the rain had soothed itself down to beat but a few half-hearted patterings on the roof of the church.
“We ought to get back ’fore they know we gone,” Rue said.
Varina was quiet as they descended the church steps. She walked down slow, over-careful in her hoop skirt, and Rue coming down behind her was impatient. Outside, steam curled up from the ground drawn out from the heat. Already the sun was returning and Rue felt very tired thinking on the work her mama would surely have waiting for her.
“Make one for me.” Varina’s demand came out of nothing and nowhere. She ghosted her hand over Rue’s hip, where she knew the beads were hidden.
“What you need it for? You ain’t bleed yet.”
“But when I do. I’ll for certain need one when I do.”
Irritation rose in Rue the same as the tendrils of mist that came up off the rainwater. She wanted then so suddenly to slap Varina it was like a sting she already felt in her palm. Varina had pearls and brooches, bows and combs; Rue could have no one thing of her own.
Varina made her separate way up the road to the House. Rue watched her go, watched her skip round puddles and pockets of mud, her pale hand shading her pale face, her hair glowing like a beacon fire in the growing strands of sunlight. Rue watched Varina all the way until she disappeared into the House, and then she turned and walked home herself, her beads going click-clack-click.
In their cabin Miss May Belle was working nutmeg, grounding it down to a fine powder. It raised up in a spicy earth smell, Rue’s favorite scent.
“Where you got to?” Miss May Belle didn’t need to look up to ask it.
Rue watched her mama’s elbow go up and down with her grinding, and she knew she was in some kind of trouble.
“Fetched the skullcap like you asked.” Rue set down the basket of damp purple flowers and knew it for a meager offering.
“Now, wasn’t that near an hour ago?” It wasn’t a question.
Rue picked up the flowers from the basket one by one at the stems the same way she’d picked them from the thicket. She drew the dew off the leaves and tried to look busy doing it.
“You and that Varina, y’all got different lives to live,” Miss May Belle said. It wasn’t the first time she’d warned it, but Rue had to be impressed at the uncanny way her mama had of knowing what was what. “You listenin’?”
“Yes, Mama.”
Rue bound the skullcap stems with twine and hung the bundled posy up by the window. There were a mess of other herbs up there, waiting with their bottoms up, their stems to the sky as they dried. Rue tiptoed and stretched and added her new pickings to the others, choosing a spot where they could get the full of the heat without getting the full of the sun. The skullcaps hung awkward. To Rue it looked as if their drooping violet heads were straining to stay upright.
“You got to obey her, fine, but you don’t got to follow her,” Miss May Belle said. Rue was uncertain of the distinction. She wished her mama would leave off the topic. A low twisting pain had started in her stomach, not a stabbing but an ache, and she knew she had to bear it. Miss May Belle of all people wouldn’t have sympathy for woman pains.
Her mama passed her the ground-up nutmeg without a word, but Rue didn’t need telling. In a large jar on the shelf was where they kept the mama’s milk, an extra bit of help for mamas too thin or too sickly, too overworked or just not at all able to call up any milk of their own. Rue poured out a splash from the jar and stirred in the nutmeg before it could drink up all the milk. The trick of it was to add just the right amount, make a paste not a soup, and Rue had the knack for these kinds of mixings, better, she thought, than even her own mama had.