said. “What if it’s all empty air what Bruh Abel speaks on and seems to do?”
Jonah shrugged. “Seems to me if faith was tangible it wouldn’t be faith, would it?” He surprised Rue, reached out and touched her cheek like he was soaking up a tear that wasn’t there. His touch was so gentle it startled her.
“What he makes folks feel is real, ain’t it? You’d know that, if you went to pray with us.”
Rue turned her head away from Jonah’s palm, buried her face in Bean’s soft brown hair so she wouldn’t have to look at Jonah and show him her hurt, or her wanting.
“?’Llow me to fix you supper,” he said.
Jonah served up dried fish stew on a tin plate. The food was still warm from when Sarah had made it earlier. Rue wondered if Jonah had caught the fish himself out there on one of his working trips on the docks of white men’s boats, reeling in catches for them. Rue liked to think that he had. She motioned for him to eat along with her, both of them head bent over the steaming plate.
Bean grew restless in Rue’s lap, leaned across the table, curious of the food. She pulled him close to her chest, fed him fingerfuls of corn mush off her plate. Bean gnawed at her fingers, sweet as any teething child. Why were folks so quick to heap their fear and foreboding upon him?
“I’d like to see after him, your Bean,” she said, “to make sure he come up right.” She did not know why she said it, only that she felt worry for the boy as much as she felt a kinship for him. It seemed right to promise it there in the quiet still of Jonah’s home, her belly filling up warm with his easy kindness. What else could she give Jonah but that? Women’s work, he’d called it. Rue wanted to prove herself worth much more.
She could smell Jonah this close. Scented of malt and of hay. He laid a hand atop hers, seemed to study her awhile. He nodded, maybe in acceptance of what she’d offered, but when he finally spoke he said, “Bean’s to be baptized soon. Bruh Abel promised.”
She thought again of the weak baby Si who had lived and died before Bruh Abel could make a spectacle of him. She had to wonder, if Si had lived would Bean now be saved from all this high-mindedness? Wasn’t he just a child? He felt like one. Safe in her arms, he was banging at the supper table, amusing himself like any baby would with the discovery of his growing strength. But his arms did bare that strange hexagonal pattern, like the surface of a bee’s hive, and that skin all over was sickly pale. And the eyes. Rue looked from Bean to Jonah.
Jonah spoke softly, so soft Rue had to lean in to hear. He said, “I want Bean to be saved.”
“Yes.” Rue was watching Jonah’s lips. “So do I.”
The sound of the front door hitting the clapboard startled them apart. Three sharp footfalls and there was Sarah in the doorway. Long and thin, willow reed in coloring and in ease, Sarah seemed to mold herself to the doorjamb. She looked at Rue and Jonah and Bean through slant eyes, like there was something about them to see if only she could squint harder.
Rue stood from the table, jarring Bean suddenly. He let out a low of displeasure. She clutched him closer, like a thief hiding behind the very thing they meant to steal.
“Sarah. We was waitin’ on you,” Jonah said. “Rue wished to speak to you on some matter.”
“Evenin’, Sarah.”
“Miss Rue.” Perhaps the address galled Sarah, for she said it in a bite. After all, they were near the same age and yet so different.
“I’ll let you two get on.” Jonah took Bean from Rue’s hands, but Bean struggled to stay with her. He cried out to her like to break her heart. Jonah took him into the next room, deeper into the dark of the house.
“If we talkin’ let’s do it outside,” Sarah said.