Jilo (13 page)

May’s eyes drifted from the back of Jilo’s head to the damp spot on her daughter-in-law’s blouse.

Betty tugged the fur so that it was covered. “And Poppy?”

“Poppy?” May said, nearly having forgotten that Betty had asked about her middle child as well. “Poppy. She’s good, but I’m afraid our Poppy doesn’t have much of a head for learning. At least not the book kind.”

“She’s pretty, though?” Betty asked.

May could’ve gotten angry that Betty would see “pretty” as her daughter’s best hope. Poppy was no scholar, but she was honest and hardworking. And there was nothing she couldn’t do with a needle and thread. Truth of the matter was, though, Poppy was pretty. No, more than that.

“Poppy is a beautiful girl,” May said, then quickly added, “on the outside and the inside, too.” Betty’s fur-draped shoulders relaxed. “She’s got herself work as a seamstress. Up in Charlotte,” May added, both hating that her granddaughter was so far away and worrying that she wasn’t far enough away. She’d never really accepted Maguire’s claim that his grasp reached worldwide.

“But she’s so young.”

“Only a year younger than you were when you married my Jesse,” May said, feeling defensive, but her words caused her to reflect on how Betty’s getting married too young had been the root of so many of their troubles. She bit her lip, then gave into an urge to provide the woman with a shred of comfort. “Don’t you go worrying about Poppy. Girl has a good head on her shoulders. She ain’t gonna get herself messed up with some boy. You wait and see, she’s gonna make something of herself.”

May stopped and took a good look at Betty. Her pasty skin and fancy clothes. Her pretty features and her selfish heart. May wanted to let the past lie in the past, find a way to forgive this woman, both for taking Jesse and for deserting her own daughters. But May soon realized that even though she might someday uncover a font of forgiveness in her heart, today was not the day it would happen. She folded her arms across her chest and took a wider stance.

“All right now, girl,” May said. “How ’bout you tell me what you really doin’ here?”

Betty moved her lips to speak, but before she could utter a word, May heard a high and piercing shriek coming from her own front porch. Her head jerked toward the sound. A baby’s cry—a tad less angry, but still just as desperate—reached her ears. She flashed a look at Betty’s crumpling face, then strode to the front door and yanked it open. On the other side of the screen door stood a young black woman, probably around Opal’s age, dressed in a dark gray maid’s uniform. Her tight lips twitched as her nervous eyes fell on May, but she continued to bounce a small bundle, the source of the shrieking, and pat the baby’s back.

May pushed the screen door open, the young woman taking a cautious step back as the door protested.

“May,” Betty said, her high heels clacking across the wooden floor as she rushed to catch up to her mother-in-law, grasping the screen door before the resentful spring could pull it closed.

May took in the sight of a shiny maroon sedan with a liveried driver—a white man—stationed at its side, but neither the man nor the scintillating hunk of steel held her attention.

“Turn it around,” May commanded the maid. “I want to see it.” The young woman hesitated, but then did as she’d been told.

May approached the bundled child, its face contorted by a degree of rage only an infant could muster. A balled-up fist flailed on the end of a chubby arm. May reached out and took the damp hand gently between her own fingers. “Yours?” May said to Betty, even though she knew the answer. The babe’s skin was the same warm copper shade as Betty’s natural skin tone. The hair on its head—a coppery red, not too very different from that of the doll Betty had brought for Jilo—caught the sun. The child’s eyes flashed open. As blue as a bachelor’s button. Just as May had suspected.

“Yeah.” Betty’s defeated voice came from behind May. “She’s mine.”

“Well it sounds like she’s hungry. If I were you, I’d stop nursing that fur you wearin’ and feed her instead.” May caressed the baby’s soft hand, then looked back at Betty, who seemed grateful to shrug off her stole.

Betty held the fur out toward the maid with one hand, and reached out for the child with the other. “Let me see her,” Betty said, then the two traded their burdens. Betty crossed to the far end of the porch and took a seat on the bench swing. She waited until the driver turned his back, and then her moment’s modesty surrendered to another piercing cry from the child. Betty shifted the baby to her left arm, and undid the buttons of her blouse with her right hand. The child took to the exposed breast, bleached pale as it was.

“I’ve been working on getting her switched to the bottle. I have plenty of formula, but these things,” she shifted so that her bosom jutted a bit forward, “just keep doing what they do.” Betty seemed apologetic.

“What’s her name?”

“Ah,” Betty said, her own face showing the relief of letting go of her milk. “I’ve just been calling her Baby, but . . .” Her words deserted her as her haunted eyes met May’s.

“But you reckon I can name her anything I want.” May felt a pain in her heart at the sight of the poor child in this hopeless woman’s arms.

“I can’t keep her,” Betty keened before managing to calm herself. “He won’t let me keep her.”

“Came out a shade too brown, did she?” May asked. Betty flinched, although May hadn’t intended to cause her more pain.

“He says I have to give her up.” She leaned back, shifting the child as she did so. “Wants me to turn her over to one of those horrible convents so they can adopt her out.” She patted the baby’s tight copper curls. “But you and I both know they ain’t never gonna adopt her out.”

May heard Betty’s real voice, her real words, not the practiced Yankee talk she’d been using since she arrived.

“You hopin’ he’s gonna change his mind, aren’t you? Hoping he’s gonna marry you.”

Betty laughed, a hard bitter laugh, as hot tears fell down her cheeks. “Mickey ain’t gonna marry me. He’s already married. And he’s Catholic.” She looked up at May. “I ain’t got no hope for nothing. I just can’t bear the thought of giving her over to strangers. Never knowing if she’s all right.”

May closed her eyes and drew a deep breath. When she opened her eyes again, she patted Betty’s shoulder. “ ’Course she gonna stay with me. I’m her nana, ain’t I?”

Betty’s eyes widened and a shudder of relief ran through her. “Thank you,” she managed before her words turned to throaty sobs.

“Now enough of that nonsense,” May said, a harshness rising unbidden to her words. She braced herself, looking for the strength to give this woman one more chance to do right. “ ’Course, you could stay, too. Finish raising your girls here with me.”

Betty’s sobs stopped cold, and her eyes opened in something very near to horror. “Oh, May,” she said, her haughty Yankee tone resurrecting itself in just two syllables. “I could never stay on
here
.” She cast a disapproving eye over May’s entire world. “No, I have to get back home. Back to New York.” She leaned a tad forward, as if she were about to share her most cherished secret. “You see, I love him.”

May nodded. “All right, then.” She turned to the maid. “You fetch the baby’s things. Bring them inside.” At the squeak of the porch swing, she looked back to see Betty standing, already holding her infant out toward May.

May accepted the child into her arms and pulled her into her bosom, even as the baby’s natural mother fumbled with buttons to hide her own exposed breasts. May turned to take the child inside, but Betty’s voice stopped her.

“I know I ain’t a good mother. Hell, I ain’t really any kind of mother at all.” She licked her lips, then rushed on as if to prevent May from responding. “I’m not a good woman. I’m selfish. I’m vain. I’m greedy. If there is a bad choice to make, you can bet your last dollar I will make it. But in my sorry life, I have done one thing right.” She paused and fixed May with her gaze. “I have left my girls in your care. ’Cause I want them to learn something I could never teach them. I want them to grow up like you.”

Betty pushed past May and hurried down the steps of the porch. She ducked into her shiny long car as soon as her driver opened its door.

This time, May had no urge to chase after this foolish woman child. Neither to punish her nor to beg her to stay. May stood firm, watching as the young maid struggled with the baby’s belongings as Opal had struggled with those damned cardboard suitcases so many years before. May ran her hand over the back of the now-sleeping child’s head, then placed a kiss on her brow. “Don’t you worry, little one. Your nana, she loves you.”

SIXTEEN

December 1940

“When was Jesus born?”
Poppy sang in a low, sweet voice as she pumped water into a sink full of dishes. She’d inherited her mama Betty’s talent for singing. May counted it among one of her greatest successes that the girl’s voice was all of her mama she seemed to carry in her.
“It was the last month of the year
.
”
Poppy was such a beautiful thing, even in the harsh white of the electric light. For a moment, May missed the soft flicker of her kerosene lamp, but she had to admit she was growing used to these modern conveniences the “Hoodoo” money had brought their way.

Poppy took after her great-grandmother Tuesday, standing barely five feet tall, and with a waist not much thicker than a willow branch. It both pleased and worried May that she’d filled out nicely in those places that men liked to see full.

May had only agreed to let Poppy head up to Charlotte in exchange for the girl’s promise to keep her head screwed on tight and her skirt pulled down over her knees. So far, May believed she’d kept her word, although her guardian, a pastor’s wife, had written to say her husband wearied of the sound of pebbles ricocheting off the upstairs windows every night. Poppy was fifteen, the same age Betty had been when she became May’s daughter-in-law, and with full lips, high cheekbones, and deep brown eyes, she was prettier than most by far. The preacher’s missus informed May that her granddaughter had plenty of suitors, but none of them had managed to capture her heart. Yet. It might be December, but May was no fool. A fresh new spring lay just around the corner.

Poppy sensed her grandmother’s presence and looked back over her shoulder. “Nana, you want me to get Jilo ready for bed when I finish up with these?”

“Naw, girl.” May crossed the room to place a kiss on Poppy’s head. “Jilo’s big enough to handle herself now, and Binah, she’s sleeping—for now, at least.” The baby still hadn’t taken to sleeping the night through, although that mattered less to May than it once might have. She almost looked forward to the sound of Binah’s fretful stirrings. It made the long, sleepless nights less lonely. “You done helped enough around here today. ’Course Jilo might like for you to read her a story from that book you brung her.”

Poppy looked up from the soapy water and smiled at her. “No, little miss is gonna want to show off by reading me one of the stories her own self. That girl is smarter than the rest of us put together.” The tone of her voice and the smile in her eyes told May Poppy couldn’t be prouder of that fact.

“Yeah, you probably right.” May leaned her hip against the sink’s cold porcelain lip. “It’s so good to have you home, even if it is just for a few days.”

“I didn’t want to miss Christmas . . . and”—her smile faded—“I just had to see her with my own eyes.”

May pulled the girl into her arms. She’d mailed a picture of Binah to both Opal and Poppy when she wrote to tell them they had a new sister, but a picture didn’t do much to make a body seem real. “ ’Course you did.”

Poppy relaxed into May’s arms. “I sure wish Opal could be here.”

May slid her hands to her granddaughter’s shoulders and pushed her back a little so they could look at each other. “How about tomorrow we call up the operator and have her put through a call to that sister of yours?”

“All the way in California?”

“All the way in California.”

Poppy threw her wet hands around May’s waist and squeezed tight enough to take the wind out of her. Pulling the girl close, May squeezed right back and leaned her head forward to breathe in Poppy’s scent.

A loud bang on the front door startled Poppy into making a little jump.

“Even on Christmas,” May muttered to herself. As she stepped back, she caught the worried look in Poppy’s eyes. The magic had never set well with Poppy. She never said so outright, but May knew it was a large part of the reason she’d wanted to get away. Hell, it was a large part of the reason May had let her go.

“I’ll get it,” Poppy said, ready to spring toward the door.

“No.” She held up her hand. “Don’t you worry, none, girl. Nana tell ’em to come back another time.”

May shuffled out of the kitchen and down the hall. Her steps fell heavier than they had in years past, and it was taking her more time to get around. May figured there was no escaping time, not even with the magic she had at her command. Another rap, followed by a quick and impatient series of bangs, sounded on the door. May stopped dead in her tracks. “I am coming,” she yelled in the direction of the knocking, “and if you keep banging away like that, you ain’t gonna want to see me when I get there.”

She took her time, more than she needed, really, to make it to the door and brush aside the curtain covering the door’s window. Once there, she flicked on the switch by the door, causing the exterior overhead light she’d installed that summer to burst to life, revealing the snow-dusted visage of Henry Cook. His sweet innocent face, combined with the wispy flakes of miraculous snow, gave the appearance of a Christmas ornament. Her annoyance faded at the sight of him. She hadn’t laid eyes on him since she’d stopped working at the Pinnacle. His face was unchanged, but the rest of him had gone through a growth spurt. The fellow who stood beneath the harsh glare of the porch light was no longer a boy. He was a young man. He wore a woolen flat cap and a threadbare coat way too big even for his newly broadened shoulders.

Healing his poor mama had been her first solo act of magic; she hadn’t been at all sure it would work, but she thanked God that this boy still had his mama. A hot wave of guilt flushed through her, knocking back the cold breeze coming in through the door. Was it God she should be thanking for such a thing? Well, hell, if she was damning herself using magic, she would do what she could to make some good come of it.

May opened the door. “Henry, what on earth brings you out on Christmas night? You should be home with your family.”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Mother Wills.”

For some reason hearing this young man address her by her working name cut her to the quick. “No, Henry. Don’t you call me that. We’re old friends, you and I. You call me May, or Mrs. Wills, if you must, but I don’t want you calling me Mother, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The words came out wrapped in caution, and he seemed to deliberate before continuing. “Mrs. Wills. You gotta come with me. You gotta help. There’s something real bad goin’ on.”

The screen door gave its usual complaint as she pushed it open enough to signal for Henry to enter. One of these days she’d get around to replacing that damned spring. Henry reached out and took hold of the screen door, pushing it fully open and stepping into the main room, but not far enough for May to close the other door and shut out the cold. He shifted foot to foot, looking like the slightest noise might make him take flight.

“I just passed by Wildwood Church down the road,” he said in a rush. “There’s a group of white men there, and they got Pastor Jones with ’em.” May was taken aback by the name. She hadn’t given the young preacher a single thought since her mama’s funeral. “They done set the church on fire, and I’m afraid the pastor’s gonna get killed if you don’t do something.”

“All right. I’ll be right out.” May closed the door after Henry, and turned away.

Poppy stood at the end of the hall, just outside the kitchen door. She dried her hands on her apron, her nervous eyes focused on May. “Everything okay, Nana? Was that Henry?”

“Everything’s just fine, my sweet, sweet girl.” She paused. “Nana has to go out for a bit. She needs you to watch your sisters for her.”

“Of course, Nana.” Worry returned to Poppy’s eyes, and her smile flattened. “Where you going?”

“Don’t you worry about that.” May reached out for Poppy’s hand, giving it a tight squeeze. “Nana will be home by morning. You just watch Jilo and Binah, and think about what you want to say to Opal when we call her. And don’t you worry, you hear?”

“Okay,” Poppy said, obedient as always.

“Promise me. No worries.” May released Poppy’s hand and tapped her nose with her index finger, causing her granddaughter’s eyes to light up again with mirth.

“I promise, Nana.”

“That’s my good girl.”

May took a moment to pull her heaviest coat on over the new cardigan Poppy had given her for Christmas, then found her way out to the porch, careful not to let either of the doors slam and wake the babies. Henry’s beat-up Model A truck was running, although the engine spluttered enough to sound as if it might give up the ghost at any moment. After helping May into the passenger side, Henry circled the truck and struggled to open his own door, which would only gape partway. The kid squeezed in through the gap, then pulled just as hard, metal grating metal, to get the door closed.

May noticed only one headlight of Henry’s Model A seemed to be working, and it veered its gaze up toward the trees. Fine if you were out hunting possum, but not so good if you were trying to see which direction you were headed. May had never attended the Wildwood Church, but she knew it lay five miles or so south, down off Buckhalter Road. She wasn’t sure if it was still considered Savannah proper. She also wasn’t sure they’d make it in time to do any good. Henry pressed the clutch and shifted into drive, causing the truck to groan and heave before it began its slothful roll forward.

“What do you think this is about?” May asked him.

“I don’t know ma’am. Is it ever
about
anything?”

May stared out the side window, watching the familiar territory pass by at an unfamiliar pace. Even lumbering along, it took next to no time for them to reach the bend in the road. They turned south on Ogeechee and kept on for what felt forever, but what was in reality probably no more than a dozen minutes. Henry turned the rattling beast left on to Buckhalter. May didn’t know for sure where the church stood, but she could see the glow of the flames and smell the smoke even before they made it half a mile.

“You stop here,” she said as they neared the far end of the drive that cut between Wildwood Church’s graveyard and the glow in the night sky she could only assume was the burning remains of the church itself. She reached over and patted Henry’s forearm without ever taking her eyes off the devil’s sparks rising into the air. She pointed toward a tall clump of wax myrtles she hoped would help hide the truck . . . and the boy. Henry obeyed, easing the truck to the side of the road and shifting to park.

“This old girl can be tricky to start,” he said. “We should probably leave it running.”

May looked into the boy’s warm amber eyes. “That’s fine. You’re gonna stay here anyhow.”

“Oh no, ma’am. I can’t let you go on your own. Poppy . . .” He stopped talking after the slip of her granddaughter’s name, but the look on his face told her all she needed to know. It explained what this young fellow was doing driving around these parts on Christmas night, and why the little miss hadn’t take interest in her suitors up in Charlotte. Henry was on his way to court her. May hadn’t seen it coming, but if she didn’t get him killed out here tonight, this boy might just be a good match for her Poppy.

She turned on him. “You will do as I damned well say, you hear me, boy?” Henry cringed at her severity. Good. Better to have him scared of her than messing around in things too big for him. She reached for the door handle, only to realize there was none.

Henry’s face was still frozen, his eyes open wide. “I got to open it from the outside,” he said, forcing his own door open a fraction and squeezing out. He came around to her door and tugged it open for her, offering his arm to help her steady herself as she eased her way out of the truck.

She could see how anxious the boy was on her behalf, so she forced a confident smile to her lips. “Don’t worry for old May,” she said. “You stay right here, and be ready to take off when Jones and I get back.” The smile faded as she considered the situation. Truth was, she had no idea what was waiting for her on the far side of the churchyard. “If something should go wrong, though, don’t you try to come riding to the rescue. You scat, and you go get Poppy and the girls someplace safe.” Even as she said the words, she wondered where that might be. Still, she wagged her index finger in his face. “Promise me.”

He hesitated, then blurted out, “I ain’t a coward.”

May reached out and placed a gentle hand on his cheek. “I know you aren’t. A coward would never have come for help. A coward would have turned around and driven home. Promise me you’ll see to my girls.” She paused and looked deeply into his eyes. “All of them.”

He nodded. “I promise.”

She turned and started making her way through the graveyard, feeling the full weight of her years. The graveyard hadn’t been active in twenty years, but she had known many of the folk buried here. She was no longer a young woman. Hell, tell the truth and shame the devil—she was an old biddy now by anyone’s standards. The best part of her life lay behind her.

She was a widow. Her husband and her only son were buried in a cemetery not so very different from this one, just a few miles down the road. She wove through the stones that had been erected for those who could afford a record of their presence in this world, and the hand-marked whitewashed wooden crosses of those whose families were too busy struggling to stay alive to afford more for their dead. The scent of smoke grew stronger and stronger, reminding her that this world was no place for a decent soul. This world belonged to the barbarous. It was a world of war. A world of killing.