Ruby

“The call of crows and the purring of doves. The screams of a Black man. The slowing of a heart. All captured, hushed and held under the colossal fur of pine and oak, magnolia, hickory and sweet gum.”

Bond anthropomorphizes the landscape of Ruby with a sense of memory. The trees in the woods hold memories of lynching and KKK rituals, symbolizing how the racist past of the South continues to influence the present.

“Girl, you got to fly off next time they take you down there. Don’t hold fort in your body, surrender it so you can come back when they done.”

This advice, delivered by Ma Tante, is meant to help Ruby survive her assaults. Ma Tante doesn’t feel capable of standing up to the power of the town, so this is the only way she can help Ruby. By teaching a young Ruby to dissociate, however, Ma Tante sows the seeds for a dysfunctional coping mechanism that will follow her into adulthood.

“Seem like a White man can do anythang on earth to Black woman—rape her, beat her, shame her. But he show her an ounce of respect and all hell break a loose.”

Racism and sexism run so deep that it is considered permissible for a white man to violate a Black woman, while showing her respect upsets the segregated social norms. Though this quote focuses on white men, Black men in Liberty also beat, rape, and shame Black women, and Ephram showing Ruby respect eventually does cause all hell to break loose in town.

“Some folk drink theyselves to stupid. Others so empty, gluttony take they belly hostage. And some get so full up with hate, it like to crack they soul. Hell, ain’t nothing strange when Colored go crazy. Strange is when we don’t.”

Here, K. O. Samuels acknowledges the impossible conditions of being Black in the South, and the toll taken by a lifetime of oppression. Despite acknowledging that it is reasonable for oppressed parties to go “crazy,” the people of Liberty still blame Ruby’s “madness” on her being a sinner, illustrating how gender affects people’s experiences of racism.

“In this way, Ruby found the Dyboù. In this way, Ruby learned to rape her body each night.”

Even after Reverend Jennings’s death, his abuse influences Ruby. She is so accustomed to violence that she acts it out on herself, prolonging her victimhood because it is the only dynamic she feels comfortable with.

“Ruby had felt it then. The audacious hope of rooted things.”

Amid Ruby’s seemingly hopeless situation, she draws strength from nature. In addition to being the source of her few happy childhood memories, the chinaberry tree in her yard, just like her, has seen countless horrors but continues to stand fast and grow.

“She simply kept her limbs numb and her eyes empty as she had since she was fifteen. Since she was twelve. Seven. Six. Five. When the first man had ripped the cotton of her panties, explaining that this is what happens to very bad little girls.”

Decades after Ma Tante taught her to dissociate during assaults, Ruby continues to use it as a coping mechanism. This quote reveals that she has been raped since she was a child. Her abusers have told her she is bad to justify their own crimes, a narrative that has stayed with her into adulthood.

“So when he pulled her up and lifted her injured hand she bared her teeth and glared, because if he didn’t want to take her body, then he must want something more vile.”

Ruby can’t conceive of a relationship with a man that doesn’t involve violation or theft of her autonomy. When Ephram doesn’t rape her, she pivots to thinking that he is after her soul like the Dyboù.

“Most of the men she had ever met had been devils or boys, and she already had enough of both.”

Ruby explores two major relationship dynamics between men and women: abuser to victim, and child to mother. Ruby has occupied both roles but has never been loved by a man as an equal.

“It was 1963 and a world full of Negroes were making their way to Washington, DC, to stir some change into the batter of the world.”

Bond includes references to historical events that contextualize Ruby during the Civil Rights Movement. The idea of large-scale social change injects some hope into the often bleak narrative while highlighting the fact that legislation changes don’t immediately translate to the disappearance of racism and violence.

“Those fair-skinned harlots who brought shame and unrest on the community over forty years afore. That blond, blue-eyed Neva Bell, who fornicated with a White man and got herself shot because of it? No matter this one was brown. This Ruby Bell carried the same blood, and that blood carried the same sin.”

This screed by Celia highlights the problematic nature of valuing the concept of virtue over the actual experiences of human beings. Celia shifts the entirety of the blame for Neva Bell’s rape and murder onto the young girl instead of the men who killed her. This pattern of thought reflects a larger system of values that allow abuse to run rampant in Liberty.

“When Celia turned onto the church road she had a mission, a holy war she would not only fight but win.”

Celia uses her standing in the church to rile the town up against Ruby, showing that the religion-based moral code assumed by most of Liberty is fallible. The town’s power structures can be easily manipulated by people with bad intentions.

“And while they might have gone out and found a better, saner, prettier girl with full breasts, in that instant, nothing else on earth would suffice and subsequently Ruby knew the only power she had ever known on earth. Ruby kept her screen door unlocked most nights.”

In adulthood, Ruby enables her own assaults because she is so used to a single dynamic between herself and men. Having had all her power and agency stripped from her, she finds a twisted sense of power in these encounters.

“Having never fully entered the house of her body, she had no difficulty finding boarders.”

This quote illustrates the consequences of Ruby’s lifelong abuse and the use of dissociation as a coping mechanism. She is so used to leaving her body that she seamlessly continues self-destructive sex work even when she is no longer being forced into it.

“The word ‘Liberty’ hung like a banner over the White man’s head, which made it easy for Ruby to know whom it was promised to. Both word and coin. With God’s trust and blessing.”

This quote refers to a word on a dollar coin, but it highlights the irony of Liberty Township’s name. The “liberty” hopefully promised in the title is rarely granted to its downtrodden, formerly-enslaved citizens who continue to perpetrate oppressive power structures on their own female members.

“Ruby knew that the White girls were always good girls, even when they were bad, but Negro girls started bad and could be anything after that.”

Ruby believes this skewed perspective to be the truth because it’s taught to her by Miss Barbara and her clients at the brothel when she is still an impressionable child. This belief that she is inherently bad and guilty informs the course of her life.

“Yes. It was good and strong. It would weaken the soul of anyone who stepped upon it. Cause their courage to drain from their feet.”

While the black magic practiced by the reverend and later the Dyboù is literal, it also symbolizes how Ruby’s abusers have tried to break her soul by feeding her lies about her character. They have a vested interest in keeping her scared and complacent so they can continue to use her without consequence.

“Righteous had tried to help Honey understand the nature of man and how it’s a woman’s job to hold herself above that nature, and then if she can’t, to find forgiveness, especially for a man of God.”

Righteous’s interpretation of Christianity categorically forbids holding men accountable for their actions. Both consensual and nonconsensual sex must always be viewed as a shameful act and blamed entirely on the female partner.

“Some folks say slavery and the whip make us crazy. Some say we got so twisted up with pain and hate so we do this here. But is that true, brothers?”

Though Reverend Jennings tries to frame the black-magic fire rituals he presides over as acts of empowerment for Black men, Bond reveals that he is indeed taking out his pain and hatred on the world. After being abused as a child, Reverend Jennings victimizes others in the same way.

“The great pines had stooped in sorrow when they saw these slaves learning the thick brush, the source of the White man’s might, then mingling their own ancient homeland rites, magic and shadow secrets with the new, until they began gathering around their own fires and driving their desires into the roots of the world.”

This quote, using the landscape as a longstanding observer of human behavior, explores how the past is still present in Liberty. Historical violence begets more violence, with each community subjugating those who have less power than themselves.

“So she told him the truth. ‘I want you with me in sleep every night. And when I wake up, every morning, I want you there too.’”

Ruby is used to suppressing her wants to please other people, so her ability to vocalize her desire to Ephram illustrates how their relationship is helping her find a sense of agency. Her desire here expresses the trust and security she has come to place in Ephram.

“There was no place else to go. No God, no nothing else. Couldn’t be.”

Ruby’s refusal to participate in the church is part of the reason she is outcast from town, but this quote highlights why faith is a more complex issue for her. After being brutalized and witnessing the murder of her best friend, Ruby can’t believe in a fair God with the same readiness as most of Liberty.

“Ruby knew that a lie could only control a person if they believed it.”

Since childhood, Ruby has been told that she is a bad person who deserves the abuse she experiences. In the final moments of the novel, she realizes that this is a lie used to keep her complacent. Her realization relinquishes the lie’s power over her and establishes her own agency.