quick as she could. The floorboards creaked wickedly with her every step. Across the room she could make out what she was after: All the combs and pins and brushes were laid out neatly in a row on the vanity, doubled in the mirror. Rue made her footfalls high and careful, tested each floorboard before she came to rest on it. Marooned halfway across the room on an especially whining plank, Rue leaned forward, reached out her arm. She snatched up the first comb she could lay hands on, plucked a clump of orange hair, and quickly replaced the comb next to the others. Now that she had the tuft of hair, she didn’t know quite where to put it. She could hardly walk out of the house with a handful of Varina’s hair. Rue settled on stuffing it into the lining of her dress and turned herself around, traced her laborious route back to the door.
She stopped again at the dolls, like to see if they had observed what she’d done. They hadn’t moved from their faithful vigil, staring blind and straight out at the dust motes Rue’d unsettled.
“You’re not so pretty,” Rue whispered at them. “My mama’s gon’ make me a doll baby. One that smiles. Black. Sweet as can be.”
Rue dared to reach her arm out to touch one and found it cold, as far from a baby as a rock at the river’s edge was. None of them looked like Rue but none of them looked much like Varina neither, with their impossibly white skin and painted-on pink cheeks. The bodies of the dolls jutted out at hard edges beneath a rainbow parade of pretty dresses made of nicer fabrics than any Rue had ever owned. Rue’s first thought was to grab the nearest doll and shuck off the dress to see if the white shining skin continued downward, smooth as a dinner plate.
“Are you meant to be here?”
Rue spun at the voice. It was a white boy, almost a man, behind her, one of Marse Charles’s sons. Rue looked down before she could see which. She knew she was not ever allowed to meet their eyes.
He came into the nursery from the hall. Rue watched his black boots stomp up to her. He made the floorboards moan as loud as he wanted, didn’t care. About him she could smell a heavy stink she knew to be liquor coming up out of his sweat. It was like a cloud he carried. He kneeled before Rue. Grabbed her chin in his rough, dry hand and pulled her face near to his. There was nowhere else to look then.
Rue recognized it was Marse Peter who held her only because he was the youngest of the three brothers. He tilted back Rue’s head roughly, and for a terrible moment they breathed the same air. She tried to figure what he was after by the tick in his jaw, the pulse of a vein in his temple. He had Varina’s tight lips and round blue eyes. But his hair was a murky brown, and above his lip an equally dark mustache was pushing its way through. It looked like a smudge of dirt on his mouth.
He squeezed her jaw. “What you about, huh? Answer me, girl.”
“Miss Varina sent me, suh,” Rue stuttered out. Her mouth was near clinched shut in his grip. He shoved her off, and her teeth clicked together so hard she feared they’d shatter.
“I don’t think you’re tellin’ me the truth,” he said. “I think you’re up here stealin’ my sister’s belongin’s.”
Rue cringed away and feared she would be hit for it. “No.”
“No? I saw you. At my baby sister’s hair things first and then at the dolls. Shall I tell my father that he’s got a li’l thief in his house?”
“No, suh, no.”
“Perhaps if you ask me kindly I’ll keep it from Father. Rather I see to the punishment myself?”
Marse Peter grabbed the pull of her apron strings. The knot came undone easy, fell away to swing at Rue’s bare legs.
There was a high-sharp giggle at the doorway, no humor in it.