Conjure Women Read online

  “I do,” she said loud. Murmurs shivered up from the crowd. “I wish him gone. I do.”

  Bruh Abel put his hand heavy on her head, as though it were an effort to do so, and he pushed her down, down, down ’til her knees and her legs and her hands were all in the dirt. Still she kept her eyes turned up to him.

  “You only need tell him, ‘Leave me.’ ”

  “Leave me,” she repeated.

  “Louder.”

  “Leave me.” Her voice cracked. “Leave.”

  “Louder for all to hear, Sister Rue.”

  She felt a monstrous sorrow rise up in her like a swell. She looked away from Bruh Abel, down at her hands spread out in the dirt, and she began to sob. Tears dripped clean from her face to darken the ground beneath her in fat circles that made strange patterns as they wetted the dirt—looked like stars set out on a sky below, and all the while she ground out the words, “Leave me.”

  The ground shook when folks started up their foot stomping to the rhythm of Bruh Abel’s words raining down: “Cast off your wicked ways. Don’t let them demons have no more hold on you.”

  She wanted it, salvation, not in the sense she’d always known—as a promise of hereafter eternity. Instead, she wanted salvation in the here and the now, for herself and for Bean, or a glimpse of it at least, a place she might feel safe and rest her head at last. Bruh Abel was beside her, his warm hand on her face.

  “Out. Anything not of You,” he said, “out.”

  In the far-off distance she felt her throat constrict and release and cry out. Her tongue flickered out words of no clear form, desperate sounds articulating something kin to wanting, kin to ravening. She seemed able to observe her own body in its flawed entirety from afar.

  Then all at once the euphoria left her—a sudden depletion, like the moment after a passing gust of wind when still air seems strange and inexplicable. Someone lifted her at her armpits and set her on her feet. She swayed but stayed standing.

  “Was it the spirit a’ Jesus what come to you?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The Holy Ghost entered me.”

  All around her people were staring and murmuring, holding out their hands to touch her. She turned to Bruh Abel, who was now some distance away from her, though he hadn’t moved at all. It was the crowd that had rushed in. Over their heads he was puzzling her out again, a slow eyeing from top to bottom and back up.

  “Tongues is a sign for unbelievers.” If he was speaking for the crowd or just for her she couldn’t figure, but either way it sounded like something he’d snatched whole cloth from some other preacher’s mouth. “Prophecy is for believers.”

  “In Jesus’s name,” she mumbled. That was what folks kept saying, wasn’t it?

  “What He say, Miss Rue?”

  “He say, I be His. I be healed.”

  * * *

  —

  After, Rue took herself over to the old church. She walked the long way to be certain she was not followed, stood outside in the well-trod path, that rut made over time from years on top of years of folks going back and forth in search of worship. For Rue, faith had always flickered in and out of her consciousness like a flame on a candlewick, sometimes resilient against wind, other times extinguished easy in a sibilant hiss. She could not account for what she had felt that afternoon in the town center, any more than she could account for why Bean hadn’t caught the ailing naturally while others had.

  After the walk of several miles Rue was glad to push through the double doors and shut them tight behind her. The air was heavy with dancing dust motes like loosed cotton bolls. Rue sat herself down in the front row of the church where she had not been allowed to sit. It still felt wrong, after all those years, to break the white man’s nonsense rules. Up above, the floorboards creaked.

  “You listenin’?” she asked, staring straight at the pulpit. If anyone else were to come across her they would have thought she was arguing with God. Either way there was no answer.

  “Varina,” Rue called out, and her voice bounced through the vaulted ceiling and seemed to return to her tenfold.

  There, a groan of wood, and summoned, Varina came out of her hiding place, behind the rectory door. She looked wan, skeletal.

  “You didn’t come back,” Varina said.

  Rue sighed. “I’m sorry, Miss Varina.”

  “You ought not leave me for so long.” Her voice came at a warble, and Rue looked at her proper and saw fear there. “You really ought not leave me.”

  “Ain’t I always come back?” It was like speaking to a child, but that’s just what Varina looked like now, one startled from a nightmare, looking for any comfort. But there was only Rue to give it to her, and it was the threadbare sort. Varina had been raised to have a hundred black souls at her call. Rue alone must have felt like a pathetic disservice.

  “That white man you came in here with. Was he a soldier?”

  So Varina had seen. “Bruh Abel? He weren’t white. He’s colored, Miss Varina. Just real pale.”

  Varina rocked on the heels of her bare feet like she wished to run but had no place to go. Rue hadn’t seen her mistress so agitated in an age, not since the early months of her hiding. Then Varina had prowled the rectory, fitful and crying, or euphoric in turns, and there had been only the one way to soothe her then, one awful way. Rue had made the white doctor’s medicine last as long as she could. It was all she’d thought to grab from the house before it burned, a small supply, and she mixed it with wine or thinned it with water to ration it and still Varina had screamed in her agony that she was dying.

  Those draughts of laudanum had run dry finally and Rue could not get hold of more. She had broke Varina of the awful addiction the long, hard way, like breaking down a wild stallion by receiving a hundred kicks to the face. The hundred and first time Varina came away clean; the only stain the poppy had left on her were the dreams. The nightmares.

  “I can’t sleep, Rue,” Varina said now, recalling an old complaint. “I see the soldiers comin’ for me.”

  “Ain’t I say I’d keep you safe, Miss Varina?”

  But her mistress seemed not to hear her, was trapped in a danger of her own imagining, and in her mind that danger was still marching toward her, as it had been three years past. Rue let her keep her nightmares. Let her think they were still real.

  “When will this goddamn war be at an end?” Varina moaned.

  “By God’s grace, any day now.”

  * * *

  —

  Rue held her body still when she heard the knock at her cabin door, though she’d heard so many knocks before and more urgent ones to be sure. This one, if she could presume so much from simple knocking, sounded resigned. Rue took her time crossing the small room and opening the door. Took her time in saying, “Sarah. What’s the trouble?” because she knew what the trouble was.

  Sarah was weary-looking, likely from taking care of her family in the way all the women in town had grown tired on their kinfolks’ behalf. If there was a sickness in the town, every woman was made weak by it, whether she had the symptoms or not. Worrying was a disease for women, and it came as a chronic ailment. By the time Rue opened the door to her, Sarah had rested her arm up on the doorway, her head cradled weak on her forearm.

  “Bean,” she said, lifting her eyes but not her head. “He’s sicker now.”

  They walked in the same purposeful stride, matching their steps unconsciously, side by side. Rue had the sense they were in some kind of race where the winner had to be the first to arrive and the last to lose their composure.

  The night long ago that Bean’s strange crying had come to her bloomed in Rue’s mind. She recollected how the sound, the peculiarity of it, had yanked her from a sleep with no dreams. Rue had forgotten the exact quality of the sound. She could recall only how horrifying it was, how it had set Bean apart before this t
rouble had even begun. She could recall only wanting to keep him quiet, like the cry would speak something she didn’t want heard.

  Rue let Sarah lead her inside. Jonah was there, sitting on the floor of the front room with the little girl in his lap, the little boy around his shoulders. They looked healthy, and Rue was glad to see it. They played on him like he was a tree, and Jonah was just as immobile as one, to be sure. He watched her cross the room behind Sarah, not saying a thing, and all that silence led Rue to believe that something had passed between them, some sort of dispute. He’d been the loser, Rue figured, and then Sarah had come to find her.

  Rue knew what to expect from Bean, but she was still shocked to see it. The froth and fever, when she’d sought out the right mixture to fix the symptoms, had sounded in her head as ordinary. To her, sickness—death and birth—did have the habit of growing ordinary over the seasons, until one case cropped up to shock her. And this was it and, worse, it was of her own making.

  Bean’s breathing came in wet shards, a wretched sound like someone drowning. He was not fighting but lying still, as if weighted down by something only he could make sense of. He locked eyes with it, this oppression in the air, and did not stop staring it down, even when Rue and Sarah drew near.

  Rue rested her palm on his forehead. She felt exactly what she knew she’d feel. Fire. She couldn’t keep up the pretense long and drew her hand away, hid it in the apron of her dress as though it had been branded to tell of her guilt.

  Rue slipped from the room. There was only so much she could do, and she’d done too much already.

  In the outer room she found Jonah risen from the floor. He’d put the children in a rocking chair in the corner. They huddled together in the seat, fighting a doze and losing.

  She could sense his distrust from across the room, as thick as though it were a thing he could hold in his hand. A stone to throw. Jonah did not like her looking at his children. Rue looked dead at him, feeling suddenly bold. I am still your witch, she was about to say. So you best be scared of me.

  Rue opened her mouth to speak, to cuss, but it was Sarah’s wailing that came, mournful and absolute from the other room. Rue rushed back, but Jonah was quicker, and she followed after him as close as she dared. He stopped himself in the doorframe with his hands braced against each wall. Rue had to slip beneath his arms to get past him. She near had to climb over Sarah crouched at the foot of the bed. Bean’s strange eyes, Rue saw, had shut.

  “What’s the matter?” Jonah was asking. His voice was urgent and aggressive, like he was ready to fight with the truth if it came to it.

  Rue put her hand to Bean’s mouth and felt no breath. She put her hand to his neck and felt no rushing blood. She put her head to his chest, hoping, hoping to hear a distant pounding there, but there was nothing to hear and no way to hear it besides. All Rue could hear was the sound she knew well, Sarah’s howl, the desperate sorrow of a mama who already knows.

  Still, it fell to Rue to pronounce it like it always did. Like it always would. “Bean,” she said. “He dead.”

  WARTIME

  There is a new fox in the wood. Miss May Belle jokes that she’s gonna go out and skin it, wear it for a coat when the season gets chill.

  It’s a woman. Ma Doe says the right word for a woman fox is a vixen. It’s brown and bold, been seen prowling round the House like it thinks it belongs there, pawing at the front door trying to get an invitation in.

  Miss May Belle got herself a new ring that don’t belong to her, come off a bigger hand, it only fits on her thumb. Word is it used to belong to Missus, who isn’t even yet cold in the ground. Did Miss May Belle thieve it? Did Marse Charles gift it?

  Lord, but that Miss May Belle is uppity.

  Who can say—except that a thief would never be so proud. The only time Miss May Belle’s seen to take off that ring is when she’s birthing. Says it’s bad luck, she does.

  The fox prowls. Missus’s grave chills. The South divorces the North, wanting its freedom.

  Mary John, the kitchen girl, her new baby comes too early, comes out feetfirst, comes out still. Makes sense, the world turned upside down the way it is. Miss May Belle and Rue see to Mary John, who’s burning up, sparked with the birthbed fever.

  Heard Marse Charles is looking for a new wife, a third. If you listen hard in the wood you can hear them two foxes fighting, the old one and the new, two vixens baring teeth, going at each other’s throats. That’s how all women are, Miss May Belle says. Territorial. Soon the woods will be flooded with foxes, before the coming war is done. Those foxes won’t let black folks alone. They’ll run in packs. An earth of foxes, that’s what that’s called.

  Marse Charles’s sons look mighty fine in them tintypes sent home. Proud with their new uniforms: epaulets, scabbard and sword, gleaming new buckles, yet untouched by dust or dirt or by blood. The House flies a proud new battle flag. They’re calling it the Stainless Banner.

  Miss May Belle finally oversteps herself. She asks for too much. Soap and candles in war times? That’s one thing. Now she’s begging after medicine for Mary John. Real medicine. What comes in glass vials. The birthbed fever burns, inferno.

  Miss May Belle begs. Says she’ll do anything. Anything. She pleads after Mary John’s life. Marse Charles says, “What, now you niggers too good for grass?”

  * * *

  —

  Varina’s needing a husband. She ain’t never bled yet. She’s the missus now her mama’s gone. The tousling foxes sound like women screaming through the night. Screaming ’cause their sons are returned to them dead, if they’re lucky, or else not returned at all, left wounded and trampled on and ground up in some Northern dirt. Morning come, there’s blood in the grass. Blame them foxes. The South renames their flag the Bloodstained Banner. Whose blood? Red-backed and blue-crossed, stars along the middle, corner to corner for every Southern state that says hell no.

  Marse Charles said no, but Miss May Belle’s got ahold of the medicine some other way. Mary John comes back to life like the last few mighty embers of a fire you think been full stomped out. She’ll live to love lots more babies.

  Now, what is that screaming? Ain’t no fox. Out of the door and into the night. In the square and Marse Charles got Miss May Belle by the hair of her head. He’s saying how dare you? How dare you disobey me? His strong white fist is squeezing out her curls like to make them straight. He’s dragging her out and into the night, and as he goes her body spins on the end of his fist, on the twirl of her hair, over the rocks and mud and grass. She’s fighting hard, yelling words that ain’t even words no more. Maybe she learned them things from her African mama. Savage promises of violence. Her face is bloodied, red on her like tears.

  Lord Jesus.

  When Marse Charles gets tired of dragging, he throws her over his shoulder like a sack of grain. They go clear out of the plantation. It’s a bleach-white moon-filled night. You can see where he’s taking her to. Right off in the distance, the church looms.

  Where’s her girl? That Rue. Found her hid under the bed. Yes, it was Rue, not the fox, doing the screaming.

  * * *

  —

  White folks planning for themselves a jubilee. Let the shooting stop for a while. Let the sons come home. Let the fox go shrill in the field. Why doesn’t Marse Charles just go out and kill those foxes? Folks says he hasn’t got the heart. When mourning for Missus is done in three months’ time, Marse Charles says, we’ll have ourselves a fete.

  Three days now Miss May Belle’s gone. That jail beneath the white folks’ church? You ever seen it? You ever been sent to it? That’s where he’s locked her up, ain’t it? There beneath the ground. On the inside it’s five steps this way and five steps that way. No sun, no moon. All dark. All black. They say the water seeps up, down there, when the river swells. Water how high? Not high enough as you’d be hoping, by day three. Not high enough to dr
own you or them rats neither.

  Ain’t no one deserve that. Not for trying to save a dying mama’s life. Not even Miss May Belle.

  Do you think Miss May Belle killed Missus? Killed the first wife too? Conjuring them into foxes to haunt them woods?

  * * *

  —

  Marse Charles let her out, finally. He let her keep his dead wife’s ring. Miss May Belle come out from the jail afraid of the sky. North of here them Yankees win another battle. Ain’t this war ever going to end? Miss May Belle come out afraid of the light.

  Folks said, should we go and see to her? Nah, she’ll be alright. She’s a tough ’un, that Miss May Belle. Let them alone. Let her daughter see to her wounds. In the woods two foxes stay prowling.

  THE RAVAGING

  Rue was trapped. Living in the syrup slow motion of a dream, words wading their way out of her mouth thick and strange. She gave the town the words and they repeated them, and even when she heard them echoed back, still they did not feel like sense: “Black-Eyed Bean is dead.”

  Ma Doe’s home was a natural place to end up, but Rue came to realize that only when she was standing in front of it. She shied at the door, sat instead in the rocking chair and brought her knees to her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to think of Bean. Bean as he was and Bean as he would be. Now she’d have to see him buried and know she’d done it, completed the circle she’d hesitated at on the day of his birth with her scissors raised high. Did he know it then? she wondered. Folks do say babies born with their caul got the Sight.

  “Rue-baby.” It was what her mama had called her. Ma Doe knew that. She was being kind, calling her in. Rue went into Ma Doe’s cabin glad to see there weren’t any children there. Ma Doe sat alone, her legs raised up, her feet resting on an overturned bucket bearing her thick, dark calves, pockmarked and black bruised in places after a whole lifetime of standing on the behalf of other folks, nursing at their children in the middle of the night, rocking them to sleep.