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No, leaving things unsaid, undone, this was how May survived back in those days. Averting her eyes, turning a deaf ear, hiding any tone of hurt or defiance. The buckra told you to leave something alone, you damn well left it be. The old fellow gave up the ghost about a year after she began working for him. The next day she returned the package, still as tightly wrapped as the day she’d taken possession of it, to his house.
She met and married Reuben around that time, and she spent nearly two decades taking care of him, eventually giving birth to her sweet Jesse.
Jesse who’d died twenty years ago today.
She could hear Binah’s bell-like laughter streaming in through the open window. She knew the girls were out there tending the garden, pulling weeds. She could hear their voices, snatches of their conversation, carrying into the kitchen. They were discussing names for Jilo’s baby. Binah had her opinions, but Jilo would only entertain girl names. Seems that if it were a boy, she planned to name him after two of her heroes: Jackie Robinson and her “father,” Jesse Wills.
Funny how May’s heart had claimed both of these girls as her natural granddaughters, given that neither of them truly belonged to her boy. Of course, Jesse himself had claimed Jilo, but would he have found it in his heart to claim the younger one? Binah was a rare beauty, no denying that, though her beauty was not of the kind many folk around here would appreciate, at least not openly.
Binah had gotten her features, and her sweet voice, from her mama. Would that be enough to bend Jesse’s heart to the girl? But that red-tinted hair—auburn, folk called it—and those bright blues eyes of hers, those came from a father who’d probably never even bothered to set eyes on her. Would Jesse have found enough love in his heart to take the girl on as his own? May would like to think so, but Jesse was still a man, after all, and a man’s pride could prove a fearsome barrier. Didn’t really matter though. Her Jesse was gone, and May had fallen completely in love with yet another of Betty’s cast-off children. Didn’t matter whose blood ran through either of those girls’ veins. They both belonged to May now.
May heard another voice. Still high, but breaking every so often as it began to slide down into the speaker’s chest. Binah’s friend, that young boy Willy, was out there, probably helping them with the watering. Despite the delicate way he carried himself, he was good at hauling the heavy bucket from the spigot to the garden. Seemed he was always underfoot, but May didn’t have the heart to chase him away. Binah had been born straddling two worlds, marked as she was by her parents’ different traits. May figured it was her granddaughter’s firsthand knowledge of what it was like to be not quite the one and not quite the other that drew her to Willy. Some might protest having the kid shadow their girl at every turn, but May had seen this gentle, delicate kind of boy before. Binah, and her honor, were safe as could be in his presence. The world didn’t cotton to boys like him, and soon he was gonna have to learn how to hide his softness or have it beaten out of him. But that day didn’t have to be today, and that beating certainly wasn’t gonna happen here.
May rose and emptied her cup, then rinsed it and set it on the counter. She gripped the porcelain lip of the kitchen sink and leaned forward.
“Your nana,” she called out to the girls, “she’s gonna go lie down for a spell.”
Jilo’s head shot up at her words. “You feeling okay, Nana?”
May knew she was fading, and she knew Jilo could see it. “Fine. I’m fine,” May said, surprised by the annoyance she heard in her own voice. “I’m just old and worn out.” She forced herself to smile. “Don’t you worry about your nana. She just needs a little rest.” May wondered what was going to become of these children once she was gone, though rightly, neither one could be called a child anymore. Jilo was full-grown, with a baby of her own coming, and Binah was fourteen, not really that much younger than May herself had been when she married.
Jilo nodded, but said, “I’ll come check in on you shortly.”
May felt another flush of irritation, but refused to let herself show it. “All right.”
Backing away from the window, she headed down the hall to the room that once again served as her bedroom. Instead of meeting customers in the house, she now held audience with them in the old cemetery in the center of town, where
any and all could see. Cut down on the folk who weren’t serious enough about their troubles to need her help. Before, when she let people sneak into her house, she found most of the problems she addressed could’ve rightly been handled with a little more common sense and a little less laziness. The folk who were desperate enough to set aside their fear and pride and walk right into Colonial Cemetery, they were more likely to have problems that merited her help, and the courage to face whatever solution her magic would provide.
Of course, she made a lot less money that way. She’d questioned more than once if she should open up her home once again, especially now that Jilo was home and expecting. But in truth she no longer had the energy for the midnight knocks at the door. No, best to keep business and home separate. Still, May wished she’d managed to set more aside, but she’d paid for Jilo’s and Opal’s schooling, hoping they’d manage to take care of themselves afterward. Although Opal had done well in school, she no longer worked as a nurse. She’d married Nate, her soldier, years ago, and the two of them had three children of their own now. Children May had never laid eyes on in person. Nate had stayed on in the service, and Opal always said she couldn’t visit because they were stationed in places like Japan and Germany. But May didn’t believe it. She knew it was the magic that kept her eldest grandbaby away as sure as it did sweet Poppy.
May had wanted to cut all ties with magic that winter day Poppy had taken off for Charlotte, swearing on the Lord’s holy name never to set foot there again. But life hadn’t left her much of a choice. Maguire had long ago seen to it that she’d never find another respectable job again. Besides, even though she wished it were otherwise, she knew she’d grown too frail to do the hard physical work she’d once done at the Pinnacle. It struck her that the hotel was no longer there, anyway. Destroyed by fire caused by faulty wiring, they said, though May had her doubts. She’d seen something else in the paper, too—Sterling Maguire had welcomed his third son into the world. If May failed, as her mama, too, had failed, to take Maguire out, the old man would probably find a way to continue jumping from body to body to continue poisoning the world centuries after May had been forgotten. May knew that any attack against Maguire would most likely culminate in her own death. That’s why she’d put it off as long as she had. But she was running out of time. She’d sure like to help see Jilo’s baby into the world first, but maybe it’d be better to make sure that babe could be born into a world without Maguire.
She entered her bedroom, trying not to see the haint blue that still dominated there, floor to ceiling. A part of her would love nothing better than to do away with it, paint it over with good white lead paint. Leave nothing but plain white walls to shelter her, a plain white ceiling to shield her from the heavens. No magic, just a fresh start. She could have the floor sanded down to the grain, or maybe have it ripped out and replaced with new strips of oak. But the haint blue still served its purpose. Forces, not quite so friendly, still wandered nearby, attracted by the power they sensed residing in this house. If anything, she should give it a fresh coat, as well as the outside of the house, the overhang of the porch, and the shutters and doors.
She kicked off her shoes and sat on the bed, staring at the door to her closet, almost expecting it to open and reveal the Beekeeper’s grand chamber. But it didn’t, and she very nearly regretted that. The magic had left May so alone in the world, exploiting it for those who feared her, trying to shield those she loved from it. The Beekeeper was the source of this divisive magic, but devil or no, at least with the Beekeeper, May had someone who could accept her exactly as she was.
She well remembered the night she’d ordered the creature away from her home, but the truth was, May had never really expected the creature to honor her wishes. Even today, she kept a bottle of the spirits in the pantry, just on the odd chance the Beekeeper might return.
But it had been years now. The war had come and gone since her last visit from the Beekeeper herself, though the cry of a rooster at odd hours seemed an assurance that, even unseen, the Beekeeper was still keeping an eye on things. Her magic had never deserted May. If anything, it had grown stronger, and might be, it struck May, the only thing that was keeping her going.
Her heart jumped as she heard a door creak open, but it settled when she realized it wasn’t the door to her lost friend’s world, just her granddaughter checking in on her.
Jilo poked her head in. “You’re awake now?”
“Of course, I haven’t even lied down yet.”
Jilo’s brow lowered, and she turned her head a touch to the side. “You just been sitting here staring at the wall all this time?”
“What do you mean ‘all this time’? Can’t a body have a minute to collect her thoughts?”
Jilo smiled and came into the room. May noticed that she held something clutched against her bosom. “Of course, Nana. Just want to be sure you’re doing okay.”
The girl sounded worried. May stopped and studied Jilo’s face for a moment, registering the concern in the girl’s eyes. “How long have I been in here?”
“It’s a little over two hours now.”
May startled at Jilo’s words. “It’s all right, Nana. There’s nothing wrong with you,” Jilo said, rushing over to sit next to her on the bed, placing her free hand over May’s own cold one. “I know what today is,” Jilo said, and shifted so that May could see the old cigar box she’d brought in with her. “I know Daddy died twenty years ago today. And I know you’re hurting over it today even more than usual.” Jilo tilted the box up so its illustration caught the light streaming in through the window. “I was thinking about him, too, and I remembered this here old thing, so I went and dug it out. Don’t really know what it’s supposed to be. Some kind of good luck juju or something.” Jilo placed it on May’s lap. “Opal told me that your mama made it for Daddy, and he passed it on to her. When Opal left for California, she gave it to me.”
