their old mistress had been living amongst them hidden, trapped away thinking the war still raged. For that Rue was thankful, but now she had a favor to ask. She started off light, asked him about where he’d been when he’d been away, the things he’d seen and the money he’d made. Jonah talked between gasps as she looked him over, giving her the bare bones of a scheme he’d heard tell of in a Northern city.
“I’m of a mind to go back and take it up, permanent-like,” Jonah said. “That’s what I heard from the other men too. That it ain’t safe here and ain’t gon’ never be. You right, Miss Rue, they won’t never let us rest. Now more than ever.”
Rue didn’t disagree with him. Men were not trees, she knew, black men especially; it had always been dangerous for them to take root.
“Sarah’s too far along to travel safely,” Rue said.
In truth Rue had been neglecting Sarah, who had not had an easy time the whole length of this pregnancy. But even with the mama’s suffering, the baby in her still thrived and Rue couldn’t help thinking it was the most unfair thing she’d ever seen. That woman’s big, proud high-yellow belly. To have another baby when Sarah had never claimed her last baby rightly, had wanted to cast Bean out if it came to it.
Would this baby have skin like scales too? As Bean did. As Posy might’ve.
“I’ll send for Sarah after,” Jonah said. He hadn’t quite said it in a way that Rue believed. But Jonah had always been the good kind. She had to hope, and this was her chance.
She said, “When you leave you oughta take Bean with you.”
“I can’t do that.” His answer came calm as a windless sea. “As I see it they ain’t mine to take.”
Rue was bracing to tell him, figuring how to put into words what she knew about Sarah and Bruh Abel. It was the same truth that she’d had such a difficult time telling for herself. Because beneath the shock of their hoodwink was the low-down hurt of an infidelity. It was base and it made Rue angrier to think on. That she had expected any different when she had named Bruh Abel as a liar with lies in her mouth also. And laid down with him just the same. It was the least original of all sinning.
But Jonah was leaning toward Rue, straining across the table, coming so close she thought he meant to kiss her. He said in her ear, “Miss Rue. You know ain’t none of ’em mine.” She pulled away from him like he’d scorched her. Busied herself on the other side of the room pretending she was gathering up healing things. More so she was gathering up her wits. None of them children were his?
Rue tried to figure the times that Jonah had traveled away, count up the years that Bruh Abel had been amongst their town, and came up empty. There was no way of knowing, was there, for Bruh Abel had come like a thief in the night and made a fool of them, and of Rue most of all for thinking that her trickery was the only trickery that mattered.
“Cold hands,” Jonah murmured when Rue brought herself back to him. He was smiling even with his teeth gritted and there was a fond haziness to his eyes. Dark eyes, she reminded herself, dark as any she’d seen, true black African eyes. But Jonah’s eyes had never been as dark as Bean’s.
She’d heated a knife ’til it glowed the hot red she liked. She undid Jonah’s belt without asking him, pulled it free of his belt loops in a fluid tug and handed it back to him, said, “Bite down.”
He looked like a warhorse with a bridle. She surveyed the wound again on his leg, like a general taking in the land and how it lay. She eyed his pant leg and didn’t hesitate.
“I’ll be needing to cut the fabric away.”
He didn’t hesitate either. “Go ’head,” he said and he didn’t even remove the belt from his mouth but balanced it on his