the way she owned her place and lived it, whisperings be damned. ’Til Bruh Abel set on her.
When Bruh Abel came into town he took up quarters where he could, expecting a bed and finding a different one weekly or even nightly in the houses of the most devout. Opal kept him for three days, and on the third day she shrugged off her wickedness and was reborn.
“I’m just tired,” Opal had said and maybe that wouldn’t have been enough repentance for most preachers for a lifetime of wild lusting, but it was enough for Bruh Abel.
He did it in the square, in the center of the cross that was their town. Someone had brought out a stool, so Opal sat with her feet hovering over the bucket, her toes twitching above the water in spasms of virgin hesitation.
“Like this?” she asked, but already Bruh Abel was rolling up his sleeves.
Rue wouldn’t have watched except that she was already at Ma Doe’s, bringing a new pouch of herbs to wrap around the superstitious old woman’s neck.
“All of this carryin’ on. I liked the old prayin’,” Ma Doe had said. “?’Twas quiet.”
But same as everyone Ma Doe went out to her porch to have a look at Bruh Abel, whose preaching she didn’t often get to witness, the river being too far for her rheumatic knees to take her. Today Bruh Abel had brought the river to them, by the sloshing bucketful, and had placed it at Opal’s feet.
Easing herself down into her rocking chair, Ma Doe nodded appreciatively. “He is fine lookin’,” she said to Rue. “Who on earth wants an ugly preacher?”
This day Bruh Abel’s expression was closed off and serious as though there was great focus required in washing a whore’s feet. Opal had her skirt tucked up beneath her knees. Bruh Abel knelt before her and took both of her arches in his two hands and lowered her feet into the bucket. He had a small chipped cup that he dipped into the water between her legs, and he drew up a cupful and poured it onto one foot. Bruh Abel switched to the other foot, again pouring a stream of water as he held on to her heel, leaned forward, and placed a kiss between her biggest toe and its smaller partner. He held his lips there for a long reverent while.
* * *
—
Ma Doe drew Rue into her empty cabin with no more than a sly cant of her head.
No children in there. Rue flinched away her foreboding.
“I’ve had news from up north,” Ma Doe said.
She settled herself down behind the desk that had used to belong to Marse Charles. They’d only just rescued it from the fire that had destroyed the House. Now it dominated Ma Doe’s schoolroom, a burnt-out treasure chest that held their secrets. Ma Doe’s arthritic fingers turned the brass key and from one locked drawer she pulled out a letter, still in its envelope, and held it up to Rue. “Do you know what it says?”
No, Rue did not know, not by reading, but she recognized the big scrawling letter V that named the intended recipient of the correspondence, Varina, and from that she could easily imagine the rest. Ma Doe had read to her every one of those Northern letters which so rarely said anything new.
“The lady writes to her dear niece with concern for her niece’s health,” Ma Doe read. “Asks Varina, once again, to join the family in Boston. Says Christmastime is a most lovely occasion for the blessed reunion of estranged relations.”
Rue tutted, “Ain’t any time a lovely occasion for the reunion of relations?”
Ma Doe ignored her, went on, unspooling the letter to reveal its second page. “The lady asks that her beloved niece think again on the proposition of finally selling her stakes of this ruined Southern land altogether. She writes that she understands the reluctance to give up one’s childhood home and its fond memories, but mightn’t Varina, her dear niece and the last of her brother’s living children, come up to Boston to live permanently where she will be lovingly received?”