Well, he hummed and hawed and sorta spewed around and said he’d just dropped by to say hello. All the time his eyes was darting round same as if his mind was somewhere else. Right then and there Myrtle opened the door. She looked past me to Mr. Smith and she said, I’m sorry, Jack honey, for keeping you waiting like this but that damned Mr. Alton thinks he owns me body and soul just because he pays me fifteen dollars a week. I just couldn’t get away a minute sooner. She didn’t look at me not oncet except when she and Mr. Smith left out of the front door and then she give me a look like she used to give me when I’d handed over a doll to her because mama made me.
I wanted to die and my body to rot. I felt like a pore old meowing cat out in the rain.
I couldn’t stop thinking of Mr. Smith. At the store my eyes followed him every step he taken. I changed my lunch hour on account of between one and two he come downstairs and was near the stockroom, relieving the basemint floorwalker. He would say, hello Ruby, but never a word about walking in the park or a movie or nothing.
I used to haunt the streets trying to track him and Myrtle down. If I coulda just stood outside myself I reckon I coulda seen how foolish it all was, me a mourning over a man that had no use for me, when they was so many other men in the world.
I wanted Mr. Smith and I couldn’t hep myself. Even sleeping I couldn’t get him outa my mind. Wasn’t no other thought nowhere I could get holt of. And I’d come home every night to find him in the living room waiting for Myrtle. Didn’t even have the grace to meet her somewheres downtown.
Things kept on like that for some little time. Then I reckon it was about the prettiest spring night I ever seen. I couldn’t bear it inside and I went walking down the street. I taken my time about coming back. Well, when I finely got back home there was mama and papa in the living room and Mr. Smith and Myrtle, and mama saying now then Ruby where you been that you wasn’t home to get the most important news we’ve had anytime lately? Guess what, Mr. Smith and Myrtle is getting married.
Papa nudged me and said, well now you’ll be the next one Ruby, and then he whooped and hollered and showed all his gums. I just said to myself, I got my pride, I can’t break down here, so I said, well I’m sure I hope you’ll both be very happy. Myrtle said, we ain’t gonna have no fine wedding, we’re gonna drive out somewheres dost by and get married, then we’ll come home and you can have a good supper for us, mama. Why don’t you have fried chicken, always said nobody in the world can fry chicken like you.
I wish they’d been somebody I coulda talked to that week while they was waiting to be married. I’d think, oh God, this can’t be true, he’s my only love. I’d even try to think of things that would make me feel good like maybe Myrtle would jilt him or maybe she would get killed or just up and die, but then it was Saturday afternoon and time for them to drive away and I realized wasn’t nothing gonna take my misery from me. I was gonna have to face it without a single human being knowing what I was going through.
The neighbors come by to look at Myrtle before she and Mr. Smith left to be married, said they never seen nothing so pretty in their lives. I just set down in the sitting room after they left and I had about the spine-tingliest feeling anybody could ever have. There was somebody in my place that had no right to be there.
And then bless goodness they was back before you could say Jack Robinson, Mr. Smith saying well, it don’t take much time for you to get into these things but just let me see you try to get out of it. Myrtle laughed, said well talk for yourself, just don’t you let me see you trying no tricks. And Mr. Smith said, well you talk mighty sassy for a little old married woman.
I kep wanting them to leave and let me waller in my misery. I thought they’d go on a honeymoon.
But we eat the chicken supper mama had fixed and we set around for a while and Mr. Smith looked at Myrtle right sheepish and said well for a old married man I feel mighty tired and I guess we might as well turn in.
They had no intentions of leaving, they was going to sleep in the same house with me. Walls in that old house was paper-thin. I could hear them and I heard Mr. Smith say reckon they’re all asleep, and Myrtle said you bet they are and even if they’re not they’s some things that ought not to be put off no longer.
Then I never heard the like and it went on and on and I kep thinking I can’t stand it no longer. I couldn’t think of a thing but just that it’s gotta stop, they mighta had the common decency to go away, they got no business here they gotta stop. Then a wilder thought than that come and I wasn’t realizing what I was doing, I was just wild and crazy like a demon couldn’t nothing have stopped me, and I jumped outa bed and I run to the kitchen and I grabbed up a butcher knife and I went tearing into their room and they didn’t even notice me. I taken the butcher knife and I slit Mr. Smith’s throat.
Myrtle jumped up and shoved him away from her. She scrambled up somehow and tried to get to the door but I was too quick for her and I grabbed her around the neck and cut her throat. The blood spurted all over her nekkid body and onto my nightgown and I was laughing, and there was Mr. Smith groaning over there in the bed and flailing around like a chicken when it’s dying.
I remember he kep saying Ruby, Ruby, for God’s sake stop, and even then I believe he coulda roused me outa what I was doing if he had just said Ruby, you don’t know what you’re doing, you’re just unhappy because we’ve been thoughtless and I oughta realized how you musta felt, please forgive me. But he didn’t. He snarled at me, you ugly devil, damn your soul.
I seen then they wasn’t breathing any more, and then I done the queerest thing. I went into the bathroom. There wasn’t a drop of hot water, never was, but I filled the tub full of cold water and set down right then and there and washed all the blood offa me. Then I taken a fresh nightgown outa my top dresser drawer and put it on and I went to bed and to sleep.
That was the last good sleep I had in my life. I never had none since then, I can tell you. First thing I heard next morning was mama moaning and groaning and saying oh my darling baby what has happened to you, and then it all come back to me, and yet I couldn’t be sorry. I wouldn’t a turned my hand to bring the two of them back to life.
Well, I got up and went to the breakfast table. Mama and papa musta got up early and eat and tiptoed around not wanting to wake Mr. Smith and Myrtle. I eat right hearty and mama kep on moaning and papa said he’d call for the police and he’d take the life of the fiends that done such a horrible thing. I remember I taken the last sip of coffee in my cup and I said papa, well I guess you won’t have to look no farther for sure as you’re born I killed Myrtle and Mr. Smith.
Mama looked at me like I was a unholy thing and papa just opened that toothless mouth of his and for oncet nothing come out.
I don’t recollect much of what happened after that. They come and got me and locked me up and some newspapers sent folks to talk to me. One right nice lady come and I remember she talked to me mighty sweet, asting me how I felt and wondering if they was anything she could do for me. She talked on and on and finely she said well now, honey, you loved him yourself, didn’t you, and you just couldn’t bear to see your sister get him. I reckon that really was it I said.
And then next morning there was my pitcher on the front page and a story saying the murderess was jealous of her sister. That same lady bought me a nice dress for the trial and hired me a lawyer. I got right disgusted with it, couldn’t stand to see my name in the paper or my pitcher and that story that was signed with my name and didn’t have no more to do with me than if I was a jack rabbit.