Page 55 of Witness 8

Her mom shook her head, then brought a trembling spoonful of soup to her mouth.

‘You know, some of them are really nice places. It’s not a nursing home, you know. It’s like a retirement complex, with nurses. For people like you. Nice folks.’

‘We don’t have the money,’ said her mom. ‘We can’t afford any of those places.’

‘I’ve been saving,’ said Ruby.

Her mother eyed her warily.

‘Where did you get the money?’

‘Working. For families on our street.’

‘That’s notourstreet any more. They kicked us out. Remember? When your father took all our money. Now you’re going to leave me too. Everybody leaves me,’ said her mother as her shoulders shook and tears fell into her canned soup.

‘I’m not leaving you, Mom. This is for the best,’ said Ruby. ‘It’s better for you. There will be someone to take care of you twenty-four hours a day.’

But her mom didn’t hear her. Or didn’t want to. Her spoon fell from her thin, bent fingers and landed in her soup, splashing on her blouse, neck and face.

Getting up from her chair, Ruby grabbed a napkin and moved round the table. She knelt before her mother, turning her around to face her. She dipped the napkin in a glass of water and wiped the soup stains on her mother’s clothes.

When they were clean, she carefully raised her mother’s head, wet the napkin again and gently dabbed at her mom’s face as a mother would wash a baby’s face – slowly, so very gently and with great tenderness. Her skin was so thin it was almost translucent. She was afraid that if she was rough she might tear it.

Ruby wondered if she loved her mom. She thought that she did. That, whatever love was, this was the closest she could come to it.

‘It’s going to be okay, Mom,’ said Ruby.

‘You’re a good girl, Ruby.’

Later, when her mother was asleep, Ruby slipped quietly out of the apartment. The elevator hadn’t worked in weeks, so she made the descent down the four flights of stairs, past the rotting garbage bags outside the apartments. A short bus ride brought her to an old hardware store in East Harlem. They were just closing up for the night as Ruby entered the store. She promised the store owner she would be quick.

She paid cash for a bag of masonry nails, spray paint and a four-pound crack hammer with a forged-steel head and shock-resistant grip. She put all the items in her backpack and took the bus home.

In her bedroom, in their little apartment, Ruby held the hammer. It seemed very heavy at first, but after some practice swings she soon got used to the weight. The key was to swing it. Not to use force. Let the momentum, gravity and the weight of the head do the work.

The little pebbles that Ruby had been throwing down the hill were slowly eroding the slope, knocking into bigger stones, which rolled into even larger ones. The landslide was beginning.

All Ruby had to do was make sure that it buried the right people.

The letters she would deliver tomorrow morning, before sunrise, would be the first boulders rolling down that hill.

20

Ruby

At seven the next morning, Ruby stood in front of the Jacksons’ front door.

She had never been given a key to their house. Some residents didn’t mind Ruby having a key. She could clean, shop for groceries, keep the place secure and in shape for their return from vacations or long weekends in the Hamptons.

Not the Jacksons.

Ruby’s finger hovered in front of the doorbell.

When she pressed it, things would be set in motion.

She had to be quick.

Accurate.