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The article had arrived by itself, with the words “Show my girls their mama” scrawled beneath the photo in a slanting, loopy script May’s eyes had been hard-pressed to decipher. May wasn’t sure she should let the girls see it.
May grunted as her eyes fell again on “Miss Wills’s” age. Twenty-eight years old with a twenty-one-year-old daughter. True, Betty still looked good, May could tell as much from the photo, but the reporter’s acceptance of Betty’s claim spoke more of his infatuation with his subject th
an anything else. May wondered just what the newspaper fellow had gotten in return for the write-up.
May’s eyes focused again on the newsprint she held. A semicircle of besotted and uniformed white boys gazed adoringly at Betty. Betty, who was about to set sail with them. For all May knew, those boys might all be over in Europe now. Might even be dead.
Her eyes drifted from the photo to scan the text once more. Imagine it. Betty singing over in Europe. Even setting foot on Africa. Opal was in the Orient, working as an army nurse—the army wouldn’t let her say where—and for a moment May found herself imagining the two meeting up overseas, Opal a black nurse, Betty a “stunning redheaded, hazel-eyed” white singer. Would the two even recognize each other if they were allowed to congregate in the same hall?
May nearly wadded up the newsprint, but something made her hesitate. Maybe Poppy would want it. She could mail the article to Poppy in Charlotte, but no. It would probably just get returned, unopened, like every other letter May had sent her over the last two years. Poppy blamed May for the horrors that had unfolded on Christmas night two years back. She had left Savannah swearing that she would only speak to her grandmother again if May gave up working magic. It broke May’s heart every time she thought of her girl. Lord knows May would like nothing better than to give up the magic. The problem was that the magic didn’t seem ready to give her up. When May finally made it home that Christmas night, she’d been greeted by the Beekeeper, sitting sprawled out on her front steps. The damned creature hadn’t raised a gloved finger to help May’s girls. “I wanted to see how the little one would handle herself,” she’d said, screeching with laughter as she began to recount the acts of savagery that had just taken place in May’s home.
May had ordered the Beekeeper away. Commanded her never to return. But even though the creature had not shown herself since then, her power continued to flow, as unwanted as ever, through May. Hypocrite, May thought. A part of her was more than grateful the magic hadn’t just dried up. For one thing, she hadn’t managed to track down Maguire’s demon, and she was grateful she’d have more than her increasingly disregarded prayers to protect her babies. Maybe Jilo had managed to take it out, or maybe it was just playing possum until it was strong enough to strike again. Besides, she couldn’t deny she’d grown accustomed to the little luxuries that the “donations” she received for working the magic, which folk mistakenly believed to be Hoodoo, could buy. Perhaps it was too late for her. Maybe she’d sold her soul just like Maguire—only he was better at bargaining.
Maguire. Without missing a beat, that damned buckra had gone from praising Hitler as a great thinker and a noble man to mobilizing his many factories to join the war effort against the German leader. As best she could tell, Maguire had made money from the Jerries before the war by selling them things they were now using to kill our boys. And now he was making even more money by selling our military the things they needed to fight back. It was all a big circle. A snake feeding on itself, and growing fatter from the feeding. May had no doubt regarding where Maguire’s true allegiance lay in all of this bloodshed. His only loyalty was to himself. She held a complete record of his weasel words and deeds, at least those reported in the local paper, in the form of the clippings she still collected about him.
Maybe someday, after May had passed, Poppy would find the scrapbook, and these clippings and the notes May made on them would help her begin to understand what May had been up against. Help the girl find a bit of forgiveness in her heart for her old nana.
Poppy blamed May for ruining her relationship with Henry Cook. Henry. He’d up and enlisted before the war, probably as much out of desire to put some space between himself and Poppy as to serve his country. Whatever romance had blossomed between the two was now good and dead.
May remained angry as a hornet at Henry for his part in Maguire’s plan, but still she said a prayer for his safe return. He should’ve warned her about what she was walking into that night, but he wasn’t a bad boy. Would he and the other black servicemen be allowed to see Betty’s show if it passed through where he was stationed?
The colored soldiers here in Savannah weren’t allowed to share the whites’ facilities. Folk were taking up money to buy a space the black servicemen could use for their own recreation. Those collecting funds for the cause had even stooped to taking money from May. Polite society had no room for “witches.” People who used to tolerate her as the daughter of Mother Tuesday had drawn the line once she started working magic herself. Even the folk who’d come to her, pleading for her help, treated her like she was tainted when they caught sight of her outside the house. Magic had cost her Poppy and her reputation. May wondered what she might lose next.
Of course it seemed the man who’d forced her into this life couldn’t lose. A new thought struck her. Maybe that’s what she should do with this article about Betty. Just slip it into the same scrapbook where she kept the clippings about Maguire. Forget she’d ever received it.
She laid the article down on the table and walked away to boil up a bit of chicory. It was an absentminded move, which had become more common for her over the last few years. She turned her back to fill a saucepan with water, not even noticing Jilo had come into the room until she heard her say, “They’d let her borrow books from the main library.”
May looked back over her shoulder to find Jilo hunched over, her elbows on the table, examining the story without laying a hand on it. “What’s that, sweetheart?” May looked deep into the girl’s intelligent black eyes, grateful that Jilo’s own logical nature had, with some careful and repeated prodding, reenvisioned the demon’s attack as a bad dream. Even more grateful for the role Jilo’s nature had played in May’s efforts to convince the girl there really was no such thing as magic. May would gladly have her granddaughter believe her to be a shyster if it meant she’d never believe in, or be tempted by, magic. The cycle would be broken.
“Mama. She looks enough like a white woman, I bet they’d let her take books out of the main library.” May’s heart broke from the knowledge that Jilo dreamed of the day she could borrow books from the big library over on Bull Street.
“They got all the books there. Not like at Carnegie.” The Carnegie branch over on East Henry Street was the closest library where coloreds were allowed. Those weeks when Jilo was good, when she did her chores without fussing, May would see to it that the girl got to go, whether she walked Jilo there herself or paid one of the black taxi companies to drive her there and bring her home an hour later.
Well, okay. At least that resolved the problem of whether May should share the news article with Jilo. “Yeah,” May said, forcing a smile on her face. “They just might, at that.” She paused, searching Jilo’s face. “You remember your mama?”
“I remember when she came. When she brought Binah to us. But I’d forgotten what she looked like till I saw this.” Jilo’s eyes rose to meet May’s. “I thought she looked more like the doll she brought me. The one I lost.”
May felt her lips purse. That doll hadn’t been lost. May had found a way to bind Jilo’s ability to access magic to this doll, then buried it out in a part of town Jilo would never have need to visit, miles east in a grove cut through by Normandy Street. May set the sauce pot down and crossed the room to her granddaughter. “She’s a very pretty lady, your mama. Real good singer, too. See?” She placed a hand between Jilo’s shoulders and traced along the photo with the fingers of her other hand. “She’s going overseas to entertain the troops. Doing her part in the war effort. You should be real proud of her.”
“Binah wouldn’t know her,” came Jilo’s reply.
May circled around and sat in her chair. “Well, no, I reckon she wouldn’t . . .”
“But Binah looks a lot more like her than I do.”
May felt a bitterness rise up in her. “She’s done tried real hard to look more like Binah.”
“Binah gets her hair from Mama, doesn’t she?”
May failed to repress a chuckle. “No. Binah gets that from her daddy’s side. Your mama gets it from Mr. Nestle’s side.”
“Mr. Nestle? Who’s he?” Jilo’s innocent eyes made May regret the joke.
“Ah, Nana’s just joshing,” she said. “Nestle’s the fellow who sells the auburn henna your mama uses to change her hair’s color. Your mama’s real hair looks just like yours.” She patted Jilo’s hand. “Though you get the rest of your good looks from me.” She reached up and pinched Jilo’s cheek, provoking a laugh from the girl.
“She must be sad,” Jilo said after a moment, the smile falling from her face.
“Why do you say that?” May said, glancing down at the photo. To her eyes, Betty looked happier than she had any right to be.
