Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(6)

Just a bit south of the cemetery, the house was bounded by a creek and a thick cluster of live oaks and pines, which, to Jesse’s childhood imagination, seemed to go on forever. He knew this house and its land would come to him one day, after his own mama died. Now, though, he and his family lived in the city’s new projects in Yamacraw, joined hips and shoulders to their neighbors with barely the room to spit between. His mama wanted them here with her, but, much to Jesse’s shame, blood between Betty and his mama was bad.

The silent glares of disapproval his mama cast at Betty were proof enough of her disappointment in Jesse’s choices. She’d sacrificed to get him into the university so that he could become a lawyer or a doctor. Not the dockworker he’d become to support his young wife. Betty refused to live under his mother’s roof, where, to be fair, she had never been made to feel welcome. Instead, she used the dusty and crowded streets of Yamacraw to remind him of his failures without ever having to say a word.

By any right, the front porch should be sagging under the weight of his extended family, but Jesse sat alone on the freshly lacquered white swing, beneath the fading haint-blue overhang. His kin was either avoiding him or giving him breathing space. Maybe it came down to a little bit of both. Jesse didn’t really give a good goddamn which it was. He’d chosen this seat for a reason, and that was to keep an eye on the bend of the road in anticipation of Betty’s return.

The screen door cried out as Aunt Miriam, his Uncle Louis’s widow, came out onto the porch, carrying a plate covered with rice and a shrimp-and-okra gumbo. A thick slice of golden cornbread crowned the feast. “Your mama sent this out to you. She wants you to eat.”

Jesse didn’t want to eat. His pride was hurting. Still, his stomach rumbled at the scent of ginger, garlic, and bay leaf riding beneath the hot sweetness of cinnamon. Biting his lip to keep it from quivering, he shook his head and waved her away.

Shame was riding him like the hag, drawing the very breath out of him. The other men, the ones old enough to be married, had their plates brought out to them by their wives. Even when she was around, Jesse’s wife wasn’t the kind to go fetching him anything. But after strutting out of the graveyard, Betty had taken off in a direction that decidedly wasn’t homeward. No, she hadn’t gone home, and she sure as shooting wasn’t here. Nobody said a word, but a knowing look passed from face to face, a silent telegraph conveying a dirty supposition of where Betty was headed: off to a man who decidedly wasn’t Jesse.

His aunt Miriam’s face fell, making him feel all the worse. Jesse realized she’d been using the opportunity to look after him to fill the gap her husband’s death had left in her heart. “I’m sorry,” he began to say, but she’d already turned away, the scream of the screen door drowning out his mumbled regrets.

His gaze drifted back to the gray sandy path that passed for a drive. Empty. Dry and dusty. He found himself praying for rain. A good solid downpour that would drive his nattering family with their sly smiles clean off his mama’s land. A new flood that would wash down the whole world, rinsing away its sins. And Jesse, the new Noah, could ride out the storm with those he loved, on a tiny floating island built by his own hand. No other men to catch Betty’s eye, no other man to fill the spot in her heart or her womanhood, the two parts of her he’d once thought she held sacred for him.

He felt eyes on him. “I cooked this to your nana’s tastes.” His mama stood before him, grasping the plate he’d refused. Jesse was surprised he hadn’t heard her approach. He wondered how many other things happened right under his nose without him noticing. “You’d be showing disrespect not to eat. To your nana and me both.” His mama held the plate out to him and waited. “Baby,” she said after a moment, her tone comforting. “It’s yo’ girl everyone talkin’ about, not your wife.”

Defeated, he took the plate, but lowered his eyes. “And what they’re saying is that Jilo isn’t my girl.” He felt a pang in his heart. “But she is. Even if she isn’t, she is.”

“Of course she is,” she said, “and you send anyone who says otherwise to me. I’ll clear things up for them right quick.” His lowered gaze came to rest on her hands. She was rubbing the knuckles of her left hand with the fingers of her right. Jesse could tell her arthritis was bothering her; her joints were swollen, and holding the plate had seemed like work for her. Arthritis had flared up in her early, way too early. His nana could have used her magic to ease his mama’s suffering, but he knew she had never offered, and his mama had never asked.

“No,” Mama continued, “what they saying is ‘Old Tuesday’ left a bit of her soul with Jilo. They saying Jilo gonna have the power now.” She sat down at his side, the old swing complaining about the added burden. “Eat,” she said, tilting her chin down and looking at him with one eye opened a tad wider than the other. He knew this look. He’d grown up seeing it creep onto his mama’s face right before she lost patience with him.

He took a bite. Then another. It was delicious, but his heart remained heavy. He let the fork rest on the plate. “You think they’re right?”

His mama shook her head. “No, that was just Mama kissing the little one good-bye. She was telling us she was proud we were honoring her in the old way, but she took whatever magic she had with her.” She reached out and lifted his chin, turning his face toward her. “You and I both know she didn’t want her magic to live on past her. That’s why she never showed me any of it. That’s why she never let us rely on it. She didn’t want none of that for us.”