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After she finished cleaning her teeth, she washed her face with cold water, not wanting to wait for the hot to come clanking up through the pipes. The frigid touch of the water didn’t help the aching behind her eyes one bit, but it did clear a bit of last night’s fuzz from her brain.
She dabbed at her face with a hand towel, then attacked her hair with a brush, doing her best to smooth it. She was just about to dive back into her room to dress when she remembered the smoke that had filled the air at the club last night. Neither Mary nor Mrs. Jones had mentioned picking up the scent, but Mary wasn’t the most attentive of witnesses, and it wasn’t Mrs. Jones’s way to mention such things. Whenever she smelled smoke, she’d leave it to her husband to find the fire. It could be used as another strike against her.
“Damn.” Jilo dropped her pail back down on the table and dove into an icy shower, soaping herself as best she could with a pat of Camay so tiny one of the other girls had left it behind as having no value. Sopping wet and teeth chattering, but now fully awake, she dried herself and pulled on her robe. Back in her room, she dressed herself in a gray shirtwaist dress with sleeves that covered her arms past the elbow. Jilo hated the damn thing—Nana had made her buy it—but the pastor had complimented the style as being suitable for a young Christian woman. If it came down to playing the part of a repentant sinner, a good costume would help.
Jilo made her way downstairs, giving a wide berth to the large communal dining room, where she could still hear bits of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians being read aloud. Jilo surmised that the apostle’s thoughts on the topic of charity were intended to fortify Mrs. Jones’s resolve to remain patient with her. Lord knows, the pastor’s wife had quoted the passage often enough to her over the past years. The thought elicited an eye roll, and Jilo barely remembered to adopt a suitably remorseful expression before knocking on the frame of the pastor’s door. The door itself stood ajar, the amber light from his desk lamp spilling out into the hall. She stood in the doorway, waiting for the pastor to look up from his studies.
For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her. He remained bent over a thick concordance, scratching notes on his pad. Finally, he laid down his pen and looked up at her. “Miss Wills.” He waved her forward. “Do come in,” he said, folding his hands before him on his desk. “Close the door behind you.”
After doing the pastor’s bidding, Jilo turned to face his beatific stare. He let her stand there for a moment, just long enough for the silence to grow awkward, then pushed back in his chair. “Please, sit,” he said, extending his hand toward a chair opposite him. Normally she had to face his private sermons standing; this chair was a new addition to his space. Though its cushion now wore a different fabric, and a back leg had been repaired with a brace created from splints of wood and heavy screws, Jilo recognized it as a poor relation of those that were still used around the dining table.
“Don’t worry,” he said, watching her eye the repair work. “I mended it myself. It may have been broken once, but now it’s stronger than it ever was.” She stepped around the chair and lowered herself onto the seat. “Just like the human soul,” the reverend added, the smile on his lips showing her he was quite pleased with his own simile.
Jilo crossed her legs at her ankles, just the way the mistress of comportment at the college had shown them all to do on the first day of classes, giving the hem of her skirt a slight tug as she did so. Smile. Keep quiet. Jilo had played this game with the pastor more than a few times over the years. Experience had taught her that the biggest mistake she coul
d make would be to assume she knew which infraction she’d been caught committing.
She and the pastor sat face-to-face as the clock on his desk ticked off a full minute. Twice. The entire time, his eyes searched her. The smile fled his lips, replaced by a stern expression meant to intimidate her and wear her down. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sure you can guess why I asked to speak with you.”
Jilo had been composing a mental list of reasons, but shook her head. “No, sir.” She made her voice come out as sweet as dew on the morning grass, but then the devil himself twisted her tongue. “Are you in need of spiritual guidance?” The words escaped her before her common sense could close the gate.
The pastor jerked his head back as if she had slapped him. “Spiritual guidance, indeed.” He puffed out air and tapped his finger on the desk. Ten times. He was obviously counting. He stopped and relaxed his shoulders. “You may not be aware of this,” he began, seeming to have decided on another tack, “I’m unsure of how much your grandmother has shared with you, but I once had a church not far from her house.” Despite herself, Jilo betrayed her interest by leaning just a bit forward. It was the first she’d heard that the pastor had any connection to her world. She ran through a list of churches in the area, trying to figure out where he’d come from.
“That’s right,” Jones continued, “your family and I go way back. As a matter of fact, the first time I laid eyes on you”—for a fleeting moment a smile came to his lips—“you were nothing but a tiny bug of a thing.” His focus weakened, as if he were reliving the memory, but then his attention snapped back on her like a mousetrap. “Your grandmother did not send you to live in this house by chance. She sought me out, and I believe her reason for doing so was that she knows I am quite familiar with the women of your family. The best are willful and stiff-necked. The worst, weak. Given to sinning and always ready to drag the nearest man down along with them.”
Jilo very nearly lost her cool, but sensing a weakness in the man, she instead took a moment to sharpen the stick she was about to jab in a very soft place. “I see you’ve met my mama.” She leaned her elbow against the arm of her chair and rested her chin on her hand, smiling sweetly.
The pastor flushed, but collected himself in the next instant. “Indeed,” he said, a sadness filling his voice. He shifted in his seat and leaned over to open a drawer. He reached into the drawer to retrieve an item, then flashed her another, knowing look, before placing it on the desk.
It was a book, the cover of which she instantly recognized, even though it was upside-down from her point of view. He pushed it toward her, never taking his eyes from hers. “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” He raised his hand to preempt the question he anticipated. “Before you ask, how this came into my possession is beside the point. I know even you would have better sense than to leave such a work sitting out for any and all to see, so you can believe me when I tell you the girl who brought it to my attention has been heartily reprimanded for going through your personal belongings.” He tapped the image on the cover. “This bird appears as if it has already been caught in the fires of hell. My aim is to make certain you don’t share this poor misguided creature’s fate.”
“It isn’t a regular bird. It’s a phoenix,” Jilo said. He shook his head, not understanding. “A phoenix. A mythical bird that renews itself by setting its nest on fire. Through the fire, it is reborn.” She reached out to take the book, but he pulled it back. “In this case, the fire is symbolic of passion . . .”
“I have examined this book,” the pastor said. “I am well aware of the nature of what it contains. Still, the narrative concerns me less than what I found written here.” He opened the book to its frontispiece, then pointed to a name printed on the facing title page. Lionel Ward.
Jilo bit her lip, waiting again for the pastor to take the lead. Professor Ward often shared books from his personal collection with her, books he felt would enrich and broaden her mind. Many were banned from the public library, so it would have been hard for her to obtain them on her own.
Jones closed the book and reached over the desk to hand it to her. She accepted it without daring a word.
“I am not a prude, Miss Wills. I believe that our Lord made relations between men and women pleasurable because he wants us to find pleasure in them.” He paused, as he often did when giving a sermon, to emphasize the point he was about to make. “But God intended for these relations to take place within the bounds of matrimony.”
“I understand, Pastor. It was wrong of me to bring this book into your home. I’ll return it to Professor Ward today, right after classes.”
Jones raised a single eyebrow. “I’m not sure I’m making my concerns clear. I do appreciate and accept your apology. Strangely enough, I think it may have even been somewhat sincere. But I am less concerned with the imagined sins in this book than I am with the possibility of actual sin between creatures of God.” He held his hand out to her, palm up, signaling that she should give the book back to him. “I will return this book to its owner.”
Jilo hesitated, but his tone was firm. She placed it in his hand, and he set it on his desk, covering it with a pad of paper, like Adam hiding behind the fig leaf.
“I do not believe this book is appropriate reading for a girl your age. I certainly don’t feel it is appropriate for a man to be sharing with a young lady. As your guardian, I will inform this Professor Ward of that fact myself.”
Jilo felt herself go hot then cold with embarrassment. “But Professor Ward is a married man,” she said, hoping his marital status would somehow convince the reverend of the innocence of the loan.
“That, Miss Wills, is my point exactly.”
THREE
October 1952
Jilo found her eyes resting on the red-and-white tin sitting on the desktop. A lozenge shape bordered the white silhouette of a man on horseback, a jouster by the look of his proud lance. The picture struck her as out of tune with the name inscribed below it—a word that conjured up images of hot sands and cool oases, not Camelot.
