RUBY
Before I open the door I listen behind it, the low and steady music of sewing machine whir, of cutting fabric and snapping thread, the rhythm of the pedal and the dull knock of the chair against the floor as Mom twists and turns to adjust a hem or stitch. I’ve never seen her nick or cut herself when she sews. And she smiles this smile, like everything is rightly placed in the world along with the seams on a quilt. This is her happy or some version of it when she is alone and apart from me or Lebanon. It’s nice she has something she loves that doesn’t hurt her.
Mom sings the same song each time she closes herself in this room.
Ask the Savior to help you. Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through.
It’s a pretty song, and I wish I could believe the words. It brings me a memory associated with hope or love or some other good feeling. When I hear this song, I reach back into my mind. I remember the creak of the porch in Tennessee as Grandma Naomi rocked back and forth in her wicker chair. Billowy wisps of white dandelion fluff float by, tickle my nose, and fall back down on the tops of the grass. I can almost feel the sun on my knees and the split board of the top stair slightly digging into my thigh. I don’t move though. I’m tasting the sweetness of the tea as it slips sweet and cold to the back of my throat. I hear laughter. My laughter. Grandma smiles at me, and I’m happy and free in the Tennessee sunlight, hidden in its indigo dreams.
Ask the Savior to help you. Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through.
Light floods the hall from the sewing room, and I stand face-to-face with Mom; the wrinkles around her mouth pulling down her lips into a tight smile.
“You realize you were singing, Ruby?”
“No.”
“Your singing is just like Mom’s. So pretty. You’re such a pretty girl.” She caresses my face. The faraway sound in her voice lingers in my ears and burrows its way into my heart, cracking it just a little bit more. “Wanna come sit down and keep me company for a minute or two?”
I move a stray hair from her forehead and she flinches, then smiles wide. I can never really say no to Momma. She asks for so little. When it comes to everything, even people loving her, she asks for so little. She should ask for more. We both should ask for more, believe we deserve more.
“So how’s work, baby girl?”
“The same. Not much to report. Not a lot of overtime, but I’ll be able to help with the mortgage.”
“No, no. Just wanted to make sure you were good there. Happy.”
“Happy?”
“Yeah. That’s important.”
I lean forward and Mom scoots her chair away, at a slightly different angle, so that if I were to try to touch her, I’d be just out of reach.
“Why’d you move?”
“It’s just these stitches are giving me the blues and my back is acting up.”
Grabbing a dark green pillow from the small chair next to her, I stand behind her. “Move forward,” I say. Mom does what I ask. Her movements are stiff, ready for anything I suppose. She can’t switch that off, the constant awareness. He’s not even in the room, and she’s prepared to hurt at every turn. How can she think I’m happy when I see this, when I see her live like this?
She leans back. “Hmm. That is better.”
“Well, I do have a good idea occasionally. I’m not just a pretty face.”
“Now where did that come from? I just said thank you.”
I feel the muscles of my cheeks snatch back in some kind of way. “You don’t have to look like that. You remind me of your father when you make that face,” Mom says.
“I can’t see how I look,” I reply, folding my arms across my chest.
“Oh, baby, come on, come on. Don’t be like that. I didn’t mean anything by it, okay?” She scoots her chair near to me and reaches out to take my hand. Her fingers are warm and firm and they grip mine.
“Now, tell me about something nice today,” she says.
I’m trying to think of something, anything to put a smile on her face and mine. I hate my job. I hate my father. But I want to tell her something nice.
“They have dance classes starting up at the new community center, in a month or so,” I offer.
“That’s nice. How much are they?”
“Ummm, I’m not sure.”
“Okay, well I mean we can figure it out. If you can still help around here, I don’t see why you can’t go. We’ll of course have to ask your father.”
“Why does it matter what Lebanon thinks?”
“Don’t refer to your father by his first name!”
“He’s not a father! He’s not a husband! He’s the thing that makes everything ugly like him.”
“We’re all he has, do you know that? You don’t walk away from that, from the responsibility of someone needing you. People have hurt him and let him down his whole life. Even his mother...she...she...” Mom searches for words, some improbable sentence that’ll help her explain why Lebanon is the way he is, and why she stays, and because of her, why I stay.
Mom sighs. “I know your father in a way no one else does, and somewhere deep down he loved me once, he still does. What he does is...it’s more than bones and bruises, and the world can be so unkind to people, relentless, especially to men like him, to people like us. And those few times when it gets to be too much, he loses himself a little. But I find him, and he comes back or at least he used to, and maybe I can do that again. One more time.”
“And...what if you can’t, Momma? What if he kills you? You want to live like this forever? You want me to stay in this house, at a job I hate, and help you pay bills he can’t? Never do anything with my life?”
“He’s not a perfect person, but you can’t blame him for everything wrong with you.”
“You’re right. I can blame you, too.”
There is a silence now, one held in the walls and floorboards. A silence that screams. Water spills from Mom’s eyes and I’m being pulled further and further from her. I have this sticky feeling of being both right and cruel. I become Him, Lebanon, my father. The lashes of my words and the soft pleasure I find in my mother’s tears bind me to him. In this fractured moment, I resemble the person I hate the most—yes, this is a sticky feeling. Guilt and vindication and fear cling to me.
Mom hugs me hard, like Grandma Naomi. She and I are in this together; us against him, and I don’t want Mom thinking I really blame her for everything that’s happened in my life. I do own some part of my situation. I can leave, but I can’t leave her with him. I couldn’t be happy like that. So, if I can’t be happy as a party of one, I’ll be miserable as a party of two.
“Look, I’m not good at talking. Why don’t I watch you work on this quilt? After, I can make us some blackened catfish. You like that, right?”
“Okay, baby.” Mom dabs away the last of the tears leaking from her eyes, then sniffs, the phlegmy sound filling the quiet around the rest of my choked-on words, the ones I will never share with her.
“You know I love you, Ruby.”
“I know.”
Watching her work on the quilt, the metallic melody of the sewing machine fills the still air. The white bench in her room looks out onto the street. It digs into my flesh like the top stair of Grandma Naomi’s porch. I don’t move or adjust my position. I stay with the pain, and Mom begins humming the song once more.
Ask the Savior to help you. Comfort, strengthen and keep you; He is willing to aid you; He will carry you through.