Ruby and Rebecka — Chapter Four

Chapter 4

All God’s Children Got Wings

The morning was fresh and almost cool when they left the Flamingo Court in search of Inez’s grave. Next to her, as she wound across the island, Ruby rummaged through the leftovers of their Bojangles breakfast, making strange croaky purring sounds. They’d been driving around and across the island for over an hour now. Last night’s dream of the baby felt like a stain on her morning. Some of the live oaks branches hung so low that the moss whispered and scratched like ghosts across Bertha’s roof.

 Becka hummed snatches of songs rising up from distant memories. A few words would surface and then vanish like a mirage. “Children. Wings” Something about that but before her tongue could form more words, they vanished.

“What is that song? Ruby, do you know it?”

Ruby ignored her and pulled more scraps of biscuit from the bag and made a mess of crumbs across the bench seat then shivered and fluffed her feathers with pleasure. 

‘Good lord Ruby, you are making a mess of my car.’

I got wings you got wings all gods children got wings.

A strange feeling fluttered inside Becka. Children and wings and flying

Flying all over God’s heaven, Inez sang loudly now

She felt so lightheaded and strange. I will find this grave. I will apologize and then I will get us all home and sort out whatever King thinks he’s up to she said out loud and with determination. I don’t believe a sabbatical is a good idea in real life. 

Inez shook her head. Mm mm mm. She sucked her lips against her teeth.

It was frightening Becka thought how her brains was spotted with blank patches where memory fell into a chasm and could not be retrieved. The sun rose higher in the sky and still she had not seen any sign indicating that she was pointed in the right direction. Instead, she’d just been driving around in circles. The backs of her arms ached, and it was so hot now the car seats had begun to feel like they might crack from the bake of the sun. The hopefulness of the morning was beginning to fade. Even the birds were quiet in the trees and Ruby look like she was fading.

“You can fly away Ruby,” Becka said. “You don’t have to stay in this car with me.”

But Ruby ignored her.

All god’s children got wings. Inez began singing again. Sing it, Becka.

Inez, Becka doesn’t know this song, Episcopalians don’t sing this song.  Hope sat with her hands folded primly in her lap.

She knows it.

A strong scent of fresh lemon flooded the car.

And Becka swerved, bumping along the shoulder. 

Inez used to smell like that, sweet and rich, covered over with the smell of fresh squeezed lemons. And the car felt thick and intimate inside it as if she was not alone with only a crow for company. She glanced over at ruby and shuddered.

Ruby was busy fluffing her feathers and preening and grooming herself.

“Do you have mites ruby?”

Sometimes a wave of repulsion moved through Becka when she really took Ruby in. Why on earth, a crow, of all creatures? She wondered and shuddered. But then Ruby would give her an almost human glance, and a rush of tenderness filled her.

The island herself felt like she was curling up out of the marsh, the sand, and down from the sky wrapping round her and pulling her in in in in. The island spoke in a language made of salt, marsh, trees, sand, echoing voices of ancient peoples, and then peoples brought in chains, of harshness veiled by politeness, of truth obscured by justification. The island held all the beauty and misery, all the layers of emotion and it held a language brought and kept from another country. There were snakes and alligators and rice. Ancient marsh lands with dolphins and sharks. Constantly cleansed by the ocean, swept clean by storms. thick with salt and memory. Thick with fear. Thick with resilience. Thick with love. Thick with life. 

A strange mixture of dread and relief filled Becka. 

What do I do now? What do I do now? Ran like a chorus through her mind as she drove along side roads past the marsh and down the river road. Past the big farm where both Granny and Inez used to take her, still here, and there across the street was the Praise house, still here as well. The only one left. The farm, the Praise house, standing determinedly, holding onto the way of life, as developments of identical shiny new houses, filled with people escaping cold winters, encroached like an inexorable tide.

And then the dream surfaced again like a stain. 

Maybe she hadn’t protected from the hag, and it had come for her in the night. Were Granny and Inez with her? Had they become Haints? And what if that dream was a haunting because she sure couldn’t shake it. Every time she thought of that baby her throat seized closed, and tears sprang to her eyes.

We aren’t hags! Inez said

And Hope, startled, said, Well what on earth is that?

Unhappy spirit and we aren’t that.

No, we are not! We are most certainly not whatever that unpleasant sounding thing is

Inez laughed. Becka knows what a hag, a haint, and the plat eye are. She sure does.

Hope gave Inez a long stare.

Inez turned away and stared through the window as they passed a small white wooden building.

It’s still there.

Was that your church?

No, but we went there sometimes. It is everything.

I see, Hope said.

A pang sprang through Becka. A dim memory jogged free. That small white building. The music. The clapping the stomping the singing. She had been there…with Inez… she had loved it there…the heat the singing the clapping the the stomping the smell of sweat running freely down faces, between breasts in flowered dresses… The joyous freedom ringing around the tight hot space. So different than the stuffy quiet of the episcopal church all buttoned up and controlled, where she’d been admonished and shamed for running down the aisle to greet her friends.

Ruby hopped onto the dashboard and fluffed her feathers and began pecking at the window.

Inez’s church must be somewhere around here, Becka thought.

I haven’t even been here 24 hours, and the island is wrapping around me like returning my long lost skin. She tried to shrug this off. She didn’t want it. I am different now.

This was the real reason she hadn’t come to granny’s funeral.

The place was thick with ghosts. Inez called them haints and jack- o -lanterns and plat-eyes and none of them not a one were a good thing. A little feeling of terror that was slightly thrilling at the same time surged through her.

Like it or not, she was home.

Look for signs Inez used to say.

But now what? King still hadn’t so much as texted. That wasn’t a sign. That was a clear message. So, she had two choices. She could run back to him like always or for once in her life get some backbone and do what she wanted to do. We have been married too long for this. Hmmph. And then, What do I do now?

“What do I do now?” She chanted and then began tapping the steering wheel.

And suddenly the idea. The desire, sharp like longing, arrived in her heart fully formed.

I want to sing.

“I need to sing again,” she said out loud to Ruby. 

I’m just not going back right yet. I’m just not. If he wants a little sabbatical, then I’m going to have mine. 

She cranked up the radio and let All Glory All Gospel radio blare into the car. All gospel all the time, the announcer said. 

The music was familiar, but with new words. Unrecognizable in places, like the new neighborhoods of houses, springing up, in place of the tangled woods. Can new shiny houses erase the memory held in a place, she wondered. All these people oblivious to history.

Becka sighed, to her right was a sandy track cutting into the woods and impulsively she swerved onto it and decided to push further down this dirt track, it looked so familiar, if the church wasn’t here she would go to the beach and figure it out from there. 

She switched off the radio. Good. I will go to the beach and take it as a sign that I am free of all this. 

And then, the faint sound of music, floated through the thick air. Real music this time not a figment of ancient memories and not the radio. Oh, oh, she thought. Shoots. That. There it is. That music, not free after all, and she followed the sound down a narrow track through a dense tunnel of trees, the music getting louder and louder until she finally emerged into a clearing right on the edge of the marsh.

And there it was, Inez’s church, nestled under the live oaks and twisted soaring magnolias. The small white church where Inez had brought her so many times when Granny wasn’t paying attention. When Granny had been, what they called, indisposed.  A small cemetery stretched away from the church towards the marsh. Ancient graves jutted out of the ground like broken teeth. The music, and clapping, and, stomping flowed out of the tidy building, spilling into the thick air and flew out over the marsh and into the hot blue sky. 

Oh my, Hope said. 

Inez touched Hope’s arm and muttered something quietly in a language of her own. As if understanding, Hope said, it is so strange I know, to visit your own grave. 

Yes. 

Come on, Inez, let’s get out of here. 

Becka switched off the engine and before she could open the door Ruby croaked, hopped onto the open window, and brushed past Becka’s face, cawing loudly over the scattered graves with Inez and Hope soaring after her. 

“Ruby, wait!” Becka leapt out of Bertha and ran after the bird without even thinking. She ran, winding through the old graves and then new graves until finally she caught up with Ruby, who now hopped about, pecking for worms. And there she was, standing above Inez’s grave. 

Oh my, Inez said. 

Indeed, said granny, Strange, isn’t it?

Mm hmm. 

And a hot sick feeling flew into Becka’s throat making her feel like she couldn’t breathe. The music roared out of the church now, one female voice arced above the others lifting, lifting, lifting out and up into the heavens. The ground swayed, the music swelled, Ruby flapped around her face and Inez and Granny swirled around then clutched their arms around each other’s waists, swaying in the breeze. 

Becka teetered, her face flushed and hot. Her throat tightened the music, the heat, the memories, her heart swelled and contracted. A strange sensation rose from her belly right into her heart making her eyes water. No! she thought. No! but it was too late. Inez, Granny, The island, the music. She teetered again, her head light and dizzy. Ruby landed on her shoulder and Becka’s knees buckled and then the world went black.