it had, the way the men shivered and stepped back afeared of the House as if she’d painted a curse on it, and in a way she had, the conjure of contagion. The only course they had was fire, that one true final cure.
* * *
—
The crackling, popping, hissing of the House going up in flames seemed to speak to the slavefolk in a forgotten language they hadn’t known they’d lost. When they heard it talking they came out of their quarters, out from by the river, out from the cotton fields, to hear what the fire had to say, to watch it devour all they’d known, turn that white House black, sunder it all to a thin windswept ash. When it had eaten up all it could, the fire, still hungry, went after the trees.
Miss May Belle came out amongst the gathered people, strange and stumbling in the light, like somebody just drawn out from the depths of a cave. Rue ran to her, wanted to whisper to only her mama the truth of what she’d done. Let the rest of them mourn after Miss Varina or dance on her grave if they liked. Rue held the truth of her trick to her like treasure. The key was in her pocket.
But when Rue reached her mama the woman was not smiling; instead she was collapsing, falling like her knees were where the fire was, all her bones popping and snapping.
Rue held her mama, hugged at her, tried to understand where her grief came from. Miss May Belle was pointing at the trees, to one in particular, a tall white birch where the flames had caught the very top, blazed all orange like a new type of leaf.
“My man,” Miss May Belle cried. “My man. Lord, Rue, what you done? Ain’t you know I made him safe? Ain’t you know I turnt him to a tree?”
EXODUS
“You wanna see her ’fore you go?”
“You think there’s time?”
Rue did not.
“You think she mine?” Bruh Abel said “she” because Rue had said “she.” There was really no telling what a baby meant to be ’til it had come.
“Don’t you know?”
“Even Adam wasn’t sure a’ Eve an’ they was the only two in the garden.”
Save the snake. Rue shrugged. “Won’t know ’til she come out. An’ even then.” Even then.
Bruh Abel smelled of his faith, the bold, beautiful kerosene lights that illuminated his church’s tent like a lone star in the night sky. Did the moon see it and envy? Most likely, and if it did not, he’d only go on and build that light bigger. The scent of the burning oil clung to his clothes, traveling clothes of a type Rue’d never seen him in. Unadorned and ordinary, they fit close to his lithe body like extra skin. Running clothes.
“It was done with long ago, me an’ Sarah was. Rue, I swear it.”
Rue had never asked him to swear. And maybe that had been her failing. She didn’t know how to ask. Or how to believe.
They were in the front room of Sarah’s house, looking on water boiling in a pot. When it was time to go Bruh Abel had nothing with him but the tied-up bundle of his suit wrapped around his Bible and whatever he could hold in its smaller pockets, as if he’d accumulated nothing in all those years. That couldn’t at all be true. Rue kissed him while the water bubbled and popped and hissed.
Their plan, like all the plans they’d ever formed together in the rut of their shared bed, between the optimism of flesh to flesh, was simple. Bruh Abel would lead his people out in the early threads of morning light, march sure through the gathered dew, wind up northward, away from the legacy of danger, all of them that wanted gone, going together. Those that would stay would stay, the old, the infirm, those tied to the land they found too beloved to leave, it being theirs by bitter rights, a home where they’d sweated and bled and lost as much as it was a place they’d planted seeds and watched things flourish. Miss