Chapter Eight

Mae pulled the sleeve of her cardigan down over her hand, covering the remnants of a large bruise. Her eyes darted away from Ruby as she passed her walking the length of the hallway to the incinerator at its end. She stepped carefully, the soreness between her legs making her move awkwardly.

Ruby avoided eye contact as well, causing Mae to question how much the woman heard through the thinness of the walls. Did she hear his angry grunts as he thrust and pounded her flesh? Did she hear her holding in her cries? Shame reddened her cheeks.

“How you, Mae? I ain’t seen much of you this past week,” Ruby said, clearing her throat in the uncomfortable silence that blossomed between them.

“I been real behind in my housework. You know, it a little place, but it take a lot to keeps it clean. I been doing the windows and such.”

“Humph,” Ruby snorted, her eyes darting involuntarily to Mae’s hand, watching her pull the sleeve down further and hold it tight with her fingers. “That’s good, less work for me. I need to take a look. I bet you can see them shining from the street.”

Mae shrugged and shifted her bag, looking longingly at the incinerator. All she wanted was to keep going, throw away her garbage, get back inside, and, most of all, stay away from Ruby.

Ruby shifted her weight, determined to force Mae to talk to her. She missed her friend.

“You know, you ain’t the only one been missing around here. Jimmie ain’t been here since it was all that ruckus with Clyde. He say anything to you about it?”

“Nah, not much,” Mae muttered, shuffling forward and leaving Ruby standing at her own door.

In front of the incinerator, Mae stood, hip cocked to brace the hand holding the garbage bag. She watched as Ruby stood in the doorway of her room and stared hard in Mae’s direction before moving toward her. Though only a few feet of the hallway’s air—thick with the aroma of conflicting meals being cooked in private rooms—separated them, it formed a chasm between them. Ruby sighed. The hollow emptiness that had accompanied her days before she met Mae had returned.

“If I done something what made your husband mad with me, you can tells me, Mae. I ain’t no babe. I knows him and Jimmie had words. Then you got ‘busy’ and been busy every day since. Ain’t nobody stupid.”

Mae searched the floor for the words to explain what she didn’t understand herself, how Clyde had been changing every day since then. Yes, God, he had changed.

He stormed through their small room each evening, glaring at her, following her with eyes that burned with hatred. She didn’t know him anymore, didn’t want to know him. Her other hand rubbed absently at the bruise hidden beneath her sleeve, willing the pain away.

Her mind scrapped and shredded all the things she had done . . . eschewing time with Ruby, foregoing spending time with her, shunning even the mention of her name. She remained closeted inside their apartment, avoiding the other tenants while letting her secret meal cooking stagnate. Her life had deteriorated into one continuous nightmare of degradation, pain, and humiliation.

Clyde’s hands had become his primary means of communication, printing his displeasure on her flesh, revealing the brutal, wild man she had heard whispered about back home. The one she had only occasionally glimpsed . . . until now.

The man she married had vanished into nonexistence, leaving this angry person who beat her savagely and screwed her until her womb ached from the pounding. His darkness roiled between them, smothering the life from her.

She shook herself, realizing she had been standing still, staring at a spot above Ruby’s head, her eyes vacant. Ruby shot snuff into the can in her hand and wiped her mouth with her handkerchief.

“Is you okay, Mae?” she asked, hearing the underlying plea in her words. She wanted Mae to look at her, to see the wisdom in her eyes, see she had a story to tell, a tale that could save her.

Ruby sifted through the memories awakened of hands pummeling flesh and choked whimpers seeping through thin walls. Not Mae’s, but her own. Her features scrunched, her brows coming together over her wrinkled nose. She pulled the courage to tell the truth about good men into the light. Good men who hid their badness from the world, saving it to unleash on the women who loved them.

“I’m gon’ catch up with you, Miss Ruby.” Mae sighed, her shoulders slumping. “You been a good friend to me and all. But, Miss Ruby, Clyde, he my husband. He ain’t never been happy since we come here. My muhdeah say sometimes you got to let a man be a man and do what a man do.” She paused, reading the air as she collected her thoughts, then continued. “And Clyde, he been having a hard time. I don’t thinks he feel like the man he need to be. He be thinking we needs to go back to Louisiana. I wants to stay here, but he might be right. Us might needs to go back home.” She sighed again, finally lifting her eyes to Ruby’s. “I’m gon’ miss you if I do.”

Ruby’s gaze roamed, following the turmoil flowing across Mae’s delicate features, waiting for her to finish. Her words diminished to a near whisper.

“He really do be a good man,” Mae murmured. “He just having a real hard time right now.”

“All right, then.” Ruby felt her courage dissolve as the seconds ticked by, and the space between them grew, the chasm becoming an abyss. Straightening her posture, Ruby seemed to decide and raised her head, her chin jutting forward. “I understands what you saying, though, and I ain’t one to come between a husband and wife.” The silence stretched between them, and she waited. “If you gets a chance, that gal down in 110 got her a sick boy. You might see if your herbs can help. I done told her about you, and she be waiting.”

She remembered the thumps against the thin wall again, followed by Mae’s choked whimpers; remembered keeping her own pain a secret locked behind swollen lips and transparent lies. “You knows where I be, Mae. All you needs to do is knock on this here door if you needs me.”

Mae smiled weakly, walking past Ruby and back to her own door.