A short story inspired by a true-ish story and for Mrs. Donna Cozart Pauley
One thing was for sure: little Ruby Mitchell was strange. No doubt, she was a smart girl with a pleasant demeanor. She was a model citizen who made good grades and greeted everyone in the church after worship. She read books as naturally as a fish might swim. She even played clarinet in the marching band despite being the only twelve-year-old at the high school. No one thing about her could be called unsettling nor were any of her quirks -- outside of her fondness for and the ability to recollect completely useless facts at a moment’s notice -- necessarily extraordinary.
Maybe that wasn’t true.
But it was true that the mere glance at the heavy glasses that slowly slid down the bridge of her nose and warranted her constant pushing towards her forehead could make those around her tire, and though she was very polite in conversation, we knew that, because she was the only twelve-year-old who had read most of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, she could only be strange. And since most of us thought Thucydides was a venereal disease, why wouldn’t we think she was strange?
Sure: with her vocabulary and her knowledge and her skill at conversation and her virtuosity at the clarinet (she was playing Mozart while Lizzy Burns down the street tortured her mother with “Hot Cross Buns,” her clumsy fingers struggling to cover the tone holes on her flute), some people may find those things extraordinary, but I always said that the most extraordinary thing about her was how ordinary she was: outside of her intelligence and her occasional wit, she was just another twelve-year-old girl who wanted what other twelve year old girls wanted. And what girls want at that age can only be typified as strange.
If my memory serves me right, Ruby didn’t have very many friends at school. I mean, she was at the high school while kids her age were at a completely different school across town, some twenty-two minutes away and that’s if you had a car. It didn’t help that she wasn’t just at the high school, but she was a graduating senior. Oh, yes! Ruby was taking advanced high school courses: she was reading Tolstoy and Shakespeare and, at night when no one was watching her, Gertrude Stein (!!). She was taking advanced Calculus and studies in macroeconomics. She taught herself how to speak German and French, and she figured in the next few years, she would pick up Portuguese because, based on the recent changes in the world population, it was becoming a viable language. And for the rest of us? You guessed it. Thucydides was not Portuguese either.
I understand why she had no friends, and in her own way, she did, too. Her classmates were graduating seniors who would either go on to college or join the military or start working as people tend to do from our town. She didn’t hang around the kids who smoked cigarettes or drank their daddy’s whiskey or made bad choices on Prom night and, nine months later, finally understood the meaning of “cause and effect.” She hardly knew what sex was, despite her intellectual advancements, and though she seemed interested in boys, she was not quite interested the young men who were her peers (although history informs us that the terms can be interchangeable). There would be time for that later, she would imagine, but at her age, tomorrow had not yet found its speed. She was perfectly happy with her books and her music and her big glasses. And who cares if she had any friends or not?
Sometimes, children can be cruel. She heard what they'd say about her when she'd make a higher grade than one of her classmates or when she was walking down the hallway. They were both puzzled and frightened by her. Besides, she had her mind with limitless possibilities, and for now -- she told herself this -- that would be enough.
As Ruby’s mother would say, “That’s that,” and for a woman who spoke English as well as her third grade education allowed her and whose favorite reading material was a bunch of baking recipes, Ruby would, too, live by these words. All things considered, that is that and nothing more. Things are only as fair as what we are given, she was told. Ruby, once a small glimmer in the mind of God and, perhaps, more of a glimmer in her father’s interest in her mother, did not ask to come into this world at all, but she certainly didn’t mind a world that had books and music and vision correction in it. And not just books but many books! I mean, for each new story, that is not just that but it can be there and then and everywhere, upside down and in between, all because of the simple notion that can become it , and it is a better, more powerful demonstrative pronoun. It is a thing, a world in which she longed live, and just because she wanted it, does that make her so strange? What was it, other than a desire to be understood or valued and appreciated despite her sometimes seeming to think a socialist economic policy would provide palpable solutions for those living in extreme poverty? So it went: because “that is that,” further diminished by a contraction notating an ease of regional dialect, twelve-year-old Ruby Mitchell learned that that is rarely ever it. This was true in baking, her mother told her. It didn’t matter how much flour the cake needed, if you didn’t have that much flour—your cake wasn’t going to bake. And that’s that.
Semantics stood in the way of Ruby cultivating meaningful friendships.
—
One morning, as the sun rose with a promise of a hot day, Ruby heard something crying. It was not a human sound, but humans, being animals, sound like a mama cat who lost just one of her kittens in a litter of six or so when they cry so I guess it isn’t fair to make any sort of delineation. Ruby, still with sleep in her eyes, stuck her head out her window and saw a screeching baby mockingbird. Upon further investigation, Ruby noticed that the poor bird’s nest had fallen out of the oak tree in their front yard just a few feet from where the bird now lay hollering.
Well, it didn’t have a broken wing, but it was scared something sure. Ruby felt sorry for it, but she stopped herself before picking it up. She remembered reading that it was a myth that a mama mockingbird would not take back a baby if touched by human hands because mockingbirds had a poor, if non-existent, sense of smell. But that’s not what worried her: where was her mother? And her siblings? They were definitely not around, and this poor creature was all alone in the world with no company, without so much more than the knowledge to fly.
Ruby couldn’t shut the window on the little thing now: for practical reasons, she could already hear Jenny Pritchett’s no-good tomcat licking his lips and meowing coyly across the street. Though she loved animals, she did not love cats because she couldn’t quite accept them for their nature. After all, cats are the only animals pretentious enough to relieve themselves in a box and bury it with their noses up in the air as if it were some well-kept secret treasure. According to Ruby, cats were no better than her obnoxious Uncle Roy, the world traveler because he went to Canada once. Cats, according to Ruby, might as well vote for a Republican.
But thankfully this prejudice of Ruby’s did not extend to birds, and more specifically, it did not extend to orphaned mockingbirds.
—
Ruby took the little mockingbird and, using a small shoebox, a few of her father's worn socks, and some twine that her mother kept in a drawer full of useless things in the kitchen, made a makeshift nest. That seemed to make sense. As long as the bird was comfortable, at this point.
"Chirp," said the bird. "Chirp, chirp."
"Are you hungry?" Ruby asked.
"Chirp."
She had never fed a bird before. What was she to do? Thoughts flashed once again to this poor bird's mother, and Ruby felt a heavy pull in her chest. She knew what it was like to be scared and alone and lost. She felt those things in her room at night with her flashlight and blanket pulled over her head reading Beat poetry.
Ruby knew that mama birds would eat food and regurgitate it for their babies. Ruby shuttered at the thought. She was no mama bird, but how would she help this poor hungry soul in front of her?
Ruby ran out the back of the house, leaving the bird chirping upstairs. She picked grass and dug through the red dirt with her bare hands, hoping to find a nice fat juicy worm. She looked up and saw Jenny Pritchett's no-good tomcat in the window across the street.
"Oh, twist your own tail!" Ruby said, under her breath.
—
Ruby went inside and washed up, the bird still chirping upstairs, when suddenly she remembered that her mom had just sliced up some apple pie for the church social day after next. Ruby took a small slice, knowing full well she could blame it on her father who enjoyed apple pies at nights without his wife's consent.
She tiptoed upstairs and was pleasantly surprised to see the bird hippity hopping around the room.
"Well, someone is feeling better!" Ruby said.
"Chirp," said the bird.
"Would you like some pie?" Ruby offered.
"Chirp, chirp," said the bird, enthusiastically.
Ruby had an idea: this seemed like a ripe opportunity for tea, the kind the Brits had and the ones she would dream about with friends who shared her love for Proust. So, Ruby set out a tablecloth, two cups (truly, one cup and a thimble for the bird), made some tea that her mother kept on the high shelf in the cupboard, and she had her very first tea party with her very first friend.
For the afternoon at least, all seemed right with the spinning, swirling world.
—
Needless to say, Ruby discovered that tea and apple pie were not staples of a bird's diet. Over time, Ruby learned to improvise because she and the bird went everywhere together. Ruby started carrying the bird in the shoebox, but it wasn't long before the bird would perch itself upon her shoulder like a parrot. Ruby learned that the best place to take the bird for worms was down by the oak tree at the library. Underneath the shade, the dirt was cold and soft, and earthworms could be plucked from the topsoil for a true feast.
The other children found Ruby even stranger than before now that she had a mockingbird as a pet. Some called her a witch. Some were afraid of her.
Per usual, Ruby did not mind. She and the bird received stares in their daily walk to the library. They stared right back.
—
One day, Ruby and the bird were together in the front yard discussing the political ramifications of democracy within governments having previously been run by dictatorships when Jenny Pritchett's tomcat appeared in the shrubs. Ruby didn't realize the cat was there, and it didn't take long for the cat to sneak up behind the bird and pounce.
The bird, however, showed a fight that Ruby was not expecting. It plunged and dived and pecked the cat on its ears and bit the cat on its tail and so furiously pestered that cat that he took off running down the street. The bird's face -- like any mockingbird -- had high arching eyebrows and looked almost angry, if not disapproving in the least.
Today was no day to kill a mockingbird! Ruby began to laugh in her startled amazement. This bird reminded her of an old woman in one of her favorite books, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. Mrs. Dubose! The irony of it all was too rich.
"Let's hope she's not a racist," thought Ruby, "but if she is racist, at least it's towards tomcats, so I suppose that's not so bad."
And with that, the bird had a name.
—
As days turned to weeks, Ruby realized that she had forgotten what her life was like before Mrs. Dubose. How refreshing it was for someone to listen, for someone to understand without staring at her big heavy glasses or wondering why she was more interested in books than boys! Who else would listen to her ramble about her preference of Degas to Rembrandt, of Satie to Beethoven? Ruby was a Francophile, after all.
In her new normal, Ruby found herself, one evening, staring in the mirror and examining two different colored dresses to wear to yet another church social.
"The colors are plain, and the design is drab," Ruby said.
"Chirp," Mrs. Dubose agreed.
"Still, I think the black dress with the chevrons is what everyone is wearing in Paris these days," Ruby replied.
Mrs. Dubose preened her feathers.
"Oh, you disagree?" Ruby said. She sighed heavily. "Fine, Mother will like the pink one anyway."
Mrs. Dubose hopped along the vanity approvingly.
Ruby put on the pink dress and her image caught her eye in the glass. She had not put back on her glasses, but for the first time in her entirely too short and well-informed existence, she thought herself beautiful, if only because she had become caught in a time and place where she had allowed it. She was a young woman at the crossroad so many girls face, a time where the voices inside of her could sometimes drown out the things she said out loud. Perhaps this is why she chose to listen more than to speak. Could a girl be both pretty and smart? Not in her world. Not in her mother's world. Girls are either pretty or girls are smart, but they couldn't be both. And that was that.
But Ruby knew that, like most other things in life, certainty could not always be true. She looked down at the vanity and saw Mrs. Dubose looking up at her. It was a queer feeling, but Ruby could have sworn that the bird's features were softer -- that Mrs. Dubose was even, perhaps, smiling.
—
Ruby was startled by a noise in the middle of the night. She thought she heard a stirring in the kitchen downstairs. She kept her eyes open sleepily and listened for a long time before deciding that her imagination was making up sounds as it does most midnights.
She sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. She reached for her glasses and saw a most interesting thing: Mrs. Dubose was sitting on the edge of her window peering out into the moonlight. The bird's chest rose and fell gently, calm and measured.
Ruby wondered if Mrs. Dubose was thinking of her family, of the life she used to know. Ruby wondered if Mrs. Dubose knew love.
Ruby went towards the windowsill and gently placed Mrs. Dubose back into her shoebox. Mrs. Dubose looked up at her with sad eyes.
"Please don't be cross with me, Mrs. Dubose," Ruby said, "for I know you are not one for feelings. But if I have not said it before, I want to thank you for being my friend."
Mrs. Dubose cooed, and that was the closest Ruby ever felt to knowing the inside of her own chest, to feeling her beating heart pump love through her veins.
After she wished Mrs. Dubose goodnight, Ruby climbed back into bed, took off her glasses, closed her eyes and slowly drifted into a great beyond, unaware that she had forgotten to shut her bedroom door.
—
In the morning, as the sun rose and hid behind the clouds of a cool Autumn (or, at least, as cool as such a morning can get in this part of Texas), Ruby awoke to an empty shoebox and an open door. Mrs. Dubose was gone. This was odd as Mrs. Dubose was not one for taking a stroll without Ruby early in the morning.
She put on her heavy glasses and descended the stairs down into the kitchen where her mother and father standing vigil, not knowing how to break the news of tragedy to their daughter who was certainly smart enough to understand it.
Mere hours before, an animal -- most likely a bobcat -- had clawed its way through the screen door on the back porch and, after what looked like a brief struggle, gobbled Mrs. Dubose up, leaving nothing but a small pile of feathers for her survivors.
Or could it be Jenny Pritchett's sour old tomcat back for revenge? Tears in her eyes, Ruby swore she'd never forgive him. It would be easier for her to believe the crime was perpetrated by the bobcat assassin, but it made no matter now. Ruby's mother would pray for her before the church social, which definitely put a somber tone on an otherwise celebratory event.
For all of her intelligence, Ruby could not understand this. She could not wrap her mind or her heart around the heaviness she felt in her chest. Was it shock or disappointment, sorrow or relief?
If she could not understand it, at least she was now confident in knowing that cruelty is a necessary part of life as an animal in this world, and, though fairness often has little to do with it, that, as her mother would say, is that.
Copyright © 2019 John Grimmett. All rights reserved.
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