Portable Childhoods Read online

  The basement is a place between the worlds, within Kitty’s domain, but beneath her notice. Now, in the daytime, it is Ruby’s, and Mary Louise is happy there. Ruby is not like other grown-ups. Ruby talks to her in a regular voice, not a scold, nor the sing-song Mrs. Banks uses, as if Mary Louise is a tiny baby. Ruby lets her sit and watch while she irons, or sorts the laundry, or runs the sheets through the mangle. She doesn’t sigh when Mary Louise asks her questions.

  On the rare occasions when Kitty and Ted are home in the evening, they have dinner in the dining room. Ruby cooks. She comes in late on those days, and then is very busy, and Mary Louise does not get to see her until dinnertime. But the two of them eat in the kitchen, in the breakfast nook. Ruby tells stories, but has to get up every few minutes when Kitty buzzes for her, to bring more water or another fork, or to clear away the salad plates. Ruby smiles when she is talking to Mary Louise, but when the buzzer sounds, her face changes. Not to a frown, but to a kind of blank Ruby mask.

  One Tuesday night in early May, Kitty decrees that Mary Louise will eat dinner with them in the dining room, too. They sit at the wide mahogany table on stiff brocade chairs that pick at the backs of her legs. There are too many forks and even though she is very careful it is hard to cut her meat, and once the heavy silverware skitters across the china with a sound that sets her teeth on edge. Kitty frowns at her.

  The grown-ups talk to each other and Mary Louise just sits. The worst part is that when Ruby comes in and sets a plate down in front of her, there is no smile, just the Ruby mask.

  “I don’t know how you do it, Ruby,” says her father when Ruby comes in to give him a second glass of water. “These pork chops are the best I’ve ever eaten. You’ve certainly got the magic touch.”

  “She does, doesn’t she?” says Kitty. “You must tell me your secret.”

  “Just shake ’em up in flour, salt and pepper, then fry ’em in Crisco,” Ruby says.

  “That’s all?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, isn’t that marvelous. I must try that. Thank you Ruby. You may go now.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Ruby turns and lets the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room close behind her. A minute later Mary Louise hears the sound of running water, and the soft clunk of plates being slotted into the racks of the dishwasher.

  “Mary Louise, don’t put your peas into your mashed potatoes that way. It’s not polite to play with your food,” Kitty says.

  Mary Louise sighs. There are too many rules in the dining room.

  “Mary Louise, answer me when I speak to you.”

  “Muhff-mum,” Mary Louise says through a mouthful of mashed potatoes.

  “Oh, for god’s sake. Don’t talk with your mouth full. Don’t you have any manners at all?”

  Caught between two conflicting rules, Mary Louise merely shrugs.

  “Is there any more gravy?” her father asks.

  Kitty leans forward a little and Mary Louise hears the slightly muffled sound of the buzzer in the kitchen. There is a little bump, about the size of an Oreo, under the carpet just beneath Kitty’s chair that Kitty presses with her foot. Ruby appears a few seconds later and stands inside the doorway, holding a striped dishcloth in one hand.

  “Mr. Whittaker would like some more gravy,” says Kitty.

  Ruby shakes her head. “Sorry, Miz Whittaker. I put all of it in the gravy boat. There’s no more left.”

  “Oh.” Kitty sounds disapproving. “We had plenty of gravy last time.”

  “Yes, ma’am. But that was a beef roast. Pork chops just don’t make as much gravy,” Ruby says.

  “Oh. Of course. Well, thank you, Ruby.”

  “Yes ma’am.” Ruby pulls the door shut behind her.

  “I guess that’s all the gravy, Ted,” Kitty says, even though he is sitting at the other end of the table, and has heard Ruby himself.

  “Tell her to make more next time,” he says, frowning. “So what did you do today?” He turns his attention to Mary Louise for the first time since they sat down.

  “Mostly I read my book,” she says. “The fairy tales you gave me for Christmas.”

  “Well, that’s fine,” he says. “I need you to call the Taylors and cancel.” Mary Louise realizes he is no longer talking to her, and eats the last of her mashed potatoes.

  “Why?” Kitty raises an eyebrow. “I thought we were meeting them out at the club on Friday for cocktails.”

  “Can’t. Got to fly down to Florida tomorrow. The space thing. We designed the guidance system for Shepard’s capsule, and George wants me to go down with the engineers, talk to the press if the launch is a success.”

  “Are they really going to shoot a man into space?” Mary Louise asks.

  “That’s the plan, honey.”

  “Well, you don’t give me much notice,” Kitty says, smiling. “But I suppose I can pack a few summer dresses, and get anything else I need down there.”

  “Sorry, Kit. This trip is just business. No wives.”

  “No, only to Grand Rapids. Never to Florida.” Kitty says, frowning. She takes a long sip of her drink. “So how long will you be gone?”

  “Five days, maybe a week. If things go well, Jim and I are going to drive down to Palm Beach and get some golf in.”

  “I see. Just business.” Kitty drums her lacquered fingernails on the tablecloth. “I guess that means I have to call Barb and Mitchell, too. Or had you forgotten my sister’s birthday dinner next Tuesday?” Kitty scowls down the table at her husband, who shrugs and takes a bite of his chop.

  Kitty drains her drink. The table is silent for a minute, and then she says, “Mary Louise! Don’t put your dirty fork on the tablecloth. Put it on the edge of your plate if you’re done. Would you like to be excused?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” says Mary Louise.

  As soon as she is excused, Mary Louise goes down to the basement to wait. When Ruby is working it smells like a cave full of soap and warm laundry.

  A little after seven, Ruby comes down the stairs carrying a brown paper lunch sack. She puts it down on the ironing board. “Well, Miss Mouse. I thought I’d see you down here when I got done with the dishes.”

  “I don’t like eating in the dining room,” Mary Louise says. “I want to eat in the kitchen with you.”

  “I like that, too. But your stepmomma says she got to teach you some table manners, so when you grow up you can eat with nice folks.”

  Mary Louise makes a face, and Ruby laughs.

  “They ain’t such a bad thing, manners. Come in real handy someday, when you’re eatin with folks you want to have like you.”

  “I guess so,” says Mary Louise. “Will you tell me a story?”

  “Not tonight, Miss Mouse. It’s late, and I gotta get home and give my husband his supper. He got off work half an hour ago, and I told him I’d bring him a pork chop or two if there was any left over.” She gestures to the paper bag. “He likes my pork chops even more than your daddy does.”

  “Not even a little story?” Mary Louise feels like she might cry. Her stomach hurts from having dinner with all the forks.

  “Not tonight, sugar. Tomorrow, though, I’ll tell you a long one, just to make up.” Ruby takes off her white Keds and lines them up next to each other under the big galvanized sink. Then she takes off her apron, looks at a brown gravy stain on the front of it, and crumples it up and tosses it into the pink plastic basket of dirty laundry. She pulls a hanger from the line that stretches across the ceiling over the washer and begins to unbutton the white buttons on the front of her uniform.

  “What’s that?” Mary Louise asks. Ruby has rucked the top of her uniform down to her waist and is pulling it over her hips. There is a green string pinned to one bra strap. The end of it disappears into her left armpit.

  “What’s what? You seen my underwear before.”

  “Not that. That string.”

  Ruby looks down at her chest. “Oh. That. I had my auntie make me up a conjure han
d.”

  “Can I see it?” Mary Louise climbs down out of the chair and walks over to where Ruby is standing.

  Ruby looks hard at Mary Louise for a minute. “For it to work, it gotta stay a secret. But you good with secrets, so I guess you can take a look. Don’t you touch it, though. Anybody but me touch it, all the conjure magic leak right out and it won’t work no more.” She reaches under her armpit and draws out a small green flannel bag, about the size of a walnut, and holds it in one hand.

  Mary Louise stands with her hands clasped tight behind her back so she won’t touch it even by accident and stares intently at the bag. It doesn’t look like anything magic. Magic is gold rings and gowns spun of moonlight and silver, not a white cotton uniform and a little stained cloth bag. “Is it really magic? Really? What does it do?”

  “Well, there’s diff’rent kinds of magic. Some conjure bags bring luck. Some protects you. This one, this one gonna bring me money. That’s why it’s green. Green’s the money color. Inside there’s a silver dime, so the money knows it belong here, a magnet—that attracts the money right to me—and some roots, wrapped up in a two-dollar bill. Every mornin I gives it a little drink, and after nine days, it gonna bring me my fortune.” Ruby looks down at the little bag fondly, then tucks it back under her armpit.

  Mary Louise looks up at Ruby and sees something she has never seen on a grown-up’s face before: Ruby believes. She believes in magic, even if it is armpit magic.

  “Wow. How does—”

  “Miss Mouse, I got to get home, give my husband his supper.” Ruby steps out of her uniform, hangs it on a hanger, then puts on her blue skirt and a cotton blouse.

  Mary Louise looks down at the floor. “Okay,” she says.

  “It’s not the end of the world, sugar.” Ruby pats Mary Louise on the back of the head, then sits down and puts on her flat black shoes. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I got a big pile of laundry to do. You think you might come down here, keep me company? I think I can tell a story and sort the laundry at the same time.” She puts on her outdoor coat, a nubby burnt-orange wool with chipped gold buttons and big square pockets, and ties a scarf around her chin.

  “Will you tell me a story about the magic bag?” Mary Louise asks. This time she looks at Ruby and smiles.

  “I think I can do that. Gives us both somethin to look forward to. Now scoot on out of here. I gotta turn off the light.” She picks up her brown paper sack and pulls the string that hangs down over the ironing board. The light bulb goes out, and the basement is dark except for the twilight filtering in through the high single window. Ruby opens the outside door to the concrete stairs that lead up to the driveway. The air is warmer than the basement.

  “Nitey nite, Miss Mouse,” she says, and goes outside.

  “G’night Ruby,” says Mary Louise, and goes upstairs.

  When Ruby goes to vacuum the rug in the guest bedroom on Thursday morning, she finds Mary Louise sitting in the window seat, staring out the window.

  “Mornin, Miss Mouse. You didn’t come down and say hello.”

  Mary Louise does not answer. She does not even turn around.

  Ruby pushes the lever on the vacuum and stands it upright, dropping the gray fabric cord she has wrapped around her hand. She walks over to the silent child. “Miss Mouse? Somethin wrong?”

  Mary Louise looks up. Her eyes are cold. “Last night I was in bed, reading. Kitty came home. She was in a really bad mood. She told me I read too much and I’ll just ruin my eyes—more—reading in bed. She took my book and told me she was going to throw it in the ’cinerator and burn it up.” She delivers the words in staccato anger, through clenched teeth.

  “She just bein mean to you, sugar.” Ruby shakes her head. “She tryin to scare you, but she won’t really do that.”

  “But she did!” Mary Louise reaches behind her and holds up her fairy tale book. The picture on the cover is soot-stained, the shiny coating blistered. The gilded edges of the pages are charred and the corners are gone.

  “Lord, child, where’d you find that?”

  “In the ’cinerator, out back. Where she said. I can still read most of the stories, but it makes my hands all dirty.” She holds up her hands, showing her sooty palms.

  Ruby shakes her head again. She says, more to herself than to Mary Louise, “I burnt the trash after lunch yesterday. Must of just been coals, come last night.”

  Mary Louise looks at the ruined book in her lap, then up at Ruby. “It was my favorite book. Why’d she do that?” A tear runs down her cheek.

  Ruby sits down on the window seat. “I don’t know, Miss Mouse,” she says. “I truly don’t. Maybe she mad that your daddy gone down to Florida, leave her behind. Some folks, when they’re mad, they just gotta whup on somebody, even if it’s a little bitty six-year-old child. They whup on somebody else, they forget their own hurts for a while.”

  “You’re bigger than her,” says Mary Louise, snuffling. “You could—whup—her back. You could tell her that it was bad and wrong what she did.”

  Ruby shakes her head. “I’m real sorry, Miss Mouse,” she says quietly. “But I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “ ’Cause she the boss in this house, and if I say anything crosswise to Miz Kitty, her own queen self, she gonna fire me same as she fire all them other colored ladies used to work for her. And I needs this job. My husband’s just workin part-time down to the Sunoco. He tryin to get work in the Ford plant, but they ain’t hirin right now. So my paycheck here, that’s what’s puttin groceries on our table.”

  “But, but—” Mary Louise begins to cry without a sound. Ruby is the only grown-up person she trusts, and Ruby cannot help her.

  Ruby looks down at her lap for a long time, then sighs. “I can’t say nothin to Miz Kitty. But her bein so mean to you, that ain’t right, neither.” She puts her arm around the shaking child.

  “What about your little bag?” Mary Louise wipes her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a small streak of soot on her cheek.

  “What ’bout it?”

  “You said some magic is for protecting, didn’t you?”

  “Some is,” Ruby says slowly. “Some is. Now, my momma used to say, ’an egg can’t fight with a stone.’ And that’s the truth. Miz Kitty got the power in this house. More’n you, more’n me. Ain’t nothin to do ’bout that. But conjurin—” She thinks for a minute, then lets out a deep breath.

  “I think we might could put some protection ’round you, so Miz Kitty can’t do you no more misery.” Ruby says, frowning a little. “But I ain’t sure quite how. See, if it was your house, I’d put a goopher right under the front door. But it ain’t. It’s your daddy’s house, and she married to him legal, so ain’t no way to keep her from comin in her own house, even if she is nasty.”

  “What about my room?” asks Mary Louise.

  “Your room? Hmm. Now, that’s a different story. I think we can goopher it so she can’t do you no harm in there.”

  Mary Louise wrinkles her nose. “What’s a goopher?”

  Ruby smiles. “Down South Carolina, where my family’s from, that’s just what they calls a spell, or a hex, a little bit of rootwork.”

  “Root—?”

  Ruby shakes her head. “It don’t make no never mind what you calls it, long as you does it right. Now if you done cryin, we got work to do. Can you go out to the garage, to your Daddy’s toolbox, and get me nine nails? Big ones, all the same size, and bright and shiny as you can find. Can you count that many?”

  Mary Louise snorts. “I can count up to fifty,” she says.

  “Good. Then you go get nine shiny nails, fast as you can, and meet me down the hall, by your room.”

  When Mary Louise gets back upstairs, nine shiny nails clutched tightly in one hand, Ruby is kneeling in front of the door of her bedroom, with a paper of pins from the sewing box, and a can of Drano. Mary Louise hands her the nails.

  “These is just perfect,” Ruby says. She pours a puddle of Drano in
to its upturned cap, and dips the tip of one of the nails into it, then pokes the nail under the edge of the hall carpet at the left side of Mary Louise’s bedroom door, pushing it deep until not even its head shows.

  “Why did you dip the nail in Drano?” Mary Louise asks. She didn’t know any of the poison things under the kitchen sink could be magic.

  “Don’t you touch that, hear? It’ll burn you bad, cause it’s got lye in it. But lye the best thing for cleanin away any evil that’s already been here. Ain’t got no Red Devil like back home, but you got to use what you got. The nails and the pins, they made of iron, and iron keep any new evil away from your door.” Ruby dips a pin in the Drano as she talks and repeats the poking, alternating nails and pins until she pushes the last pin in at the other edge of the door.

  “That oughta do it,” she says. She pours the few remaining drops of Drano back into the can and screws the lid on tight, then stands up. “Now all we needs to do is set the protectin charm. You know your prayers?” she asks Mary Louise.

  “I know ’Now I lay me down to sleep.’”

  “Good enough. You get into your room and you kneel down, facin the hall, and say that prayer to the doorway. Say it loud and as best you can. I’m goin to go down and get the sheets out of the dryer. Meet me in Miz Kitty’s room when you done.”

  Mary Louise says her prayers in a loud, clear voice. She doesn’t know how this kind of magic spell works, and she isn’t sure if she is supposed to say the God Blesses, but she does. She leaves Kitty out and adds Ruby. “And help me to be a good girl, amen,” she finishes, and hurries down to her father’s room to see what other kinds of magic Ruby knows.

  The king-size mattress is bare. Mary Louise lays down on it and rolls over and over three times before falling off the edge onto the carpet. She is just getting up, dusting off the knees of her blue cotton pants, when Ruby appears with an armful of clean sheets, which she dumps onto the bed. Mary Louise lays her face in the middle of the pile. It is still warm and smells like baked cotton. She takes a deep breath.