57 pages • 1 hour read
Cynthia BondRuby
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2014A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Book 1, Chapter 6-Book 2, Chapter 10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Book 1: “Wishbone” - Book 2: “Two Bits”
Book 1, Chapter 6 Summary
Ephram walks into the town square, where a crowd of men is gathered on the steps of P&K. It’s 4:40, and dark is coming on. He recalls the day Ruby arrived in Liberty, two days after the March on Washington. He’d only seen her twice before since the day at Ma Tante’s—once through the church window on Sunday at 13, and once at 18, standing on the main road with Maggie. The two girls had shared a tender moment before walking toward the Bell house. On the day of her return in 1963, Ruby had been immaculately dressed and haughty. Ephram had felt a strange despair as he listened to her address the townsfolk with disdain.
At P&K Ephram purchases iodine and thread. He’s forgotten his wallet, but Miss P says he can pay her back after tomorrow’s church service. The new Church Mother will be elected tomorrow, and everyone expects it to be Celia.
As Ephram leaves the store, the crowd asks where he’s going. He tries to lie but is called out by Chauncy. Chauncy says that he slept with Ruby the previous Thursday night. Ephram, shocked, leaves abruptly, while the men stay behind to whisper about the likelihood that he is courting Ruby.
As Ephram hurries home, he imagines Ruby and Chauncy having sex. He remembers the day K. O. took him to a brothel to lose his virginity at 16 and the pleasure and shame that followed. There was also his first girlfriend, Baby Girl Samuels, with whom he carried on in secret until Celia caught them and organized a prayer ceremony over his body.
Ephram walks deeper into the woods, dropping Ruby’s doll on the way. Feeling overwhelmed by his new image of Ruby, he lies down by Marion Lake to sleep.
Book 1, Chapter 7 Summary
Ruby sits under a chinaberry tree in her backyard. It is the same tree that saved her when she tried to die by suicide six years ago. Before her attempt, she said goodbye to the tree and the old crow that roosted in it, but as she stood beneath it, she heard a voice telling her to dig her toes into the ground. As she did so, she felt herself growing and changing into a tree and experienced “the audacious hope of rooted things” (84). For the following weeks, she wandered the town, transforming into various things, from trees to puddles and finally the river road. She lay on the river road for four nights and on the fifth morning was discovered by Chauncy Rankin. Chauncy raped Ruby on the side of the road. Ruby felt that he was, like all men, “a slight discord that she waited to pass” (85). She dissociated the same way she had when she was five, the first time she was raped by an adult man.
After Chauncy left, Ruby felt the first pains of what would become a recurring hysterical labor. In agony, she gave birth to one of the ghost girls who had sheltered in her body. In the intervening years, she has given birth to many ghosts and relived their brutal rapes and murders.
Book 1, Chapter 8 Summary
The pine trees in the Liberty woods know about the many trapped spirits that move among them. They watch the hateful Dyboù as it lurks near a sleeping Ephram. When Ephram dropped Ruby’s doll earlier, the Dyboù quickly buried it in dust. It was the Dyboù that instilled doubt and jealousy in Ephram after the conversation at P&K. Now, it looks for “chinks in his spirit” through which it can enter his body (87). The largest opening is a tear near Ephram’s heart. As the Dyboù licks at the tear, tasting innocence, a flock of crows lands and drives it away.
Ephram awakes to wailing. He follows the sound to Ruby, who is digging a hole in the soil below the chinaberry tree. As he watches, she births one of the ghost children and buries it in the hole, repeating that “the womb or the earth” are the only places children are safe (89).
Ephram reaches out to smooth a torn corner of Ruby’s dress. She lies down on the ground and pulls up her skirt, but when Ephram tries to help her to her feet, she suspects that he wants “something more vile” than sex and lashes out (89). Ruby kicks the white lay angel cake into the dirt, then strikes Ephram’s face until he starts to cry. Seeing his tears, Ruby takes him gently into her arms and rocks him like a baby. As dawn breaks, the two of them sit together and eat Celia’s cake off the forest floor.
Book 2, Chapter 9 Summary
Celia wakes at four a.m., dismayed that Ephram hasn’t returned home. She recalls her life before she became his caretaker at 13. She had been a brilliant student and a pretty girl. Both Chauncy and K. O. had vied for her attention. Chauncy took her on a date to the church picnic on the day that her mother made her naked appearance. After Otha was sent to the psychiatric hospital and Reverend Jennings left to preach on the road, no one wanted to court Celia anymore. She threw herself into homemaking and caring for Ephram. When Reverend Jennings was found lynched, Celia turned to God for answers and became a devout Christian. Though she is grateful for the life she has, she sometimes wonders what it would be like to experience romantic love.
Ruby wakes up before Ephram, watches her ghost children play near his sleeping body, and wonders when he will try to assault her. Ephram wakes up and offers to bring breakfast from P&K. As he sets out down the main road, Ruby rocks her ghost children to sleep in her yard, watching the large crow roosting nearby. She recalls the day she returned to Liberty, at the behest of Maggie.
The narrative flashes back to the day of her return in 1963. Ruby accidentally takes a train to the white town of Liberty, 100 miles southwest of its Black namesake, Liberty Township. After spending so much time in New York, she is dismayed to see the only Black people around working menial service jobs. The station porter warns her that the next train to Liberty Township won’t leave until the following morning, adding that due to traffic caused by the March on Washington, the white people in the segregated waiting area are looking for someone to kill.
Ruby tries to hire a car, but no one will come for her. As she waits, she grows increasingly distressed by the presence of a small, empty spirit that has been following her for weeks. The spirit screams and weeps disconsolately, and Ruby realizes she is the spirit of her dead child. To quiet the screaming, Ruby lets the girl enter her body, whereupon she cries herself. The station conductor accuses her of being “another drunk n****r” (107). An old Black man offers her a ride back to Liberty in his truck, but Ruby understands that she would have to exchange sexual favors for the ride. As she begins to picture doing just that, the train to Liberty Township pulls into the station.
In the present, Ephram returns to the Bell house with full grocery bags. Ruby lets him in, knowing that he will find a ruinous mess inside. She anticipates that seeing her living conditions will drive him away.
Book 2, Chapter 10 Summary
Celia looks at her clock—it’s nine a.m., and Ephram is still out. She’s certain he wouldn’t miss the day of the Church Mother election, for which Celia has waited 25 years. Celia grows increasingly angry as she thinks of how she takes care of Ephram every single day, cooking his meals, ironing his clothes, and treating his maladies. Sunday is the only day on which she gets to be something other than a mother figure, commanding respect with her speeches at In-His-Name Holiness Church. Showing up without Ephram would invite gossip and shatter the spotless image she’s worked hard to curate.
Celia muses that Ephram’s absence is “the Devil’s work” (115). She suspects that the Devil is working through Ruby to lead Ephram astray, because the Bell girls have always brought “shame and unrest” on Liberty (115).
Celia marches to Ruby’s house. Ephram opens the door with Ruby standing behind him. She commands him to come to church, but Ephram replies that he isn’t going today. Shocked, Celia delivers a Bible verse on punishment and turns to leave. As she walks back toward church, she suddenly falls on the ground and thrashes herself until her clothes are torn and bloody. She resolves to tell the congregation that she has fought with the Devil.
Book 1, Chapter 6-Book 2, Chapter 10 Analysis
Bond continues to blend real-world historical events into the narrative. While Ruby takes part in the Great Migration, leaving the South to seek a better life away from the former states of enslavement, she notably declines to associate herself with any civil-rights actions. Returning home, she is uncomfortable to be grouped with the Black people around her who occupy servile positions.
Ruby’s attitude reflects the internalization of a hateful narrative about Blackness. The source of this narrative is white supremacy, whose repercussions are felt all throughout the story. In the train station, Ruby feels uneasy because, in the openly racist South, showing insubordination to a white person can mean death. Despite her beauty and poise, she knows that to people like the white station conductor, “she would always be a n****r” (101).
Ruby’s beauty, rather than affording her privilege, puts another target on her back due to the intersection of racism and sexism. Attractive Black women like Neva and Ruby are targets for sexual violence from both Black and white men, something Ruby is keenly aware of as she imagines being raped by the truck driver who offers her a ride back to Liberty.
These chapters highlight the sexual double standard of Liberty. Ephram’s memories illustrate that premarital sex happens behind sheds, out of town, or hidden away in dark corners. Sex is seen as a rite of passage into manhood yet comes with a potent sense of shame stemming from Christian doctrine. To be perceived as a sexual being is to be shamed as a sinner, especially for women. Some of Liberty’s men react to this standard by weaponizing their sexuality—Chauncy rapes Ruby in broad daylight and without a second thought, then degrades her to the other men for having sex.
Ruby’s assault mirrors that of her aunt Neva, who was also raped in a ditch decades before by a supposedly upstanding and well-respected man. The cruel legacy of the Bell women highlights how violence against Black women is built into the history of Liberty, upheld by men who are perceived as good citizens. Ruby’s memories after the assault confirm that she has been sexually abused since childhood. Years and years of brutality have taught her to regard her body as a form of currency and to see rape as a passing inconvenience.
Ruby expects nothing but violence from the men in her life and sees herself as a subhuman creature who exists to serve the needs of others. Her long experience in putting aside her own needs to give her body to others makes her an ideal vessel for the ghost children and a magnet to the Dyboù. In the absence of a sense of self, Ruby’s spirit acts as a conduit for the lust, hatred, and pain of other people.
The dissociation Ruby practices during her rape is a common trauma response. This kind of dissociation can go beyond the moment of trauma to affect a person’s sense of identity and memory. This appears to be the case with Ruby. She refers to having lost periods of time, slipping in and out of fugue states. After Chauncy rapes her, she reveals that she was first raped at the age of five, mirroring the way that people’s minds can repress traumatic memories until they are unlocked by a triggering experience.
Ruby’s self-hatred causes her to rebuff Ephram’s genuine, innocent advances. The white lay angel cake he delivers to her symbolizes his pure intentions, but Ruby’s reaction is self-destructive and rooted in trauma. She is ready to let Ephram rape her but can’t accept a selfless kindness from him.
In this section of the novel, the past continues to shape the present. The historic abuse of Black women’s bodies by white men informs a similar dehumanization by Black men. Subjugating Black women also allows Liberty’s men to experience a social power that they otherwise have in precious little supply. The result is that nobody protects Black girls and women from violence. Even Liberty’s women feel powerless to protect young girls—in Chapter 2, Ma Tante acknowledges that Ruby is being raped but doesn’t stand up to her abusers. As an adult, Ruby takes it upon herself to be the kind of protector she needed by taking in the ghost children.
Bond explores how the influence of religion can be used to twist the nature of right and wrong. Celia hates Ruby for seemingly representing the antithesis of church morals. Because Ruby is seen as promiscuous and “crazy,” Celia knows she can easily drum up hysteria around Ruby’s supposedly evil nature. In thinking of the Bell women, who were brutally raped, Celia dismisses them as troublemakers who shamed the town. She doesn’t extend the same rancor to the men who raped and killed Neva Bell. Outward appearances of shame and virtue are more important to her than the actual moral value of people’s actions.
Celia has no such rancor for the rapist Chauncy, never suspecting him of inner darkness because he dutifully attends church services. Only Ruby is outcast by the town, her mental illness associated with degraded morality. As her story unfolds, it becomes clear that Ruby is not the one whose morality should be in question. Her mental state is a reasonable reaction to the violence done to her and around her while the community averts its eyes. In a literal sense, she sees the atrocities that the rest of Liberty ignores.
