RUBY

I am standing in the doorway and my niece Ruby is standing below me; on the genuine Mexican tiles that my sister flew to Mexico to find, purchase and bring back to install in her brand new villa-style custom household. Designed by her and her husband and built wholly in their eyes, complete with a late start date, city fees, rejected design plans, resubmitted design plans, missed deadlines, more fees, an unreliable contractor, rain delays, a leaking roof, burst second story water pipes, and a separate granny unit above a two-car garage that has been turned into a storage unit with no door.

I am standing and she is standing. She is holding onto the couch with her miniature hands, her miniature fingernails painted corvette red; one of her thick, tan legs full of rolls is shorter than the other; she has no pants on and her small belly spills out from under her shirt and over her diaper. She is smiling good-bye at me with her gaps and baby teeth showing, her blond short hair curling out where her head curves into her neck. From across the room my sister hits me with her eyes and says,

“Oh my god, Ocie! Do you know what Ruby did this morning?”
“No,” I reply.

“Well,” she begins, snapping the end of the word off with the excited short breath of a mother, “you know, she hates when Joey takes the boys to school in the morning, cant stand it. She cries and has-a-fit because she can’t go. So this morning we come down the stairs and there’s Ruby standing by the door with no pants on and no diaper, just her little naked butt with a shirt on and a book in her hand. And Joey opens the door and Ruby just walks right out onto the porch with bare feet into the forty degree weather and pouring rain, ready to go to school with the boys.”

I didn’t ask what happened when they told Ruby she couldn’t go.