The Book of Ruth (33 page)

Aunt Sid nodded yes. She had a piece of lettuce that she was trying to get into her mouth.

“I didn’t get perfume for May. I bought myself some brassieres.”

I went scarlet recalling it, but it was funny, I knew it was. Still, it was something that I’d always wanted to confess. Aunt Sid groaned in sympathy with me, and then she said that growing up was so difficult. I banged my hand on the table in agreement. She reached over and petted my arm. She murmured, “You poor thing.” I shrugged it off. I wasn’t in the mood for crying into a five-gallon drum, plus I didn’t want her to think I was a ninny. I said I was a dumb kid back then, I didn’t travel places by myself.

Somehow her saying I was a poor thing cast a pall over the rest of the dinner and we quietly ate our steaks and the baked potatoes and the green beans with slivered almonds on them. For coffee she suggested moving to the screened-in porch, and when she brought out the mugs she also had a box, containing all my letters, tied up by the year in green ribbon. She had saved my letters because they were precious to her. I sat in my chair long past dark, reading my life over by candlelight while Sid moved in and out, doing her chores, washing the dishes, reading her paper. Most of the details and events I had written about were exaggerated or had never taken place. The crickets, the moon, the dark cool air moved in through the porch screens but I was unable to budge. I was meeting a strange and familiar person through her words. I couldn’t believe I had written the letters; I was actually a little bit impressed and very horrified by my imagination.

I found a letter that described my promotion to the superior English class—I hadn’t admitted that I was in the lowest of the low, and that I was merely moving one step up into the regular class. I talked about how Mr. Davidson said I was improving miraculously, and that I had such a good grasp of the books we were reading. All lies. I never once mentioned the fact that after a month I was demoted.

“Aunt Sid,” I said to her, while she sipped her coffee, “I told so many lies in my letters to you. Half of the things I described didn’t even happen.”

She chuckled. She said that was what pen pals were for, to share fantasies with.

She rubbed her eyes with her fists; she looked up, serious all of a sudden, and said, “You, all of you, should have visited me years ago—I should have demanded it. I don’t know,” she said, “I wanted to help May and be friends in some way but we have always lived such different lives. We’re practically a different generation, and I had so many more opportunities than she did. Mother and Father had more money by the time I came along, and Marion encouraged me to go to college, and the teachers in Stillwater urged me to pursue voice training. I grew up in a different era.” She stirred her coffee and then cupped her hands around the mug, gathering its warmth. “Maybe she just couldn’t forgive me.” She looked up after a minute trying to smile cheerfully. “I shouldn’t be saying these things to you,” she said, “but I want you to know that you’re dear to me.”

I almost tipped the chair over so I could lie still in the state of grace. I wanted her to stop talking before she said something like “If I’d seen you sooner maybe you wouldn’t be retarded.” I couldn’t stand it when she was solemn. I petted the dog and stared at its limp tongue.

Then Aunt Sid asked me a lot of questions about my life, and wouldn’t you know it, I was feeling so lively I didn’t tell her every detail. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the truth, for the millionth time. I said that Ruby and Justy and May and I were in the house together still, of course, and that it worked out pretty well, because May baby-sat, and she loved Justy even better than Rock Hudson. I mentioned that May had had some rough times over the years, when we were growing up and she had to raise us single-handedly. Now that I was a parent, I said, trying to sound knowledgeable, I could imagine how miserable being alone with small children could make a person. I didn’t elaborate on how noise and dirt and whining rile you to the point of wanting to strangle everything within reach. Aunt Sid and I agreed that May didn’t have anything handed to her on a silver platter. She had had to fight for every gain, what there was of them.

But with Justy here now, I told Aunt Sid, it was an entirely new life for all of us. I mentioned that Matt didn’t ever write or come home; he was a missing person, abducted by the world. May had to learn about Matt from Dr. Heck, the school principal. She had to pretend Matt wrote her and told her trivial things, such as what his apartment looked like, when actually she was longing to hear substance. She would ask Dr. Heck, “Did Matt say where he was working?” Dr. Heck probably had it all figured out because he told May in his gentle voice everything she wanted to know about Matt.

“It’s the limit,” I said to Aunt Sid, not feeling a bit guilty for bad-mouthing Matt. Aunt Sid shook her head and said it was a shame.

I explained that Ruby wasn’t the most notorious genius on earth, not like Matt, but I knew his capacities before I married him. I said he wasn’t going to solve any riddles of the universe, and he had a little trouble holding down a job but it didn’t matter a bit, he had so many good points. I told her about the times he was kind to people, buying May a toaster oven, and what a playful father he was for Justy. I bragged about his high sweet voice, wishing that she could hear him sing. Briefly I mentioned that he drank sometimes, and that it worried us, the way he could guzzle serious quantities. I quickly added that he knew how to handle it, that he didn’t trip around or bully people. I mumbled that it scared me, that I knew it wasn’t healthy, and that we weren’t rich enough to support a drunk. Or a drug addict, I said to myself. I said that Ruby’s counselor Sherry was helping him out. He was improving little by little.

I explained my life to Aunt Sid, and how I spent my days, but I skipped over the bad parts. I told her about the qualities I admired in May and Ruby: there was only half a person pictured in my mind, when I got done describing each one. I couldn’t bring into my line of vision their heads, or their chests, where their hearts should have been.

Aunt Sid said it was astonishing that we could all live together and get along. She said it was remarkable, that I was a wonder. She thought it must mean so much to May, to have her young people and the baby.

When Aunt Sid said that I was a holy wonder I felt like what I did in my life was worthwhile, helping my family, seeing May into her old age, and having a husband with a singing voice, even though houses shrank in front of him sometimes, and it looked like a midget could live in them.

But finally, as we were standing by the kitchen door, saying goodnight, I told her to her face; I said if she hadn’t written the letters to me I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up walking down the street. Naturally I didn’t have the right words to tell her that she had made me strong, that if it weren’t for her telling me time and time again that I was a good person, with novel ideas, I might have shriveled into a warty frog croaking in single syllables from the marsh. I always got the feeling, even when I wasn’t telling the whole truth to Aunt Sid, that she took my lies with a grain of salt. When I whispered that she had saved my life she gave me a big hug. I had to clamp my teeth together to keep from crying my entire head off and destroying her real silk shirt.

T
HE
strange thing, when I got off the bus in Stillwater, was how I didn’t recognize the town. It didn’t look like where I wanted to be. My clenched hands were cold and sweaty and there was nothing left of my fingernails or cuticles. I wished the bus had gone straight through Stillwater, not stopped for a single person. Even though I had the front seat I waited to be the last one off.

It was twilight, only the air was thick and the sky had turned yellow, as if it were burning up from the heat of the day. Maybe night had decided not to come. Perhaps we were going to have afternoon for the rest of our lives. Daisy was on the sidewalk trying to make Justy wave to me. He had a sucker in his mouth so he wasn’t about to obey. He looked at me with accusing eyes for the longest time. After a while he whispered, “Ma-ma.” When Daisy gave him to me he buried his head in my neck.

“When are you going to have a baby?” I said, first thing.

“Give me ten years, maybe twenty.” Daisy winked at me. She had to be joking because in twenty years her eggs would be used up. On the way home in the car she kept asking so cheerfully how I enjoyed my trip. I told her that yesterday we went to Aunt Sid’s school, and ate dinner, and today she took me downtown and we ate lunch in a cafe. I didn’t feel like going into much detail. My time with Aunt Sid was a secret I had already stashed away. If I explained to Daisy, out loud, our morning on the porch eating English muffins, my memory of it would become fixed. I wanted the whole experience to remain fluid and new. And there was the danger that Daisy might make a joke, as she later did about the tuning fork, and I’d have to stamp out marigolds and make excuses for myself believing in magic.

I didn’t want to know, but finally I had to ask; I said, “How are Ma and Ruby?”

She coughed, saying, “It was sort of a rough two days for them while you was gone.”

“That don’t surprise me a whole lot,” I said, and then we rode quietly the rest of the way home.

May had a pan of chicken frying on the stove. She looked like she didn’t have the strength to poke the pieces. Her curls were greasy and slack, and her eyelids hung low.

“I don’t want to hear nothin’ about Sidney,” she said, right when I walked in. “I don’t want to know about the great time you had.”

“That’s fine with me,” I said, breezing through the kitchen.

Ruby was lying on the couch with a beer between his legs, in the position I left him. He acted like a real big baby when I touched him.

“Ouch, you’re hurting me,” he whined.

I hardly put any pressure on his thigh. He squinched up his face so that he looked exactly like the Chinese tourists in De Kalb, focusing their cameras.

“You look like a Jap,” I said, and then I gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and told him that I’d thought about him while I was gone.

He turned all blubbery and said, “Oh, baby, I missed you too.” I hadn’t meant that I’d missed him, but I didn’t correct his impression. He told me he didn’t like to live without me—he meant, without me serving him.

Daisy went home and then May and Ruby and Justy and I sat down for chicken dinner. The minute her fanny hit the seat May said, “My, what a juicy chicken this is, Ruby, how good of you to get it for us. Don’t it smell delicious? Thank you for making it possible.” She licked her chops and smiled at Ruby, thanking him.

He didn’t look at her, not once. He slurped his milk like a hound dog. I couldn’t figure out what was going on with those two so I paid attention to Justy, told him about the oak trees in De Kalb making a bridge over the street. He had an expression on his face that said, “I love how nice you’re talking to me, Mama.”

“Justy,” I said, “I heard Aunt Sid sing. Her voice sets your whole spine shivering, and she sings a language we don’t know.”

“He don’t know a word you’re saying,” May chimed. “My, ain’t this chicken tender?” She tore the skin off a drumstick and sank her teeth into the meat.

“Aunt Sid’s house is filled with light and color, Justy. Someday you can see it for yourself. I know you and me will get there, to De Kalb, for another visit.”

Ruby suctioned up his Jell-O, face down to his plate. He made one long noisy sucking sound.

“Ruby, you was such a sweetheart to get this scrumptious meal for us. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your thoughts, especially when that leg of yours is good for nothin’.” May talked straight to Ruby even though he was looking over his shoulder at the back door.

“Justy,” I said, “did you have fun at Aunt Daisy’s this afternoon? Were you a good boy?” He nodded his head and said, “Do.” “Do” was the only word he spoke clearly, except for “no, no, no, no, no.” He could say “no” with perfect diction.

“You know what?” May said, taking a huge ferocious bite of bread, “I don’t think I’ve tasted better chicken in my whole life. Ruby, this one tastes as good as Grandma’s devil’s-food cake. I think they’re improved when they”—she leaned over the table and spit the words out—“hang from their necks.”

He was looking clear out the back door. She wanted to catch his eye, tack it up for a trophy.

“What’s going on, Ma?” I shouted, banging my hand on the table. “How come you’re talking about this chicken like it’s Jesus H. Christ?”

She stood up with all her theatrical flair. She had been dying for me to ask. She pointed at Ruby like she was the victim finally pointing out her assailant in the line-up.

“Ruby can’t control his emotions too great, oh no he can’t.” She spoke in her hushed tone; she spit out her
t’s
and her c’s. “Don’t they have places for people who can’t control theirselves? Maybe we better call the funny farm, I’d say it’s about time.”

If I didn’t know there was blood and guts inside a person I’d say what’s down in May’s belly is a furnace making her words come out to sizzle people, to char them until there’s nothing left but smoldering ashes. Daisy always said I went to extremes when I exaggerated, but I have to say my impressions even if they aren’t true to science.

May went on to tell the story of how Ruby strangled a chicken and then hung it out on the porch by the macramé plant holder he made down at the resource center in Stillwater, where Sherry works.

Of course, he had to go strangle May’s favorite hen, the one which lays the best. She milked that part for all it was worth. She said “My Favorite Hen” about five times in a row. She stood ripping the skin off her second piece of chicken and then she said, “I went to look out the window and there was My Favorite Hen hanging by the neck on the porch.”

She wasn’t having too much trouble consuming her favorite creature. Taking a bite for the road she marched to the sink to find her cigarettes. She put one between her lips and it dangled there like a wire hanging from a busted fixture.