Exploring: The Upper Room by Mary Monroe

I first read The Upper Room in high school and remember ending the book feeling confused. Sure, I comprehended every word and read every thoughtfully crafted sentence and chapter, but I still felt like I hadn't even touched the surface of understanding the story. There was more, a message perhaps that if I went back and reread, I would probably get, but I had other books to move on to so that was the last of The Upper Room for me.

While going through unpacked boxes from my recent move the other day, I came across The Upper Room. My first instinct was to toss it aside and find Avatar, since that was what I was looking for. And I almost did, but then it struck me, that odd, old feeling that I had upon first finishing the book almost 10 years ago, that there was something more to the story than I originally took from it. So I set it aside for later reading.

Last night, I finished The Upper Room and was left troubled. These characters, who had been written with such care and attention to detail, this story that was so vivid and lively, left me, well, empty.

I fell asleep thinking about the book and still searching for the greater meaning. I mean, with a story as depressing as The Upper Room was, there had to be a reason to the rhyme, right?

Maybe, maybe not.

Warning: Since this an Exploring topic and not a Review, there will be spoilers included in the discussion.

Set in the mid 1960's, The Upper Room tells the story of Maureen growing up with a mother like Mama Ruby. Mama Ruby is a huge woman, described a morbidly obese. The floor is said to shake when she walks across it. In a descriptive passage where Ruby is being assisted by her 11 year old son, Virgil, off of the couch, she is described in such a way:

Ruby set the empty beer can on the floor and rose up from the sofa with great difficulty. Virgil ran across the room to assist her. He grabbed her arm to steady her, almost falling himself, for even with years of practice, balancing this elephantine woman was no easy feat. The boy's arms ached and he gasped.

Not only is Ruby a large presence physically, she's also a strong willed woman who is more likely to break a person in half before she bends to their demand. Ruby uses her belief in God as a crutch to not only herself but to those around her. She reasons her most heinous acts away with religion. The one thing she doesn't reason away is her problem with alcohol. Instead when she is asked by her best friend if the devil is the reason she drinks so much, Ruby frankly says no, that she is just an alcoholic with no one to blame but herself.

That is the one bit of self awareness Ruby shares with the reader throughout the whole story. She is otherwise, a highly enigmatic presence who is somehow able to rally the people of the town of Goons around her in both fear and admiration, maybe a little awe, too. It is almost sad to see how easily Ruby's neighbors are swayed by her. They do her bidding, worship her, and believe that she is the be all that in all in their small town. It seems that no one wants to point out to Ruby her many wrongs, instead pretending like they never happen or simply whispering about them behind her back. The one person who does, her son Virgil, either gets hit or Ruby reasons with him that everything is Gods doing.

He may be the one person who truly sees Ruby for who she is and yet he is still under her spell, which is understandable, she is his mother after all. Virgil knows all of her secrets. From the people she's killed and buried in the hot Florida swamps, to in Ruby's mind, her most deceitful crime, stealing her best friends infant child and raising the baby girl as her own.

Maureen was thought to be born dead. Ruby helped deliver her to her best friend since childhood, Othella, and when Maureen entered the world without a sound or a movement, both women believed her to be stillborn. Ruby was in charge of having the child buried but when she left Othella's place and got back to her own, the baby came to life. Instead of taking Maureen back to Othella, Ruby decided to keep her as her own because she always wanted a baby girl and this one looked just like the baby she had envisioned: Brown and dimpled with thick, jet black hair. Ruby could not give her up even with Virgil prompting her to. Instead Ruby took Virgil and infant Maureen and skipped town to Goons, Florida where she found a house with just one room upstairs that would be Maureen's.

Maureen spends her whole childhood under Ruby's watchful eye and thumb. She is treated as Ruby's prized possession. As child, she basks in that attention, knowing that she has Ruby as her protector gets her just about anything she could want. As she gets older, her thinking changes some. She begins to see Ruby as less of a magnificent figure and more as someone who is simply feared. She begins to realize that the so called respect that the townspeople have for Ruby is more fear than anything else. Maureen dreams of leaving Ruby and a few times tries to leave but she never gets far. Unlike Virgil who was able to get away due to the war, Maureen is truly stuck, more mentally than physically, but stuck just the same.

It takes a tragedy that shakes Maureen to the core to get her out from Ruby's rule and even then she is still not free.

Ruby is this great, larger than life figure in She almost seems unbeatable. She does what she wants an is never punished for it. Throughout the book, I kept waiting for Ruby to get what was coming for her and when it seemed like it was coming in the form of Othella, that went sour. In fact, that ended on such a bitter note, I almost stopped reading. The book was filled with happenings that went beyond real into the supernatural. Ruby ripping a man's arm clean off. Her ability to be stabbed in the chest multiple times and not flinch, then go on to choke someone off their feet. The way people went missing around her, never to be seen again. No one seemed bothered by any of these occurrences, the whole town was so utterly fearful of her that no one questioned a thing.

I don't know if one could truly be satisfied with the ending of this book. Maureen never finds out who she really is, who her real mother was. Instead, she is left believing that Othella was just a crazy woman who got what was coming to her for messing with Mama Ruby. Virgil, even though it seems that he wants to tell her or someone the truth, chickens out and never does.

I was left wondering if Ruby ever got her comeuppance. I guess if I look at Maureen finally leaving her as a punishment, then maybe she did? But since Ruby never thought that she had done wrong, even when she clearly had, then was that even a punishment? Not really, when she made it all about Maureen who had in some way done her wrong by leaving.

In the story, we never see Maureen recover from being Mama Ruby's prized child. Though the story is left on a note of promise of something new for Maureen, as a reader I'm not sure if Maureen could ever be truly be free of Ruby. Physically, yes, but mentally, Ruby was there to stay. You wonder how Maureen's life would have been different if she'd been raised by Othella, but then in some twisted fashion, because of what happened to Othella's other kids, you are almost happy that she hadn't been, because what if?

The Upper Room was truly a fascinating story about a sick minded woman and her daughter, Maureen. On the surface, it is interesting, well written, funny and full of wit. It's only when you dig a little deeper does it become something less than savory, a little bit miserable, and wholly unfulfilling.

Note: The Upper Room was originally published in 1985, yet doesn't feel dated in writing style. The prequel, Mama Ruby, was released July of this year. I may pick it up to garner a better understanding of the abominable Ruby. Maybe it will put The Upper Room in a new perspective. I can only hope.