Mama Ruby

Author:Mary Monroe [Monroe, Mary]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, African American, General, Contemporary Women, Coming of Age
ISBN: 9780758278098
Google: 7RkIyCdHzWcC
Amazon: 0758238622
Publisher: Dafina
Published: 2012-01-31T10:38:12+00:00

CHAPTER 33

WITHIN MINUTES AFTER ENTERING OLA MAE’S GLOOMY rooming house, Ruby decided that she didn’t like this new arrangement at all.

They hadn’t even seen the chitlins in the kitchen that Ola Mae said she wanted them to clean, but Ruby could smell them. As soon as they stepped into the hallway, the stink hit her in the face like a fly swatter. It was a big house, so cleaning it was not going to be an easy chore. But Ruby didn’t want to start complaining too soon. She hoped that things would get easier as they went along. After all they’d been through already, she’d bend over backward to make sure they did.

Under the circumstances, Ruby would have been willing to move in to a broom closet, and that was almost what they got. Ola Mae had assigned them to share a roll-away bed in an elevator-size room at the top of the stairs next to the bathroom that everybody used. A roll-away bed! The very thought disgusted Ruby to the bone. The only other time in her life that she’d been reduced to a roll-away bed was during a Memorial Day weekend two years ago when she and her parents had visited her sister Beulah and her husband. She asked herself again, what kind of mess had she gotten herself into? And how long was she going to live like a stowaway? Not long, she told herself. The incident with the horny restaurant owner was reason enough for her to decide that New Orleans was not the place for her after all.

An hour after they’d checked in, Ruby realized that it was going to take a whole lot of effort on her part for her to tolerate living in this place. Before she and Othella could even unpack, Ola Mae had them on their knees scrubbing her kitchen floor.

“Don’t y’all forget I need for y’all to clean them chitlins, too,” Ola Mae said. She stood stock still, fanning her face with a magazine as she inspected the mottled black and white rug on the kitchen floor that Ruby and Othella had just mopped and waxed.

They cleaned the chitlins, but they skipped the chitlin dinner. Instead, they stumbled out to the front porch to get some fresh air, and so they could converse in private. The porch steps were falling apart, so they had to be careful where they sat to keep from getting splinters in their butts.

“I didn’t come to New Orleans to be no slave,” Ruby complained, covering a spot with some old newspaper and then sitting down with a thud. Othella had already done the same thing. “I’d rather work in the cane fields than be crawlin’ around scrubbin’ floors and cleanin’ chitlins. This woman is crazy! And did you see the way them two men tenants of hers looked at us when they walked into the kitchen while we was cleanin’ that nasty-ass floor? That bug-eyed one, he was tryin’ to look up under your dress while you was bent over!”

Othella considered Ruby’s concerns and offered her a hearty nod.

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