Jilo (28 page)

The young man’s words knocked the wind out of her. She reached out to brace herself against the table, nearly upsetting the half-full glass of milk that her wide-eyed Robinson hadn’t yet touched. Her lips began working long before she found the words. “He came back . . .” she said, for the first time letting herself hear the truth of her heart. “The men in my life,” she said as the image of a photo of her father, Jesse, passed before her mind’s eye, giving way to the memory of Lionel’s golden glasses glinting in the overhead light as he held her pinned to his desk. The haunted expression on Pastor Jones’s face as he confessed his delusions to her. The look in Guy’s eyes as he read the letter inviting him to leave her behind. “All of them. They’ve all let me down somehow and left me. Even the good ones who never intended to.” She raised her gaze to meet Willy’s. “Guy, he’s the only one who ever came back.”

“We’d all been better off if he hadn’t,” Willy said, and she had to wonder if he was right. His head made a quick jerk, and he hastened to the window. “Here comes Mr. Poole now.” Willy’s voice grew excited. “He’s driving his new Impala.”

Jilo went to the window and leaned to the side so that she could see the bend of the road. A shiny new Chevrolet, a metallic shade of aqua not so very different from the familiar haint blue. She knew Tinker was doing real well for himself. He’d grown his business from the one shop on West Broad to include a small grocery over on Whitaker, some blocks south of his original shop, and a gas station in Garden City. These days everything the man touched seemed to turn to gold. And every black mother with a daughter anywhere near marrying age had taken to asking him over for Sunday dinner. Certainly on Easter, he’d be able to pick and choose from a wealth of invitations, but still it was
her
children he had wanted to spend it with.

Excited by Willy’s enthusiasm, Robinson slid off his seat and scampered to her side. She lifted him and placed a kiss on his forehead. She shifted Robinson into Willy’s embrace, then herded the two over to the back door. “Now get out there where he can see you, before he comes knocking and bothering Guy. And you treat his new car real gentle. You hear?” She pointed at Willy. “You make sure Robinson keeps his feet off the seats.” She opened the door for them and hurried them out. “You make sure to tell Mr. Poole I thank him for his kindness,” she said, but her words might have been lost on Willy’s ears, scurrying as he was to head off Tinker.

She thought of Tinker’s warm black eyes. The desperation in them the day she’d accepted that ride from him, then deserted him by the cemetery. The day she’d arrived home to find Guy and Edwin waiting on her front porch. It had all just seemed too foolish to consider. She didn’t even know the man, and he certainly didn’t know her. With Guy she had a history. She had a child. And though she knew the kind of man Guy was, she still believed in the kind of man she knew he might one day become, if he’d get out of his own way. Yes, a part of her still loved him. A part of her always would.

Still, she now found herself wondering how things would have turned out if Tinker’s old truck had held up long enough to get her home, or if Guy hadn’t been waiting just outside her door.

She turned to see Guy standing in the doorway that separated the kitchen from the hall. He was watching her with a dead look in his eyes, propping himself up with one hand against the wall. “What is there to eat around here?”

He hadn’t shown much interest in eating for quite a while. “Come sit down,” she replied. “I’ll fry you up some eggs. Got a bit of salt bacon, too.” He nodded and crossed to the table, pulling back a chair and collapsing into it. “You want coffee?” He despised the chicory she’d grown up drinking, so she’d taken to buying the more expensive beans to please him. Bought a new percolator and a hand grinder, too, as he liked his coffee better freshly ground.

“Yes. But the food first.” He put his elbows on the table, rested his head between his hands.

She nodded, realizing even as she did that he wouldn’t see her doing so. She turned and crossed to the stove, igniting all four of the electric eyes, hoping that one of them would begin to glow. The old stove was failing. It had been new when she was a girl, purchased by her nana right after she got the house hooked up to the power lines. But now the burners took a lot longer than they should to glow red, sometimes not heating up at all. They needed a new stove, but she felt it best to hold off on a purchase that would anger Guy. He had firm opinions about how “their” money should be spent. Maybe after he went a few days without a hot supper, he’d realize the wisdom of replacing it, or maybe he wouldn’t even care. Regardless, until it was good and dead, she’d force it to limp through.

She pulled out a heavy iron skillet from the drawer where she kept the pans. She set it on the stove, happy to see the back right burner had begun to heat. Once the pan was on the active burner, she switched off the others and went to the refrigerator to fetch the bacon and eggs. She watched, silent, as the white fat of the bacon began to liquefy, a memory from a chemistry class—how many years ago now?—of an experiment to determine the viscosity of some solution rising up in her mind. It fell away at the sound of Guy’s voice. “You got that coffee yet?”

She turned. “Not yet. I was getting your food ready first.”

“I said I wanted the coffee first.” He looked up at her, clenching his fists.

She didn’t contradict him. It wasn’t worth it. “I’m sorry. I’ll get it started.” She’d get some food in him. Some coffee. Maybe then he’d be sober enough to talk some sense.

“No, you might as well finish with the food since you got it started.” He lowered his head back into his hands. “It would just be nice if a man would be listened to every once in a while around here.”

She said nothing. Just grabbed a fork and turned the meat. She went to the cupboard and pulled down a plate, which she brought over to the stove. She fished the bacon from the pan before it cooked too crisp—Guy liked it tender—and cracked two eggs into the hot fat. Sunnyside up. Mustn’t crack the yolks. Guy wouldn’t touch them if the yolks got cracked. As soon as the food was ready to his liking, she carried the plate and fork to the table and set it down beside his elbow. When he didn’t look up, she placed her hand on his shoulder. “Here you go,” she said. “I’ll get your coffee.”

He grunted, but didn’t otherwise react.

She crossed to the counter to retrieve the coffee mill and the canister that held the beans. As she began to crank the mill, she looked over at Guy. He hadn’t budged an inch, hadn’t even made a start on his breakfast. She realized that he was killing himself, slowly, right before her eyes. She had to break him out of this mood, get him up and going again. Or failing that, she finally acknowledged, she would have to get him out of here. Yes, he was Robinson’s father, but she couldn’t have her boy growing up around a man like this.

“I’ve been thinking,” he said, the sound of his voice startling her, even though it came out quiet, his words, mumbled through his hands, nearly indiscernible. “You may be right.” She deserted the coffee mill on the counter and drew near to hear him better.

She waited a few moments, but he didn’t continue. “Right about what?” she asked, pulling out a chair and joining him at the table.

He looked up at her, his eyes red, still dazed from drink. “About this damned dry spell of mine. I can’t just sit around waiting for it to pass.”

She nodded, feeling hopeful for the first time in a long time. “Anything, Guy. Anything you got to do. You just tell me.” She said it, and she meant it, too. She wanted him to find his way back to himself. Still, she braced herself for whatever might come next.

He leaned back in his chair, pushing away his plate and fixing her with his gaze. “I’ve been thinking it’s this place—Savannah. It’s this town that’s the problem. If I could just get out of here . . .” His eyes lowered, a flash of guilt showing in them. “If
we
could get out of here. Get back to New York. I’m sure I’ll be able to work again.” As he spoke, he leaned forward, a fire building in him, the likes of which she hadn’t seen since the old days, back in Atlanta. “We could even take Willy if you want. There are others there like him. He’d be happier there, too. The change would be good for us all.”

For a brief and bright shining moment, she let herself be infected by his zeal. Maybe it was, after all, Savannah’s fault. It was true, before Edwin had found Guy and brought him south, Guy seemed to have been making something of himself. She imagined her small family living happily in that great northern city, far from old memories, far from Jim Crow. Then reality set back in. “It’d take money to get us set up in New York. We don’t have that kind of money, Guy.”

His eyes opened wide and he pointed toward the ceiling. “I already got that figured out; Binah’s done married herself one of the richest fellows in creation. You write your sister. You write Binah. You ask her to arrange for Edwin to make you a loan. He got me down here. He can help get me the hell back out of here.”

She shook her head. She hadn’t shared any news of Edwin with Guy. She’d figured it best not to bring up her brother-in-law. “No, he isn’t rich anymore,” she said, steeling herself to weather his disappointment. “Binah wrote me to say that his parents have cut him off. Edwin is in no position to help us.”

A small smile curved his lips, and a light ignited in his eyes. He laughed. “Good ole Edwin’s gonna learn what being a working man is like now.” It surprised her to see Guy so callous about his supposedly dear friend’s misfortune—especially since Guy himself had been counting on that fortune. Worse, it infuriated her that he would take any satisfaction in the thought of her little sister doing without. But before she could speak, he continued. “No problem, we’ll sell the house. That’ll give us something to get started with.”

Jilo pulled back. “We can’t do that, Guy.”

His face darkened. “And why the hell can’t we? A second and a half ago, you were saying you’d do ‘anything.’ ”

“Well, ’cause Nana left this place to me, Opal, Poppy, and Binah. Even if they agreed to sell it, we’d have to split it all four ways.” She wondered if they might. Based on their history of not visiting, Poppy and Opal didn’t give a damn about the place, and Binah might just be happy for the cash.

“And where the hell are they? If it weren’t for the two of us, this place would’ve been a deserted ramshackle long ago. No, this here place belongs to us. No need to share anything.”

She cast her eyes around the kitchen of the house that had been in her family now for three generations. It was true, this place belonged to her, and she belonged to this place. She realized that even if her sisters would be willing, she wasn’t. This was her home. And she knew, as badly as she wanted to believe in Guy, he’d blow through the windfall, and she and the boys might end up homeless in that great northern city. “No, Guy, that isn’t going to happen.”

Guy reached out with a wide sweep of the arm and sent his plate flying. It crashed against the wall, taking a divot of plaster out before falling and shattering on the floor. Jilo pushed back from the table, ready to flee, ready to fight, but Guy was already up and stomping down the hall. She followed him out through the living room, catching hold of the front door as he passed through it. She held up her left hand to fend off the protesting screen. “No more, Guy,” she called out after him. “No more. We can’t go on living like this. I’m not gonna go on living like this.”

He didn’t stop. He didn’t turn around. She waited there in the doorway and watched as he marched down the sandy drive, around the bend, and out of sight.

She turned, pushing the door closed behind her as she did.

When she looked up, her heart jumped to her throat. “Good Lord,” she exclaimed as she realized she was not alone. Another man sat in the partial shadow that fell on her nana’s old chair, her lover’s “throne.” Her pulse beat in her neck, even after she recognized the face, even after all sense of danger had passed. “Pastor Jones,” she said, relieved, confused, taking a few steps closer to the man she hadn’t seen in years. “You frightened me.” She smiled, pressing her hand over her heart. “I didn’t hear you come in.” She flushed with embarrassment, wondering just how much he had witnessed of her argument with Guy.

“I was called here,” he said, the words coming out quiet and flat. His voice sounded odd, like it was reaching to her from a great distance.

“Called?” she said, but he gave no further explanation. She took a closer look at him.

At first glance, he seemed to be in good shape. His clothes appeared clean and neatly pressed, his well-blocked hat rested on his knee. Still she could see there was something wrong with the man. Too quiet. Too still. Shell-shocked, that was the term that came to mind—his gaze was both blank and fixed at the same time, like he’d seen horrors he couldn’t look away from, even though they were no longer before him. He looked up at her through wide and haunted eyes. “They aren’t angels,” he said. “They never were.”

NINE

“They aren’t angels,” the pastor repeated himself.

Jilo crossed and knelt before him. “Are you all right? Can I get you something? Some water?” He didn’t respond. He just sat there staring straight ahead. “Does Mrs. Jones know you’re here? Does she know you’re all right?” Jilo tried to remember the boarding house’s phone number. Would it still ring? Had Mrs. Jones managed to hold on, or had she lost everything, going to drift in the wind? Jilo felt guilt flood her. She should’ve done a better job of keeping in touch.

“ ‘For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.’ ” It unnerved her to look at him, his words were spoken with such intensity, but his body remained still, unmoving, other than an occasional dart of his gaze. “They aren’t angels. Not at all. They’re devils. That’s what they are. They killed me, my girl. Took me, then broke me apart piece by piece, looking to see what made me tick.”

“No, no,” Jilo tried to comfort him. “You’re all right. You’re fine. You’re right here with me.” The light in the room began to dim. At first she was so fixated on the pastor, she didn’t notice, but soon it was impossible to ignore. The room had darkened from full daylight to an unnatural twilight within a matter of seconds. She cast an eye at the window, afraid that they might be in the path of a sudden oncoming storm.

The window was black. Not like the weather had turned. Like it had been painted over. Jilo rose and crossed the room, approaching the window with caution. As she drew near, the entire wall began to darken, a stain spreading out in all directions from the window, like a bruise, changing the wall’s color from its customary lead white to a deep indigo, from indigo to a midnight blue.

The darkness began to sweat through the plaster of the wall, beading up and dripping down the windowpane. Jilo stumbled back, her heart once again pounding to escape her chest. She turned to the pastor. “We have to get out of here. I don’t know what this is, but we need to move.” It struck her that she’d just told a lie. She knew what this was. Magic.

He didn’t stir, but remained staring at some invisible point six feet or so before him. “I didn’t know you were mine. I don’t think Betty knew it either.”

Jilo had no idea what he meant, but there wasn’t time to listen. She lunged forward to grab his hand, to tug him out of the chair and away from whatever was happening there. Her fingers bent to scoop up his hand in hers, but they passed right through him. A cry escaped her lips, and she jumped back from him, uncertain of which way to turn. He seemed to take no notice of her panic. She spun and ran toward the door, only to find that it, and the wall surrounding it, had also begun to change color. The darkness was bleeding through the wall, bubbling up through its surface like drops of ink. She stepped back in horror.

“It wasn’t like with me.” The pastor’s voice caused her to turn back. “They only took her the one time.” She slid around him, keeping her back against the unsullied side wall. “I never lay with her. I never touched her. But somehow they created you. From the two of us. Betty must have thought it was only a dream.” A bead of darkness broke free from the wall, taking flight on buzzing iridescent wings. Then another, and another. The wall appeared to bow in as the droplets took life and broke free. A swarm of insects, the likes of which Jilo had never seen before, neither bee nor wasp nor dragonfly, but some unholy combination of all three, spiraled around her. She began swatting at the winged intruders in wild panic, but every time her hands came into contact with one, a sharp pop, like a burst of static electricity, shocked her.

“They’ll want you now, if they see you have magic,” the pastor’s voice cut through the swarm’s buzz, capturing their attention as it did. The creatures seemed to lose all interest in her, coalescing instead around the pastor, drowning out what remained of his nonsense words, forming a spinning and ever-constricting cloud around him.

The cloud settled on him, concealing him, consuming him, then one by one the insects began to break away from the mass, each creature snatching away a bit of gauzelike substance as it disengaged from its mates. Bright pinpoints of light broke through the remaining swarm as its individual members took flight, like they were peeling away the pastor’s exterior and exposing the spirit that lay beneath.

A part of Jilo’s brain ordered her to move. To flee the front room, run down the hall, and make her way through the kitchen and out the back door, but she remained frozen in place until a light flared up from the center of where the pastor had been, a spark of white light that rose from the swarm and shot straight up through the ceiling. In that same instant, the light in the room returned. The swarm was gone.

The door began shaking as if someone were trying to force an entry. Jilo bolted down the hall, intent on making it out the back way, only to freeze in the entryway to the kitchen. She wasn’t alone. There were four others sitting at her table. A man wearing a top hat decorated with a bright red satin band was facing her. Something about him seemed familiar, but she couldn’t place what it was. “Little sister,” he called, “come join us.” He raised a glass in salute.

To this man’s right sat another with jaundiced white skin so thin the light seemed to pass right through it, giving him the look of a skeleton wrapped in fine vellum.

In spite of her earlier impression that there were four at the table, Jilo realized that the chair to the right of the fellow in the top hat sat empty. Then her eyes spied the flicker of a shadow, and that flicker solidified for an instant into the figure of a man so dark, so lusterless, that it was impossible to discern any features. In the next moment, the figure was again gone, replaced by a flat shadow that draped itself over the chair.

The fourth figure was facing away from Jilo. From the back, she had the succinct impression of maleness, but when the visitor turned, his wide shoulders seemed to narrow and soften. His skin darkened, and his bald pate covered over with dark hair. “Yes, little sister,” his baritone voice rose with each syllable, ending in a high alto, “come.” Jilo found herself looking into her own face. The room seemed to sway around her as memories—no, these were more than memories, it was as if she were reliving each experience, fresh, present, and real—of her every sadness, failure, and defeat weighed down on her. It seemed as if all hope had drained from her soul in an instant.

“Stop it, Brother,” said the man in the top hat—she still thought of this creature as a man, though only due to his appearance, which was more normal than that of his peers—causing her imitator to turn. The visitor shifted in appearance as it looked away from her, gaining in both height and girth, its skin lessening in pigment, its hair retracting inward, leaving nothing but a snowy bald pate. “This one is not for you,” the man in the hat continued. “At least not until she has accomplished what we need of her.”

“What you need . . . ?” The words squeaked out from her, but she had no sooner begun to speak them than the world around her began to change. Before her very eyes, the walls of the kitchen unfolded, peeling down and away, exposing the world around them. Soon the kitchen had disappeared, and the entire house seemed to dissolve and retract, sinking beneath the earth. Without moving an inch, Jilo found herself beneath the wide sky, looking out on her backyard. Only the table and chairs with their weird occupants remained—any other evidence of the house that had sheltered her family for decades had been erased, and although her feet told her that a solid floor remained beneath them, her eyes swore to her that she and her visitors floated at least a yard above the earth.

Jilo noticed a movement, just at the edge of the tree line. A figure stepped out from the grove of live oaks, her movements as graceful as the steps of a dance. Covered head to toe in lace, this odd woman—Jilo thought of the creature as female because of its dress and sashaying movements—began drawing near, holding her gloved hands overhead and slightly behind her. Her fingers wiggled, like she meant to tickle the sky. The sun followed her as she crossed the dry, gray field, so as she came closer, morning passed to high noon, and noon passed to dusk, the sun scraping the sky red as the figure in lace teased it along behind her.
This can’t be real. This can’t be the real world.
Dreaming. I must be dreaming.
The sight of twilight approaching on the horizon caused Jilo’s thoughts to turn to Robinson. In the real world, was the sun also setting? Would her boy be crying? Was he worried about his mama? For the first time, Jilo wondered if the everyday world was permanently lost to her. Had she somehow died and found her way, if not to hell itself, at least to some kind of purgatory? Were these creatures the same ones Pastor Jones had believed to be angels?

The veiled creature stopped mere feet from her and howled with laughter. “No, child, we’re not angels. I’ve never even seen one of those things.” She did a final twirl, the lace of her veil and of her skirt flitting up as she did. “What do you think?” she said, though now she seemed to be addressing the man in the top hat. Without waiting for him to answer, she extended a hand toward him, not in greeting, but as an impatient signal for him to hand her the bottle he held. He rose and offered it to her. Only then did Jilo realize the creature most resembling a normal man was the only one of the four remaining; the other three had disappeared from their chairs with no notice, as if they had been unwilling, or perhaps unable, to remain in the presence of the veiled one.

“You ever see one?” The woman whisked back the veil, revealing an even more absolute void than Jilo’s soul could have ever imagined. Not even a spark of light lived there. She swiped the bottle away, tilting it back to where Jilo reasoned her lips would be, were she not an abyss bound up in lace.

“No, can’t say that I have,” the man said, “though maybe they exist in the hidden places in between.”

For a moment, absolute silence fell all around them. Then the female lowered the bottle, hissing like an angry cat as she let her veil fall back over the emptiness. “Do not speak to me of the hidden places.” She hurled the bottle at the man with such force that it shattered against him. “My piss fills your hidden places.” The man stepped back, trembling, and the veiled one spun back toward Jilo. “These bastards. It pleases them to know there are things that remain hidden, even to me. But those things are few”—she stopped and turned again on her companion—“and oh, so very far between.” The man stood frozen in place, seeming to be too terrified to move, until the creature once again turned her attention from him to Jilo.

She drew closer, the shape of a head bobbing up and down beneath the lace. She circled Jilo, as if she were examining her, then came to a stop in front of her and leaned in, making a sound like she was sniffing. “And no,” she raised her head, stepping back as she did, “you don’t smell dead, though you would be if I hadn’t been keeping an eye on you.” Another burst of raucous laughter rose and fell away.

“I don’t understand,” Jilo said. “Who are you? Why are you here?”

“Oh, dearie,” the woman said, her veil sucking in and puffing out, as if a heavy breath were causing the movement, “I can tell you what they’ve called me, but I could never tell you who I am. Your grandmother May called me ‘the Beekeeper,’ as did her mother, Tuesday, before her. I reckon you might as well do the same. You humans are, after all, so dependent on labels.”

“You knew Nana?”

This Beekeeper took a few sashaying steps away, then turned back. “We were dear friends, these women and I. Long ago, I saw that I would find you through them, though I never guessed you wouldn’t share their blood. Not till the outsiders took your mama. Swept her up into the skies. Impregnated her with you. You,” she said, anger returning to her voice, “were one of those tiny mysteries, emanating from those damned spaces in between.” She turned again toward her companion, her rage emanating from her as a visible wave in this otherworldly ether. “Long ago, I sensed your coming.” She turned back toward Jilo. “I saw your destination. But I didn’t understand your essence. I do understand you now. I can see your path, even if the fools around you do not.

“But as for why we are here, it was
you
who summoned us. Why else would you have made the offerings?” The woman gestured at the table with a wide wave, and once again, all four chairs were occupied.

A cry escaped Jilo’s lips at the sight of the four corpses bound to the table. The chair over which the shadowy figure had draped itself now supported an elderly black man. She recognized his face. She hadn’t known him by name, but she had often seen him playing checkers with his friends outside on West Broad Street. His figure had been secured with a strap of leather, a belt, she realized, as her eyes narrowed in on him. He looked peaceful, as if he were sleeping.

The chair where the man with the parchment-like skin had sat was now occupied by the remains of a painfully thin white woman with graying black hair. Her hands were bound together behind the back of the chair, but she had slid a bit forward and her head was tilted to the side. Her sallow complexion suggested a long-term illness. Jilo had seen patients at the hospital with that same complexion, which usually spoke of some kind of renal failure. A look of quiet acceptance, relief after a long period of suffering, showed on her features.