Ruby had lost her mother the moment she was born. Her mother Jenna had been brutally attacked and her body left just a few hundred yards into the woods that surrounded the small town she grew up in.
She knew her grandmother raised her the first few months of her life. That much was told her when she was old enough to understand. No one really knew exactly what happened that late afternoon in the woods.
Jenna was seven months pregnant when she was murdered. the father of the baby was the town's greatest mystery. They were all guessing it was an act of incest, since Jenna was never seen in the company of any male other than her father. The whole town talked about the terrible crime for years, and still sit out on their porches and speculate about the big "WHO DONE IT?"
Jenna was the kind of daughter that any one would be proud of. She was a hard worker at the local silk mill, where her father was foreman. They would come to work together and go home together. She was the apple of his eye. Of course when it became obvious about her condition she became the thorn in his side. It was this thorn that kept picking away at his precarious mental state. He was in just such a mental state, when he pulled her off the path they usually walked on and started dragging her kicking and screaming deeper into the woods. "By God she was going to tell him who the father was or she would never give birth to this ill-gotten stigma", his mind raged to itself.
The snapping of branches and rustling of bushes changed his mind in a hurry as he left his Jenna crying in terror. While he ran stumbling over broken tree branches, he thanked God for sending someone into the woods. He was afraid of what he might have been capable of if he had remained with her another second.
Jenna looked at her mother rushing through the branches, she could feel the fright leaving her, until she saw the huge tree branch smashing down toward her. Her battered body was found by two school boys taking a short cut from school. As she was being rushed to the hospital she expelled her last breath. The infant gasped her first. Her little face as red as the ringlets that graced her tiny head. She had her mother's fiery red hair.
That night double tragedy visited that town. Jenna's father died of a massive heart attack.
The infant became a reminder to Grandma that she had committed the unpardonable. She believed the rumors about her husband and daughter. All she really remembered of that day was arriving back home from the woods all spattered and splashed with blood and the long echoed cry "WHY MOMMA WHY?" which followed her out of the woods. That lone cry haunted her every night in her dreams. She would wake up hearing "WHY MOMMA WHY?"
Months later a young man in a Navy Lieutenants uniform came to the door looking for Jenna, his sweetheart. His bright red hair glowed like a halo as he stood on the porch. It was only then she realized the grief she had brought upon herself. The whole grizzly scene rushed back as she stood staring at this young man. Above the terrible pain that engulfed her head, she heard again the anguished pleading "WHY MOMMA WHY?"
Two years later Ruby was given out for adoption to a young Navy Lieutenant and his wife. The same young man that stood dumbfounded as Jenna's mother grabbed her head and fell over dead. The cerebral hemorrhage had left poor Ruby an orphan.
Background by: Nancy
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