The feral foxes owed their life to Miss May Belle as if she was their own mama, for word was they were not foxes at all but the departed souls of used-to-be human beings, and Miss May Belle had given the dead a kind of immortality by hiding them at the edge of Marse Charles’s land. In return they were her sharp eyes, her keen ears. Her survival.
Rue could not have said one way or another how far reaching Miss May Belle’s hoodoo reigned. To Rue her mama was always a mystery; in all things great and small, she showed her magic as mamas do, with their knowing. Miss May Belle had a way of anticipating what trouble Rue would find herself in before Rue had even devised the trouble itself.
Trouble usually meant Varina, who often rebelled against her white girlhood and needed always an accomplice to witness her rebellion. That long last summer before the war came upon them, while the white adults fretted and the black adults labored, Varina ran half wild and took Rue running with her.
One particular high noon, they would make their way, without even having to agree upon it aloud, to their usual place by the creek. They ran despite the weight of the heat, trying to catch the wind with their speed; and running behind her on the narrow path, Rue had the pleasure of watching a number of Varina’s ribbons come streaming off her curls and getting tangled up in high branches.
Varina reached the shed first and declared herself the winner in a race Rue hadn’t known they were having. Then Varina, her cheeks still spotted pink, lay herself down on the grass and in one inelegant swoop divested herself of her calico dress and tugged her lace bloomers down to her ankles so that she sat in only her frilled white chemise, bare-bottomed and unashamed.
She said, “This time you can be Miss May Belle.”
They had many fights about this very thing, who got to be the mama and who got to be the healing woman, so that most of their games ended in tears, and for a moment Rue hesitated, wondering what Varina was wanting from her to be so suddenly kind, allowing her to be Miss May Belle.
Before her mind could change, Rue put her hands on Varina’s pale legs, examining as she had watched her mama examine, gently parting the skin between Varina’s legs, which at first was smooth but prickled up to gooseflesh at her touch. Varina leaned back on her elbows and watched Rue as she did this, not closing her eyes as Rue sometimes did when she was pretending to be the mama. Instead Varina was following Rue’s every movement with those blue eyes, which had turned a dull, still-water color in the shade.
“It ain’t time yet,” Rue said and took her fingers away.
“It is time,” Varina spread her legs wider, which was not how the game was meant to be played. The mama was meant to just lie there and wait.
Rue thought about arguing this; she was the one who had taught Varina the game and so best knew the rules. She was the one whose mama was magic.
“It’s time,” Rue agreed instead, placing both of her hands on Varina’s mound, drawing her open with her thumbs.
“It’s a big ’un,” Rue proclaimed, imagining a baby with black skin and red, red hair.
“I’m so very happy,” said Varina.
“What you gon’ name him?”
“It ain’t a him.” When Varina was the mama all of her babies were girls, and Rue had explained again and again that it was not the mama that got to pick.
“It’s a boy,” Rue insisted.
Varina growled, or so Rue thought, the sound seemed so loud in her ear. Then she heard grass and twigs crunching underfoot and she pulled away as quick as she could, certain Varina’s nurse had come over from the House and was about to catch them at something she would not like to see.
Varina crawled on hands and knees through the grass to reach out for her discarded dress, and so when