Free A Virtuous Ruby by Piper Huguley

neatness of the apron over her dress, and the braided black hair surrounding her head like a crown. The freckles across her nose brought a sweetness to her dignified countenance. Very beautiful.
    “She need more than strength.” Lona fixed her gaze on him. “She need support because she is too hardheaded to see what trouble she can get in. You got to let her know and even better, take her far away from here. I’m afraid of what will happen for her here.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She can go somewhere and learn more than what Miss Annie taught midwifing. John and I put aside some for school, but she needs to go somewhere and learn a skill so she can be ready for the world.”
    “It seems as if the world isn’t ready for her, ma’am. What does she want to do?”
    “She midwifing, but she always want to be a nurse. Don’t you need a nurse?”
    Adam cleared his throat. He did. His visit in Winslow was a prolonged stop on his way to a new position as chief doctor for the Negroes in the steel mills in Pittsburgh. Some of the steel barons had looked for doctors to care for the Negroes because they couldn’t get anyone else who wanted to do it. The barons agreed he needed a nurse and provided funds for it. But it wasn’t easy finding trained Negro nurses.
    Adam’s mind clicked apace. The money Paul Winslow had given him was ample enough to get Ruby into a program and help him part time. Then when she was done, he could pay her a salary. The salary could help Ruby, as well as Solomon and her sisters to gain a foothold somewhere away from this place, where they didn’t have to live in fear of being attacked. If Adam believed in divine providence, or what some called God, he would have thanked the being. However, as it was, God had taken his mother from him, and ever since he was a little boy, he was enraged at him. So he let God go his way and he went his.
    “I might.”
    “Well, then,” Lona huffed. “You got a church?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “We got our church here. Hard to go these days though, since Ruby’s shame, so we read our Bible here and worship in the mornings on Sundays. That’s what happens when you got a daughter who makes trouble.”
    “Enough, Mama.” Ruby smoothed her tapered fingers over her apron as she came back in the room, and walked past Dr. Morson to the back porch. “I’m ready for the meeting.”
    Lona shook her head. “She thinks these white people are playing around here. They ain’t playing.”
    “I guess not, ma’am.”
    Lona fixed him with a stare. “I don’t know you. I know the Winslows.”
    “I don’t know them either.” Adam began.
    Lona held up a hand and he was silent. “They’re good people and paid good money no trading. David and Ruby grew up friends and she went shaking herself around him and he couldn’t help himself. He just a boy, trying to find his way.”
    No. Adam could not agree with her assessment, knowing what he knew. David was a spoiled young man and always got his way. Ruby’s resistance to his seduction didn’t change his desires. No. Her resistance might have made him even more determined. Adam’s stomach turned over thinking about it. However, he didn’t want to take Lona on after she and Ruby had fussed at each other. He frowned.
    “She makes trouble around here with these ideas and meetings and such. Think she doing what my brother wanted her to do. If Arlo were still living, he tell her the same thing. Get a home she can settle down in. You got a wife?”
    “No, ma’am.”
    Lona clasped her hands. “You’re what I been praying for. You got to take her on away from here. She won’t listen to nobody, she so bossy and all.”
    “Lona, come on.” John slipped an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “She a good girl, but she just stubborn.”
    “She think she know everything. She don’t. She has to find out what she don’t know, and then she can set back in life.”
    Ruby’s strong insistent voice sounded out on the back