Now this is what the folks said. What actually transpired when the sea was rough & a woman was in labor was that Aunt Haydee pleaded with Blue Sunday to “Please, give this child life, please, give this child the freedom you know.” Then Indigo would play her fiddle, however the woman wanted. Once Hilda Effania came to get Indigo after Sister Liza Anne had been in labor for 48 hours, but Indigo’d fiddled her own mother out the cabin. There was nothing could come between Indigo, Aunt Haydee, & new people of color. Hilda gave up. Miz Fitzhugh gave up. When Aunt Haydee died, right after Ella Mae’s twins first suckled, Indigo just picked up her fiddle. Aunt Haydee went to Our Lord on a melody only Indigo or Blue Sunday could know.

Johnny Orpheus tried to give Indigo a few dollars for his two boys, Muhammed & Ali, but Indigo declined. She’d lost Aunt Haydee, which meant we’d all lost touch with a thirst for freedom. Indigo would have tossed Aunt Haydee’s ashes to the waves sauntering up to the cabin every now & then, but she decided to carry Aunt Haydee home in a funny bluish jar Uncle John’d given her when she was small. Uncle John had told her that colored trapeze artists usedta spit into that jar or be strung up by their heels. Now that was a long time ago, but that’s what he said.

No one had ever expected it, but that child from Charleston, that Indigo, moved into Aunt Haydee’s tabby hut, just like she belonged there. It wasn’t that she didn’t have gifted hands or a tenderness that could last a lifetime. It was just folks weren’t sure where she came from or how she came to be among them. Charleston was far away.

Indigo knew, holding Aunt Haydee’s ashes in her arms, she’d not be back for a long while. Charleston wasn’t her home, any more than Blue Sunday hadn’t suffered. In Martinique with the other black people, Indigo could have carried her aunt’s ashes on a ferry, but ’tween Difuskie & Charleston she was lucky to be on more than a canoe.

She spent little time on it, but she was concerned. Her sisters were artists. Would they understand she just wanted where they came from to stay alive? Hilda Effania knew Indigo had an interest in folklore. Hilda Effania had no idea that Indigo was the folks.

Somebody said that the day Indigo left Difuskie, 2,000 Blue Sundays came out dancing to Scott Joplin, drinking moonshine, & showing their legs. Indigo never denied this, but she kept a drawer fulla silk stockings that had not a run, & she’d never been one to miss a dance, when the aqua-blue men strode up from the sea, the slaves who were ourselves.

Chapter 24