The Notorious R(uth) B(arakat) G(rimaldi)

Chapter 21: What the Rain Brought

Dinner at Elliott's grandparents' house was about as painful as Ruthie had assumed it would be. Beginning with his grandfather asking if Ruthie knew what her blood breakdown was, it was one conversational landmine after another.

They were in the midst of eating meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and carrots, when he dropped this bomb. "So, Ruth, do you know your genetic ratio?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Ruthie asked, her fork half way to her mouth.

"Do you know how much of your blood is white, and how much is, uh, not white?" He looked at her with interest, gray eyes somehow looking watery and piercing at the same time.

"Uh, well, I don't usually think of it that way, since blood is just blood," Ruthie answered, trying to keep her voice steady. "I mean, if I cut myself, and you cut yourself, and we both bled on this pretty table cloth, you couldn't tell much based on the blood, you know?" She took a drink and cut her eyes over to Elliott, who smiled encouragingly. "Blood is just blood, and if you needed a transfusion or something, you could receive blood from a person of color with no adverse effects. I think you're talking about DNA, maybe?"

"Marty's never had a blood transfusion," his wife said quickly.

"But to answer your question," Ruthie continued, "my parents and I did do the genetic testing where you spit in the tube and mail it away, just for fun, and my ethnicity, which is what I think you're asking about, is a mixture of Scandinavian, Western European, indigenous South American, and sub-Saharan African."

"Was there more of one than the other?" Marty Nicholson asked.

Ruthie blinked at him. "They were in that order, the order I said," she told him.

"So the black part, the negro part, from Africa, the was the smallest amount of blood?" he persisted. He nodded as though that made sense.

Ruthie decided to let the whole "blood" vs. "DNA" thing go, as well as the word "negro" and just nodded.

Elliott looked at her, beautiful eyes full of apology.

"And when you say your parents, you mean the men you live with, the gay couple who adopted you?" Mrs. Nicholson asked.

Ruthie swallowed, and finally just nodded. "They're my parents, ma'am, the only parents I've ever had."

"But they're not really your parents, are they?" Shirley Nicholson insisted. "I mean, 'parents' means a mom and a dad, a man and a woman, joined in wedlock by our lord, like it says in the Bible."

"To me, parents are the people who care for you and raise you, love you and see you through to adulthood, and my dad and my pop are my parents," Ruthie replied. "I love them and they love me, and that's all that matters, I think." She thought a moment, then spoke again.

"First Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13, says,
So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Ruthie looked around the table, at the three looks of surprise, and smothered a smile. Elliott, in particular, was looking with eyes that held equal parts astonishment and admiration.

"Yes, well, the Bible also says that marriage is between a man and a woman, so there's that," Mrs. Nicholson said.

Ruthie recognized when trouble was coming her way, and she knew better than to engage people of another generation and way of thinking in an argument in their own home. It served no purpose, it was rude, and it could have bad consequences for Elliott.

She quickly wiped her mouth and rose to clear her plate. She began speaking even before she re-entered the dining room.

"You know, I'm so sorry, but I have to go," she told Mr. and Mrs. Nicholson. "I have so much homework tonight, and my parents would only let me come if I promised I wouldn't be gone longer than two hours, and that I'd be home by seven."