Saving Ruby King

by Catherine Adel West

I try opening up some place inside me where I convince myself I love her, and I find...nothing. And somehow, I’m relieved. Loving her, despite how long we’ve been together, isn’t something I’m built for. Love is a liability. It’s a way for people to control you.

I’m black. That’s what matters. Cops cover for cops. Blue covers blue. Blue doesn’t cover black.

Sara knows she isn’t worth loving. People who love her die. She won’t let that happen to the boy. She’ll make sure he doesn’t love her. Her love is poison. She’ll make him hate her. That’s the only way she knows how to love him, to prepare him for the life he’ll lead which will be hard and bad and if they’re both lucky, brief.

Tim believes in the good of people. I’m more of the James Baldwin school: “I can’t believe what you say, because I see what you do.”

Effortlessly J.P. weaves the brush on the canvas and what was once bright white is green or blue or red or brown. And I envy him, because I think this is as close as one can possibly get to feeling like God did those first six days of the Earth’s genesis.

Lebanon never knocks on doors. He pounds on them, breaks them, splinters the wood, bends the hinges into abstract forms no longer able to hold things in frame. He treats doors like he treats people. All things can be broken. In my life, I’ve realized people can become the easiest of all to destroy.