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Mary spun back around. “You’re always pushing your luck. Trying to see how much you can get away with before you get caught.”
“I’ve been caught plenty of times.”
“Yes, and for some reason the rules don’t seem to apply to you,” Mary said, her voice heating back up, “the way they do for the rest of us.”
It was true. The other girls faced swift and certain repercussions when they stepped out of line, but that line did seem a little less straight and narrow when it came to Jilo. Though she wouldn’t say so out loud, she figured Nana must have cut a deal with the reverend. Seemed that the papists hadn’t completely cornered the market on the selling of indulgences.
Fat tears fell from Mary’s eyes, missing her cheeks entirely and dropping to the floor like rain through their leaky roof. “Sooner or later you are gonna go too far. And Pastor Jones is going to kick you out. And your nana, she’s gonna make you go home . . .” Her words petered out as her moist eyes widened. “And I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”
She eyed Mary up and down, testing her for sincerity, trying to determine if this was just another ploy to get her to do as she wanted. Jilo pursed her lips and looked down at the floor, doing her best to convey that she was not in the least little bit impressed by Mary’s histrionics. Still, it was the damnedest thing, but she could tell Mary really was worried.
“All right. All right.” Jilo threw up her hands. “I’ll get ready.” She went to the chest of drawers and took hold of the bucket where she kept her toiletries—her p
ermitted toiletries, that was. Her blue eye shadow and Venetian-red lipstick were hidden in the false bottom of a hatbox that she kept in the closet.
“I’ll make your bed for you,” Mary said, suddenly all sunshine.
Mary’s sudden transformation fired up the worst in Jilo. She said the one thing that was sure to get her friend going again. “The pastor has no business going on thinking he is morally superior to the rest of humanity anyway. None of this God stuff is true. There is no such thing as God.”
Mary’s mouth fell wide open, causing Jilo to chuckle at the sight.
“Oh, Jilo. Don’t you go saying that,” Mary said, once her jaw started working again. “I know you don’t believe any such thing. You are simply trying to get a rise out of me, but it ain’t gonna work.”
“It isn’t going to work,” Jilo said, correcting her friend’s speech automatically, out of habit.
“No it isn’t,” Mary said. It was easy to pin the exact moment when she realized Jilo hadn’t taken her point, and was just correcting her grammar again. “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.”
Jilo wondered at her own mean streak. She had no reason to try and shake her friend up. No other reason beyond that it was too early, she was hung over, and, well, even under the best of circumstances, perkiness just kind of ticked her off.
“ ’Course not,” she said to mollify her friend. As soon as the smile returned to Mary’s face, Jilo looked away. She couldn’t risk having their eyes meet, for then Mary would know she was lying. Truth was, having grown up surrounded by her nana’s put-on magic, Jilo didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see with her own eyes. Oh, sure, she couldn’t see things like magnetism, radio waves, and electricity, but there were scientific tests to prove that those things were real. That they existed. As far as Jilo knew, no one had managed to come up with a test that would prove the existence of the bearded old buckra in the sky.
A rap on the door pulled Jilo from her thoughts. “Miss Wills,” Mrs. Jones’s voice came through the door. “The pastor needs to speak with you. Immediately.”
TWO
Mary’s eyes locked with Jilo’s, and Jilo gave a nod at the door. After crossing the room as silently as a cat, Mary reached for the doorknob like she was afraid it might burn her. She opened the door a sliver, doing her best to block their landlady’s view of Jilo. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones, ma’am, but Jilo, she isn’t quite dressed yet. She’s not been feeling too well this morning.”
Mrs. Jones’s left hand clutched the edge of the door and forced it open, pushing Mary back into the room. The pastor’s wife was a plain woman. Although she was decade younger than the good reverend himself, she still looked plenty old enough to be her husband’s mother. Her face bore no wrinkles, but her hair was streaked with gray, and she had a weary look that never left her. It was this perpetual exhaustion that aged her more than the gray in her hair.
Jilo crossed her arms over her chest and planted her feet firm. The older woman’s puffy red eyes and small tight-lipped frown told her that she’d finally been caught doing something that might be bad enough for them to send her home. Had they noticed her sneaking in?
The reverend’s missus approached her, pressing her palms together as if she were about to break out into prayer, but instead she reached out and gently placed her hand over Jilo’s temple. Her skin felt rough, weathered by years of scrubbing floors and dishes and the mountains of laundry she did each day for her boarders.
“Jilo, my girl,” she said, “you know that the good Lord has never seen fit to bless me with a child. But He has given me you girls. You are my children. My beautiful daughters.” She swallowed back a tremolo that had come to her voice. “You girls who live here under our roof. You got that fine college of yours to take care of educating you in the things this world values. But the pastor and I, we gotta look out for your moral education. Your spiritual well-being. We take this charge seriously.”
Jilo forced her face to freeze so that it would betray nothing. Not the anger she felt that this uneducated woman, barely a decade her elder, was talking to her as if she were a child. Not the love, which in spite of Jilo’s best efforts, she had come to feel for this gentle lady. She bit her tongue.
“We know you are a strong-willed young lady, and we have allowed you far more liberties than any of the others. But this is a holy house,” Mrs. Jones said in the face of Jilo’s silence. “A righteous house.” She dropped back to stare at Jilo. “You go on and get dressed now. The pastor is waiting for you in his study.” She turned to Mary. “You come on downstairs with me.”
“But I . . .”
“I said come,” Mrs. Jones cut her off. Evidently she’d had enough of rebellious young women for one morning.
Mary followed Mrs. Jones out of the room, but not before casting one look back at Jilo, her raised eyebrows and rounded eyes begging her friend to kneel before the seat of mercy and plead for forgiveness. Jilo might be more inclined to do that if she were sure exactly which sin they’d discovered.
Jilo grabbed her pail of toiletries and headed to the bathroom she shared with Mary and three other girls. Most mornings it was nothing but elbows and pardons, but today she had the space all to herself. The other girls weren’t early risers like Mary, so either they had been told to stay out of Jilo’s way this morning, or they’d made that choice for themselves. She set the pail down on a stand next to the sink and took a good look at her own puffy-eyed reflection. “Hell, girl, this might be more serious than you thought,” she said out loud as she grabbed hold of her toothbrush and tin of tooth powder. Her eyes drifted down to the pail while she brushed her teeth. Had they found her makeup hidden in the hatbox? Unlikely. The pastor and his wife were straitlaced, but they respected a person’s privacy. She couldn’t imagine either of them digging through their boarders’ personal belongings. Of course, she wouldn’t put it past one of the other girls, especially Louise.
Maybe they had spotted her breaking the house’s curfew, or someone else—someone she hadn’t seen—had witnessed her good times at the Kingfisher Club. But, the more she thought of it, the less likely that seemed. Who in their right mind would implicate themselves by admitting to having seen her? No. It was without a doubt something to do with Louise. Little Miss Goodie Two Shoes was always looking to land one of her housemates in a pot of trouble.
