Jilo (21 page)

Jilo stopped, confused. She realized quickly that the house was far more quiet than she’d ever experienced during her years there. Even though late afternoon was giving way to dusk, not a single light was burning. There were no smells of cooking from the kitchen. She reached out and grasped Mrs. Jones’s hand. “What’s wrong? What’s happened here?” She thought again of the boarded-up windows and padlock at Five Points Baptist. “And why is the church all locked up?”

“The church is closed,” Mrs. Jones said, her voice quavering as she spoke. “When Robert”—Jilo had never heard anyone refer to the pastor by his Christian name before—“began speaking publicly about the angels, the congregation turned against him. Some thought he’d gone mad. Others thought the devil had gotten in him. But they all thought he was blaspheming.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “I know you know about the angels. He told me he shared his experiences with you . . .”

“Well, no, ma’am,” Jilo began, “not really. He said he’d been ‘taken up’ by them when he was a child, and maybe . . .”

“It wasn’t only as a child.” Mrs. Jones cut her off. “They’ve been visiting him all his life.
All his life
,” she said with emphasis. “He shielded me from the truth, but I knew I had married a special man. A holy man.” She raised her chin, and Jilo could see the pride glowing in her eyes. “It was right after you left. He started seeing them all over. All the time. He couldn’t protect me from the truth any longer.”

“Where is the pastor?” Jilo asked.

Mrs. Jones didn’t reply, she simply tightened her grasp on Jilo’s hand and led her deeper into the house and down the hall leading to the pastor’s study. When they reached the room, Mrs. Jones released her and crossed to the pastor’s desk, where she turned on the green-shaded brass lamp that sat there. The older woman stood there trembling as she stared down at her husband’s desk. She stifled a sob, raising her right hand to her mouth, then pointed at the wall. Stepping around the desk, she walked toward the defaced wall.

Jilo saw that “GEN 5:24” was scratched into the wall’s plaster in characters five or six inches long.

“He took a knife from the kitchen. Cut this into the plaster.” Mrs. Jones traced her finger along the jagged grooves. “The next day,” she said, turning back to Jilo, “he was gone. Just gone.” She crossed back to the desk and turned the opened Bible there around so that Jilo could read its words. “And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.”

NINE

Savannah, Georgia—May 1954

“I want you to understand there are good men in this world, Jilo,” Nana said. “My Reuben, your grum’pa, he was a right good man. He took good care of me and his family. He bought your nana this here house. Your daddy, my Jesse, he was a good man, too.” A bright smile broke out on her aged face. “He sure loved his girls, he did,” she said and stroked the back of Jilo’s hand. “All three of you. He’d be proud of all his girls, he would.” She nodded. “Especially you.”

Jilo had to wonder if that were true, if her father would be proud of her now, with her dress tight around her breasts and middle. And without a man to claim the baby that was making it so.

Nana’s chair made a scuffing nose as she pushed it back. The table squeaked a bit as she leaned into it to help push herself up. “Pastor Jones, I think he’s a good man, too. Made a mistake here and there, and I sure got no idea what he’s gotten himself up to now, but at his root, I believe he is an honorable man.” She walked across the room, the floor creaking with each heavy step. Jilo noticed she was moving slower than she used to, her right hip seeming to catch every other step or so.

Jilo wasn’t sure where this conversation was heading, so she sat in silence as her grandmother crossed the room to the pantry. The old woman disappeared into the pantry for a few moments and emerged with three bottles, a cobalt-blue one like you might see hanging on a spirit tree, tucked beneath her left arm, and one small clear bottle in each gnarled hand. She crossed to the sink with no sign of hurry, then set the bottles down on the counter.

“Your nana’s afraid,” she said, reaching into a cabinet to retrieve a drinking glass, “that you done figured out all on your own that not all men are good.” She set the glass down beside the bottles and reached for one of the clear ones. She unscrewed its cap, then raised the bottle and the glass up to her eye level, and measured out a dram or so of dark brown liquid by sight. Jilo could tell by its scent that it contained creosote, but there were higher notes to it, too, one of them a bitter smell that reminded her of unripe tomatoes on the vine. Nana returned both to the counter, and though her joints seemed to protest the movement, screwed the cap back on the bottle. “Good men,” she said, turning her attention to the second clear bottle, this one with a ceramic stopper held in place by a metal bracket, “they deserve a loving woman, and children, if God sees fit to send them.” She flipped the metal lever that held the stopper in place, then took a spoon from a drawer and used it to measure out some of the clear orange liquid. Jilo rose and came to look over her grandmother’s shoulder. Her nana set the still-open bottle down on the counter. Jilo lifted it to her nose. The orange liquid, Jilo decided from the peppery scent that nearly brought tears to her eyes, was capsicum oil.

Her nana looked back at her, and seeing what she was doing, said “Careful now. Don’t get that in your eyes.” She took the bottle from Jilo’s hand and closed the stopper before setting it next to the other clear bottle. Jilo noticed the old woman’s hand trembled a bit as she reached for the neck of the tall blue bottle. Her nana took the bottle in her right hand, and used her left to twist on its cork stopper until it came out with a pop.

She turned her attention back to Jilo. “Not all men are good, but someday you’re gonna meet one of the good ones. You’re gonna want to have his babies because of who he is, not just ’cause it’s something that happened to you.” She tilted the bottle up, and Jilo watched as a liquid unlike any she’d come across—even in her advanced chemistry classes—flowed out of it. A fluid somewhat resembling mercury spilled into the cup, but this substance glowed with a phosphorescence unlike any of the normal properties of the liquid metal. Rather than blending with the other two ingredients, it seemed to come alive, like a tiny serpent in a brackish sea. Her nana stopped the bottle up, then handed the concoction to her.

“That there gonna burn a bit going down, and it’s gonna make you sleep for maybe a day, but when you wake up, your situation’ll be cleared up for you. If that’s what you want.”

Jilo stared into the glass, watching as the band of glowing silver swirled around, connecting head to tail into a figure eight, then breaking apart again. Her nana always swore to her that her “magic” wasn’t real, but the behavior of the unidentified quicksilver-like substance made her wonder, if only for a moment.

“What is in this?” Jilo swiveled the glass in her hand, growing even more curious as the substance refused to dissolve into the rest of the mixture.

“It’s safe. For you,” Nana said, not really answering the question. “You ain’t the first girl Nana’s done this for, so you don’t need to worry.” Nana’s features softened. “You
ain’t
”—she emphasized the word—“the first girl Nana’s done this for, so no need to feel like you doing something wrong.” She reached out and took Jilo’s free hand. The old woman’s touch felt cool, dry, papery. “Men, they’ll tell you that you shouldn’t have a choice in the matter, but Nana figures until those men step up and help raise what’s in you, it ain’t none of they business anyway. You, girl, Nana wants you to know you have a choice.”

She released Jilo and collected her bottles, then walked off stiffly to return them to where they’d come from.

Jilo weighed two possible futures. Perhaps there was still time. She could write the women doctors whose achievements she wanted so badly to emulate. Take a job. Maybe even save up enough money to go visit them in person.

If she had this child, she’d be branded a fallen woman. She’d have a hard time finding any kind of employment, and she’d certainly never see the inside of a medical school. Her life would be hard. Probably lonely, too. Not many men—even the good ones—would willingly raise another man’s child. Her nana was right, there was no shame in making the decision to return to the path she’d envisioned for her life. But up until this moment, she hadn’t thought she would have a choice, and she’d begun to imagine other things. What it would be like to have someone of her very own, someone so completely connected to her that they were a part of each other.

“Nana,” she said as the old woman returned from the pantry.

“Yes, baby?”

“If you were me, what would you do?”

The old woman’s eyes brightened and a smile stole over her face. “Nana, she’d do the same thing she reckons you about to do.” She reached up and pulled Jilo’s forehead down to her lips and planted a kiss on her brow. Releasing Jilo, she stepped back. “Nana be out in the garden for a while, if you need her.” She turned and shuffled toward the door that opened to the outside. The room grew brighter as she opened the door, then dimmed again as she pulled it closed.

Jilo looked down at the glass in her trembling hand. She closed her eyes and raised it to her lips. The liquid’s fiery, bitter smell promised her freedom, a chance to start over. There was no shame in letting go of this child. But her heart was not willing to do it.

Jilo opened her eyes and emptied the glass’s contents into the sink. No matter what folk thought, there was no shame in having this baby either. She turned on the faucet to wash the silvery band down the drain.

BOOK THREE:
MOTHER JILO

ONE

Savannah, Georgia—July 1954

May sat at her kitchen table, unmoving, her cup of chicory long since cooled.

Lately, May had been dreaming of days long since past, days that, this morning, seemed strangely closer and more real than the world around her. Some of the dreams were about cleaning the house of her first employer, and though she was sitting at her own table now, she felt certain that if she closed her eyes, she would see every nook and cranny of a house that she hadn’t set foot in going on sixty years.

May had begun working as the Farleys’ maid just after her thirteenth birthday. Right from the get-go, the lady of the house, known by one and all as “Miss Rose” despite being married to Mr. Andrew Farley, struck May as an anxious, nervous child, even though Miss Rose was a good ten or fifteen years older than May herself.

“Mr. Farley likes an orderly kitchen,” Miss Rose said, opening the pantry door and stepping just over the threshold. “He likes to see all labels facing forward, and they should be in alphabetical order.” She paused and gave May a nervous glance. “You do know how to read, don’t you, dear? You understand what alphabetical order means?”

“Yes, ma’am,” May nodded. She was so young. She still cared about making a good impression on this weak and spineless woman.

Miss Rose led her past her husband’s study. “If the door is closed, you may not enter.” She wagged her finger in May’s face. “Mr. Farley likes a clean, orderly space, and you will be expected to keep his office in good order, but”—she stopped and set a grave expression on her face to underline the seriousness of the knowledge she was about to impart—“you must never touch the papers on Mr. Farley’s desk.” And May never did.

May got on fine at the Farleys’, right up until Miss Rose died during labor. When Mr. Farley married again soon after, his new wife brought servants with her from her family home in Augusta. Though she felt at ease with the servants she’d grown up amongst, she simply couldn’t bear the thought of an unfamiliar colored poking around in her private belongings. It was nothing personal, the new Mrs. Farley wanted May to understand, but she had such pretty things, and well, an ounce of prevention and all that. It was really in May’s best interest to seek out alternative employment.

And so May did. She found work cleaning house for old Mr. Whitcomb, with his shock of snow-white hair, and his spotted hands that would run over a body, if that body didn’t move quickly enough away. He lived all alone, his wife gone and his children distant, emotionally if not physically, in a grand house on Calhoun Square.

At their first meeting, the old man had presented her with a box, wrapped with brown paper and string. “Take it home with you. Keep it there, but don’t open it until I tell you that you may. Don’t go opening this until it’s time, or things won’t go well for you,” he warned, a gleam in his eye telling her that in fact he would like nothing better than for her to go poking around in his squalid business, and he believed her incapable of leaving well enough alone. Only a wealthy white man like him, a man who had never felt powerless or threatened, would think that way.

He couldn’t imagine finding himself in a position where folk could treat you however they wanted, saying or doing anything and feeling more than justified, making up lies for themselves so they could paint you as the threat and themselves the innocent, the defenders of good. He couldn’t fathom the possibility of ever finding himself incapable of even saying a word in his own defense, just having to take it from those who are waiting with angry, jealous hearts for you to step out of line so they have an excuse to beat you down. But May didn’t have to imagine it; she’d lived her life there.

No, leaving things unsaid, undone, this was how May survived back in those days. Averting her eyes, turning a deaf ear, hiding any tone of hurt or defiance. The buckra told you to leave something alone, you damn well left it be. The old fellow gave up the ghost about a year after she began working for him. The next day she returned the package, still as tightly wrapped as the day she’d taken possession of it, to his house.

She met and married Reuben around that time, and she spent nearly two decades taking care of him, eventually giving birth to her sweet Jesse.

Jesse who’d died twenty years ago today.

She could hear Binah’s bell-like laughter streaming in through the open window. She knew the girls were out there tending the garden, pulling weeds. She could hear their voices, snatches of their conversation, carrying into the kitchen. They were discussing names for Jilo’s baby. Binah had her opinions, but Jilo would only entertain girl names. Seems that if it were a boy, she planned to name him after two of her heroes: Jackie Robinson and her “father,” Jesse Wills.

Funny how May’s heart had claimed both of these girls as her natural granddaughters, given that neither of them truly belonged to her boy. Of course, Jesse himself had claimed Jilo, but would he have found it in his heart to claim the younger one? Binah was a rare beauty, no denying that, though her beauty was not of the kind many folk around here would appreciate, at least not openly.

Binah had gotten her features, and her sweet voice, from her mama. Would that be enough to bend Jesse’s heart to the girl? But that red-tinted hair—auburn, folk called it—and those bright blues eyes of hers, those came from a father who’d probably never even bothered to set eyes on her. Would Jesse have found enough love in his heart to take the girl on as his own? May would like to think so, but Jesse was still a man, after all, and a man’s pride could prove a fearsome barrier. Didn’t really matter though. Her Jesse was gone, and May had fallen completely in love with yet another of Betty’s cast-off children. Didn’t matter whose blood ran through either of those girls’ veins. They both belonged to May now.

May heard another voice. Still high, but breaking every so often as it began to slide down into the speaker’s chest. Binah’s friend, that young boy Willy, was out there, probably helping them with the watering. Despite the delicate way he carried himself, he was good at hauling the heavy bucket from the spigot to the garden. Seemed he was always underfoot, but May didn’t have the heart to chase him away. Binah had been born straddling two worlds, marked as she was by her parents’ different traits. May figured it was her granddaughter’s firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be not quite the one and not quite the other that drew her to Willy. Some might protest having the kid shadow their girl at every turn, but May had seen this gentle, delicate kind of boy before. Binah, and her honor, were safe as could be in his presence. The world didn’t cotton to boys like him, and soon he was gonna have to learn how to hide his softness or have it beaten out of him. But that day didn’t have to be today, and that beating certainly wasn’t gonna happen here.

May rose and emptied her cup, then rinsed it and set it on the counter. She gripped the porcelain lip of the kitchen sink and leaned forward.

“Your nana,” she called out to the girls, “she’s gonna go lie down for a spell.”

Jilo’s head shot up at her words. “You feeling okay, Nana?”

May knew she was fading, and she knew Jilo could see it. “Fine. I’m fine,” May said, surprised by the annoyance she heard in her own voice. “I’m just old and worn out.” She forced herself to smile. “Don’t you worry about your nana. She just needs a little rest.” May wondered what was going to become of these children once she was gone, though rightly, neither one could be called a child anymore. Jilo was full-grown, with a baby of her own coming, and Binah was fourteen, not really that much younger than May herself had been when she married.

Jilo nodded, but said, “I’ll come check in on you shortly.”

May felt another flush of irritation, but refused to let herself show it. “All right.”

Backing away from the window, she headed down the hall to the room that once again served as her bedroom. Instead of meeting customers in the house, she now held audience with them in the old cemetery in the center of town, where any and all could see. Cut down on the folk who weren’t serious enough about their troubles to need her help. Before, when she let people sneak into her house, she found most of the problems she addressed could’ve rightly been handled with a little more common sense and a little less laziness. The folk who were desperate enough to set aside their fear and pride and walk right into Colonial Cemetery, they were more likely to have problems that merited her help, and the courage to face whatever solution her magic would provide.

Of course, she made a lot less money that way. She’d questioned more than once if she should open up her home once again, especially now that Jilo was home and expecting. But in truth she no longer had the energy for the midnight knocks at the door. No, best to keep business and home separate. Still, May wished she’d managed to set more aside, but she’d paid for Jilo’s and Opal’s schooling, hoping they’d manage to take care of themselves afterward. Although Opal had done well in school, she no longer worked as a nurse. She’d married Nate, her soldier, years ago, and the two of them had three children of their own now. Children May had never laid eyes on in person. Nate had stayed on in the service, and Opal always said she couldn’t visit because they were stationed in places like Japan and Germany. But May didn’t believe it. She knew it was the magic that kept her eldest grandbaby away as sure as it did sweet Poppy.

May had wanted to cut all ties with magic that winter day Poppy had taken off for Charlotte, swearing on the Lord’s holy name never to set foot there again. But life hadn’t left her much of a choice. Maguire had long ago seen to it that she’d never find another respectable job again. Besides, even though she wished it were otherwise, she knew she’d grown too frail to do the hard physical work she’d once done at the Pinnacle. It struck her that the hotel was no longer there, anyway. Destroyed by fire caused by faulty wiring, they said, though May had her doubts. She’d seen something else in the paper, too—Sterling Maguire had welcomed his third son into the world. If May failed, as her mama, too, had failed, to take Maguire out, the old man would probably find a way to continue jumping from body to body to continue poisoning the world centuries after May had been forgotten. May knew that any attack against Maguire would most likely culminate in her own death. That’s why she’d put it off as long as she had. But she was running out of time. She’d sure like to help see Jilo’s baby into the world first, but maybe it’d be better to make sure that babe could be born into a world without Maguire.

She entered her bedroom, trying not to see the haint blue that still dominated there, floor to ceiling. A part of her would love nothing better than to do away with it, paint it over with good white lead paint. Leave nothing but plain white walls to shelter her, a plain white ceiling to shield her from the heavens. No magic, just a fresh start. She could have the floor sanded down to the grain, or maybe have it ripped out and replaced with new strips of oak. But the haint blue still served its purpose. Forces, not quite so friendly, still wandered nearby, attracted by the power they sensed residing in this house. If anything, she should give it a fresh coat, as well as the outside of the house, the overhang of the porch, and the shutters and doors.

She kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed, staring at the door to her closet, almost expecting it to open and reveal the Beekeeper’s grand chamber. But it didn’t, and she very nearly regretted that. The magic had left May so alone in the world, exploiting it for those who feared her, trying to shield those she loved from it. The Beekeeper was the source of this divisive magic, but devil or no, at least with the Beekeeper, May had someone who could accept her exactly as she was.

She well remembered the night she’d ordered the creature away from her home, but the truth was, May had never really expected the creature to honor her wishes. Even today, she kept a bottle of the spirits in the pantry, just on the odd chance the Beekeeper might return.

But it had been years now. The war had come and gone since her last visit from the Beekeeper herself, though the cry of a rooster at odd hours seemed an assurance that, even unseen, the Beekeeper was still keeping an eye on things. Her magic had never deserted May. If anything, it had grown stronger, and might be, it struck May, the only thing that was keeping her going.

Her heart jumped as she heard a door creak open, but it settled when she realized it wasn’t the door to her lost friend’s world, just her granddaughter checking in on her.

Jilo poked her head in. “You’re awake now?”

“Of course, I haven’t even lied down yet.”

Jilo’s brow lowered, and she turned her head a touch to the side. “You just been sitting here staring at the wall all this time?”

“What do you mean ‘all this time’? Can’t a body have a minute to collect her thoughts?”

Jilo smiled and came into the room. May noticed that she held something clutched against her bosom. “Of course, Nana. Just want to be sure you’re doing okay.”

The girl sounded worried. May stopped and studied Jilo’s face for a moment, registering the concern in the girl’s eyes. “How long have I been in here?”