Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

Her green eyes are dull, and her voice holds no emotion, happy or sad. She comes and goes more ghost than person, but of course we’re all haunted.

It ignites that spark, the one I barely possess, the one my daughter, Ruby, may have abandoned altogether. But maybe I can still unearth what little power or breath or whatever that’s still good I carry within myself.

I have a picture memorializing the one thing Mom probably will never be able to do again—protect me.

Rebellion even in its smallest forms can eventually birth great change. With change comes hope.

I understand how the state of the deserted pasture is a reflection of my community. I understand how remaining behind walls of worship and offering plates and gospel music does nothing to change my side of the city. I understand how religion without action makes it worse. But even good people grow complacent.

smile. Old black people, elders, always figure you need a lesson about struggle because they had so much of it in their lives. Maybe they think it makes us stronger. So they’ll teach, but they won’t coddle. They’ll oversee, but they won’t hover.

Fight and kill. Those are your weapons. That’s how you live.

Sara never gave me much, but she taught me the shit that can help you survive in a world where dark skin and no money are liabilities.

Death isn’t the hard part. It’s the money it takes to die.

a woman whose life was taken too soon by a beautiful city with a lot of ugly, broken parts.

Many people believe it was a random act of violence, and our lives, black lives, are like that. Unforeseen patterns shape our fate. And on the South Side of Chicago, we exist with a unique kind of knowledge of how fragile life unfolds among these clustered rows of brick, cement and asphalt.

The detectives mill around, go in and out of the house, ask us questions. They are faceless with white skin and harsh, measured voices. Respectful, but businesslike and distant. They see this too much. Especially here. Live white faces. Dead black bodies.

I’m glad I’m seeing her this afternoon. I want to show her I’m here, that I’ll do whatever I can because there’s nothing more hopeless than believing you’re alone.

She could’ve used her fingers to dial the police, pick Lebanon out of lineup, but she used her fingers for other kinds of healing. She kept the same secret my Mom did. She’s a nice woman who helped Mom through her mess rather than out of it. Maybe Ms. Anne didn’t know any better. She’s from a different time.

The inequality permeating the streets and neighborhoods is not ideal by any means, but it’s livable. Down south, weight of segregation seems to be oppressive and immoveable.

enjoyed. I’m sure her “white girl” voice quickly eroded any idea of ignorance. Well, it probably didn’t do all that, it probably just made them feel comfortable enough to invite her to their house for dinner.

But he’s not dead because life’s not fair, and because God is as real as Santa Claus or rap stars who write their own lyrics or a father’s love or maybe love itself.

“It’s ‘Senator,’ dear. Will the car be okay out front like this?” Already I hear the anxious superiority in his voice. I know he doesn’t mean for it to come out, but there’s an inherent assumption in his question, about where I live and that dividing line between State Street that to him separates the haves and the have-nots.

Christy’s father, a state senator who now, according to the news, aspires to become a US senator, handed her a cushy job in his main campaign office. Her future already set. Her education already paid for. Her life laid out. No worries. Must be nice.

Christy is my friend. But it’s not like with Ruby. There’s a shallowness to our bond because I can’t open myself and all my experiences to Christy.

No, it’s more an air of invincibility, that must be tied to the gun they wear on their beltline. They know they won’t be held accountable for their actions. America doesn’t need ropes and trees anymore to kill us. They have cops and the legal system to do its dirty

“Why don’t you have a seat, Mr. King?” Jurgensen says. It was an order he posed like a request to me in my own damn home.

A legacy of law and order remain frayed in the very communities police are sworn to protect. Black people don’t trust the law because there is no accountability for when the law fails us.

“You know one of them reporters said something like residents are on edge after what happened to Alice. I almost laughed. We black in Chicago, we born on edge.”

One thought begets a regret which brings another thought which begets another regret and so on, his mind never loosed from the internal churning of his shame.

It’s okay to be my garbage man but not my neighbor. It’s okay to be my housekeeper but not my doctor. It’s fine to paint my house but don’t expect to see your work of art shadowing any great halls of museums. Be who you want to be as long as your potential doesn’t eclipse mine. Know your place. Stay in your place.

The city Chicago was color-blind; people, however, were and are another matter.

It’s a melting pot jigsaw puzzle with very distinctive boundaries. And those invisible lines still carve up the city, separating black, brown and yellow from white, opportunity and a void of such things.

Gossip is an unfortunate language of the church, but in this congregation so many, men and women alike, are fully fluent.

What are the frayed bindings holding these people together when ties should be cut?

Those guys on the corner are the South Side stereotype personified. What people imagine and fear when they listen to thirty-second news stories.

they eagerly war among themselves for imagined domain and false pride.

A people, especially ones whose trajectory is set and reset by those in power, a people trying to break patterns of injustice through votes and protests, through marches and sit-ins, a people like this knows about suffering. Blacks in America are the modern-day Children of Israel. They walk through a seemingly endless desert where the sun beats down at its highest point in the sky.

Her movements are stiff, ready for anything I suppose. She can’t switch that off, the constant awareness. He’s not even in the room, and she’s prepared to hurt at every turn.

If my father didn’t get involved, if he was seen as powerful in our community, but he felt powerless, what the hell could I do? That was the way I kept myself in denial. The easiest thing to do is nothing and we were all guilty of it.

More than hate binds them now. Secrets and blood can fortify the shakiest of bonds. Forever and to the end.

It doesn’t matter I’m educated, that I volunteer at church. It doesn’t matter I have a family that loves me, or that I don’t have so much as a speeding ticket to my name, I’m black. That’s what matters. Cops cover for cops. Blue covers blue. Blue doesn’t cover black. And there’d be no one to speak for me.

If you repeat something untrue over and over, you can start to believe it.

All the places in which we feel we lack—perhaps we’re drawn to someone who has what we crave in abundance. Sara is hard. Mom is softer. Sara is quiet. Mom speaks her mind. There are ways in which Sara seems resigned to the atrocities of the world; Mom rebels against them.

I swallow the backhanded compliments about how articulate I am, because in the end, most of them mean well, they’re just not experienced with black people,

And that is why I don’t come—it’s not that I don’t feel worthy, it’s because my self-esteem dictates I don’t go where I’m not wanted or appreciated. If they don’t want to deal with my neighborhood, then I won’t deal with theirs.

So much time wasted. I suppose many people feel like this at one point in their lives. How a mistake can color every other action.

Their guns raised first, we all heard them shout orders and we obeyed, but with the distinct fear all of us have when it comes to police, that no matter the level of compliance, we might still have our caramel-colored bodies riddled with bullets