crowned with harvest

by >>Jae

Ruby glanced out the kitchen window and thought, That Georgia boy's been playing again. She hadn't thought there'd been snow enough to build anything of that size, though, even for someone with as much determination to play the fool as that boy had. Then the snowy figure moved, just a little, and Ruby caught her breath and threw a shawl around her head and went outside.

"You'll catch your death," Ruby said crossly, and she never had really thought about what those words meant until Ada turned to her slowly, her face ghost-pale in the twilight.

Ada smiled at her slowly. Every move she made these days was slow, deliberate, as if somewhere deep down she'd forgotten how to do the simplest things of life and had to cast her mind back every time to remember. "Go back in the house, Ruby," she said. "It's cold," and she turned back to stare out over the barren woods.

Ruby watched her standing there, tall and still in the cold, her arms held stiffly at her sides while Ruby huddled under her shawl and blew on her hands. Sometimes she purely ached with the desire to slap Ada, to push her down, to bite her, even, to do something to shock Ada into quickness, into a blaze of anger, into anything but this sickly half-life.

"There's better ways to kill yourself," Ruby said. "If you were really fixed to follow him, you'd've found one by this time, I reckon."

When Ada spun her arms flew up, her sleeves kicking up a light dust of frost into Ruby's face. A faint pink bloomed across the top of Ada's cheeks, and Ruby wiped her hands across her face and smiled.

"Is that what you have to say to me?" Ada's voice froze her faster than the cold wind. "That's the comfort you bring to me?"

"Never said I was bringing comfort," Ruby said. "Some things, there's no comfort for."

"Then why can't you leave me alone?"

"That's not what I do," Ruby said. Then, because shirking things wasn't what she did either, she squared her shoulders and said, as gently she could, "Some things just have to be borne. There's no getting around it, so you might as well start bearing them."

"I don't know how," Ada said, the words small and brittle in the night air. She shut her lips tight over them and looked at Ruby.

For a moment Ruby was rocked back. She'd heard those words from Ada so many times before about so many things, things she'd thought a body was born knowing, and she'd always known just how to tell Ada to start. This time, though, Ruby felt something she wasn't used to feeling. This time she wasn't sure.

As the silence grew between them Ada seemed to sway backward. In her gray dress it looked to Ruby like she would fade into the night. Ruby reached out her hand and pulled Ada forward.

Ada's hand was bare, and Ruby could see her gloves stuffed carelessly in her pocket, just where they did the least good. Ada's hand was bare and cold, but as Ruby held it she felt it start to warm beneath her own. Then Ruby said,

"Follow me now," and she turned and walked into the house.

Ada followed without a word as Ruby led her up the back steps and through the kitchen. She paused by the table, but Ruby didn't. She picked up a plate she'd left there and headed up the stairs, Ada still trailing behind her, tethered by Ruby's hand.

Once in Ada's bedroom Ruby put the plate on the floor and let go of Ada. "Get you out of those wet clothes," she said before Ada could say anything. When Ada's hands fumbled clumsily with buttons Ruby hissed between her teeth and did it herself. She didn't believe in doing for folks what they could do for themselves but this night she didn't have patience. She folded Ada into her wrapper and pushed her easily toward the bed. "Sit," she said, and Ada sat. She knelt in front of Ada and unlaced her boots, then reached behind her and picked up the plate. "Eat," she said, and Ada took the plate in her own hands.

When Ruby had taken off Ada's boots she looked up and saw the plate still in Ada's hand, the biscuit untouched. She hissed again and lifted the biscuit up to Ada's lips. "I said eat," she said, and Ada's lips parted obediently. As she took the food Ruby's fingers slipped into her mouth, just the tips, and every part of Ada might have been cold but inside that one place there was warmth. Ruby pulled her fingers away, catching the sharp edge of Ada's teeth. Ruby put the back of her own thumb in her mouth and sucked away a spill of honey from the biscuit. Ada brushed a crumb from the corner of her mouth.

"Got to get you warm," Ruby said. She pulled a clean towel from the dresser and knelt again in front of Ada. "You can't sleep like this." With the towel and her hands she chafed Ada's feet, drying the snow that had seeped through her boots, then worked her way higher. She draped the towel over Ada's shoulders and rubbed Ada's bare hands with her own, so she could feel when the warmth started coming from Ada's own skin.

"Your hands are so warm," Ada said, as if she were surprised that it should be so. She bent her fingers over Ruby's, stopping them in their busy movement. Ruby sat back on her heels and watched her, curious to see what she'd do.

In one swift motion Ada lifted Ruby's hands to cover her face. Ruby had to raise up on her knees to keep up with her, her arms stretched out above her as Ada clung to her hands. Against her palms she could feel the brush of Ada's eyelashes, fine and insistent as butterfly wings, and then the soft warm pressure of Ada's lips, moving in some word Ruby couldn't hear and wouldn't have understood if she had. Ruby felt tight all over, pulled up to Ada as she was, tight outside and in, her muscles tense and her mind too as she wondered what Ada would do next. Ruby was always in motion but now she felt caught, captured like a bird between Ada's two hands.

As quickly as she had raised them Ada slid Ruby's hands down her face, revealing first her wide open eyes and then her mouth. "You're so warm," Ada said, and leaned down to where Ruby was lifted up and kissed her.

Ada's mouth on hers was a shock like the first roll of thunder in a clear dry summer, so unexpected that Ruby's first surge toward Ada was purely from the suddenness. Ruby pressed against her and Ada let go of her hands, kept Ruby's mouth but let her hands free. Ruby's arms spread out like wings as Ada opened her robe so it fell behind her.

Ada's breasts and her belly weren't pale like her face and arms, not faded winter pale after being tanned by the sun, nor yet crystal white like new snow that stung your hands with chill. Ada's body was white like something that had been hidden away, too precious for sunlight or human hands. Years ago Ruby had chored around for a widow in town who'd took a liking to her. She'd drawn Ruby into a dark corner of the house and opened a box lined with clean cloth. Inside were three pieces of delicate lace, each made with a skill and a care that even a child like Ruby could see. From the old country, the woman had said, and brushed Ruby's hand away when she tried to touch it. "There's nothing like it in this rough land," the woman had said as she folded the lace away tenderly. When Ruby lifted her hand to Ada's breast she held her breath, waiting for her hand to be brushed away.

"Oh," Ada said softly, and then louder as Ruby's fingers fluttered gently and then not so gently against her skin. She put her hand over Ruby's and for one long moment Ruby waited again. Then Ada lay back on the bed, pulling Ruby with her.

Ruby leaned over her and let her fingers trace over Ada's breasts, her stomach, the span of Ada's waist sweet in her hands. She watched Ada shiver under her fingers, her body curling toward Ruby like a poplar leaf when you drag your finger down its center. A flush of rose swelled over Ada's skin beneath Ruby's hands and her lips, and now it wasn't only Ada's mouth that was warm. Ada called out sharp and sweet as birdsong and drew Ruby up to her. Then she kissed Ruby again, deep like thunder and bright like lightning and sweet, sweet and welcome as rain.

When Ada let her go Ruby lay back on the bed, her eyes closed and her whole body strung tight and waiting. She'd never been one for waiting and she didn't like it but she didn't know what else to do and she didn't like that either. Then Ada laid one hand flat against Ruby's stomach and Ruby opened her eyes.

"You're trembling, Ruby," Ada said, and Ruby looked down in amazement to see that it was so. Ada's fingers loosed Ruby's buttons easily, opening her dress, and Ruby heard her own voice small and awed as Ada's hand slipped warm over her bare skin. Ada's palms were callused and rough, that was Ruby's own doing, but the back of her hand was smooth as the silk Ada had cast off, smooth as silk as it brushed against the secret skin beneath Ruby's breast.

"Oh," Ruby breathed, amazed again as Ada's hands called forth her own birdsong from Ruby's lips.

When Ada fell back breathless Ruby curled up on her side, not in shyness or in shame but as she'd done sometimes as a child, on the rare occasions when she'd gotten something she'd wanted, some sweet or scrap of ribbon. She had liked to hold her prize in her hand and look at it, just for a moment on her own, and let herself believe that she'd gotten it, before the ribbon faded or the sweet was eaten. There was little enough she'd had to call her own back then, and she had liked just for a moment to whisper to herself that it was hers.

Ruby felt Ada's hands moving over her hair, tugging a little. She turned to look over her shoulder and Ada pressed her back firmly to the bed. "Don't peek," Ada said, and Ruby smiled into the pillow and stayed curled where she was as Ada braided her hair.

"There," Ada said. "I wish I had a flower to put in it."

"Few enough flowers this time of year," Ruby said. "We've got mostly straw and potatoes and corn husks."

"That would work too. Corn husks and potato flowers and Ruby, crowned with harvest," Ada said dreamily. "That might work even better."

The bed creaked as Ada made to stand up. "Stay," Ruby said, and there was an edge to her voice that made her bury her face in the mattress.

"Ruby," Ada said, and the bed creaked again as Ada sat back down. "I just wanted a ribbon to tie it," she said, touching Ruby's hair lightly.

Ruby didn't say anything.

"Ruby," Ada said, and Ruby turned at the sound of Ada's voice, because she'd never been one to shirk from anything and she wasn't going to start. She rolled over so fast that she caught Ada's hand still under her. She lay back against Ada's arm and looked up.

"There's part of me that's his," Ada said, and she didn't look away from Ruby. Ada had never been one to shirk from anything, either, not anything that truly needed to be done. That was why Ruby had stayed with her so long in the first place. That was one reason, anyway. "There's part of me that's his, and always will be. And one day –- one day I'll be called to him."

"That's fine," Ruby said, and her voice sounded loud in the quiet room. "One day we'll all be called to the place where he is."

"That's true," Ada said. She kept looking at Ruby.

"Maybe there's part of you his," Ruby said, and Ada opened her mouth as if to speak but then she closed it.

"But there's part of you mine, too. And one day you'll be called to him," Ruby said roughly, "but until then –- until then, you stay with me."

Ada brushed a loose strand of hair from Ruby's face. "Until then," she said quietly, "until then I'll stay with you."