Indigo wanted to sound like the sparrows & wrens. She mimicked the jays & peckers. Conversing with gulls was easy ’cause they saw her daddy’s soul every day. Indigo had mastered the hum of dusk, the crescendoes of the cicadas, swamp rushes in light winds, thunder at high tide, & her mother’s laughter down the hall. Uncle John told her one time when they were frying porgies by his wagon that he’d got this feeling in his waking up that Indigo was dwelling dangerous on the misery of the slaves who were ourselves, & this feeling directed him to march her toward the beauty of this world & the joys of the those come before us. Indigo couldn’t get enough. No creature that moved escaped Indigo’s attention. If the fiddle talked, it also rumbled, cawed, rustled, screamed, sighed, sirened, giggled, stomped, & sneered. Every once in a while Indigo even played songs. Some colored singing, Tina Turner, B. B. King, Etta James: they songs. This was a secret. Indigo had some pride & couldn’t admit to those who claimed she made noise all the time that she’d found out the difference ’tween her free communion with the universe, primal, unrelenting flights, & melody. She played these softly, for herself. Then she’d blush, hurriedly put the fiddle back into the case, the Colored & Romance having got the best of her. Young boys were alien to her. She didn’t want to be a fool in love, have something terrible getta holdt to her. When she’d had enough of “sweetheart,” “babeee,” & “please, please, please,” Indigo yelped, “Oh Sister Mary Louise, you missed that.”

There was something moving up her leg, something that was not supposed to be there. Indigo looked down, lost a little fear, just a twig. How was a twig going up & down the inside of her leg, tickling her like the “sweethearts” & “babees” she’d been playing. Indigo looked cautiously behind her where two brown-skinned boys leaned over Sister Mary Louise’s fence.

“Get that twig from ’tween my legs.”

“We just tryin’ to get ya attention. Ya so busy fiddlin’ ya don’t see nobody. Where ya learn to play like that, gal?”

“My name ain’t ‘gal’ & I taught myself. Now go on ’way & leave me be, please.” Indigo hoped they hadn’t heard her playing songs, but her wild sounds. She hadda hunch it was them Romance riffs that brought these fellas by the shed. Nobody ever came behind Sister Mary Louise’s house. There were devils, Mandingo giants, quadroon elves, & wayward ghosts in her shed.