A Virtuous Ruby Read Online Free Page A

still interact with the intriguing Ruby? He certainly hoped so.

Chapter Three
    “Solomon sick.” Her mother spit out the words as soon as she returned to the house from town.
    Was this her punishment for venturing outside? Her heart pounded in her throat. Everyone could probably hear it.
    Please, God. No. She swallowed her heart down.
    “What you mean? I was only gone for a little bit.” Her voice echoed small in the front room. She rushed over to the cradle and Solomon lay there, blue and struggling for breath.
    She picked him up and cradled him to her, kissing the silky skin pulled taut over his little skull.
    “Babies get sick quick sometimes. He’s puny and small, Ruby.” Her mother shook her head at the baby and seemed not to care at all about Ruby’s trouble. “Always has been. There ain’t a whole lot can be done.”
    “Who says?”
    “God’s will.”
    Even in her present distress, her heart went out to her mother. Her mother’s repeated attempts to have a boy, the very thing shameful she managed to succeed at with her first child, combined to make her mother resent her. She understood, and did not love her mother any less. But ever since Solomon’s birth, she thought of her mother as her equal. Not Mama but Lona.
    “I have to try. He’s suffering so.” She laid him back down as he gave her half a smile. She kept her hand on him touching his pale milk-white forehead, the skin so transparent she could see a blue vein throbbing there. Her six-month old boy smiled in his sleep, but it was the distinct small caving in his little chest that made her throat go tight and dry.
    “Sometimes, babies don’t make it, honey.” Her mother spoke in hushed low tones. Unfortunately, she knew this to be true from bringing babies herself. “We jus’ let ’em go.”
    She focused on Solomon. His sweet features rearranged themselves in repose. He already looked like an angel to her. But that didn’t mean she wanted him to be one. “You want me to let him go.”
    “God’s fixing it this way. Let it be.”
    She lifted her head with her crown of long jet-black hair feeling heavy on her head and neck all of a sudden. Her hair. How much lighter her head would be if she just cut it all off. Her hands itched to find a scissors or a knife. But she had other, more important, things to do at the moment. “Solomon was the only thing that fixed it right, Mama, what David did to me. God wants me to fight for his life. I’m going to get help. Please watch Solomon. I’ll be back soon.” Things could change so fast in a day. The fear now was for Solomon, not about going outside.
    Following her, her mother grabbed onto her arm with determined, hard fingers and a strength she didn’t realize she had. “Don’t do it. Please.”
    Standing in the setting sun, she asked the old favor once more. Make me brown, please. The little prayer popped into her head unbidden, whenever she stood in the sunshine. The sun never obeyed. A failure. She had been trying to be browner for years now, and she could never change colors. To be less obvious. “Making things difficult is the reason this has happened to me, Mama. Why should I stop now? I can go there and ask him for help, can’t I?”
    Her mother shrank back, horrified. “It’s too much, Ruby. What about us, your family? Your sisters?”
    “I do it for them. Do you want each one of them to go through the shame I have endured? It is time for it to end. The Winslows have to help. It is the only way.”
    “We can pray, daughter.” Her mother grabbed her arm again and tried to pull her to her knees, but Ruby refused to lower herself this time.
    “I have prayed. I prayed all the time David got me in the cotton field and I begged him to stop. I begged him, Mama, and David didn’t care. And now, he owes me. I have to ask for help.”
    “Take care, girl.” Tears shone in Lona’s eyes like bright diamonds.
    “I am.” This time she was not afraid. She wrenched free of Lona’s