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Ruby
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Ruby |
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1slick_lady Member Ascendant
since 2000-12-22
Posts 6088standing on a shadow's lace 
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Ruby It was a quiet morning in the delta. Spring had brought in a silence from a winter roar. Mississippi had had a coldness it had never known before. The ice was expanding and echoes could be heard everywhere waiting for the break, as the rich soil around it would soon give up its southern ghost. There are secrets floating in the sap of magnolias, of things done in shadows with whispers on the tips of the blooms, but ladies never kiss and tell. Lucy’s kitchen was always welcome warm no matter the time of year and no coldness could ever enter here. Ruby sat in the stillness sipping coffee listening to the quiet giving way to moans and screams of the morning giving birth to a new season. It seemed like the sun would crown then slip back into the darkness, holding on in silence, not ready for this moment. Ruby just calmly waited and even in the darkness this rare gem glowed. She floated to things understood and things past, and things past understanding. She had come full circle, to be where she was, to start over again. She thought of Chuck, her best friend and confident. Her mother, someone she missed but never got to know. Her daddy, the first man she ever learned to love and hate. She thought of trials, the trial that was going on, and of the trials of life. And she thought of her biggest trial of all. Ruby’s daddy had married out of context, to a backwoods girl, but beauty and a sense of wonder always makes even the sanest man crazy. And one forgiving thing about that was …she wasn’t from the bottoms. The bottoms, was a place in town you were born to. It was the end of the line. You could move out of the bottoms but you would never move there on purpose. Only two things in the bottoms were worthwhile, and that was “The Sugarcane” and Lucy. Lucy and Rooster lived in the bottoms with their nine children. Paul Green had had many shouting matches with Lucy about moving, seeing, “she was the best paid maid in Mississippi”. Lucy would always win that fight saying, “Nine chilin’ to dress and scoool with the Lord’s help and yo money, misser Green. They’s in the bottoms now, but they ain’t gonna stay there.” He would just grin; shake his head and fight over, to pick up again on another day. The “Sugarcane” or “the cane” as it was called was a piece of land owned by the Green family, ill-gotten by her great or great-great grandfather in a shady deal. The Tombigbee River backed up to “the cane” flooding it every few years making “the cane” a piece of land consistently fertile, growing the most prime sugarcane in all of Mississippi. Sugar beets, alfalfa, and soy were grown there too, rotated year after year as not to rape the tender soil of its nutrients. How could it not be, it held the Green name and everything touched by the Greens turned to money. Ironic isn’t it - even dirt stolen from the lowest of the low cultivates by greed. Money comes with its own set of rules and manners. A line you had to walk and never be crossed, but if you are a part of it, there was always someone to pick you up even if you fell off of it. This morning in the dark she sat in Lucy’s kitchen watching her kneed thick biscuits, smelling the ham bake, thinking about the past few years and how the bottom had dropped out of her world and was crumbling at her feet. A single tear ran down her cheek and fell, dropping in her already cold fragile china cup. Lucy was like the other side of her, like how you could peel something away and the opposite was there. She always knew just what to do without a sound ever being made. The round black floured woman reached over, squeezed around Ruby and she was able to fall apart in her arms knowing Lucy would hold her together just like she did the dough. Time seemed to have warped on the moment of her birth and all things were altered. Everything about her was a contradiction. Ruby was born defiantly feisty, kicking and screaming all the time being born. She had had a name picked out for her, an old family name, but at the minute of her birth when her mother had seen her, with a head full of shiny red hair and the brilliant flashing temper of a fire gem she named her Ruby angering her father to no end saying, “What kind of name is that… Ruby Green?” until he saw Ruby smile, grabbing his finger in her tiny hand, then that, just melted away. “all romantics meet the same fate”…Joni Mitchell |
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| © Copyright 2006 Helen Chambers - All Rights Reserved | |||
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nakdthoughts Member Laureate
since 2000-10-29
Posts 19200Between the Lines |
waiting for more~~ excellent... M |
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Sunshine
Administrator
Member Empyrean
since 1999-06-25
Posts 63354Listening to every heart |
chapters and chapters more, please...  |
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latearrival Member Ascendant
since 2003-03-21
Posts 5499Florida |
Excellent. waiting for more with the others. martyjo |
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Larry C
since 2001-09-10
Posts 10286United States |
You just know how to draw me in... to a place I've never known but long to experience just because you wrote it. Smooth, you're just smooth. Write on please.  If tears could build a stairway and memories a lane, |
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