My name is Rubye Drummond. I left three younguns and a husband back in Alabama on a hot sweaty night right after the prayer meeting. I don’t know what came over me. I sat in the hard folding chairs at the back of the little church and prayed to my precious Jesus to deliver me from the thoughts I was having. He saw fit not to deliver me so at 9 o’clock after the children and Wayne were asleep I left.
I had been planning it .. well, you couldn’t call it planning actually. It was that frame of mind kind of like daydreaming where you think of things that could be or what you would do “if”. Anyway, it was March when I first got the idea. It started with a kind of desperate feeling I got one day taking care of little Joe. Little Joe has something wrong with him. He couldn’t talk and he couldn’t walk and his little hands are curled up on his chest. He could eat but it’s hard for him. I have to feed him every bite. It makes me so sad just thinking about his big brown eyes looking at me. He is pitiful. Why does Jesus let things like that happen? I couldn’t answer that and Brother Walker from church just said, “God has his ways that we don’t always understand.” I guessed it was something I did wrong to mark him. But I don’t know why Jesus would punish someone else for what I did. Why didn’t he cripple me?
Anyway, it was then, right then, that I started to think that maybe Jesus wants me to leave. He wants me to go far away and start a new life. I got more and more sure of it. At least sometimes I did. I looked for signs. I prayed for signs.
I decided that I would save a little bit of money every week out of Wayne’s pay and if no real need for it came up, I’d know Jesus wanted me to go catch a bus and find a new life.
That night after the preacher waved me good night, I just walked on past our house out of town and down the road that lead to Birmingham and to the bus station. I could have walked all night. I was in a trance. It felt so good to think of spending the night alone with no kids and no husband. Wayne wasn’t a bad man and the kids were just kids but I was losing my mind. I’d heard of it happening to women later during the change but I never heard of a young woman having a nervous breakdown. I think you have to call it that. What else would explain what I did?
The Greyhound was there ready to take off. I knew it would be. I’d checked the time-tables so often I had them by heart. I told the woman at the ticket counter I wanted to go to Long Beach, California. She smiled and asked if my husband was on getting off on a leave there. I just nodded. It was 1944 and the bus was full of men in uniform going somewhere. There was a woman with two small children in the second row. It made me think of the kids. I pushed the thought out of my mind and told myself that Jesus gave me the sign. It’s okay to leave.
I did leave a note on the kitchen table. I told Wayne and the kids I loved them but just couldn’t stay. I said I might come back but not to count on it and to just go about their lives. Then I said I’d made a lemon meringue pie and it was in the icebox so they could have dessert tonight without me. What an ignorant thing to do. It was like I thought that would make it okay.
I hardly had any money to eat so I had to be careful. At one place where we stopped.. I think it was just over the Mississippi line ..there was a little grocery store. I went in and bought a loaf of bread and some peanut butter. That would keep me from starving and would leave me money for California.
I’d heard about Long Beach from pictures I saw on the news reels at the picture show. They mostly showed sailors and things like that but it looked pretty. There were palm trees and flowers and people seemed like there were enjoying themselves. I thought about what that would be like and it never went out of my mind. That’s how I decided on Long Beach, just that simply.
I kept visualizing it. I had to so I could keep the thoughts of the kids and what my Mother would say out of my mind. She’d be so mad at me. She’d never understand. Her life had been hard.. 10 kids and a man that would hit her when he came home. I’d heard the stories over and over and I’d seen it for myself. She’d say, “Rubye, what are you doing? Even if you want to leave Wayne, what are those babies gonna do without a Mother. A man can’t raise children. And poor little Joe he ain’t got nobody. He’ll have to go into a home. You are a sorry excuse for a woman and worse for a mother!”
I think she may have been right. I see it better now than I did then. I’m sixty-seven years old and I think I’ve spent every day living with what I thought I’d left behind. It’s not that my life has been bad. It’s just those babies and Wayne. In my mind’s eye I saw them every day. I even named my new kids after the ones I’d left there in Alabama. I know it sounds kind of crazy to do something like that but it seemed like I was paying them an honor.
I had three more babies with the man I met in Long Beach. One by one I named them.. Joe, Charles and Betty Sue. They didn’t look anything like the curly-headed blond babies I’d left in Alabama. They looked like their Daddy. All except Betty Sue and she looked like my Mama.
Bill was standing on the corner by the bus station waiting for a taxi just as I got off the bus. His black hair and dark skin was shining in the hot midday sun. He looked right at me but I looked down at the ground. It seemed like he could know everything about me just by looking. I felt like hiding and walked away down the street.
It wasn’t until a month or more later that I actually met him. I’d found a job at the post office and a little room within three blocks of the beach. I wasn’t exactly happy but I did the same things every day and that kept me from thinking too much about what I’d done. I was in the habit of taking my bag lunch to the beach and sitting on a little wall to watch the waves go in and out. I’ll never forget the day Bill came walking by and stopped right in front of me. There was no going back after that. We talked for a long time but I never told him about Wayne and the kids. I said I was an orphan. I said I had no one back in Alabama. I lied over and over for a whole lifetime. I lied to Bill and to neighbors and even to the kids later when they asked about my childhood. I didn’t want them to know about the awful thing I’d done.
I started out writing this so someone would know my story. I needed to tell it. I could hide this story or letter and it would be found after I died when they went through my belongings.
Bill and I got married in Long Beach while he was still in the service. I got to live in my Long Beach heaven with palm trees and a beach until the war was over. But, you know, I never really left Alabama or those kids. Most people probably can’t imagine how awful and shameful it feels to leave your kids. It’s unnatural and seems like it’s worse than if I’d killed somebody. If it hadn’t been for that sign from Jesus, I’d have thought I’d been possessed by the devil.
I went to church every Sunday and asked our precious Lord to deliver me from the thoughts. I told him if he’d said it was okay to leave then why was I worried all the time. I didn’t expect no answer. I’d been brought up to know that you can sin and you can be delivered. I’d heard the preacher say a million times that thing about Him working in mysterious ways. I was just going to have to wait and see what he was doing here with my life.
Now I think there wasn’t a plan. Whoever reads this can maybe find those kids I left and see if something good happened to them because I left. I’m praying that there was a plan and that I didn’t ruin their lives. I’m praying that Charles grew up big and strong and smart and that Little Joe got better or the Lord took him to Heaven and made him whole. And Betty Sue.. she was such a sweet child.. please let her have kids of her own and be a nurse or something good. Don’t let her do what I did.
Nov 2002
