Before You Knew My Name (80)

And she remembers to look up.

Quietly exploring the cathedral, a lump grows in Ruby’s throat, expands until it feels painful to swallow. A wall of names, of dates and dashes, too many to speak out loud, makes her feel faint, and she considers sitting down, trying out a version of prayer to steady herself, but there’s another woman standing here before this wall, before these names, and she is already praying, head bowed, tears streaming down her face. Ruby blinks back her own tears and moves on.

When she arrives at the Cathedral’s Poets Corner, the lump in Ruby’s throat finally dislodges, hot tears spilling over, causing the words etched across the stone tablets of the floor and walls to blur. She is standing before a memorial to the wordsmiths of this country, the ones who have painstakingly translated the human experience into tiny, perfect sentences. Writers who mapped the world and its sorrows with their words.

Alone, she reads aloud quotes from those poets whose names she knows best.

There’s Millay with her songs and epitaphs. Dickinson describing captivity and consciousness. Emerson and Hemingway asking only for truth, and Hughes with his soul deep as a river. Baldwin, talking about disturbing the peace.

And this.

Walt Whitman. A man, a poet, who so loved New York, and was loved by New York in return.

I stop somewhere waiting for you.

It is others who move away now, leaving the sobbing woman alone with her poets and her sorrow. Generations of writers reaching down to wrap their arms around her, gently pressing their means of survival into her bones.



She invites Josh over as soon as she gets home. Says she has something to tell him, but there are no words when he walks into that tiny studio, fills it up, and she rushes at him, pours herself over his skin before he has the chance to say hello.

When they make love this very first time, they are clumsy, careful. Learning their way around the new body before them, this new tangle of nerves. They laugh against each other’s mouths and close their eyes when they should keep them open, but there is no embarrassment or hesitation in these hours of exploration. They teach each other, welcoming the lessons, and when Ruby comes against Josh’s hand she feels as if she is expanding into the vast, empty corners of her body, the hollow finally filled.

I’ve been stopped here, waiting for you, she whispers, but he is electric now, the blue light humming all through him drowning out her admission. No matter. They will try this again and again. And they will get better at finding each other, each and every time.



Noah pays for my funeral. He does not attend the service itself, staying true to his claim that he will never visit Wisconsin. But he pays for the flowers and the casket, and the sandwiches served after. The burning of my body, too. Asking only whether they might consider doing something special with my ashes. He talks of nebulae, of bright night skies and dying stars, and nobody understands.

‘Ruby,’ he says. ‘We will have to do something ourselves. For her.’

On the day of the funeral, media reports say the little chapel on the corner of Pearson and Flushing is packed with mourners, with people spilling out onto the gravel driveway, craning to hear the service inside. There are kids from my high school, and gawkers from out of town, and Tammy and her mother sit in the front row, next to Gloria. Mother and daughter and guardian united, enjoying their brief moment in the spotlight. They have meetings with crime show producers already booked, and last week they gave an interview for one of those weekly tabloid magazines. I don’t mind. I’d like to give them something outside of this town, outside of these people. Tammy was always good to me. Perhaps this is a chance for her mother and Gloria to do better, too.

In that interview, Gloria spoke about my mother. Things I knew. The extreme violence of her childhood, the disintegrations of home and family, until she ran away at eighteen years old, and no one bothered to come find her. The way she brought me up on her own from there, wanting, Gloria said, nothing but the best for her Alice. Things, too, I did not know. How that traumatised child never really grew up, how my mother suffered from breaks in reality I must have thought were games at the time. She did, it turns out, whatever she could to ensure my safety, from dealing drugs to sleeping with cold, old men for money. Forgetting to protect herself and getting deeper and deeper into trouble with her own mind, and the law. Not even Gloria could say what caused my mom to pull the trigger that afternoon, but she did say this: ‘I know that woman loved her daughter with all her heart. At least now, they can be together.’

Mr Jackson does not attend the funeral either; he is already long gone from town. House packed up and makeshift studio closed. He won’t be returning to school in the fall. Impossible now, with all those rumours buzzing about him. Most of the young girls he taught scoff at the idea of this man taking advantage of Alice Lee. More like the other way round, some of them say, because they like him better. Unaware of the tremble under my skin when Mr Jackson first asked me to take my clothes off, these young girls can’t understand you sometimes say yes as a means of survival. Not until it is their turn to say yes, some day.

At any rate, my teacher has gone to ground. He will emerge, eventually, with his own story to tell, a wound that will draw other young women to him, call them over. There was a girl he loved, and she died, he will tell them. Rearranging the truth until he believes it. Convinced he seeks solace, not power, when he takes another seventeen-year-old girl into his arms and into his bed.