so she was just left to sharp, angular bone. Sealed up cuts and scabbed over hurts. There was a chipped tooth far enough back in her mouth to not change her smile, unless she smiled real wide. All of it superficial, save the patch of her scalp where Marse Charles had pulled the hair clear out of her head. It was tiny, barely even there, Rue had assured her mama. It was star-shaped. Fist-shaped, Rue realized after. It didn’t grow back, never would, but it was easily brushed over.
Why couldn’t she magic her way out of that jail was what Rue kept wondering. A deep resentful hurt centered in her like a pit in fruit. If Miss May Belle was as powerful as folks would have you think, so mysterious, so feared, couldn’t she free herself, or feed herself, turn the ground seepage in that dank cell, water to wine, hoodoo herself into one of them little fleas that had left hard red welt bites on her skin and hop on out?
Miss May Belle was still scrubbing at the balustrade when Rue came out from the House, and Rue felt her mama tracking her from deep within sunken eyes as she went past. If Marse Charles’s punishment had been meant to make the slave woman obedient, then it had failed. Instead she was all the more outcast, all the more feral. And Rue always became what her mama was.
* * *
—
Rue had never had any intention of asking Miss May Belle after a way to darken Varina’s hair. It was just that Varina could not be pleased. First Rue returned with a poultice of nettle and sage, and Varina did not fancy the color the leaf skins would make. Next Rue returned with tea, steeped to black as ink, but Varina had turned up her nose at the smell. The cure Rue returned with last was a pleasing amber-brown liquid she knew that Varina would take to, the darkness in it likely to bring out her light.
“There isn’t very much,” Varina complained when Rue showed the small bowl to her. “Do you think it’s enough?”
Rue could see in Sarah’s eyes that she recognized the stuff where Varina didn’t. There was a hard-questioning look to Sarah’s face, but she stayed stiff-lipped and mute. Who knew? Maybe Sarah was feeling just as vengeful against Varina as Rue was. Perhaps they could be vengeful together. Rue turned the bowl, roiling the liquid enticingly so it would not begin to settle.
“It’s enough to work,” Rue said. “Color’s like to bring out your eyes.”
“Alright then,” said Varina, ever easy and trusting.
It wasn’t that Rue blamed Varina for what her daddy had done to Miss May Belle. Rue didn’t believe hating was transferable. But it awed her that Varina had never in her life had any reason to be distrustful of anything handed to her, even by Miss May Belle or Rue. Never thought that she could be hated for no reason, or for the simple reason of existing. The sweet smell of the gummy resin wafted up between them. Varina had not a clue and Sarah said not a word. Rue kept on turning the bowl in her hands, roiling the brown liquid. Soon it would start to set, harden; it would give the trick away.
Varina sat on her stool inspecting her hair, her nose almost up to the glass, curling a strand and uncurling it around her finger like something were going to change if she kept doing so.
“Try it on her first,” Varina said, gesturing at Sarah.
Sarah and Rue looked at each other. Open-mouthed.
“Ain’t enough for both,” Rue said.
“So y’all will go out and fetch more. But I’d like to see how it’s lookin’. We got close kinds a’ hair.”
It was true. Varina and Sarah were similar, especially sitting together like that in front of Rue. Both thin and drawn and pretty, pug-nosed and curly-headed; the only difference in them was a matter of wording. Varina’s ringlets were red. Sarah’s nappy curls were rust. Sarah, there holding the little mirror, was holding a different version of herself in the glass, or so it seemed to Rue, a different kind of