real. She waxed and waned in each story, first kind then cruel, first brilliant then flawed. Rue had it hard enough trying to believe him. So why did he keep trying to pile on more lies?
She wanted to take herself to the field, told Bruh Abel she was going to go look for some sort of quiet and he ought not to follow her. He didn’t want to let her go off alone, that much she could tell from the way his eyes roved over her. He was trying to figure if she could be trusted by herself.
“Stay here,” he said.
He blamed it on the danger that was thrumming through the town, the fear of the newly come whites lurking around, scheming to take their Promised Land, looking vengeful of it. But Rue knew what Bruh Abel was fearing. Rue’s worst threats had always come from within her own self. She could find death in the weeds. It had always impressed her how many things could harm you just by being eaten wrongly. How many things could kill.
“It’s the plant’s defense against predators,” Miss May Belle had explained once. That answer didn’t satisfy.
“It’s too late to be poison,” Rue had argued. “If you already bein’ eaten.”
Miss May Belle had laughed at that and said no more.
Rue was not even shamed by the thought that occurred to her, which was to put Bruh Abel to sleep so she could slip free of him. She could give him something she could trust in. Lavender or valerian or lemon balm; she mixed a poison for him in her head. In the end he did it to himself. He placed the bottle of label-less liquor on the table between them as though it were a solution.
“Drink,” he said. Maybe his mind was working the same way hers was. Thinking near fondly on the time he’d first wiled his way into her home. She had meant to slip free of him then in much the same way but couldn’t work it. She had tried to trick him and he had tried to trick her and the two of them had known each other for what they were. Liars. She could’ve almost felt nostalgic after it, if it hadn’t all ended up so bitter.
Rue got up from the table. Fetched two cups and ignored the pull of the stitches on her stomach as she moved. The ache of the healing wound centered from the deep cut where Bruh Abel had told her they’d taken her baby out. She didn’t like to think on it, being laid open by the Quaker doctor. It didn’t bear thinking about.
Rue set the cups down hard on the table in front of Bruh Abel.
Miss May Belle had used to say that you ought to pour in drink if you wanted to pour out truth. So, his cup she filled to near the brim and did the same to her own.
He took a sip and she watched to see that he swallowed it. She sipped, and he did the same. They watched each other, wary as any two creatures that knew they were well matched.
“Queenie lost her last child,” he said.
It wasn’t like Bruh Abel to start one of his tales in such an unfanciful way, to lay down the bare bones of a thing without a careful, purposeful arrangement of false skin to dress it up. No preamble here, no magic.
“I thought you was her last.”
He shook his head. Rue took a sip and listened.
“Was after me. I was little then. I watched, though I wasn’t supposed to. No men in the birthin’ room was what folks used to say back then.”
“Bad luck.” Rue touched her stomach. Sipped. That wasn’t true. It was just something folks said. Something Miss May Belle had used to say: “Where d’you think Adam was when Eve brung out Cain and Abel?”
“I was scared,” Bruh Abel said.
She blinked at him. For a moment she forgot what time he was speaking on. She was all mixed up; the present was the past come again.