Ruby Read online

  When I didn’t move, you said my name. I still didn’t know how to go to you. Then you reached out your hand.

  There is no possible way I can ever refuse you, your eyes pulling me with a constantly questioning gaze, your lips always teasing me, the way they never quite meet in the center. That opening holds every hope poised right there. And when you speak, every cell of my body resonates with the sound.

  I walked to you, never taking my eyes from your face. I sat next to you and you lay back, pulling me so my head was resting on your shoulder. The stars were so bright they seemed to be laughing.

  “There you are,” I said, pointing up to the sky. I had looked up the myth in one of Isabelle’s books. Your namesake was a powerful hunter who was blinded by a king when Orion wooed his daughter. Orion’s sight was restored by Dawn, who had fallen in love with him. But then Artemis slew him with her arrows. He was too beautiful to die and became a constellation.

  “When I found out the myth behind it, I asked my mother why she would choose that. She said, ‘We have to start using the lovely old names or they will go to waste. We just have to make up a new mythology. You’ll do that.’”

  “Big responsibility.”

  You rolled your eyes. “She is convinced I’m meant for a life of mythic proportions.”

  “Well it looks like she’s right.”

  You angled your face to look down at me. I could feel your breath moving the tiny stray hairs on my forehead. “I don’t know about me. You’re the one. What is it with you and these animals, Ruby? Where do you come from?” Your eyes were like a horse’s, so large and dark, full of the reflected world.

  I told you, “I had a horse when I was twelve. Vixen. She was what they call high-spirited, but really she was just wild. She threw me once and cracked my ribs. But I just kept getting back on her.”

  That was all I told you about my experiences with animals.

  “Ruby, thank you for going riding with me. I couldn’t have done it yet without you there.”

  I lowered my face so that we were nearly touching noses. Neither one of us closed our eyes. I touched my lips to yours, brushing them gently. Then I kissed you, deep and full.

  WE HAVE AN ALFALFA FIELD behind our house. One spring after it is mowed and bailed, we find a nest of four baby rabbits. Their mother lies dead nearby, mangled by the machinery. Opal and I take them home in a box, and Mr. Becker gives us a huge cage and tells us how to care for them. He comes over regularly to check on them and give them shots. I feel so proud when he tells us how healthy and tame they have become.

  My father starts getting upset though. He says we have to get rid of them or he is going to make stew. We stand in front of the supermarket for days trying to give them away. All but three are taken, but no one wants the littlest one, whose name is Peter. I lie awake at night, so scared that my dad is going to cook him. I pray to the Lady of the Forest to help us.

  Walter-Mae Livingston lives at the edge of town in a large, ramshackle house with a greyhound she had saved from being put down when it could no longer race, a blind white German shepherd, and a three-legged cat. People say Walter-Mae is a witch, and the kids all run away when she comes to town to buy her groceries.

  I march up to her door one day with Peter in a box. She asks me in and shows me her family. The two dogs and the cat are all eating together out of the same bowl. Walter-Mae shows me the bed where they all sleep together, too.

  “Please take Peter,” I say. “I’m afraid my dad will eat him.”

  “Who’s your daddy?” she asks. Her green eyes look brighter in contrast to her skin, like a black cat’s. I even imagine that the pupils are elongated. She seems to be seeing straight through my skull into my brain.

  I shake my head. “It doesn’t matter. Please, just take him.”

  When I come back to check on Peter three weeks later, he is eating and sleeping with the greyhound, the shepherd, and the three-legged cat. Maybe Walter-Mae Livingston really is a witch. Or an angel, or the Lady of the Forest I had sent my prayers to. I always wanted to be like her.

  DAD COMES HOME from work early. I haven’t yet fed our dog, Buford. Dad starts screaming at me. He takes Buford downstairs to the basement and locks him in. Then he comes back up. I’m just standing there, putting the dog’s food in his bowl to take down to him. My father comes up behind me and grabs my arm. He drags me to the top of the staircase and kicks me so I stumble down. Then he leaves. I go in to Buford. He doesn’t even want his food. He lies down on his bed and I lie down with him, my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

  Later that day, we all leave for my grandparents’ farm. But Dad won’t take Buford—we always take him. He throws him into the kitchen and puts up the gate. I guess he’s still punishing us both.

  Buford doesn’t forget what happened. He breaks out of the kitchen. When we get home, we see he has pulled one pillow off of the bed and peed on it. It’s Dad’s pillow.

  I think Dad is going to kill Buford but instead they just stare at each other. I’ve never seen an animal look like that. At least not a domestic one. My father just walks away after a while. But I know he’ll find some way to punish. It never just ends. It’s got to go somewhere.

  One day, I am standing in the kitchen setting out jelly beans in pastel paper-cup cake-pan liners for my birthday party. Cake and ice cream and party favors, balloons and presents and jelly beans. I even got a kitten as a present from my mom. I call her Batgirl. She’s black, with huge green eyes. Sunshine through the window and the kitten is sleeping. Nothing bad can happen.

  All of a sudden, my father comes into the house, almost running. I hear the china in the cabinet rattle. He is screaming about how I missed a speck of cat shit on the lawn mower seat when I cleaned it. He punches me in the arm. My new kitten is cowering in the corner, watching.

  The next day, I go out the back door to find Batgirl. I am carrying her food in a little yellow bowl.

  She’s dead, lying on the back step, blood oozing from her mouth and nose. It is never discussed but I know who killed her.

  Three stories. In the first, I saved the animal, in the second, he helped me. In the last story, neither of us could be saved.

  WHEN I PULLED AWAY, your eyes were surprised and you were smiling that amused, slightly cocky smile. I felt my face flush and I was glad for the darkness. What had I just done? I jumped to my feet, shoving my hands awkwardly into the pockets of my jeans.

  “I’m sorry, Orion. I’m really sorry. You must think I’m such an idiot.”

  “That’s not what I was thinking at all. I was thinking what an amazing mouth you have.”

  I turned and went back into the house. You stopped me at the front door. You were still smiling.

  “Why did you do that?” you asked.

  I wished I could perform the invisibility spell. “I already said I was sorry. What else do you want?”

  The smile was gone now. “Ruby, that’s not what I meant. Why did you walk away from me?”

  I tucked my hair behind my ears and looked at my shoes, the way I used to do when I was little. “I’m sorry. I was just so shocked at myself. For doing that. And I was afraid…”

  You interrupted me. “There is one thing I want you to know. You never have to be afraid of me in any way.” I glanced up and saw you standing there looking at me, eyes darkened with concern. “And please stop apologizing. When we look back on our first kiss I don’t want us to remember it as sorry.”

  I brushed your cheek with my lips and ran out into the night.

  the maiden

  I STOP AT THE EDGE of the forest. The darkness is so deep that I imagine I can see my own reflection in it. The moon is waxing, but the sky is full of a rolling fog that blocks any light. I shiver in the cloak Isabelle had made me, drink the potion from the blue glass bottle, look up at the sky, and say the words from the book of spells.

  “Love has led me and now I must follow. Gentle Maiden, sister moon, show me the path to my desire.”


  The words sound strange, old-fashioned, but I repeat them anyway, until they begin to feel part of me.

  I close my eyes and cross into the darkness.

  When I open my eyes again, I see a path winding among the trees, lit by tiny flying lights. They twirl and dance, hovering one minute and darting the next, staying just far enough ahead that I can’t really see them clearly. The smells of roses, jasmine, lily of the valley grow stronger with each step I take over the springy pine needles.

  The path opens to a clearing where the trees form a structure, some kind of multiroomed gazebo. The entrance is covered with what appears to be a gauzy cloth, but when it touches my face, I see that it is really a thin veil of moss. Inside the gazebo are chaise longues and chairs covered in peach, rose, and pale yellow silks and velvets, heaped with pillows of soft green and blue. The twinkling lights from the path gather around the edges of the ceiling that is open to the sky. In the center of the room is a small blossoming tree that holds in its branches a basin filled with water. A breeze stirs the water releasing the scent of roses. I feel warm and tingling, high with it.

  Someone is here with me; I can feel her presence. I turn to see a young woman standing in the doorway. She is about my own age, maybe a little younger, with moonlike skin and long, silky, golden ringlets full of tiny pink blossoms that look as if they have sprouted there. Her dress seems to change color as she moves and the light hits it in different ways.

  I smile at her cautiously and she reaches out her hand to me.

  I pull back with shock as soon as I feel her skin: desire surges through me, from my core, out my limbs to my fingers and toes.

  She reaches out to touch one of the flowers on the small tree, then gestures for me to do the same. I hesitantly graze the petal with my fingertip. The sensation of wanting fills my body again, just as it had begun to ebb. I touch the rose water in the basin and every one of my cells reverberates with more sensation.

  I follow the girl to one of the day beds but it is hard to walk with so much blood pounding through me. She lies back on the bed and I sit at the edge of it.

  My whole body relaxes as if invisible hands are massaging me. I close my eyes, and when I open them, I see Orion reclining beside me where the girl was. He tosses his dark curls out of his eyes and stretches his limbs. I can see the shadow of hair on his strong chin, the way his delicate nostrils move when he breathes, the thickness of his eyelashes, the motion of his Adam’s apple. Tears prick like pins at the inner corners of my eyes. I want him so much. Why do I want him so much? I don’t even know him.

  The girl—herself again—stands and puts her hands on my temples. They start to throb. I feel like my brain is contracting and expanding. I want to scream. I’m not sure if it’s desire or sadness or fear.

  Suddenly, the girl changes again. Her ringlets straighten out into smooth strands, still blond, and her clothes transform into jeans and a jean jacket over a pink tank top. She has on blue eye shadow and lip gloss and she is chewing bubble gum. She smells of sugar and cigarettes.

  “You know, someone told me that virgin didn’t used to mean you didn’t have sex with anyone. It just meant you didn’t have a husband. You could sleep around as much as you wanted.”

  “Tiger?” I say. “Tiger Smokler?”

  “Hey, Ruby.”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m here for you,” she says. “You can’t leave where you come from.”

  Then she gets up and walks out of the gazebo.

  I follow her.

  I CAME BACK AND COLLAPSED on my bed. What was happening to me? I wondered. Had I finally gone completely mad? Three times they had happened, but none of these episodes in the forest could be real.

  the dreams

  WHEN I WAS A LITTLE GIRL, I had four dreams. I told my mother and my sister and we always talked about them, how strange they were, how vivid and cinematic and terrifying. They became part of the family legend, Ruby’s Dreams, like the time I saw King and Queen walking on the hill. But the problem was—the thing I never told my family—the dreams weren’t dreams at all.

  I AM FOUR YEARS OLD. I wake from a deep sleep. A woman is standing in the door of my bedroom. She is ghostly white—her long, stringy hair, her skin, her long nightgown with the elastic bands around her trembling wrists—but solid in form, dark eyes ringed with circles, sinking into loose folds of flesh.

  I know she is here to hurt me. I know I need to fight. I get up and throw my little yellow plastic chair at her. It hits her and she glares at me, baring her teeth. Then she is gone.

  The next morning I tell my mother. I tell her everything except the first part. The waking-up part.

  I AM SEVEN YEARS OLD. I’m in my bed and wake suddenly. I hear something coming down the hall. I sit up, gripping the sheets over my heart as if I’m trying to keep it from escaping my body. At the foot of the bed are two smallish men crawling on their knees. I can just see the tops of their heads, level with the mattress. Slung between them, resting on their backs, is a pole and tied to it a wolf, all four feet bound together. The men regard me with surprised faces as if I am the nightmare. We all stare at each other for a moment. The wolf’s eyes are woeful.

  I think, I am the wolf, I am the moon, I am the dark of the night.

  Why am I so afraid of the darkness?

  I don’t see the men and the wolf anymore. I see my mother lying on her back on the floor, her wrists pressed together as if they are bound. She is weeping.

  TEN YEARS OLD. I’m walking down the long dirt rock road that leads to town from our house. To my right is a big open pasture for cows. To the left is a trailer court. The flimsy trailers look depressing, but people have tried to make them more inviting with plastic flowers in window boxes, ceramic ducks and gnomes, cheap lace curtains, and Christmas lights. I am thinking of Tiger Smokler. She and her brothers all looked like Southern California surfers. They were so blond and miraculously tan, even in the winter, with really white teeth. When Tiger committed suicide, her family lost their house and moved into one of those trailers. Later, her parents divorced and her mom started drinking. Tiger’s brothers rode my bus. Bad boys, people said. They seemed nice to me, though. I always wanted to talk to them, even just say hello, but I never did.

  I look into the sky at the enormous clouds. They part. I stand there, staring up, wanting to call for someone else to see but I can’t speak.

  A girl is bound and gagged, tied to a post. A man is standing over her, brandishing a knife. He is bearded and very thin, wearing only a loincloth. There are bloody marks on his palms and feet.

  “Wait!” I yell. “What are you doing?”

  He looks at me calmly and raises the knife.

  “Tiger?” I scream.

  The clouds close again and I run toward home as a light rain starts to fall.

  THAT SAME YEAR. I am in the kitchen with my mom, helping her make meatloaf. I see something odd outside in the distance and go onto the deck to get a better view. A house on the edge of town is on fire, flames leaping from the windows. I’m yelling to my mom, “Fire, fire, call the fire department!” but she can’t hear me. I see her through the glass, wrist-deep in raw meat, eyes wet with onion tears. I look back at the house. As I watch, the fire jumps to the roof of the church next door. The house looks untouched. Out of the church’s flaming roof I see something. It’s a large fierce bird and it’s flying straight at me. I back away from the edge of the deck, startled by the colorful span of wings. The bird lands on the top rail of the deck and looks at me, cocking its head questioningly. I can hear its thoughts in my mind.

  “I love you,” the bird is telling me. “I would like to stay with you awhile.”

  Later, I discover the name of the bird. It is not in a book about animals but a book of mythology. Rising from the flames. Phoenix.

  MAYBE I AM CRAZY. Or maybe something else happened in my bedroom, in the kitchen in the fields by the trailer park. Something that could not be remembered.
Something unforgivable.

  the knowing

  WE WENT OUT FOR INDIAN food at a tiny restaurant with purple and saffron-colored walls. We ate saag palu, the spinach just melting with ghee, and creamy, spicy cauliflower-and-potato alu gobi. Wrapping everything in the garlic naan so that the textures and flavors blended together. Our eyes were watering from the spices and we tried to cool off with the cucumber-and-yogurt raita. I looked at you sipping your wine.

  “I would give anything to be that wine in your mouth,” I said.

  “I wish you were this wine in my mouth.” You leaned over and pressed your lips to mine. They burned with the spices. My whole body was burning.

  “Let’s go dancing,” you said.

  A little band was playing salsa music at the pub. You put your hand on my lower back and I moved my hips slowly. You pressed against me and I felt your chest, your heartbeat, your pelvis.

  “Where did you learn to dance like this?” you asked.

  I smiled into your neck.

  “Where did you come from? I’m serious, Ruby. I’ve never met anyone like you.”

  WE CAME BACK FROM DANCING and I fell into the sofa, my yellow flowered skirt spreading out around my legs. I felt the summer breeze through the cottage windows. We were laughing. I can’t even remember why. We were just laughing because we were together.

  The laughter stopped. You were standing across the room with two glasses of wine but you set them down as if you had forgotten about them. You moved over to me very slowly and kneeled in front of me. Your eyes stayed on my face as you put your hands on my ankles and ran them up my legs. You looked down, then back up at me, asking.

  I couldn’t breathe. My mouth was parted slightly and I felt a gentle, stinging sensation on my lips.

  You glided your hands along the tops of my thighs under my skirt, stopping just at the place where my legs met my hips. I was sweating there. You looked back into my eyes and kissed me very softly with your whole mouth. When I kissed you I could smell myself. I didn’t smell like a girl. I smelled like a meadow in the sun. But then I pulled away from you. I wanted to see your face again.