Page 14 of My Redneck Baby Daddy

Chapter 5

Rue

Afew days after my date at the diner with Bobby Jo, word seemed to spread like wildfire. Maybe the whole county wasn’t talking, and the larger part of the city either but the parts that shared a pew with my church going mama must have felt rather chatty.

After dinner one evening, my mother waited until the plates were cleared to ask me to help her in the kitchen.

I ran water and soap over the good dishes while she stood beside me with a towel she was not using.

"I'm not telling you who you can date," she started off quietly.

Looking over as the suds built on the dishes, I took her it. "It sounds suspiciously like you're about to."

Claire sighed. "Rue…"

"Mama…"

"I’ve spent twenty-six years working in hospitals, Rue." She set the towel on the counter. "I’ve watched drugs take people apart in pieces. Stood in hallways while mothers found out they were burying their children. Cleaned up after the likes of a man like him."

I turned the water off, because that deserved my full attention.

"He never used," I said. "He told me that himself."

"He sold them, baby."

I opened my mouth and nothing came out. I’d been carrying that sentence around since the diner without ever letting myself say it plainly. My mama had put it on the counter between us in four words.

"He was nineteen," I said finally.

"And somebody's child bought what he was selling." She said it gently, which was worse. "I'm not saying he hasn't changed. People change all the time, and I’ve seen that too. I'm saying don't you dare be naïve about what he did, because being naïve is how good women end up somewhere they can't get out of."

"I'm thirty-two, Mama."

"I know exactly how old you are. I was there doing the pushing, girl."

My father came in for a glass of tea and did not leave, which told me they had discussed this beforehand. "Out of every man in Virginia, Rue?"

"Daddy."

"I'm asking a fair question." He leaned against the door frame with the tea in his hand. "I have lived in this county my whole life. I knew of Danny Joe Maddox before that boy was ever born. I watched Sue Ellen Maddox work two jobs and still come to church on Sunday looking like she hadn't slept in a week. And I remember the morning they picked her son up, because your mother's cousin lives on Ferrell Road."

"That was thirteen years ago."

"It was."

"He owns a business. He employs Regina's husband. He pays taxes and fixes people's driveways."

"I know what he owns." My father set the glass down. "You have barely dated anybody in your entire life, Rue. Thirty-two years of being careful, and the first man you bring around here is Bobby Jo Maddox."

"I did not bring him around. You were in my driveway." I replied looking between both my parents. They were good, honest hard working people and surely they could see that in Bobby Jo.

"Same difference."

"I’ve only been on a few dates with him. I'm not marrying the man."

"Good." He said it fast, like it settled something, and I stood there with my hands dripping on my mother's kitchen floor. I couldn’t figure out why one syllable had put a hole in my chest.

I was in Regina's office Monday before the first bell with the door shut. She had all those posters on the wall, the counseling kind. There was even one of just the Blue Ridge Mountains that I’d always loved.