A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Other Stories

“Why, is Rufus at home?”

“Rufus is cute,” Laverne said. “I thought I’d ask him how he liked my shoes.”

Ruby sat up with a fierce look, very pink and purple. “Why Rufus?” she growled. “He ain’t but a baby.” Laverne was thirty year old. “He don’t care about women’s shoes.”

Laverne sat up and took off one of the shoes and peered inside it. “Nine B.” she said. “I bet he’d like what’s in it.”

“That Rufus ain’t but an enfant!” Ruby said. “He don’t have time to be looking at your feet. He ain’t got that kind of time.”

“Oh, he’s got plenty of time,” Laverne said.

“Yeah,” Ruby muttered and saw him again, waiting, with plenty of time, out nowhere before he was born, just waiting to make his mother that much deader.

“I believe your ankles are swollen,” Laverne said.

“Yeah,” Ruby said, twisting them. “Yeah. They feel tight sort of. I had the awfulest feeling when I got up those steps, like sort of out of breath all over, sort of tight all over, sort of—awful.”

“You ought to go on to the doctor.”

“No.”

“You ever been to one?”

“They carried me once when I was ten,” Ruby said, “but I got away. Three of them holding me didn’t do any good.”

“What was it that time?”

“What you looking at me that way for?” Ruby muttered.

“What way?”

“That way,” Ruby said, “—swagging out that stomach of yours that way.”

“I just asked you what it was that time?”

“It was a boil. A nigger woman up the road told me what to do and I did it and it went away.” She sat slumped on the edge of the chair, staring in front of her as if she were remembering an easier time.

Laverne began to do a kind of comic dance up and down the room. She took two or three slow steps in one direction with her knees bent and then she came back and kicked her leg slowly and painfully in the other. She began to sing in a loud guttural voice, rolling her eyes, “Put them all together, they spell MOTHER! MOTHER!” and stretching out her arms as if she were on the stage.

Ruby’s mouth opened wordlessly and her fierce expression vanished. For a half-second she was motionless; then she sprang from the chair. “Not me!” she shouted. “Not me!”

Laverne stopped and only watched her with the wise look.

“Not me!” Ruby shouted. “Oh no not me! Bill Hill takes care of that. Bill Hill takes care of that! Bill Hill’s been taking care of that for five years! That ain’t going to happen to me!”

“Well old Bill Hill just slipped up about four or five months ago, my friend,” Laverne said. “Just slipped up…”

“I don’t reckon you know anything about it, you ain’t even married, you ain’t even…”

“I bet it’s not one, I bet it’s two,” Laverne said. “You better go on to the doctor and find out how many it is.”

“It is not!” Ruby shrilled. She thought she was so smart! She didn’t know a sick woman when she saw one, all she could do was look at her feet and shoe em to Rufus, shoe em to Rufus and he was an enfant and she was thirty-four years old. “Rufus is an enfant!” she wailed.

“That will make two!” Laverne said.

“You shut up talking like that!” Ruby shouted. “You shut up this minute. I ain’t going to have any baby!”

“Ha ha,” Laverne said.

“I don’t know how you think you know so much,” Ruby said, “single as you are. If I was so single I wouldn’t go around telling married people what their business is.”

“Not just your ankles,” Laverne said, “you’re swollen all over.”

“I ain’t going to stay here and be insulted,” Ruby said and walked carefully to the door, keeping herself erect and not looking down at her stomach the way she wanted to.

“Well I hope all of you feel better tomorrow,” Laverne said.

“I think my heart will be better tomorrow,” Ruby said. “But I hope we will be moving soon. I can’t climb these steps with this heart trouble and,” she added with a dignified glare, “Rufus don’t care nothing about your big feet.”

“You better put that gun up,” Laverne said, “before you shoot somebody.”

Ruby slammed the door shut and looked down at herself quickly. She was big there but she had always had a kind of big stomach. She did not stick out there different from the way she did any place else. It was natural when you took on some weight to take it on in the middle and Bill Hill didn’t mind her being fat, he was just more happy and didn’t know why. She saw Bill Hill’s long happy face, grinning at her from the eyes downward in a way he had as if his look got happier as it neared his teeth. He would never slip up. She rubbed her hand across her skirt and felt the tightness of it but hadn’t she felt that before? She had. It was the skirt—she had on the tight one that she didn’t wear often, she had… she didn’t have on the tight skirt. She had on the loose one. But it wasn’t very loose. But that didn’t make any difference, she was just fat.