’em for Mama,” Bean said.
Rue looked closer. She saw what Bean had gathered, leaves and stems of various uses, heaped together by type and color and shape, things he’d seen her bring to Sarah over the months. He’d gone and got them himself.
“Let me see you.” She pulled him into her lap and he didn’t squirm but let her look him over, his hands down to his legs. She had a fear that he’d troubled into some poison while he foraged. He didn’t know what to avoid. But as Rue looked at the uneven crag of his skin she saw that there was not a scratch on him.
“How’d you do all that?”
He shrugged, a warm easy weight in her arms.
“I watch you,” he said.
What else did he know? What else had he seen but every little thing they’d all done up to now, every lie and hid truth? Every sickness and every worship. Bean with his big, smart watchful eyes.
He let himself be cuddled closer and Rue rubbed her face in the thread of his hair. An oiled-leather brown, so much like Bruh Abel’s. Why hadn’t she seen it? She’d never bothered to look past his eyes.
“And she helped me some,” Bean admitted, like he wasn’t really wanting to share the credit. “Auntie V. She nice.”
“You friendly with her, ain’t you?”
“Sure. I like her plenty. She look like Mama.”
Rue squeezed him in her arms like to say sorry with her squeezing. It was folly to think that she was the only one that had ever had any secrets.
Bean told her of the woman who’d let him call her “Auntie V,” how she’d been kind to him and spoke to him and kept him safe from the white demons riding through, and as he told it Rue settled it all in her mind, muddled together a bittersweet solution but a solution all the same.
“Yo’ mama gon’ be alright,” she said to Bean.
“How you know?”
“?’Cause I’m gon’ stay here. I’m gon’ watch for you.”
“Miss Rue? Where am I goin’?” he had the sense to ask.
* * *
—
Rue told Bean a story to remember her by. It was what Miss May Belle would have done, she reckoned.
This is a story, she said, of how Bruh Rabbit done fooled God. He went up to the sky, straight up to God, and said, God, I’mma bring you one hundred slaves and all you need give me to do it is one kernel of corn. God laughed. Said, you can’t make one hundred slaves out of a kernel, but he gave the seed to Bruh Rabbit anyway just to see what would happen.
Well, Bruh Rabbit took that seed and he planted it and it did grow up into a mighty cornstalk, and when it had grown tall he picked the ear and traveled on to the next town over. There Bruh Rabbit begged a room, told the innkeeper, this here corn is special. This is God’s corn. Don’t let no harm come to it. But Bruh Rabbit was clever. In the middle of the night he hopped out to where he’d left the corn and he plucked every kernel from it and, unseen, took himself back to bed.
Come the morning he pretended like he didn’t know nothin’ ’bout it. Screamed to the townspeople, some chicken must’ve ate God’s corn. You best replace it or you’ll be sorry. Afeared of God’s wrath the townsfolk gave to him the chicken they thought must have done the eating.
Now he took the chicken on to the next town. Told the folks there, this here is God’s chicken. Don’t let no harm come to it. But in the night he crept to it and killed that chicken also. And when morning come he hollered at the people, said, that’s God chicken. You best replace it. Just then some workers passed by carting after them dead bodies fresh from the war. So Bruh Rabbit took himself the littlest amongst them as payment and went on to the next town.
There he dressed up the body like