DANIELS, RUBY WILHELMINA

[ruby wilhelmina daniels]

RUBY WILHELMINA DANIELS
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RUBY , TWENTY ONE , NYC CITIZEN , JUNO

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I was six the first time I heard the word courtesan.

I had no clue what it meant, only that it must have been horrible. The wounded expression on my mother's face as the earlier discourse was repeated to her was enough to tell me that.

She'd taken up a position at a local restaurant, her apron tied neatly around her infinitesimal waist, folded and ironed to pristine perfection. I remember the utter and complete adoration as my lips pulled into a smile, and she tucked me into the folds of her simple black pants, whispering eternally her love for me as she smoothed my hair away from my forehead and gazed at our matching reflections. It seems like a lot of women go through that moment; they lovingly hold their children's faces in their hands and see themselves, their own features reflected in the mirrors. Dim lighting characterized our apartment, and perhaps that was the only portrait of her i'll ever remember, stuck in a warped dimension of yellowed skin and deep, dark circles.

My father's sun-lined face was solemn as he dutifully told her, ceding only to the pounding of her narrow fists against his chest, everything the ruthless woman had discussed with him and more, things she didn't say but was quite obviously implying by way of intonation. I always enjoyed his stories, eyes closing in recounted glee as he weaved worlds around me. I'd climb onto his lap after he got home from work, my shoulders covered by the same well-loved flowered dresses day after day, and wait for him to begin the evening tales of adventure and excitement. That night, things went differently. Instead of me, it was my mother, sprawled over his lap, crying like some dam had broken within her and was rushing out, too fast for her to grasp, her pregnant stomach the barrier between them.

Courtesan.

I looked it up, after days of it's sour presence on my tongue. I hunted, determined and capable, through the other words that began the same way but couldn't possibly hold the same meaning. Finally, my finger skimmed over it. Courtesan. A prostitute. A word whispered only in dimly lit evening clubs and captured by the intrigued patrons, the profoundly lonely individuals that showed up at these places and remained until thrown to the wolves of the evening. Slowly, my finger kept moving past it, down the page until it moved off of the dusty tome, and resided in a balled fist on my lap.

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I seek silence, a heated missile eternally doomed to collide with the loneliness that never seems to come from my family. I spend hours with myself, days and days in a house all alone while the rain pounds down on the roof and I draw pictures of what I assume are relatives (but only in my head, I admit with careful discrepancy that I can't draw whatsoever), but I've never seen them in person. My family doesn't socialize; my parents are estranged from their roots as if something was wrong about them from the beginning, and even their own blood knew it. I close my eyes when the shrieking begins, brother and sister fighting over a paper doll, his chubby hands poised with a pair of scissors over the neck, and she shrieks as if it were her own throat trapped in his threatening grasp.

“Ruby?” father calls me into their bedroom, and I see mother (although in my head, I refer to her only as Minnie, conventions aside) limp on the bed, her eyes closed and her face pale. A drop of sweat falls from his forehead and he positions her so that when she wakes, she'll be comfortable.

“Is she sick?” I hear myself ask, shutting the door to make sure their childish arguments stay away from this poor, impaired woman. I'm only ten, but somehow I feel superior, because he trusts me enough to let me in on these details, however heinous they may be. That being said, my brother is only eight and my sister six – he couldn't very well ask them for assistance in undressing and redressing her.

He only nods, falling mute as he so often does when he has nothing important to say.

“You should take Vivian to the store,” I say, voice timorous and small in the hot, sticky room. The urge to crack open a window is overwhelming. He only looks at me, and I progress to the point of my statement. “He hid her last barbie on top of the bookshelf today.” I hate my country accent, I hate it. The more outgoing kids at my elementary make fun of me for it, claiming I'm some kind of hick in their British world. It's just as bad as if I were Cockney.

Minnie's eyes fall open as soon as he's gone, and she puts on her coat, slipping a pack of cigarettes into the pocket without even glancing at me. I was startled by her sudden actions, frozen on the edge of the bed where I'd been about to put her feet under the covers. She's still pale, and there's still a sheen of sweat over her face, but she looks beautiful now, as she always does. She leaves and doesn't come home until the morning. No one says a word about her sudden disappearance, and she makes pancakes and we all laugh and talk over the table like it never happened.

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When I announced I was moving to New York, there was only silence. I didn't expect anything else. The next week, everyone stood on the driveway as my taxi pulled away. I watched, transfixed, as they assumed I was out of sight and turned their separate ways, each to a different direction. I wondered if the unified front was for me, or if they really felt on the cusp of average society, and had to portray this belief by standing, unified, and waving off the first girl out of the house.

It wasn't like I was being sent off to be a doctor, or a surgeon, or even a lawyer. I was following a whim, searching vaguely for my calling as so many teenagers in my year had done already. I wasn't intelligent enough to do something extremely productive, not like Vivian with her boundless scholastic endeavors and tireless studying, and I wasn't athletic enough for the sports route my brother had devoted himself to so fondly. Instead, I relied entirely on the blessed genetics passed down to me from both sides of the family. They wouldn't last forever, I thought, so why not capitalize?

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I find myself again hunting for the silence that never seems to settle in my life. Six girls, five if I don't include myself, in a cramped, crumbling apartment. We sit around and converse blithely in our native tongues (Portuguese, French, Polish and English), conspicuously not eating, counting down the seconds until we can sleep instead of waiting for the phone to ring, fidgeting. Between the six of us, we can afford cable, and we sit with our spines, bony and aching, pressed against the wall. A couch could have been there if we were other people, but we're not paying for the apartment and we don't care. Slowly, I bring a cigarette to my lips and exhale, into the cloudy room. There's no heat, and we don't bother opening the windows to let in the cold.

My mother and father keep the few clippings of me from the magazines I send home on the wall of my old room. I think about ringing home, but I don't.