Ain't No Sunshine (2 page)

Maybe he was right. I needed those beatings. I should have used them as a way to purge my impure thoughts about Ruthie. Unfortunately, the pain didn't drive away my thoughts of her. Instead, in an effort to escape my reality, I thought of her more. While my body convulsed in painful spasms, my mind was at peace and in her presence.

During this beating in particular, I tried to plan my next adventure with Ruthie. I was not as creative as she was, so all the things I came up with were boring compared to her ideas. Even if I did come up with something halfway decent to do, by the time Ruthie finished making suggestions to make it better, it never really seemed like my idea anymore. I remember one time I came up with the idea to build a car and drive away from here. Somehow it turned into making a boat, becoming pirates and sailing to Europe. We made a raggedy raft that ended up sinking in the lake, but it was fun trying.

I was so lost in my thoughts I didn't hear Matthew come home.

He tackled my father to the ground. "Leave him alone!" They scrambled around for a while, knocking over anything and everything in their path. 

My mother, who had been cowering in the kitchen, came forward and pulled me out of the room. "Go to Ruthie's house, Stephen," she said. She looked sad and helpless.  Her once-beautiful blue eyes had lost their luster.  She probably should have come with me. There was nothing she could do here. They would keep fighting until one of them was out cold. Hopefully, my father would go out first. That would give my mother enough time to get the house cleaned up. If he came to and things looked slightly normal he was able to pretend that nothing had happened and that he didn't just get beat by a boy half his age. My mother and Matthew wouldn't dream of
calling  the
police or anything. No one would believe that Reverend Phillips would do such a thing, and Matthew would probably be the one taken away. No, we were all just trapped, doomed to continue this cycle over and over again. Deep down I knew it couldn't go on forever. I knew one of them would eventually kill the other. I just didn't know how soon that would happen and how it would affect the rest of my life.

We lived in a huge, white, colonial-style house situated in a wooded area on a hill. It had been passed down through my father's family for generations. For a long time, tourists would come to our house as they went through tours of Civil War trails. My father had put an end to that some years ago, though.  It would be too embarrassing for him if someone witnessed how he treated us.  My father liked this house because he was able to look down on the rest of the town, and, of course, because from here no one could hear our screams.

The only house within walking distance was Ruthie's. Hers was a cottage located at the edge of our property that used to be for servants. It was small, but I liked it much better than my own. It was cozy.  Plus, I didn't have to fear for my life when I was there.

As I walked to Ruthie's house, sweat dripped into the open wounds on my back. I must have grimaced with pain because as soon as Ruthie saw me, her eyes saddened and her lips quivered. She knew what had happened. She automatically ran into her house to get the peroxide.  By the time I reached her front porch she was ready to doctor my wounds.

"That bastard," she mumbled as she gently cleaned my back. I don't even think she knew what that word meant. It was just something she had heard someone say.

"It's not so bad this time. Matthew was there."

It
wasn't
so bad that time. I had been through much worse. Sometimes I would pass out during his attacks and wake up convulsing in Matthew's arms. For a while, I would have flashbacks whenever a word or smell reminded me of my father.  I would freeze at the slightest stimulus. But over time I learned to deal with it. I trained myself to get over those episodes. I had to learn how to not let my father's behavior haunt me in other aspects of my life. That day I was actually able to forget about it and salvage the rest of the afternoon with my friend. I wanted to go swimming in the lake between our houses, but Ruthie thought my back might get infected so she talked me out of it. Instead, we played hide and seek. I ended up staying for dinner that night. 

"Mabel, you and your friend get in here for supper," her grandmother yelled into the woods from the kitchen window. Mabel was Ruthie's mother. I don't know how she got them confused.  From the pictures I saw, they looked nothing alike. Mabel had a smooth, dark complexion with thick, black hair.   She had big, round eyes and a round face. Ruthie's eyes were more almond-shaped, and everyone called her "high yellow.” We know now that they were referring to her light complexion, but back then those comments just started Ruthie's love affair with the color yellow.

"Grandma, I'm not Mabel. I'm Ruthie. Mabel was my mommy, and she died a long time ago."

“Don't you think I know that?" Grandma Esther said. She really didn't know. She was just too proud to ever admit she was wrong. "And who is your friend?" 

"Grandma this is Stephen Phillips.  He's been here all day." Ruthie rested her head on her little fist.  I could tell she was getting upset at the mention of her mother.  It made her sad to think that she had never met her. Ruthie's mother died in childbirth.

Grandma Esther asked who I was so often that sometimes we would make it a game and tell her I was some television star she had never heard of.  One time we even told her I was President Kennedy's son, and she gave us an extra dessert at dinner.  I guess Ruthie didn't feel like playing that game today.

"You must be Theodore's boy."  For a long time, I had no idea who she was talking about.  I thought Theodore was some white person she had met when she was young and thus she naturally thought I was related to him.  I was ten when I first learned that Theodore was my father's first name.

Late that night, Matthew came over to collect me. Ruthie and I had fallen asleep in front of the television. Ruthie's grandmother had forgotten to lock the front door, as usual, so Matthew just came in.  He picked me up and was about to walk out when Ruthie woke up.

"Wait, Matthew.  It's your gift day."  She rubbed the sleep from her eyes.  Her dark brown curls were in a tangled mass on one side of her head.  In the summer, the sun always dyed a few select strands of hair a light gold color, which made it look like she had yellow ribbons in her hair.  She jumped up and scurried to her bedroom.  Matthew set me down on the sofa and looked at me for an explanation, but I just shrugged.  I had no idea what she was talking about.  I was with her all day and I didn't see her making any gifts.  This must have been something she had planned earlier.

Ruthie came into the living room, smiling broadly and with her hands behind her back.

"Close your eyes," she told Matthew.  I could tell that he was exhausted but he played along and tried to perk up.

"What's this about, kiddo?  What do you mean it's my ‘gift day’?" he asked playfully.

Ruthie liked to choose random days, give them a name, and hand out gifts.  She always thought it was sad that people only gave each other gifts on birthdays and Christmas. I think the real reason was that her birthday marked the death of her mother. And her senile grandmother never remembered Christmas. 

"I mean you get a gift today because it’s a very special day."  Ruthie cleared her throat and tried to sound official and grown up.  "This is August of 1963.  August is the ninth month of the year.  Nine plus sixty-three is seventy-two.  Seventy-two minus fifty is twenty-two which makes this a very special day because fifty days from today you will be twenty-two years old."  Ruthie was so proud of her convoluted logic that she almost forgot to give Matthew his surprise.

"Oh, here you go," she said as she handed him a very elaborate picture colored with a combination of crayons and finger paint.  "You can open your eyes now."

Matthew had been smiling throughout Ruthie's speech, but when he saw the picture his smile waned.  He looked sad.  Ruthie started to get upset.

"You don't like it?" she asked, on the verge of tears.  "I can make you another one."

"No, Ruthie, I love it.  It's perfect," he choked.  I didn't really understand why he got so emotional back then.

"You see, it's us," Ruthie began to explain with renewed vigor.  "There's Stephen and there's me.  See how my skin is darker.  And there's you and Miss Marjorie.  I didn't have any more yellow so I made her hair brown.  Is that okay?  I know what you're thinking.  That the sun is very yellow and I could have used some of that yellow on Miss Marjorie's hair, but the sun isn't yellow.  It's a new color I found called saffron.  Isn't that a pretty name for a color?" 

Ruthie kept going on about the drawing, pointing out the lake and the tire swing and how the sun took up nearly half the picture.  That was her way of showing that everyone was happy.  She even had her grandmother in the picture.  Everything and everyone was there--except my father.

Even though Matthew was exhausted and probably in a lot of pain, he still carried me all the way home.  I felt guilty and offered to walk, but I think he preferred to hold me.  He walked in silence.  I tried to figure out why he was so sad.  Maybe Ruthie's picture reminded him of the kind of life he wanted.  He was old enough to leave and start a family of his own, but he didn't.  Maybe it showed him a glimpse of what life could be like if a certain someone wasn't around.  We didn't have any family pictures like that where everyone seemed happy.  As a matter of fact, we didn't have any family pictures with Matthew in them.  Now that I think of it, I don't remember seeing a single childhood photo of Matthew.  It was like he wasn't a part of this family or like someone was purposely trying to exclude him.

When we got home, my mother was on the sofa crying.  Matthew tucked me into bed and then went to console her.  He held her in his arms and let her sob uncontrollably.  She would be there for hours,
  then
she would fall asleep and he would carry her to bed. 

That night I had a dream. It wasn't anything elaborate or symbolic. It was so simple and calming, yet memorable at the same time. Ruthie and I were walking down Main Street of Livingston, Virginia hand in hand. That's all.
Just walking down the street.
Yet, as simple as that sounded, it wasn't possible. We'd tried it before. Last winter we were waiting for Matthew outside of a whites-only pharmacy when I noticed Ruthie was cold. I grabbed her hands to warm them in mine. The store owner came out and yelled at us. Matthew swept us up, tossed us in the car and drove away as fast as he could. My father already knew what happened by the time we got home. The next day, when Matthew went to work, he beat me.

The Wednesday after I messed up and got caught looking at Ruthie during church, Ruthie and I sat in her living room watching TV.  There was a man on television talking about a dream he'd had. I remember thinking that his dream was much better than mine. Ruthie was glued to the television as Martin Luther King talked about how "little black boys and little black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and little white girls as sisters and brothers."

"That's us," Ruthie said with tears in her eyes as she grabbed my hand. "He's talking about us."

***

Normally, it is the mother who takes her children shopping, but not in my family.  My father never let my mother leave the house except for church and a few very important social functions where it would look bad if she didn't attend.  He treated her like some sort of caged animal, controlling her every move. Watching my mother cook a meal was like watching a puppeteer with a marionette.  He would sit in the kitchen and stare at her. He only allowed her to use certain ingredients and utensils.  If she added too many dashes of salt or used a spoon he had never seen before, he made her throw the food away and start over.

With school starting in a few days, I needed new clothes. God forbid I not look like the perfect child he had groomed me to be. My father and I went to the local department stores while Matthew stayed at home with mother.  Matthew knew he wouldn't do anything to me with people watching.  I actually didn't mind going shopping with my father.  He was nice to me in public.  He played the role of loving father so well that even I almost believed it.  We would wander around the store together and he would let me pick out what I wanted.  After rejecting half of the items as inappropriate, I would then go try on the rest of the clothes to see if they met his approval.  Each item had to be of a certain quality and reflect the amount of money my father had.