Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(66)

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.