told him.

“I don’t believe it.” He stared at me and shook his head. “I don’t believe it.”

“I ain’t lying to you—you was my first kiss.”

“Which closet you been hiding in?” He was amazed I was such a late bloomer. He said, “Wasn’t you ready to explode?” and then he looked bashful again, because of his appetite.

I felt so glad, being together, apologizing. Later, we drove down to Honey Creek, and he sang to me; he sang, “You’re sixteen, you’re beautiful, and you’re mine.”

I didn’t ask him where he learned about girls. I didn’t want to hear how many others he had kissed. Daisy told me Hazel taught him. She’s an old bag in Stillwater. She pretends she’s a young girl still, but she couldn’t fool anyone. She has crimson hair—it isn’t her natural color, I can tell you that much. It’s in tight curls, looks like her head is killing her, and she wears blouses that are open all the way down to her waist. They lace up the front. She wears them loose so you can see her fake leopard-skin bra. Plus her jeans are too small for her pot belly that wants to pop out of her fly. She’s real sensual, all right. You can hear her coming a million miles away in her spike-heeled cowboy boots. The wrinkles on her neck are the giveaway: she’s at least fifty years old. I thought females were dried up by then, Daisy said that even though Hazel looked ferocious she was a kitten underneath, that she treated Ruby decently most of the time. She said she saw them hugging outside of Dino’s once after Hazel got mad at him and chased him around the bar with a fly swatter in one hand and a broken beer bottle in the other. I guess Ruby didn’t visit her too much any more. She found some other boys she liked better. I didn’t ask him questions about her. I didn’t want to know anything else about his education.

At supper the next night I asked May if Ruby could come bowling with us, and she said he didn’t look like he had too much upstairs—the way he grinned at people, he looked like a fool. I said I had my own eyes and Ruby looked just fine to me.

“Well, if you ain’t gonna turn feisty on me, on account of some man with bugged-out eyes and a girl’s name.”

She didn’t look so hot herself. We were eating sweet corn, and she had a bunch of hulls stuck between her teeth. She said, “Don’t you know that he wrecked Viola Hanson’s car, plus he stole something from the gas station where he worked?” She spoke as if Ruby were a famous bandit, when in fact she had never heard about him before I met him. She got her information from Dee Dee. I looked down at the table and I saw the sweet blue eyes of Ruby’s and the way he sniffed the earth and looked out to the universe—and I raised my voice. I said, “Are you perfect?”

“I’ve seen you loaded and driving too,” I mentioned, leaning toward her. “I’ve seen the way you squished Daddy down so much he left you. He never did anything right in your smart opinion; you was
always
at his heels. That’s what you did, Ma, you squished Daddy so much he drove down the road. He likes me and Matt. He sends us ten dollars when he thinks it’s our birthday. He don’t ever do that for you.”

She froze. Her eyes were fixed on my face. “You just ain’t no angel,” I said slowly, to wrap it up.

She looked at me as if I were a complete stranger. I thought perhaps her head would collapse from the weight of the reprimand, into something akin to a pancake, but the next minute I could tell she wanted to wallop me. She started to raise her hand.

“Don’t touch me, Ma,” I begged. “I just want to be a little happy. Ruby don’t do real bad stuff,” I pleaded. “And he likes me—he’s good to me.”

May snorted. She shoved her chair back and got up to slam some objects around. I didn’t say anything more, and after a few crashes, metal on metal, she came back to the kitchen and sank into her seat. She stared at the table. Finally she slapped the potholder down and said, “I’ll kill you if you get a baby and you’re not married, understand?”

I said she could be sure I wasn’t going to do that.

If I got pregnant without a husband I’d be like Dee Dee’s daughter Lou. Then May would have to live in Dee Dee’s shoes, and that’s one place she didn’t want to experience. May didn’t pay too much attention to my answer. She was watching me drift away. She saw me getting married and blasting off in the getaway car decorated with tin cans. I could see plainly on her face that she was thinking to herself. She was asking, Who’s going to take care of me when I’m over the hill? How am I going to pay the bills with my puny salary? She was watching herself move into the low-income housing apartments in Stillwater. The walls are cardboard, and there’s millions of kids chasing up and down the halls. You can smell everyone’s cooking and there isn’t a back yard for a garden. She was picturing herself without a soul in the world. Her narrow eyes said to me, I don’t need you; go ahead, leave. But I knew she wished I’d run to her feet and kiss her slippers that look like dirty carpet you let the dog sleep on. She wished I’d say, I’ll never ever leave you, Ma, please be my friend. I had to laugh at her fears. I had about one hundred dollars in my old plastic pig. How was I supposed to pick up and leave? Did she imagine that Ruby was actually a millionaire disguised as a drunk driver? He didn’t even have a job.