21

RUBY

Skinny and scared, little Ruby had been a target growing up in the foster home. She’d laid low the first two years she lived with us—there were occasional aggressions towards the smaller kids, and some talking back now and then, but for the most part she was compliant. Then Ruby grew six inches in four months and wasn’t little anymore. She was big, bigger than her siblings, bigger than me, and the biggest kid by far on the playground. It was payback time. Throwing her newly gained weight around, her behavior was bullying and intimidating, yelling at the tutors, “You’re not the boss of me!” She was right. The tutors weren’t the boss of her; I was. I would intervene, talk her down, get her in her room, and shut the door. But the aggression was escalating and with the other kids watching, how we handled Ruby’s behavior would set the bar for the rest of our teenage-parenting career.

Ruby had a date playing cards with the residents at the assisted living center near our house as part of her community service unit for homeschool. During the session, the tutor called. “Ruby freaked out, she started screaming and stormed off, I tried to help her turn it around, nothing worked, I have no idea where she is . . .” The tutor was stressing out.

“No problem,” I said, “you head home. I’m on it.” I was taking Anthony to his swimming lesson. “Sorry, Pal,” I said, turning the car around, “your sis is having a day.” I found Ruby stomping down the bike path and stopped the car. I left Anthony in the car with his seat belt on and walked over to Ruby. She was agitated, throwing her arms around trying to wave me away. I said, “Hey, Babe. How’re you doing?” She ran towards me, fists up, then stopped and shouted, “She disrespected me! Nobody gonna disrespect me! I don’t take that shit from nobody!” I nodded to her, “Why don’t you walk on home, Sweetie? We’ll cool it down, and talk it through when we get back.” She screamed, “You always take her side! You don’t care about me! I want you out of my life! You’re not my real mom, I HATE YOU!” I got her back to the house and in her room using my crisis line voice, calm and non-escalating. “We’re having hamburgers for dinner, I’ll call you down soon.” I had to feed the other kids first and then clear the deck.

Dan was working late that night. I called him to debrief on the Ruby situation. “Maintain control of the house. Shut her down if she tries to bully or threaten.” I fed the other kids then called up to Ruby, “Time to eat.” She didn’t answer. I went upstairs and knocked. She opened the door, still hostile, her eyebrows up near her hairline, baiting me. I said, “It’s time to eat, Honey, and please answer me when I call you.” She looked past me, “FINE!” then pushed me into the hallway, body-checking me with her shoulder. I was so not ready for that. She’s so strong! I grabbed her forearms and forced her back into the room. She was screaming now: “Let go, let go, stop it!” as I yelled, “IT STOPS NOW!” She was crying and screaming, more shocked than combative. I let go of her arms, walked to the door, and shouted over her screaming, “STAY IN THIS ROOM! DOOR CLOSED!” I shut the door behind me and slid to the floor. My heart was pounding in my throat and my hands were shaking. That did not go well.

I could hear Ruby crying in her room. I called Dan and briefed him, speaking quietly, my eyes fixed on Ruby’s door, fearful. He said, “I’m on my way.”

Half an hour later, Dan came up the stairs and smiled at me, sitting on the floor in the hallway. He opened Ruby’s door and addressed her softly, “Hey, what happened here?” Dan let her tell her side of the story, listening respectfully. When she was done, he said calmly, “You live in this house, Honey. This is your home. We love you and we want you here. You need to find a way to get along.” He gently closed the door. I stood up and followed him down the hall towards our room. “You okay?” he asked. “I screwed it up,” I said, shaking my head. He hugged me. “Don’t worry. You’ll have another chance. This isn’t over.”

The next day. I called a meeting with the tutors to lay out a protocol for dealing with Ruby. “If I am not here and she behaves in a threatening way, leave the room, go into another room, close the door, and call Dan. If he does not answer, call the police. If I am home, get the other kids out of the house and I will handle it. I hope I don’t have to, but I will. We cannot allow her to intimidate, bully, or run this house. Show no fear.”

That night I went over the details of “handling it” with Dan. He went over it with grim efficiency: “First, grab her arm, pull her forward and off balance, tangle up her feet and get her on the floor. Lay across her until she stops struggling, then ask her if she is ready and have her sit on a chair for twenty minutes. If she lands a punch, you have to shut her down.” I felt sick. “Dan, I’m not trained.” He said, “She’s not going to expect it, especially from you.” I lay in bed rehearsing the sequence over in my mind, left hand here, right hand there. “You’ll be fine,” he said, “but it’s going to happen and it’s going to be you. You have to control the situation or it will send the wrong message.” Copy that.

* * *

Ruby had not liked the foster home. She was teased for having a stutter, was called “stupid” by the other kids, “dunce” by the foster mom, and everyone in the foster home had made fun of her for being held back in school. But Ruby wasn’t stupid—not in the slightest. When she felt safe, it seemed Ruby could learn and retain information at a very high level. When we were still a family of four in the city, I met with her teacher to discuss the possibility that Ruby’s learning disability was not cognitive.

Ruby and Jimmy had their own chalkboards and would play school in their room for hours on end, working with their make-believe students and disciplining them. I was the principal. We’d discuss the behavior issues of certain students at our faculty meetings. The kids were ruthless. They would send a student to the office for any disruptive behavior, including talking back. “How’s everything going?” I would ask, poking my head in their door. They had laid out twelve short stacks of books in a circle on their rug. Ruby said, “Reading time.” I nodded, “Do you mind if I sit in back and watch?” “Yes, that would be fine, Principal Fox.”

After our move upstate, we had a weekly winter knitting session in our kitchen aptly named “Stitchin’ in the Kitchen.” The neighbors would come over, adults and kids. We met every Thursday night and everyone had a knitting name: Ruby was “Purl,” Jason, “Slip,” Susie “Loopy,” and Jimmy named himself, “Mistah B-Knittin’!” One night the conversation turned to spelling. While we slipped and purled, Ruby confessed she always wanted to be in a spelling bee. “I can help her,” said one of the tutors, “I used to spell competitively.” Some of the neighbor kids also expressed interest, “We could meet in the basement!” Ruby was excited, “Please, Mom, please!” I said, “Hmm. We could call it, ‘Speller in the Cellar.’ If you can spell ‘cellar’ we will do it.” I thought she’d spell it “seller.” She thought a minute, “C-E-L-L-A-R. Cellar.” Wow.

“How do you know that word, Honey? Did you have a cellar in the Bronx?” No. It was a basement. Hmm. I didn’t use the word “cellar” at home and I was keeping pretty close track of what she was reading. Lucky? Curious, I tossed her some more words at random and she caught them all. The tutor said, “She’s a natural speller!” The boost to her confidence was like an energy surge in the room. Ruby was spelling things Jimmy couldn’t spell, spelling words that Jason hadn’t heard of, words that she hadn’t heard before, but could spell somehow. I was always looking for these rogue strengths we could build upon.

Within a month of Ruby’s spelling victory, she failed a social studies test and tried to hide it from me. “I was afraid you would give me a punishment.” I told her I would never be angry at her for failing, only for lying about it or trying to hide it. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you are struggling with. This is difficult material, Sweetie! When you fail a test, it shows me is that you need more support.”

I told her to stay in her room and correct the test: “I’ll come check on you soon.” Half an hour later, I stopped outside her door and listened. She was teaching her make-believe class. I knocked gently and stuck my head in. I used my principal voice, “Excuse me, Ms. Fox, am I interrupting?” Ruby stayed in character, “Not at all, please come in, Principal Fox.” I sat on her bed in the back of the classroom while she went over the continents, countries, and capitals that had been on her social studies test. She had made lists with colored markers on her dry-erase board. She turned to me and said, “I’m playing school.” I smiled, “I see. How are your students doing?” Ruby said seriously, “This is very difficult material. These children need a lot of support.”

* * *

When we first met Ruby, her behavior around adult males was consistently inappropriate. Actually, her behavior was entirely appropriate for a child who had been raised inappropriately. None of this was her fault, but we still had to deal with it. I did a lot of redirecting, “Hop down, Sweetie,” I’d say. If her behavior escalated, “Come with me, Miss Ruby,” I’d say gently, “let’s take a minute.”

One in four girls are sexually abused before they turn eighteen. My friends who had been sexually abused recognized her as one of their own, “That was me, I know that look.” I couldn’t be sure, I wasn’t there. But I wished what was done had never happened or could be undone. I wished I could be her undoing.

We started working on her body confidence by playing catch, standing so close that I could reach out and place the softball in her mitt. As soon as the ball was in the air, she would look away to see if anyone was watching her. We shot baskets, swam, biked, and kicked the soccer ball around. Six months after moving upstate, Ruby announced, “Mom! Did you notice I don’t walk like that anymore? All bent over? Remember when I used to walk like that?” She mimicked her former posture: birdlike and fearful, bent forward from the hips, shoulders hunching over, her beautiful little face tipped back, staring up and out, like a question mark.

“I did notice, Sweetie! How does it feel?”

“It feels good. I walk like regular now, you know, like normal kids.”

I put my arm around her, “Yeah, except you’re still so gorgeous. What are we going to do about that?”

Ruby laughed, “Mom!”

I was huggy and affectionate with her, holding her hand, providing piggyback rides, wrestling, snuggling, and putting my arm around her when we walked. Dan was not touchy at all. He would wrestle with her, but only when the other kids were also in the dog pile, limbs flailing, child’s play, non-sexual by association. Any approach she’d make towards him, he would turn into a joke, stiff-arming her, stepping back, or running away. No contact—just fun and love as she’d chase him around the house.

When issues came up, I would encourage her to talk about it and normalize the experience by sharing stories about my one in four friends, many of whom she knew. “It’s not on you, babe. It shouldn’t happen but it does.” She always said nothing happened and I let it go. One time I brought it up and she started crying, “I know . . . I know . . . it’s just . . . I don’t know.” She was flustered and angry. She started to cry and I put my arm around her, “Thanks for telling me that, Miss R. We can leave it for now unless you want to say any more.” She shook her head.

“Do you want to play Crazy Eights?” I took out the cards and shuffled. “You deal.” We played a few games and had some laughs. She was quiet a minute and then said, “Oh, Mom. All I can say is that there are too many men in this world.” I smiled at her. “I hear that, girlfriend. Tell you what, Ruby. Until you are ready, I’m going to keep all those men away from you and keep you right here next to me.” She softened and slumped back in her chair. She looked at me with those gorgeous, melty eyes and said quietly, relieved, “Thanks, Mom.”

* * *

Although she was only twelve years old, Ruby looked more like sixteen. I upgraded her training bras to some fabulous striped and polka-dotted bras on the condition that no one would ever know how fabulous her new bras were. “Your underclothes are your business. If I can see them, I will take them.” She left for school the next day all buttoned up, but came home that afternoon more bra than shirt. Without a trace of anger in my voice I said, “Up you go. You’re showing me you are not ready.” I told her to go to the bathroom and swap out her new bra for a sports bra. I emptied her drawers of the new bras and Ruby was not upset. In fact, she seemed relieved. I encouraged her sporty side for the time being, buying her hip sweatpants, athletic, but feminine, T-shirts. She went with it, no complaints. “Thanks, Mom.”

In a parent meeting with Ruby’s feeling doctor, the therapist shared some insights she’d gained: “Ruby has the emotional maturity of a nine- or ten-year-old child.” Suddenly everything made sense. Of course! I had mistaken her size for maturity. Dan and I started talking to Ruby as if she were much younger, dressing her younger. We were not lowering, but rather, changing our expectations. She relaxed immediately, was more open and less defensive. I bought her stuffed animals, we played board games, and we went to the playground. I watched her play in the dirt with a yellow plastic shovel for hours, filling little pails and dumping them out. One afternoon Ruby told me, “I feel like I’m a little too old to be playing at a playground, but I really like it. I like the swings the best.” I said, “You just keep swinging, Miss R, playgrounds are super fun.”

She flew with me to Washington DC for work. Even sitting next to each other, people didn’t assume we were traveling together. On the bus, the plane, and the metro, three different men tried to hit on her. “She’s with me,” I would say, smiling. “I’m her mother.” One of them didn’t take the hint. I stood up and addressed him, “I’m going to ask you to leave her alone.” He looked surprised, “Sorry! I was just being friendly! I thought she might like some gum.” I stared him down. He didn’t move. I said softly, “Back it off.” He turned and took his seat.

Ruby didn’t say anything at the time, but she brought the incident up later when we got home, again and again, “And then you stood up and you told him to leave me alone.” She loved this story.

I nodded. “I’m your mother, Ruby. I will deal with the men in this world until you are ready. Take your time, I got you.”