Rubyfruit Jungle (5 page)

“Molly, you are flat out crazy. Everybody likes themself, I am telling you.”

“Oh yeah, smartass? Did you like yourself when you told Carrie you’d go out and play and leave me trapped inside with a sewing basket?”

Leroy’s face flashed shame. Bull’s eye. He switched the subject to save himself having to think on that one any more. “If you’re not gonna get married then I won’t either. Why do people get married anyway?”

“So’s they can fuck.”

“What?” Leroy’s voice went into a high-pitched trail.

“Fuck.”

“Molly Bolt, that is a dirty word.”

“Dirty or not, that’s what they do.”

“Do you know what it means?”

“Not exactly but it has something to do with taking all your clothes off and messing around. Remember how upset Florence got when those two dogs were stuck together? That’s what it is, I think. I don’t know why anyone would want to do it, because those dogs didn’t look very happy about it. I know that’s what it is, besides I seen dirty books Ted hides under his mattress and you should see them. It’d make you sick for sure.”

“Dirty books?”

“Yeah, Ted’s been reading them ever since his voice started cracking. You ask me, I think his mind is cracking right along with it, myself.”

“How’d you find out he was reading them?”

“Spied on him. After you go to sleep he turns the light back on so I knew he was up to something and I snuck out for a peek. There he was
reading. Now the only books in this house are the Bible and our school books. I know he ain’t reading none of them.”

“You are truly smart, Molly,” Leroy said with admiration.

“Yeah, I know.”

Carrie’s screams and poundings had died down by this time. “Let’s go back and see if she is ready to make a deal.”

A soft whimper came from behind the cellar door when I knocked on it. “Mom, you ready to come out now? You ready to make that deal?”

“I’m ready, just let me outa this dark hole. It’s full of bugs.”

I unbolted the door and opened it. Carrie was sitting on the root cellar steps like a little girl, holding her arms and crunched over. She looked up at me with pure hate and flew out of the cellar like a jack-in-the-box. She grabbed me by the hair before I could dodge and started hitting me in the face, stomach, and when I doubled over like a porcupine, she hit me on the back with both fists at once. I could feel my eye start to close up already. I was so busy trying to get away from her that I didn’t hear what she was calling me. Leroy fled the house in total terror. He didn’t once try to gang up on her. If he’d blasted her with a couple good kicks, I might have gotten away. But Leroy never was tactical, plus he had a streak of the coward in him.

That night I was sent to bed without supper. I didn’t care because I couldn’t eat my supper anyway. My mouth was all swelled up ugly, and
it hurt to talk. The whole crew got Carrie’s version of my sins and I couldn’t open my mouth in self-defense. I guess she thought she’d shame me in front of all of them, but I stared at her with real pride as I marched into the bedroom. She wasn’t going to beat me down, no how. Let’em all get mad at me, I wasn’t giving her a goddamned inch, not one. I crawled in bed but I was so sore I couldn’t sleep and late that night I heard Carrie and Carl get in a blowout. Only time I ever heard Carl raise his voice, and I bet the rest of the house heard him too. “Carrie, the child’s high-spirited and she’s smart, you got to remember that. That kid’s quicker than all of us put together. She started reading all by herself when she was three with no help from any of us. You got to treat her with some respect for her brains. She’s a good girl, just full of life and the devil, that’s all.”

“I don’t give a goddamn how brainy she is, she don’t act natural. It ain’t right for a girl to be running all around with the boys at all hours. She climbs trees, takes cars apart, and worse, she tells them what to do and they listen to her. She don’t want to learn none of the things she has to know to get a husband. Smart as she is, a woman can’t get on in this world without a husband. We can’t be sending no girl to school as it is. It’s the boys we got to worry about. Them’s the ones will be earning livings. You make too much of her head.”

“Molly is going to college.”

“Big talk.”

“My daughter is going to college.”

“Your daughter, your daughter. That’s a laugh. That’s the first time I heard you say that. She’s
Ruby Drollinger’s bastard that’s who she is. Where do you get off with this daughter crap?”

“She’s mine as much as if I’d been her real father and I watch out for her.”

“Real father. What right have you got to talk about being a real father? If you’d been a real father I’d have my own daughter and she wouldn’t be like that wild hellcat you stick up for. She’d be a real little lady like Cheryl Spiegelglass. Your daughter, you make me sick.”

“Honey, you’re all upset. You don’t know how you’re sounding. Molly is yours, just as if she was your own. A child’s got to have parents and you’re her mother.”

“I am not her mother. I am not her mother,” Carrie shrieked. “She didn’t come from my body. Florence had babies come from her body, and she tells me it’s not the same. She knows. She told me I’ll never know what it’s like to be a real mother. What do you know? Men don’t know about these things. Men don’t know anything.”

“Mother, father, what’s the difference, Cat? It’s how you feel about the child, it’s got nothing to do with your body. Molly is my daughter, and if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to see that girl gets a chance in this world neither one of us had. You want her to spend her life like us, sitting back here in the sticks, can’t even make enough money for a new dress or dinner in a restaurant? You want her to live a life like you—dishes, cooking, and never going out except maybe to a movie once a month if we can afford it? The child’s got brightness in her, Cat, so let her be! She’ll go to big cities and be somebody. I can see it in her.
She’s got dreams and ambition and she’s smart as a whip. Nobody can pull one over on that kid. Be proud for her. You got a daughter to be proud of.”

“You turn my guts. She’ll be somebody. That’s all I need, Molly traipsing off to a big city like Philadelphia and thinking she’s better than the rest of us. She’s got high ways now. You make her worse. She’ll go off to college and a big city and forget you ever lived. That’s the thanks you’ll get. She don’t care for nobody but her own self, that kid. She’s a savage animal, locked me in the cellar. You don’t live here with her every day and see her like I do. She’s wild I tell you. And how far’s she gonna get with all her brains considering her background? We ain’t people that can do her good in fancy places. She’ll be ashamed of us. And she’s a bastard to boot. You got pipe dreams for your daughter.” She hit on daughter with such bile it made me shudder.

“Cat, my mind is made up. Molly is having her chance whether you like it or not. She’s getting an education. Now you learn to live with it, and you’re not to lock her in this house with you. Let her run all over the whole goddamn county and let her knock shit out of Cheryl Spiegelglass. I never liked that kid anyway.”

“I have one think to say to you, Carl Bolt. We’ve never had a fight between us until that child came under our roof. And we never would have a fight like this if you could have given me a baby, but you had syphilis, that’s what you had. You ain’t fit to be nobody’s father. If I could have had my own all this would be different. This is all your doing and I’ll never forget it.”

“My mind’s made up.” His voice was soft with hurt feelings.

“We’ll just see about that,” Carrie hedged. She had to get the last word in, whether anyone listened or not.

Leota B. Bisland sat next to me that year in sixth grade, and Leroy sat behind. Leota was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. She was tall and slender with creamy skin and deep, green eyes. She was quiet and shy so I spent most of sixth grade concentrating on making Leota laugh. Miss Potter wasn’t too pleased with my performance in the first row but she was a sweet old soul and only made me stand in the hall once. That didn’t work out, because I kept returning to the doorway to dance when Miss Potter’s head was turned. I also made the finger at Leroy. Right when I was in the middle of shooting the bird, Miss Potter turns from the blackboard. “Molly, since you enjoy performing so much I’m going to make you the star of the Christmas play this year.” Leroy asked whether the play was going to be
The Creature from the Black Lagoon
. Naturally everybody
screamed. Miss Potter said no, it was a play about the nativity of Jesus and I was to be Virgin Mary.

Cheryl Spiegelglass got so mad she jumped up and said, “But Miss Potter, the Virgin Mary was the mother of little Lord Jesus and she was the most perfect woman on earth. Virgin Mary has to be played by a good girl and Molly isn’t good. Yesterday she stuck a wad of bubble gum in Audrey’s hair.” Cheryl was bucking to be Virgin Mary, that was clear. Miss Potter said that we had to consider dramatic talent not just whether a person was good or not. Besides, maybe if I played the Virgin Mary some of her goodness would rub off.

Leota was a lady of Bethlehem so she was in the play too. And Cheryl was Joseph. Miss Potter said this would be a great challenge to Cheryl. She was also in charge of costumes, probably because her father would donate them. Anyway she got her name in the program twice in big letters.

Leroy was a Wise Man, and he wore a long beard with Little Lulu curls on it. We all had to stay after school every day to remember our lines and rehearse. Miss Potter was right, I was so busy trying to get everything perfect that I didn’t have time to get into trouble or think about anything else except Leota. I began to wonder if girls could marry girls, because I was sure I wanted to marry Leota and look in her green eyes forever. But I would only marry her if I didn’t have to do the housework. I was certain of that. But if Leota really didn’t want to do it either, I guessed I’d do it. I’d do anything for Leota.

Leroy began to get mad that I was paying so
much attention to a mere village inhabitant and he was a Wise Man. He forgot it as soon as I gave him my penknife with the naked lady on it that I clipped from Earl Stambach.

The Christmas pageant was an enormous production. All the mothers came, and it was so important that they even took off work. Cheryl’s father was sitting right in the front row in the seat of honor. Carrie and Florence showed up to marvel at me being Virgin Mary and at Leroy in robes. Leroy and I were so excited we could barely stand it, and we got to wear makeup, rouge and red lipstick. Getting painted was so much fun that Leroy confessed he liked it too, although boys aren’t supposed to, of course. I told him not to worry about it, because he had a beard and if you had a beard, it must be all right to wear lipstick if you wanted to because everyone will know you’re a man. He thought that sounded reasonable and we made a pact to run away as soon as we were old enough and go be famous actors. Then we could wear pretty clothes all the time, never pick potato bugs, and wear lipstick whenever we felt like it. We vowed to be so wonderful in this show that our fame would spread to the people who run theaters.

Cheryl overheard our plans and sneered, “You can do all you please, but everyone is going to look at me because I have the most beautiful blue cloak in the whole show.”

“Nobody’s gonna know it’s you because you’re playing Joseph and that’ll throw them off. Ha,” Leroy gloated.

“That’s just why they’ll all notice me, because I’ll have to be specially skilled to be a good Joseph.
Anyway, who is going to notice Virgin Mary, all she does is sit by the crib and rock Baby Jesus. She doesn’t say much. Any dumb person can be Virgin Mary, all you have to do is put a halo over her head. It takes real talent to be Joseph, especially when you’re a girl.”

The conversation didn’t get finished because Miss Potter bustled backstage. “Hush, children, curtain’s almost ready to go up. Molly, Cheryl, get in your places.”

When the curtain was raised there was a rustle of anticipation in the maternal audience. Megaphone Mouth said above all the whispers, “Isn’t she dear up there?”

And dear I was. I looked at Baby Jesus with the tenderest looks I could manufacture and all the while my antagonist, Cheryl, had her hand on my shoulder digging me with her fingernails and a staff in her right hand. A record went on the phonograph and “Noel” began to play. The Wise Men came in most solemnly. Leroy carried a big gold box and presented it to me. I said, “Thank you, O King, for you have traveled far.” And Cheryl, that rat, says, “And traveled far,” as loud as she could. She wasn’t supposed to say that. She started saying whatever came in her head that sounded religious. Leroy was choking in his beard and I was rocking the cradle so hard that the Jesus doll fell on the floor. So I decided two can play this game. I leaned over the doll and said in my most gentle voice, “O, dearest babe, I hope you have not hurt yourself. Come let Mother put you back to bed.” Well, Leroy was near to dying of perplexity and he started to say something too, but Cheryl cut him off with, “Don’t worry, Mary,
babies fall out of the cradle all the time.” That wasn’t enough for greedy-guts, she then goes on about how she was a carpenter in a foreign land and how we had to travel many miles just so I could have my baby. She rattled on and on. All that time she spent in Sunday School was paying off because she had one story after another. I couldn’t stand it any longer so I blurted out in the middle of her tale about the tax collectors, “Joseph, you shut up or you’ll wake the baby.” Miss Potter was aghast in the wings, and the shepherds didn’t know what to do because they were back there waiting to come on. As soon as I told Joseph to shut up, Miss Potter pushed the shepherds on the stage. “We saw a star from afar,” Robert Prather warbled, “and we came to worship the newborn Prince.” Just then Barry Aldridge, another shepherd, peed right there on the stage he was so scared. Joseph saw her chance and said in an imperious voice, “You can’t pee in front of little Lord Jesus, go back to the hills.” That made me mad. “He can pee where he wants to, this is a stable, ain’t it?” Joseph stretched to her full height, and began to push Barry off the stage with her staff. I jumped out of my chair, and wrenched the staff out of her hand. She grabbed it back. “Go sit down, you’re supposed to watch out for the baby. What kind of mother are you?”