New York Times bestselling author Mary Monroe presents an unforgettable tale featuring the rebellious early years of Mama Ruby, the indomitable heroine of her acclaimed novel The Upper Room. Growing up in Shreveport, Louisiana, Ruby Jean Upshaw is the kind of girl who knows what she wants and knows how to get it.  By the time she's fifteen, Ruby has a taste for fast men and cheap liquor, and not even her preacher daddy can set her straight. Only Othella Mae Cartier, daughter of the town tramp, understands what makes Ruby tick. When Ruby discovers she's in the family way, she's scared for the first time in her life. After hiding her growing belly, Ruby secretly gives birth to a baby girl at Othella's house. Othella talks Ruby into giving the child away--and with the help of a shocking revelation, convinces Ruby to run off with her to New Orleans. But nothing can erase Ruby's memories of her child--or quell her simmering rage at Othella for persuading her to let her precious baby go.  Someday there will be a reckoning. And Othella will learn that no one knows how to exact revenge quite like Ruby Jean Upshaw.  .  . Mary Monroe , the daughter of sharecroppers, is the author of the award-winning and New York Times bestselling God series that includes God Don't Like Ugly and God Don't Make No Mistakes , among other novels. Winner of the AAMBC Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award and the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Award, Mary Monroe currently lives in Oakland, California, and loves to hear from her readers via e-mail at AuthorAuthor5409@aol.com. Visit Mary's website at MaryMonroe.org. MAMA RUBY By MARY MONROE DAFINA BOOKS Copyright © 2011 Mary Monroe All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-7582-3861-0 Chapter One Shreveport, Louisiana, 1934 Nobody ever had to tell Ruby Jean Upshaw that she was special, but she heard it from every member of her family, her father's congregation, her classmates, and even the people in her neighborhood almost every day. She was the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter. To some black folks, that was a very high position on the food chain. It meant that she had mystical abilities usually associated with biblical icons. But as a child, Ruby didn't care one way or the other about being "special" like that. She balked when people insisted that she'd eventually have "healing hands" and the ability to "predict the future" like other seventh daughters of seventh daughters. Ruby didn't care about healing anybody; that was God's job, and those snake oil salesmen who rolled through town from time to time. And she certainly didn't want to be telling anybody what the future held for them. Because if it was something bad, they didn't need to know, and she didn't want to know. The bottom line was—and she told a lot of people this when they brought it up—she didn't want those responsibilities. The last thing she needed cluttering up her life was a bunch of superstitious people taking up her time and drawing unwanted attention to her. Just being the daughter of a preacher was enough of a burden. And since Ruby was the youngest member of the Upshaw family, her parents watched her like a hawk and tried to monitor and control most of her activities. "Why do I have to go to church every Sunday?" she asked her mother one Sunday morning when she was just eight. "I want to have some fun!" "You go to church because you are supposed to, gal. How would it look to the rest of your papa's congregation if his own daughter don't come to church?" Ida Mae replied, giving Ruby a stern look. "Don't you want to be saved?" "Saved from what, Mama?" Ruby questioned, looking out the living room window at the kids across the street building a tent in their front yard. "Saved from the world, worldly ways. This planet is full of all kinds of pitfalls out there waitin' on a girl like you. Drinkin'. Men with more lust in their heads than brain matter. Violence. Loud music and sleazy outfits that would shock a harlot," Ida Mae answered. Ruby already knew all of that. From what she'd been able to determine, it was a lot more fun to be "worldly" than it was to be the way her parents wanted her to be. "I want to have some fun like the rest of the kids!" she said with a pout, knowing that she faced a no-win situation. Her parents' minds were as nimble as concrete. Once they laid down the rules for Ruby, there were no exceptions. "You can still have fun and keep yourself virtuous," her father insisted. "Me and Mother ain't makin' you do nothin' we didn't make your sisters do, and look how well they all turned out." Ruby pressed her lips together to keep from laughing. Before they got married, all six of her older sisters snuck out of the house at night, drank alcohol, slept with men, and wore clothes that would "shock a harlot." That was the life that Ruby thought she wanted, and she had already started on the journey that would lead her to a life of fun and frivolity. And as far as vi