A Virtuous Ruby Read online

  “Sometimes, babies don’t make it, honey.” Her mother spoke in hushed low tones. Unfortunately, she knew this to be true from bringing babies herself. “We jus’ let ’em go.”

  She focused on Solomon. His sweet features rearranged themselves in repose. He already looked like an angel to her. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to be one. “You want me to let him go.”

  “God’s fixing it this way. Let it be.”

  She lifted her head with her crown of long jet-black hair feeling heavy on her head and neck all of a sudden. Her hair. How much lighter her head would be if she just cut it all off. Her hands itched to find a scissors or a knife. But she had other, more important, things to do at the moment. “Solomon was the only thing that fixed it right, Mama, what David did to me. God wants me to fight for his life. I’m going to get help. Please watch Solomon. I’ll be back soon.” Things could change so fast in a day. The fear now was for Solomon, not about going outside.

  Following her, her mother grabbed onto her arm with determined, hard fingers and a strength she didn’t realize she had. “Don’t do it. Please.”

  Standing in the setting sun, she asked the old favor once more. Make me brown, please. The little prayer popped into her head unbidden, whenever she stood in the sunshine. The sun never obeyed. A failure. She had been trying to be browner for years now, and she could never change colors. To be less obvious. “Making things difficult is the reason this has happened to me, Mama. Why should I stop now? I can go there and ask him for help, can’t I?”

  Her mother shrank back, horrified. “It’s too much, Ruby. What about us, your family? Your sisters?”

  “I do it for them. Do you want each one of them to go through the shame I have endured? It is time for it to end. The Winslows have to help. It is the only way.”

  “We can pray, daughter.” Her mother grabbed her arm again and tried to pull her to her knees, but Ruby refused to lower herself this time.

  “I have prayed. I prayed all the time David got me in the cotton field and I begged him to stop. I begged him, Mama, and David didn’t care. And now, he owes me. I have to ask for help.”

  “Take care, girl.” Tears shone in Lona’s eyes like bright diamonds.

  “I am.” This time she was not afraid. She wrenched free of Lona’s strong hold. Her midwifing knowledge helped newborn babies, not six-month-olds. She had to get help for Solomon.

  She stepped off of the porch into the red dusty land bordering the Bledsoe property and made her way down the road to the big Winslow house, tugging on the shawl covering her head. She had changed into her heavy work shoes and her feet dragged in the dust, as she rushed by the blossoming fields, feeling stiffness in her knees. Sharp and painful in her lungs, her breath came shallow as she risked the dusk alone. Her activity in town today made her vulnerable to another attack. She didn’t care. She had to get help for her child. He was all that mattered.

  The Winslow house stood in the distance with its impossible whiteness glowing in the near dark. It was not weatherbeaten like the Bledsoe house, no matter how many times John Bledsoe whitewashed it. The difference was money. David’s family had plenty of it. They were going to give her some to make everything better for Solomon. Today, she was not going to the side door, the servants’ door, where she entered with her mother whenever the Winslows needed help for countless entertainments and dinner parties. Today, she knocked on the front door, relishing the feel of the hard wood scraping against her knuckles.

  The maid had gone home by now. As she lowered the shawl from her head, she imagined Paul Winslow stirring his bulk, acting as if he would answer the door. His wife would hold him back, compelling him not to do it because it wouldn’t be proper. It would be David who would answer the door to make this request easier for her. Or harder. Did she have the strength to face her attacker again? Please, God. Give me strength.

  Sure enough, David appeared before her, tall and confused. “Ruby? What are you doing here?”

  Instead of fear, she bristled. Certainly, he meant to question why she had come to the front door, instead of to the back for work, as she always had?

  But nothing was going to stop her from getting help for Solomon. Not even having to face him again. David’s tall, rangy body meant that she could step easily into the front foyer underneath his arm. So she did.

  Smelling the lemon of the pinewood polish, she tried to ignore the grandeur of the Winslow home, knowing intimately the hard work it took to keep it looking so beautiful. She was surprised, however, to see Paul Winslow in the front parlor with the handsome doctor from earlier today, in there with him. He had not been in her imaginings. Not those ones. She turned to David, and her ears pricked at the sound of Miss Mary approaching them both, her dress bustling quietly behind her. She had worked here long enough to know the sound when she heard it.

  Her gaze met David’s confused eyes. David had the same gray eyes as the handsome doctor in the parlor. Goodness. The shock threatened to take her down, but she could not let it. “I need help.” She spoke in a firm but low whisper. “I need money for a real doctor.”

  Miss Mary came and stood between David and Ruby, making her elegantly garbed body a shield between her only son and disaster. “Ruby, why are you here? Go on home.”

  Despite the shock, she did not move her gaze from David’s face. “He knows why I am here. I need a real doctor to help my baby.”

  Now Mr. Paul came and stood in the hallway. “This is all very irregular. Any appeals you people make, you know to come back, and you know to come before dinner, not after. You’re lucky Dr. Morson is here. I’ve brought him down from Tennessee to help treat your people.”

  “I need the best care for my child, Mr. Paul, sir.” The honorific sound for the town’s lead man came from her and sounded disrespectful. “This is to save my baby. I need a real doctor. Mr. David knows why.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t.”

  She moved her gaze from David and met Miss Mary’s eyes. Miss Mary knew. She was supposed to keep her eyes downcast, to look away, to be ashamed. But she didn’t. She met a Winslow’s gaze, and she did not feel the least bit of fear for the first time in her life. She was not ashamed of Solomon. She could be ashamed of how he got in the world, but his start was not her fault, not one bit of it and she knew it now, despite hiding away from the world for all of those months wondering if God had abandoned her. He had not. He had given her courage.

  She turned to David. “Are you going to help our baby?”

  “Now, wait just a minute, girl,” Mr. Paul blustered. “You cannot come into our home before the Lord’s day and do this kind of thing. It just isn’t done.”

  “What does your mother have to say about this kind of behavior, Ruby? This is most astonishing.” Miss Mary twisted a handkerchief back and forth in her hands.

  “She can’t stop me from trying to save her only grandchild.” Ruby willed David to make a move, to help, to do something. What happened to all of the brute strength he had used against her in the cotton field? Now it was her turn to have brute strength. “Your only grandchild.”

  “Leave at once, Ruby.” Miss Mary slumped back into the chair. “You’re nothing but trouble—making up organizations and carrying on, causing trouble around here. If it weren’t for your mother working here for so long, well, you can tell her she needn’t come ever again.” Miss Mary pointed her long arm toward the door.

  Dr. Morson stepped forward, “Miss Ruby, is that you?”

  Miss Mary huffed. “I just want her out of here now.”

  Ruby had been thrown out of places before and steeled her body for any physical attack. She would not be cowed. Still, Ruby had to work hard to address David because of the magnetic pull of the very handsome Negro doctor, who had not taken his gaze off of her. No man had ever looked at her like that before. She wasn’t sure that she liked it.

  Paul Winslow s
aid, “Dr. Morson here will take fine care of the child.”

  “I’ll get my bag.” Dr. Morson slipped up the staircase in a quiet, and unassuming way.

  “Let him take the car,” David addressed Miss Mary.

  “What? We cannot have colored people driving around aimlessly in our cars.”

  “If you won’t, then I’ll drive.” David was speaking to his mother, but he put his Winslow gray gaze on Ruby.

  Was he sorry now? Too late.

  “David, you cannot be a part of this.” Mary Winslow insisted.

  “I already am.”

  She followed the doctor through the dark garage past all kinds of cars and the horses in the Winslow stables. David followed.

  “Thank you.” She steadied herself, leaning on one of the cars.

  “I hope it’ll be okay.” David touched her arm and his touch burned her, threatening to carry her back to when she was frightened and alone in the field with him. Stay calm. She willed her arm to stay in place, so that her fear did not show.

  “Yes.” She climbed into the car with the handsome doctor. David cranked the car and they drove down the driveway. She glanced backward and the curtains were parted, with the faint outline of Mary Winslow showing through the window seeing them off.

  And Ruby was in the car with a man she barely knew.

  Normally, she might have cared about this impropriety, especially after the attack, but she couldn’t now. She had to get help for Solomon.

  But she needed to know something first.

  “How you get to be a doctor?”

  “I went to the University of Michigan medical school and graduated last month. I was paying the Winslows a visit.” Then a pause. “He paid for my education.”

  “Paul Winslow?” She couldn’t help but let out a laugh despite the seriousness of the situation. “He ain’t even helped to build a high school down here to keep the Negroes in the mill on his dime. How in the world is he paying for a Negro man’s college education? Pull up over there.”

  Dr. Morson pulled up in the Bledsoe yard. “He was compelled to do me a kindness.”

  “Why?”

  His gray eyes held Ruby’s gaze, once again, without blinking. “I’m his son.”

  A fist of fear clenched in Adam’s stomach as he climbed out of the car. Ruby had a baby? And that baby was his…nephew?

  Whenever he had gone to the houses of his Negro patients, their places were always dark. He expected to see something downcast and downtrodden, like the homes he had grown up in.

  The Bledsoe home was not like that. The home was well-lit inside and from a wide front porch he stepped into a comfortably furnished large front room with beautifully appointed pine furniture, davenport chairs and colorful quilts. Brightness and light, not the dark.

  He nodded his acknowledgement to the people gathered in the room, a man, surrounded by four attractive young ladies dressed in white nightgowns—a verifiable rainbow of brown, all with worried looks on their faces. They stood around a cradle, again, made of pine and beautifully appointed as well.

  “How you get this doctor to come?” the smallest girl asked, whose beautiful skin matched the furniture. “He white.”

  “Delie, hush your mouth.” An older woman approached from another room. “Didn’t I tell you not to speak unless you are spoken to by an adult?”

  “I was surprised to see a white doctor come in here.” The little girl pouted.

  Ruby stepped to the child and put an arm around her. “I went and got Solomon the best help I could find. Now, we all need to pray for him, okay?”

  “I been praying, Ruby. I been praying real hard.” Delie shook her black plaits back and forth. “I love him so. He’s the little brother I never had.”

  Touched by the child’s simple and plaintive plea, he gulped. Ruby was affected as well. In the lighted room, silent tears slipped down her creamy colored skin across her light brown freckles. When he laid eyes on Ruby’s baby, he shook his head, nearly voicing a denial.

  It couldn’t be.

  It wasn’t the fact the child’s chest caved in and went out, back and forth. He laid his hand on the child.

  Goodness.

  This child, this precious baby was an exact copy of him . He had one childhood picture of him at about the same young age and it was true. As he touched Solomon, a tingling went up his arm and he connected with another human being. All of his professional distance as a doctor evaporated and he understood, in a way he never had before, why he was a doctor. To bring his knowledge to this little Georgia town and to take care of this baby.

  Where had David been? Why didn’t he take care of his son? What kind of man was he?

  No kind. Clearly. Adam reached down into his bag for his Franklin-Bell and listened to the baby’s chest. He turned Solomon’s small body with loving care and gentleness.

  Solomon’s tense little body relaxed, and the baby’s breathing eased almost right away. Some of the other young women in the room took in a sharp gasp of breath.

  “Praise him,” someone said.

  Was that Ruby?

  Solomon had asthma. Adam moved his Franklin-Bell over the thin child.

  Did he have enough to eat?

  Something in the home, as well kept as it was, made it difficult for him to breathe. The beautiful quilts in shades of bright red, green, blue, and orange might have something to do with it. He put the Franklin-Bell down and used his hands to inspect the baby again. “Come here, little fellow.”

  He had been so angry at God for years, yet his mind scrambled in amazement as he examined the child further. Had he been brought here to care for this baby? He slipped one hand under Solomon’s tiny head and one under his bottom and lifted him up into his arms, holding him close. As he shifted the baby in his arms, Solomon opened his eyes and stared at Adam with a knowing stare, a gray stare. Adam’s skin tingled.

  Solomon had Winslow eyes too.

  He smoothed down the little shirt that had been lovingly embroidered by someone and the child was clean, even though he was small.

  “Will he be all right?” Ruby’s freckles stood out on her pale, creamy skin, and her brown eyes brimmed with fear and anxiety. He would do what he could to calm her fear, since he didn’t want to see her beautiful countenance disturbed in such a fashion.

  “Yes.” He couldn’t say more. It was as if healing the baby was healing himself, and a sharp pain he didn’t know he had inside of him began to scar over.

  “But you came in and made him sleep again.”

  “I would like to believe I have a magic touch with babies, and my mere arrival could put them to sleep.” He chuckled as he took Solomon away from the little room back through the kitchen. Continuing to the large front living room where the Bledsoes sat, he cradled the baby as the family stopped chattering and stared at him, striding through their home. He took the baby out into the June night air and Ruby followed him.

  “But, there is something more going on here, isn’t there?” Adam smoothed down the baby’s brow. Sweet little fella.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “He seems small and light. He’s what, four months old?” He shifted him in his arms. The baby didn’t seem to weigh enough.

  “No, five almost six.”

  He shook his head, icy alarm running through his veins. This was his nephew…was he being well cared for? Keeping his voice calm he asked, “What are you giving him to eat?”

  “I—I nurse him.” Ruby retreated back from him, folding her arms over her chest.

  “He needs more to eat. If he were a little bit bigger, he might be able to ward off this asthma better.”

  “What should he eat?”

  Ruby’s intelligence showed earlier. He had to make sure she understood though, for her baby’s sake. “He needs food, not just milk. Do you have enough to ea
t here? If not, then David should be providing it.”

  Ruby folded her arms and shifted her stance.

  No. A tight feeling suffused his body. He’d offended her. It was the last thing he wanted to do even as he appreciated her well-made chin in her heart-shaped face. The sweet touch belied the steel set of her jaw.

  “We take care of our own.” Her jaw became more defined in the darkness. “Solomon is my cross to bear—my shame,” she told him, “or at least that is what people think. But I am not ashamed of him.”

  He nodded, not judging her in anyway. One thing doctors learned, babies happened. “I have a syrup he can take whenever he has a breathing issue, but he should stay away from the kitchen. It’s not a good place for him. And you need to give him some finely ground up food, purees, protein. Something solid. Mashed up peaches, strained fine.”

  “You telling me how to feed my baby?” Her brow furrowed. Clearly she wasn’t used to taking direction.

  “He needs to be built up more to be able to ward off the asthma. It’ll take some time, but I’m sure your mother can help you.”

  “She don’t want to help. She’d rather God take him.” Something sharp pierced his chest at the thought. Babies died too, but not this one.

  “I can say something to the Winslows if you can’t provide for him.”

  “I can provide for my baby. He will be fine. I just thought nursing him was good.”

  “That’s fine. He needs more than that. I can stay and watch him, but as I said, he needs more.”

  Ruby stared out into the night and the rigid set to her shoulders eased a bit. There was clear relief in her at his words and a sudden gladness in his heart. Gratitude washed through him, happy to have helped her. “We can take care of him. I didn’t want to believe it, but he’s a gift from God.”