Joey held it up to catch the light, awed that something so pretty—and so expensive—was actually hers. A real ruby, surrounded by real diamonds, set in real gold.
“A lovely necklace for a lovely young lady.” Charles’s eyes were bright, his smile wide. “Come over here, sweetheart. I’ll put it on you.”
Another glance at her mother, but this time, Joey’s heart sank. Ruby was smiling, but it was not a nice smile. Ruby was smiling that smile, the one that hid what she was truly feeling. Charles hadn’t been around long enough to know that smile, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have noticed, because he wasn’t looking at Ruby. His attention was fully on Joey, and the one thing Ruby would not tolerate was anyone giving the attention that should be bestowed upon her to someone else. Including, and especially, her daughter.
Her mother’s eyes flashed with jealousy. It was quick—blink and you’ll miss it—but Joey caught it. The smoke from the Marlboro swirled around Ruby’s face. The tip of the cigarette now had a centimeter of ash, and if she didn’t tap it into the ashtray soon, it would fall into her lap. But her mother didn’t move, the icy smile plastered on her face like a clown mask.
Charles was oblivious to all the unspoken communication. “Come on, honey. Let’s see what it looks like.”
Joey was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t. Slowly, she walked around the table to the other side where Charles was sitting. He moved her hair off her shoulder, the gray fuzz on his forearm brushing along her jawline as he clasped the chain around her neck. She was close enough to breathe in his cologne. It smelled expensive.
Charles turned her around and stared at her, gazing at her throat, and then the pendant, and then her chest. He reached out again, arranging her hair so it fell around her shoulders once more.
“Gorgeous,” he said. “You are a beautiful girl. You’re going to give your mama a run for her money in the next few years.” He winked. But not at Ruby, at her.
Her mother’s smile flickered, but remained.
The next morning, Joey woke up to a quiet apartment. When she came out of her bedroom, her mother was sitting at the dining room table, still in her nightie, hair in disarray, looking out the window at the park across the street. She was smoking yet another cigarette. If Charles had spent the night, he was gone now; his shoes weren’t by the door.
“So, you think you can flirt with my boyfriend, do you?” Ruby turned away from the window and stared at her daughter. “You little slut.”
“What?” Joey said, still half awake.
It was just one word, and a benign word at that. But the minute it slipped out of her mouth, she knew it was a mistake. She had dared to speak, and that was all it took. Ruby was out of her chair, and before Joey could react, her mother’s lit cigarette pressed into her neck just above her collarbone, a centimeter away from the chain of her new necklace. She cried out, the heat from the Marlboro searing and intense. Then Ruby spat in her face, her warm, tobacco-scented saliva spraying across Joey’s eyes and cheeks.
“Mama, please—” Joey said, but before she could finish, her mother backhanded her across the face.
Then Ruby hit her again, and again, and again, until finally, blessedly, everything went black.
When Joey came to—one minute later? Ten minutes later?—she was lying near the sofa in the living room, the cigarette inches away from her face on the scratched parquet floor. Someone was rapping at the door, and judging from the volume and pace, they’d been knocking for a while.
Her eyesight cleared a little, and she watched as Ruby stomped toward the door to fling it open.
It was Mrs. Finch, their neighbor at the end of the hall. Her body was partially obscured by Ruby standing in the doorway, but her pale green housecoat and matching slippers were easily recognizable. She was on her way to the garbage chute; she had a stuffed white trash bag in one hand.
“What do you want?” Ruby snapped at the woman. “Has it ever occurred to you that if someone doesn’t answer their door after five minutes, then maybe they don’t want to?”
Ruby’s tone was aggressive, and from her vantage point on the floor, Joey saw Mrs. Finch’s slippered feet back up a step. “I … I heard…”
“You heard what?”
The neighbor took another step back, but not before she glanced past Ruby to see Joey lying on the floor. They locked eyes briefly, and while Joey could have tried to signal for help, she didn’t.
It never worked. Nobody ever helped. It only made things worse.