his own daughter, to his own land.
I’m always free to leave, you see, to run away in my mind. And every time Marse Charles touches me, in my head I am gone. I go and meet my man by the river. In my freedom, I make it daytime ’cause I love to see his body in that light with no fear of being seen or found out or stolen back again. We can love in the daytime, take every moment the sun has to give, pull off all our clothes, no sinful shucking up of dresses here, Lord no, we can know each other like man and wife do, stretched out beneath the trees. And I can touch every inch of my man, claim him, even the sweat behind his kneecaps is mine, the small seashell curve of his ear or the field of his back, timber brown and rippling with muscle but here in my mind, and here only, he is unblemished, unscarred, unhurt. I can howl at the thrill of loving him and him me, and when we’re done we can wash each other clean in the river, safe with the feeling that the rocks under our toes are as steady as the shore.
“Belle,” he say and I flinch away because my man doesn’t never call me that, not here, not anywhere.
“Shh,” I say to him. I press my finger on his lips. The water moves around my waist and his arms snake up around my neck. I can feel the slow, steady lacing of his fingers against my spine, slipping against the wet. North is the way the river flows here and it could sweep us away if I let it.
“I love you, Belle,” he say.
And I say, “Hush, hush,” because in my mind I’m only May. And my man’s hands break free of my neck and different hands appear.
Marse Charles’s voice breaks into my mind, says, “Do what I tol’ you now, Belle,” and he grabs roughly onto my face, his fingers dig deep into my cheekbones like as if they wish to rip them out. And he has me again, there in the moonlight and the worst of it, the very worst of it is, beneath all of it is the stench of his white fingers that smell so hotly of bacon grease. Even my springtime river can’t wash that stink away.
* * *
—
Marse Charles goes his way and I go mine.
In the bed my girl is safe, hasn’t even rolled over. I love her so, love how dark she is like her daddy. I lay down beside her hardly rippling her sleep. I shouldn’t have had her, but I did. Kept her hid no matter how big she grew in my belly, and when it was time for her to come on out I stole away to a clearing in the woods and birthed her all by my lonesome.
I tell that tale all the time, about how I brung my own baby out into the world alone. But I ain’t never tell it true. For if my Rue-baby had been born into this cruel life half-black, half–Marse Charles’s child, I would have dashed her head in on the rocks myself.
“Rue-baby,” I say to my sweet dozing child. Almost a woman grown. “Rue. You listenin’?”
Sleepy and slow her voice comes out like it had far to travel.
“Yes, Mama?” she say.
EXODUS
“It’s almost time,” Sarah said.
Over the top of her pregnant belly, she stared blearily as Rue looked her over.
“Oh, we got a while yet.”
In the front room of Sarah’s cabin Rue settled in, Bean right beside her. She looked around regretfully at the empty house. Jonah had took up his things and left, chasing prosperity up north, and there were empty places on the walls where a man’s belongings used to hang. His hat. His axe. The painted walls had not faded even, left outlines of what wasn’t there.
She sat herself down at the table where she saw there were leaves spread in orderly lines like they were marching in. She recognized their various patterns.
“What’s all this?”
“I got