He sat down for lunch with Sarah, and Luke and Ryan joined them. Jon wasn’t sure how Sarah was going to react to Ryan’s presence, but she was nice to him, letting him tease her a little bit and teasing him in return. Jon even found himself laughing. He hadn’t known he still could.
The sound of laughter greeted him when he got home. The house was a mess, but Gabe and Ruby were having a fine time running around the house, playing tag. First Gabe ran up to Ruby, poked her with his finger, and yelled, “Tag!” Then he ran away, and Ruby made a big deal of trying to catch up to him. When she finally did, she poked him back, yelling “Tag!” even louder than Gabe.
“Play!” Gabe screamed at Jon.
“Do you know the rules, Mr. Jon?” Ruby asked.
“I think I can figure them out,” Jon said. He promptly poked her with his finger, and yelled, “Tag!”
Then Gabe ran over to him, and the game progressed. Jon didn’t think Gabe would ever agree to stop, and Ruby didn’t seem to care. But Lisa, Jon knew, wouldn’t be happy with things the way they were.
“Ruby, you need to start cleaning,” Jon said. “Have you done anything today?”
“I tried, Mr. Jon,” Ruby said. “Honest, I did. But little Gaby here needed some fun.”
“Ruby’s my best friend,” Gabe said. “We played all day. Tag, Ruby!”
“Did he have his nap?” Jon asked.
“Was he supposed to?” Ruby asked. “Seems to me he’s doing just fine without one.”
“He takes a nap every day at one o’clock,” Jon said.
“I’ll make sure of that tomorrow, Mr. Jon,” Ruby said. “You want something to eat? Your kitchen kinda scares me, but Gaby here can help.”
“Ruby let me cook my lunch,” Gabe said. “I put the honey on my bread all by myself.”
“Ruby, honey is only for special occasions,” Jon said.
“Today was a special occasion, Mr. Jon,” Ruby said. “I didn’t even know they still made honey. Haven’t seen any in so long. We sure did enjoy it, didn’t we, Gaby?”
Jon knew he should have scolded Ruby for eating the honey. But if Lisa hadn’t bothered to explain what food was for family and what food was for domestics, he wasn’t about to.
Instead he looked at Gabe, who was glowing with happiness. “Let’s play some more,” Jon said. “Tag, Gabe! Bet you can’t catch me!”
Jon was standing at his window, staring at the faint outline of the moon, when Ruby walked in.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, painfully aware that he had nothing but pajama bottoms on.
“I can’t sleep in that room,” Ruby said. She was wearing a cotton nightgown, flimsy enough that Jon could see the outline of her body. “It’s so quiet. Can I sit down, Mr. Jon?”
Jon nodded, expecting her to sit on the chair. Instead she crawled into his bed, her knees propped up, her head resting against his pillow.
“I get so lonely down there,” she said. “All alone and all you folks up here. I’d love to sleep with little Gaby, but Mrs. Evans says that’s where the new grubber girl will stay. She says I should like it, having my own room, but I never was so alone. Always had lots of people to share my room with me.”
“Are you from White Birch, Ruby?” Jon asked. “Did you always live there?”
“No, Mr. Jon, I did not,” Ruby said. “We worked a chicken farm back in West Virginia, but they stopped bringing us food, so we ate all the chickens and had to get going. We tried for Oklahoma, since Momma has family there, but then Daddy heard there was work in Tennessee. He and Momma work in the greenhouses. Me and my sisters live with them and Mrs. Duncan’s daughters. Mrs. Duncan’s a domestic, same as me now, so she’s only in the apartment on weekends. We’re all in the room together, me and my sisters and the two Duncan girls.”
“How many sisters?” Jon asked.
“There’s four of us,” Ruby said. “Me and my twin, Opal, and Jasmine and Cheyenne. I had two little brothers, but they’re gone. I had a teacher named Mrs. Evans. That’s your name, isn’t it, Mr. Jon? Like Gaby’s momma?”
“Yes,” Jon said.
“The guards killed her,” Ruby said. “I never saw anyone killed like that. Then the guards made us walk all the way to the bus terminal. I was so scared they were going to kill us, too, but all they did was put us on buses and bring us here. I never saw Sexton before. It’s so pretty. We stayed in a dormitory, and they tried to teach us girls how to cook food like clavers eat, and how to clean, and be polite. It wasn’t so bad because Opal was with me, and I knew the other girls from school. Then Sunday, they took us to our houses. They said we had to stay in Sexton for a whole year and not go back to White Birch once. I don’t even know if my family knows what happened to us.”
“I’m sure they know,” Jon said.
“Mrs. Evans, my teacher, she was real nice,” Ruby said. “We all knew we was going to be grubs. We didn’t have a chance to be nothing else, and there’s nothing wrong with grubber work. But Mrs. Evans said we should be proud of the work we did. She said everybody’s good at something. She said she was good at telling stories and raising her kids, but she wasn’t any good at being married. That made me feel better about things, because my parents love each other so much. They’re always hugging and kissing, and Momma says they never go to bed mad at each other. So maybe they’re grubs, but they’re still better than Mrs. Evans at being married. Aren’t you tired, Mr. Jon? You could get in bed with me.”
Jon thought about all the grubber girls he’d had. He’d known nothing about them. They might have heard his name, Tyler or one of his other friends calling out to him, but that was it. The girls’ names hadn’t been important. The girls hadn’t been important. For all he knew, Ruby had been one of them.
“How old are you, Ruby?” he asked. Not a question he’d ever bothered to ask a grub before.
“Fifteen,” she said. “Almost.”
It would be so easy, Jon thought. Lisa wouldn’t know, or if she did, she wouldn’t care. She never asked him what he did in White Birch, but she was no fool. She had to know. She’d be angry if Ruby didn’t do the cleaning, but that was it. She probably expected Ruby to end up in Jon’s bed or, more likely, Jon to end up in Ruby’s.
“Go to your room,” Jon said. “That’s where you should be sleeping, Ruby. You’ll get used to the quiet soon enough.”
“Don’t you like me, Mr. Jon?” Ruby asked. “I like you.”
“I do like you, Ruby,” Jon said. “That’s why I want you to go to your room and get a good night’s sleep. Mrs. Evans expects you to work very hard. She’ll be angry if you don’t. Now get out of my bed and go where you belong.”
Ruby got out of the bed. “If I do all the cleaning Mrs. Evans wants tomorrow, can I come in here again, like tonight?”
Jon shook his head. “I have a girlfriend, Ruby,” he said. “She wouldn’t like it if you came in here.”
“You sure you’re a claver boy?” she asked. “I never knew a claver boy to care about his girlfriend before.”
Jon laughed. “I’m a slip,” he said. “Go to bed, Ruby. I’ll teach you how to make scrambled eggs in the morning.”
“What do I do now, Mr. Jon?” Ruby asked.
“We put the vegetables in the pot,” Jon replied. “Gabe, watch where you’re going.”
Ruby giggled. “Don’t pay him no mind, Gaby,” she said. “You drive your trucks wherever you want.”
Gabe rammed his toy truck into Jon’s leg and laughed in triumph.
Jon shook his head. “Ruby, you can’t let him get away with things,” he said.