Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(89)
“How come you do it?” he said, his voice coming out hushed, his eyes darting toward the hallway.
“How come I do what?” She made her way to the table and began filling the single glass for her son.
“How come you let that man stay on here?” Willy’s words caused her to stop cold and set the pitcher down. “How come you let him treat us like he does?” His voice grew louder, almost like his courage was growing with each word spoken. “You ain’t stupid. You must know by now you can’t change him.” She raised her hands, a signal for Willy to keep quiet lest Guy overhear what he was saying, but the boy wouldn’t be hushed. “I don’t care if he hears me,” Willy said, standing tall. “I ain’t afraid of him. You shouldn’t be either,” he said, though his gaze was fixed on the kitchen’s entrance, telling her that his words were only so much bravado. “Not if there are two of us and only one of him,” he quickly added. “We can make him leave. We can go back to like it was before. Back when it was good.”
She stood there for a moment, at a loss for words. Her heart pounded with the expectation that Guy’s heavy boots would come stomping down the hall. Much to her relief, the only sound was that of Guy snoring in his throne.
“Sit,” she commanded, watching as Willy dragged out a chair, turned it around, and then slumped over its top rail. She placed her hand on the back of Robinson’s head to reassure him, then realized she was actually doing it to comfort herself. “I’m not afraid of him,” she said. She only realized it was a lie when the last word left her lips. “I love him,” she said by rote, wondering if there were still even a shade of truth to that statement. Then finally she said the one thing she knew to be true. “Remember,” she said pulling Robinson’s cheek against her hip, “he’s my son’s father. I won’t have you showing disrespect for him in front of my boy.”
Willy forced his way up from the table, leaning over it toward her. “He done disrespects himself enough in front of him. Won’t look after him. Won’t work a lick. Won’t even get up out of that old chair ’cept to grab another bottle. He ain’t the kind of man a woman like you could love. No,” Willy said, his tone softening as his eyes lowered to Robinson’s face. “I don’t believe you do. Love him, that is. You want to love him. But I don’t know why. What has he ever done for you, really?”
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.