“So you keep tellin’ me! Look, girl, I am doin’ the best I can, but you ain’t makin’ it easy. Maybe you should go off on your own. That way, if things don’t go the way you want them to, you ain’t got nobody to blame but yourself. You and all of your complainin’ done got on my nerves.”
“I ain’t complainin’! I’m just lettin’ you know how I feel!” Ruby wailed. “I thought we’d at least have husbands by now. . . .”
CHAPTER 50
O
THELLA EXHALED LONG AND LOUD. AND THEN SHE RUBBED
the back of her neck, her eyes, and her swollen belly. “I don’t know about you, but once we leave here, I’m goin’ to marry the first man that asks me to. I don’t care if that man has two heads and a tail,” she told Ruby, rubbing her belly some more, which was still as flat as her chest. “I want my baby to have a real home.” Othella chuckled.
“What’s so funny, Othella?” Ruby asked.
“I hope some of my milk stays in my titties once the baby gets here. That might be cheaper than me tryin’ to buy me a set of them fake foam titties that I been cravin’ all my life.” Othella chuckled again.
“My sister Beulah said that if a man played with your titties enough, that would make ’em grow,” Ruby said.
“And that’s another reason why I want to get married. It would be nice to sleep with and cuddle up to the
same
man every night. Especially after all we been through.”
“Well, in case you ain’t been payin’ attention, the men folks ain’t linin’ up to marry you, or me. That’s one notion that you need to get out of your head right now and leave it out for good, or at least for a while. We ain’t nothin’ but whores, me and you. Just like them girls that work for Miss Mo’reen. Just like your mama. Even if we married saints, that wouldn’t change the fact that we are whores. A monkey in a ball gown is still a monkey. And you, you are the most pitiful kind of whore. You pregnant with some unknown white man’s baby. What decent colored man would want to marry girls like us now? And there ain’t a chance in hell that a decent white man, or even some snaggletooth red neck, would marry us.”
“You finished?” Othella smirked. “Can I say somethin’ now?”
“You can say whatever you want to say. We ain’t got nothin’ to hide from one another.”
“Well, since you mentioned white men, I don’t think I’d want a white man who would marry girls like us,” Othella admitted. Her voice was even more plaintive now, and so detached it sounded like it was coming from another person. There was a look of total defeat on her face. She sounded like a woman who had practically given up on life. For a moment, Ruby thought she was going to burst into tears.
What Othella had just said disturbed Ruby, and made her sad. She had no idea that her best friend, a girl she thought she knew better than she knew herself, had such low self-esteem. “You don’t think much of yourself, do you?” Ruby asked, her lips so stiff she could barely move them.
“I care a whole lot about myself,” Othella defended. “But that don’t change the fact that I been whorin’ around and done fooled around and got myself pregnant by one of them white men I jumped into bed with.”
“Nobody needs to know how you got pregnant,” Ruby insisted. “You can say . . . you can say you got raped like I was goin’ to. . . .”
Othella shook her head. “I don’t want to touch that with a bean pole.” A great sadness suddenly consumed Othella and she knew why. It was because she knew what was on Ruby’s mind: her baby in that asylum. She decided not to remove the scab off that old wound. “We’ll be all right. We’ll find some nice men. Other than us and the folks back at Miss Mo’reen’s house, ain’t nobody else ever got to know what we been up to. Once we get to Florida, we’ll start out fresh.”
“I’ll think about it. But to tell you the truth, I just might stay on here,” Ruby said. “I’ll get me a room somewhere, somehow. As long as I stay away from certain parts of town, I don’t think I have to worry about runnin’ into nobody that we already done screwed up with.”
Ruby was wrong again. The next day, she and Othella walked to an outdoor market two miles from their carnival trailer to purchase some vegetables and fruit, and a carp to fry for dinner. Right after they had paid for their purchases and were about to leave, Ruby heard somebody call out her name. “Ruby! Uhhh, Ruby! Yoo hoo!” She and Othella turned around at the same time.
“Cat Fish! What the hell—” Ruby stopped. She was surprised and thoroughly annoyed to see the white woman who had been such a thorn in her side at Miss Mo’reen’s house. Othella was even more annoyed. She still wanted to slap Cat Fish for the way she had verbally attacked her in front of Maureen’s clients.
“Don’t say nothin’ else to that heifer,” Othella ordered, grabbing Ruby by the arm. But it was too late.
“Cat Fish, what are
you
doin’ in this part of town?” Ruby asked, a hand on her hip. She and Othella were stunned and dumbfounded at the way Cat Fish was smiling at them. They were even more stunned when she hugged them both.
“It’s so good to see y’all! I ain’t seen nobody from the old neighborhood since I left!” Cat Fish squealed.
Ruby and Othella looked at one another, then back to Cat Fish.
“What house are you workin’ in these days?” Ruby asked, looking at Cat Fish with guarded caution. The way she had warmly “greeted” them didn’t impress Ruby. She was surprised to see that their old nemesis had lost a considerable amount of weight, and that she looked at least ten years older. There were even several thick swatches of gray hair on her head. The drab brown dress she wore, with a large safety pin dangling from one sleeve, looked like it belonged to a woman three times her age. She had on a pair of backless men’s house shoes, both with holes. And even though she had on lipstick and a dab of rouge, she looked like a woman who had seen the last of her best days.
Cat Fish seemed genuinely happy to see some faces from her sordid past. She had never displayed such a wide grin in front of Ruby and Othella. And despite her tired look, a smile improved her appearance. “Me? I ain’t workin’ in nobody’s whorehouse these days. Somebody bad-mouthed me in a big way to all the District madams.”
“I wonder why?” Othella clucked, giving Cat Fish a narrowed-eyed, suspicious, sideways glance.
“Most people don’t know I’m a Jew unless I tell ’em. Miss Mo’reen didn’t even know, and neither did any of her girls,” Cat Fish confessed in an almost apologetic tone. Her smile faded, and her face suddenly looked like the mask of a hag. “This is a real bad time for us. Especially Jews that don’t have much money or a real good education. We can’t reach a single one of our kinfolks who still live over there in Germany.”
“Oh? Why is that?” Othella asked with a curious look on her face.
Ruby, who had always paid more attention to what was going on in the world than Othella, knew a little about Hitler’s proposed plan for the Jews. “This is a real bad time to be a Jew anywhere in the world, I guess,” Ruby said, actually feeling sympathetic.
“We are hopin’ for the best, but expectin’ to hear the worst. I . . . I’m pretty sure some of them are in serious trouble. Maybe . . . maybe even dead. I’ve been goin’ to synagogue a lot, and sittin’ shivah.” Othella and Ruby looked at one another, then back to Cat Fish and shrugged. “Shivah is a seven-day mournin’ period that my people go through when there is a tragedy.” Othella and Ruby shrugged again. “Anyway, I couldn’t hide all of that from too many people. I couldn’t stop myself from talkin’ about it to the folks I thought were my friends. Well, apparently, one of the people I thought was a friend I could trust, wasn’t. That’s how word got around to the houses about me bein’ a Jew.”
“But you still white,” Ruby reminded.
“I’m still a Jew, too,” Cat Fish pointed out, tears in her eyes. “You might not believe it, but some folks feel the same way about Jews that they feel about you people. I realize all of that now.”
“Uh-huh,” Ruby said, nodding and looking profoundly smug. It gave her great pleasure to say what she said next. “Now you know how we feel.”
Cat Fish shook her head. “I can’t say whether I do or don’t. I just know that things got real hard for me once the wrong people found out I was, you know, different. My last boyfriend is in the Klan. When he found out I was a Jew, he almost slapped my face clean off.” Cat Fish blinked, but she couldn’t hide the sadness that had already consumed most of her spirit. “I work at that restaurant on Willow Street across from that fish market these days. I wait tables, do a little cleanin’ when the regular colored woman don’t show up. . . .”
Othella could tell that Ruby was as uncomfortable as she was by the way Ruby kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other. They both got even more uncomfortable after what Cat Fish said next.
“A few of the District whorehouse clients pop in from time to time. Y’all remember a lawyer named Wally Yoakum? He told me he’d been to Miss Mo’reen’s house after I left. He had one of them handlebar mustaches, so he’d be easy to remember.”
“I remember him,” Ruby said stiffly, rearing back on her legs, preparing to defend herself. “What about him?”
“He pretends like he don’t know me in front of his friends and business associates, but he’s met me after work a few times for a little fun. He ain’t too particular, so if y’all need to make a few dollars on the sly that you ain’t got to split with Miss Mo’reen, I can let him know. Ruby, he’s so liberal, he’d even go for a girl like you.”
“We don’t work for Miss Mo’reen no more,” Othella said quickly.
“Oh? Whose whorehouse are y’all workin’ in now? Y’all live around here?”
“No,” Ruby said. “We live across town, but we are in the process of movin’ from there. And we don’t work in nobody’s whorehouse no more.”
Now Cat Fish was the one with a guarded look on her face, looking from Ruby to Othella. “Uh-huh . . . I see. Well, let me give y’all my address in case y’all change your mind and stay here and ever need a few dollars.” Cat Fish dug down into her purse until she fished out a pen. “That Wally. He’s a real character, if I don’t say so myself. And, by the way, he’s a ‘minute man.’ Except when he’s drunk! I declare, when he’s wasted, he couldn’t ‘cum’ if I called him.” She tilted her head to the side and chuckled as she continued to root around in her purse. “I know I got a piece of scratch paper in here somewhere. Would y’all believe Wally’s got the nerve to crave virgin pussy? That’s a damn shame!” Cat Fish let out such a shrill laugh she sounded like a hyena, but even that couldn’t hide her despair. “But he told me he ain’t havin’ much luck findin’ too much virgin pussy in this town. Can y’all just imagine that? Shoot! I got everything in my purse but what I need!” Unable to find anything to write on, Cat Fish scribbled her address on the palm of Othella’s hand. Then, she surprised Othella and Ruby with another hug and told them she hoped to see them again.
As soon as Cat Fish departed, Ruby told Othella, “I’m goin’ to Florida with you and that carnival. This town ain’t big enough for us and some of the folks that we don’t want to deal with no more.”
“She’ll probably tell that Wally that she seen us as soon as she sees him again,” Othella said, glancing at the information that Cat Fish had written on her hand. “And as soon as we get back to our trailer, I’m goin’ to scrub my hand, and we are goin’ to get the hell out of this town.”
CHAPTER 51
S
ILO, FLORIDA, WAS A SMALL FARMING COMMUNITY THIRTY
miles west of Miami. It was not the paradise that Ruby and Othella had expected. The very first day got off to a bad start.
They’d arrived with the rest of the other carnival employees in a battered old bus that June morning, a few minutes before noon. The blazing hot sun had already rolled up into the sky with rays that felt more like weapons. Within an hour, the humidity was almost unbearable. Handkerchiefs, fans, and large paper cups of iced water seemed to be useless. And the bugs, flies, grasshoppers, gnats, and even a few creatures that no one could identify, were much bigger, bolder, and hungrier than the ones that inhabited Louisiana.
“Well, I told y’all that Florida wasn’t what them travelogue people make it out to be,” Mr. Peterson told Ruby and Othella the first time they complained. “And if y’all want to leave and go back to where you came from, that’s fine with me. I do wish you gals would stay, though.” Mr. Peterson was in his forties but he had the cute pudgy face of a little boy. It was a shame to see such a nice man pouting like a two-year-old. “I was hopin’ you two gals would stay on, especially since I bent the rules and hired y’all. . . .”
Mr. Peterson made Ruby and Othella feel so guilty, they decided to remain with the carnival. One of the main reasons that they decided to stay was because Mr. Peterson was probably the nicest man, white or black, that they’d ever encountered.
When the Fourth of July rolled around, two weeks after they’d arrived in Florida, Ruby got depressed. Othella didn’t have to ask her why: it was Ruby’s baby’s first birthday. It was also Othella’s sixteenth birthday and she wanted to celebrate it.
“Mama Ruby, you know how you and me always celebrate my birthday in style because it’s on a holiday, and I hope that we will continue to do so. But after what else happened on the same day last year, you don’t have to keep helpin’ me celebrate it,” Othella told Ruby that morning.
Ruby shook her head. “It’s the blackest day in the year for me,” she admitted. “And it will be every year for as long as I live.”
This was the first year that Ruby and Othella didn’t celebrate that day, at least not as a birthday. However, since it was a national holiday, they attended the carnival’s holiday barbeque that included a fireworks display. During that celebration, another carnival worker announced that it was his birthday. Somebody ran out and purchased a cake and more beverages. Othella and Ruby left when a small group started to sing “Happy Birthday” to their coworker.
“I’m glad you didn’t tell these folks that your birthday is today, too,” Ruby told Othella as soon as they made it back to their trailer. “I wonder if them asylum nuns did anything for my little girl. . . .”
“I’m sure they did,” Othella said, trying to sound hopeful. “You know how nuns like to make a fuss.”
Less than a week after Othella’s birthday, things really fell apart. Mr. Peterson received a wire from his estranged wife in Brooklyn. She informed him that their only son had died in the war. Mr. Peterson rushed to be by her side and to make funeral arrangements. Three days after he’d arrived in Brooklyn, he sent a wire to the carnival headquarters in Miami informing them that he had reconciled with his wife and had decided to remain in Brooklyn.
Two days after Ruby and Othella had been told that Mr. Peterson was not going to return, they met their new supervisor. Unfortunately, he was the exact opposite of his predecessor. Not only was Roland Miller more like a disgruntled pit bull than a man, he was also a bonafide bigot, who vigorously supported segregation. He didn’t even allow the black employees to use the carnival toilets or eat in the same makeshift tent cafeteria with the white employees. When nature called, the black employees had to do their business in metal slop jars or in the nearby woods, using leaves, old rags, or old newspaper for toilet paper. But that wasn’t enough for the mean new supervisor. He also cut Ruby’s and Othella’s pay twice in the same week.
“Business is slow . . . ain’t much money comin’ in since we cut one of them elephant acts,” he explained, rolling a wad of chewing tobacco with his tongue around in his jaw. Brown spit oozed from one corner of his mouth. He didn’t know that Ruby and Othella had been told by some of the white workers that he had not cut their pay. Then he grinned, revealing two broken rows of dingy yellow teeth. “Y’all some smart gals, so y’all will make do somehow with less money. You people always do manage.”
Ruby wanted to slap the white off his face. “You right about that, Mr. Miller. We people always manage somehow,” she agreed, grinding her teeth.
As soon as Mr. Miller walked away, Othella said, “You need to stop talkin’ to Mr. Miller in such a uppity way, Mama Ruby. Now that he done run off all of the other colored workers, he is just itchin’ to get rid of us, too.”
“Fuck that hateful bastard and the woman who gave birth to his ass. He don’t scare me! If he’s smart, he’ll stay out of my way!” Ruby hurled the words at Othella like rocks.
Othella shifted a bucket of water from one hand to the other and took a deep breath. “That’s the problem. Don’t nothin’ scare you and I’m scared that one of these days, that’s goin’ to get you in some knee-deep trouble.”
Ruby was also hauling a bucket of water to the dancing elephant in the main tent. She stopped walking abruptly and turned to face Othella. “Trouble don’t scare me no more. You ought to know that by now,” she announced. “I will always do what I have to do, and anybody that makes me mad . . . well, they’ll be real sorry.”
Othella knew how sorry Glenn Boates was that he had made Ruby mad. She wondered how a violent sexual predator like him was getting by with only half of a dick. She also wondered how Wally Yoakum was doing, and if he was still angry about the beating he had suffered.
“Lord knows I feel sorry for the next person that makes you mad,” Othella muttered.
Ruby gave her a serious look. “I do, too.” When Ruby laughed, Othella joined in.
Ruby and Othella did not have a lot of expenses, and they still had a fairly substantial amount of the money left that they’d earned at Maureen’s house. Othella didn’t know how much Ruby still had, and vice versa. Even though they were in the same mess together, they had both decided to keep certain pieces of information to themselves—in case something drastic happened and they split up on a bad note.
One thing they did share with one another was the desire to get separate places as soon as possible. They had begun to get on one another’s nerves lately, so two separate residences was not such a bad idea. And that’s why it was important for them to continue working as much as they could.
Ruby and Othella started to work on some of the nearby farms when business got slow at the carnival. Another reason they signed on with the farms was to have something to fall back on in case Mr. Miller abruptly fired them. And the way he had been complaining about their work performances lately, getting fired was a strong possibility. According to Mr. Miller, they didn’t clean up after the animals fast or well enough, they used too much water by taking baths every day, and they acted too “uppity” with the white carnival patrons.
Working in the fields was not that much more pleasant than the carnival.
“I never thought I’d see the day that I’d be slavin’ away under a blazin’ sun pickin’ strawberries,” Ruby complained for what was probably the fifth time in the last hour.
It was hard to believe that only three months had passed since they’d fled from Maureen’s brothel.
“I’d rather be doin’ this than pickin’ beans. At least we can eat while we work,” Othella said. She bit into a large strawberry that she had sliced with a blade that was as sharp as the switchblade that Ruby had used to downsize Glenn Boates’s dick. Othella didn’t know that Ruby had replaced her first switchblade with one that was even sharper. “I can’t wait for that man to let us work in the sugarcane field and pick oranges. I can eat as many oranges as I want and reap the benefits from all of that vitamin C in ’em. I don’t want to birth no sick baby. That’s the last thing I want on my hands. Takin’ care of a baby all by myself is goin’ to be hard enough.”
“I told you, I’m goin’ to help you with the baby when it comes. That is,
if you keep it.
”
“Of course I’m goin’ to keep my baby! What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothin’,” Ruby muttered.
“Now look. I know what you thinkin’, and I am tellin’ you right now, don’t bring up that subject. That’s the last thing I want to talk about right now. We got enough mess on our hands already, so don’t make it no worse by remindin’ me about the baby you gave away.”
“It’s gettin’ late. Let’s finish up and get up out of here,” Ruby said. “All this hot sun and this hard work can’t be doin’ you much good. You really beginnin’ to look like a sick woman.”
Othella was a sick woman. Within the last hour, she had begun to ache all over. Then without warning, she threw up. By the time they made it back to their carnival trailer in a field on a dirt road across from a lake, Othella was so weak and in so much pain she had to lie down on that lopsided roll-away bed that she and Ruby shared.
Ruby went to get some pain pills for her from the bearded lady in the trailer next door. She was gone only a few minutes and when she returned, Othella had sat up on the bed and was looking much better. This puzzled Ruby, but she handed Othella the pills anyway. Othella swallowed the pills without water, and then she started humming gibberish under her breath, like a woman who had lost her mind.
“Othella, you beginnin’ to worry me for real. You . . . you just take it easy,” Ruby said, silently praying that they didn’t need a doctor, or a psychiatrist. She knew that they were in one of the most segregated areas of Florida. The hospitals didn’t admit black folks, and she didn’t know of any black doctors or anybody else they could turn to.
“I hope you and the baby are goin’ to be all right,” Ruby told her, worried and frightened. One thing she had not considered was one, or both, of them getting seriously ill or . . . killed. After all they’d been through Ruby decided that they were lucky to still be alive. “All of this hard work and that blazin’ hot sun ain’t good for you. You really have to take it easy and slow down some.” Ruby stood by the side of the bed looking at Othella. She wondered why Othella was taking so long to respond. “You hear me? We don’t want you to have no defective baby, now do we?”
Othella stopped humming and gave Ruby a strange look. She didn’t look or seem sick at all now. Maybe she’d only just lost her mind. . . .
“It don’t matter now. There won’t be no baby,” Othella sputtered. “And I’m real relieved.”
Ruby’s jaw dropped. She was clearly alarmed. “What? Did you do somethin’ to it? Did you swallow some of that Black Draught laxative to get rid of it?” she asked, giving Othella an accusatory look. “I thought you told me you’d never get rid of no baby!”
“Calm down, girl. I didn’t get rid of no baby. I wouldn’t never ever do nothin’ as unspeakable as killin’ my own baby.” Othella paused and let out a loud breath. Then her voice came out in a deep croak, “There wasn’t no baby to begin with.”
Ruby felt the blood drain from her face. She thought she was going to pass out. “What? All this time—”
“It was a false alarm. My monthly just came on while you was next door gettin’ them pain pills. I guess all of that activity in Miss Mo’reen’s house and my bad nerves threw my cycle off. And all of that backbreakin’ work in them fields didn’t help much.”
A tear rolled down the side of Ruby’s face like a marble. She had been looking forward to cuddling a new baby. . . . She sniffed and blinked hard to hold back any additional tears. “Oh. Well, maybe this is a good thing. Now that you ain’t pregnant, we can both start workin’ longer hours and more days in the fields until we get enough money to move on with. It don’t seem like we goin’ to be gettin’ married no time soon.” Ruby stopped talking when she realized there was a look on Othella’s face that she could not interpret. “What else is the matter with you? Why you starin’ at me with that strange look on your face? You can’t be smilin’ about not bein’ pregnant, when you thought all this time you was.”
“You know I wouldn’t smile about nothin’ like that!” Othella erupted. It was hard for her to control the tone and speed of her voice. She was giddy and excited, and it showed on her face now. This puzzled and disturbed Ruby even more. It took Othella a few moments to summon enough nerve to say what she had to say next, because she knew it was something that Ruby was not going to like. “I got somethin’ I need to tell you, and I already got a feelin’ you ain’t goin’ to like it. . . .”
“Just from the way you actin’ and soundin’, I already got that same feelin’ myself,” Ruby wheezed, folding her arms.
“See, I didn’t want to say nothin’ too soon, Mama Ruby. But the thing is . . . uh, I done met me a man and now he wants to take care of me . . .
permanently.
”
Ruby’s heart was beating with fear. Her stomach muscles tightened, and her head felt like it had just been mauled. Now she wished that she had gotten a few pain pills from that bearded lady for herself. She could not have been more upset if Othella had told her she had terminal cancer or some other deadly disease. She tried, but was unable to hide the way she felt.