“That one?” Ma Doe’s voice trembled, also. “That one says ‘love.’?”
“It’s so small.” Rue’s hand, which ached from holding Ma’s still, went straight to her belly in wonder. “?‘Love.’?”
* * *
—
There were a thousand different ways to love somebody. But Rue still hadn’t settled on which was the one Bruh Abel was needing. They’d never made promises. She did not know where he slept when he did not sleep with her, and she did not want to know. But with her stomach growing fat he’d been lured into her bed every night, and despite herself she made room for him.
After their lovemaking he was bound for his tent. He climbed up and out from their bed, put on his suit with quick, well-practiced movements, always did it the same way, dressed himself pants first, regimented, like if the day called for it he could go just like that, running at a moment’s notice.
“You comin’ to hear the sermon?”
Still naked, sheet tangled, Rue thought about saying no. She hadn’t grown used to the tent, probably never would like it, and liked less the fervor that folks felt for Bruh Abel. The way Bean paraded down the aisle at the end of each service like some kind of finale.
“You comin’, Rue?”
Rubbing at the small, hard peak of her belly, she said, “If you want me.”
Sarah had set herself up singing, formed a little choir who wound their music around the shape of Bruh Abel’s sermonizing. Charlie Blacksmith was forging horseshoes by the dozen for weary travelers come at the end of their long journey from there to here. Dinah made big quilts stuffed thick with Spanish moss, a dollar a piece for any one of her woven stories. Li’l Sylvia sold ashcakes, honey sweet, a secret recipe passed down from her mama. Ma Doe had spread her schoolhouse between two cabins, employed the knowledge of newcomer women with Northern book-learning, and everywhere the children were beginning to scratch out their letters and numbers too, easy as if they’d always known them. They had all grown prosperous, as Bruh Abel had always said they would. Sarah’s choir sung on the subject of prosperity this day. They stood on three-tiered risers, wore long gowns in baptism white. They bellowed it—Sarah, as always chief among them and tallest, proclaiming “This is the day the Lord has made.”
Bruh Abel strutted over to the choir in step to the enabling mhmm-ing of his audience. Rue watched as he caught eyes with Sarah, the choirmaster of her own creation. Was there a wink passed there that Sarah caught and received as a signal to start singing? He looked up at her on the riser like she was the only one he was talking to, a whisper for her ear: “What y’all go out to the wilderness to see? This here a prophet.”
The choir burst into praising ol’ John the Divine. It was a good old-fashioned, foot-stomping tune, like to get you picking cotton faster. But just as Bruh Abel stepped away from her, Sarah’s knees began to buckle and sway, and the choir, thinking she’d been took by the spirit, sang louder. Rue watched as Sarah drew in breath but no sound came out. She crumpled and fell, hitting against each tier on the way down.
* * *
—
Sarah was pregnant.
“You needa rest up,” Rue told her. In the new world that they’d made, maybe a black woman could afford a little rest for her own sake. “Stay in bed.”
Bruh Abel carried Sarah all the way to that bed and laid her down in it.
“When’s Jonah due back?” he asked and propped her pillow. Rue looked on, wary.
Sarah, still faint, could barely shake her head without making herself dizzy. “Inside a month or so. But just as soon as that he’ll be off again.”
“He’s a good man,” Bruh Abel offered.
“You go on back, tell ’em Sarah’s just fine,” Rue told him. Bruh Abel turned to her, seemed to see her and her belly for the first time.