Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(73)

“I do,” the woman said, leaning forward. “I do give them permission to cleanse me.”

Jilo flashed the woman her most reassuring smile, then doused the ball of paste with a bit more rum. She struck the match, not hesitating this time, and touched the flame to the white paste.

The woman’s eyes widened as the ball of paste caught flame and then began to darken, expanding, lengthening, and growing into what resembled a small black snake wriggling along.

“There it is,” Jilo said. “That’s the fix. Right there. The spirits done drew it out of you.”

The woman wobbled in her seat, nearly swooning, but caught hold of the edge of the table and steadied herself. Her eyes filled with tears. “You have the gift,” she said, a tone of gratitude overriding her earlier haughtiness. She raised her hand like she wanted to reach out for Jilo, but instead she stood and rushed out of the house, to all appearances a terrified but happy customer.

Jilo and Binah squealed in simultaneous delight, shocking the drowsy Robinson awake. He began to wail in displeasure, but Jilo swept him into her arms and spun him around and around, planting one kiss after another on his face. As his cries lessened, she looked up at Binah. “We’re gonna get by just fine.” She looked down at Robinson and planted another kiss on his cheek.





THREE


April 1955



“You? You the one claiming to be able to work the root?” The woman had only been in Jilo’s house a matter of minutes, but she was already struggling to pull her heavy frame up out of Nana’s haint-blue chair so she could leave. “I ain’t got time for none of your nonsense.”

“I wish you would give me the chance to assist you with your difficulties,” Jilo said.

The woman snorted. “You ain’t got none of the Hoodoo in you, girlie,” she said, laughing, her fat cheeks, mottled with rosacea, rising as her jowls jiggled. “Anybody with eyes can see that.” She huffed and puffed, but couldn’t wrest herself out of the chair on her own.

Jilo’s early optimism about resurrecting her grandmother’s business had faltered quickly. It wasn’t easy finding folk who would place their faith in her particular brand of Hoodoo. She’d done her best to imitate her grandmother, but truth was, she didn’t know the first thing about working the magic tricks that fueled her nana’s act.

Though Jilo sometimes felt remorseful that she was perpetrating out-and-out trickery, not even backed by the belief of those who practiced genuine Hoodoo, Nana had taught her that sometimes a little deception was the best way to free people of the fears and beliefs preventing them from leading happy lives. Jilo had read in magazines about people spending hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to undergo years of psychoanalysis, just to work through childhood traumas that might not—in reality—have ever happened to them. No, she wasn’t claiming to be able to cure disease or help people strike it rich; she was just putting names to their fears, setting up boogeymen only to knock them down.

After her first go at “magic,” Jilo had called upon her nana’s faithful clients to tell them she was taking up the mantle. Word began to spread, especially after she cleared herself and Robinson out of Nana’s old room and returned it to the calling room it had been in the heyday of Nana’s business. But after a handful of visits, the trickle of callers had dried up. Nana had a touch that Jilo did not seem to have inherited.

So desperate was she for customers, Jilo had actually been happy to welcome this vile woman into her home. It was midday, so she had turned Robinson over to Willy’s care before leading the visitor into the haint-blue room. Though Willy was a few years younger than Binah, he’d left school long ago. He could read. Some. He could write. A little. It had been almost a year since the government had proclaimed white schools had to be open to black children, but Savannah was having none of it. And with only a handful of schools in the city open to black students, no truant officer would ever come looking for Willy. Jilo wasn’t his mama, even though it was sure starting to feel like it, so she didn’t force him to go.

“Don’t just stand there like a natural-born fool, girl.” Her visitor’s forehead had bunched into a concertina of angry wrinkles. She was holding out an arm for help out of the chair, probably had been for some time. Jilo hated the thought of touching the woman’s pasty, sweaty flesh, but she realized that helping the rotund old woman rise would be the only way to get her out of the house. Besides, she’d faced plenty worse in her nursing days. Bracing herself, she wrapped her fingers around the woman’s clammy wrist and pulled until the woman managed to shift her heft from her haunches to her feet.

“Naw, girl. You ain’t got none of the root in you. Just look at you.”

“I’ll have you know my grandmother was Mother Wills, and her mother was Mother Tuesday Jackson . . .”

“ ‘I’ll have you know . . .’ ” The woman parroted the words back to her and cackled, her small gray eyes peeping out through curtains of flesh. “Listen to you. I don’t give a damn who whelped you. You walk around here puttin’ on airs like you somebody. But you don’t know nothin’ about the root, you just another uppity Negro, done got yo’self a bit of learnin’ on how to talk fancy. Think you smart enough to pull the wool over folks’ eyes, but I done seen through you, girlie.” The woman ambled toward the door, then turned back. “I don’t fault you none. I saw those diapers out there drying on the line. I know you ain’t got it easy.”