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The doorknob jiggled, and the door began to open before she could invite her visitor in. “Jilo,” Binah called in a hushed voice through the enlarging crack. “There’s some white woman out front, banging on the door.” For a moment Jilo had a sense of déjà vu—an old memory very nearly surfaced before slipping back beneath the waves of the past.
“Well, go see what she wants,” Jilo said, her tone meant to convey that this was the obvious action. She tugged Robinson off her tit and settled him down next to her on the bed. He began to fuss. “Shh. Shh,” she repeated, trying to comfort him as she tugged her nursing bra—a gift from Poppy—into place, and pulled the top of her dress back up.
“I don’t want to. You come with me,” Binah said, casting a nervous glance back over her shoulder as a more insistent knocking sounded on the door.
Jilo quickly hooked the buttons of her dress through their loops. “She’s probably had trouble with her car. Maybe an accident out there in the storm.” After placing a cloth over her shoulder, she hefted up her growing boy and rubbed gently between his tiny shoulders. “She may be hurt,” Jilo said in a firm tone, hoping to spur her sister into action, but Binah just stood there shaking her head.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, girl. How much trouble do you think one woman, even a white one, is gonna cause you?” The baby gave out a loud and liquid burp. Rising to her feet, Jilo wadded up the cloth with one hand and handed it to Binah. “Here, you might as well be of some use around here.”
Another series of loud bangs sounded on the front door. “Yes, ma’am,” she called out. “I hear you. I’m coming.”
Jilo padded down the hall and through the front room, then thought twice before opening the door. She turned back to find Binah creeping along at
her heels. She held the baby out to her. “Take Robinson to your room. I’ll see what the lady wants.” Jilo was amazed by her sister’s trepidation at meeting the strange woman. Binah snatched the baby from her and took off like a shot. Another knock wrested Jilo’s attention back to the door.
Jilo switched on the porch light, then opened the door just enough to get a good look at the woman—and to make certain that she was alone. The woman was older than Jilo. Certainly thirty, probably forty. She was well dressed, in a gray box jacket suit with trim in a darker shade of gray. A red pillbox hat topped with a pearl stickpin and a black birdcage veil. Her lips were painted a red that mirrored the shade of her hat. She stood there drenched and trembling in the cold, mascara running down her cheeks. But still she held her chin high, looking down at Jilo over the bridge of her nose. Her eyebrows were raised as if in expectation that Jilo would pay her obeisance. As Jilo took her in, it struck her to see how such vulnerability could be paired with such a look of haughtiness.
“May I help you?” Jilo asked, adding as an afterthought, “Ma’am?”
“I need to speak to the old Negress,” she said, yanking on the screeching screen door with such vehemence, Jilo feared this cry might be its last. “Oh, do let me pass,” she said, pushing past Jilo, her tone impatient and irritated.
Jilo faced the intruder, amazed to see this buckra woman standing there before her, steam starting to rise up from her damp garments.
“Well, where is she? The woman”—she seemed to be searching her memory—“May. Yes, Mother May. She helped me before. Years ago now. I need her help again. I went to the cemetery three days in a row now, and she hasn’t shown up like usual. I know this is where she lives.”
“She did live here, ma’am . . .”
“Did?” the woman interrupted her.
“Yes, my grandmother passed some months back.”
The visitor’s face hardened. “This is very inconvenient. I am in great need of her services.”
Jilo had to swallow back a laugh. “I apologize for the inconvenience my grandmother’s death has caused you,” she said, a good dose of sarcasm creeping into her words, though she had done her best to modulate her tone.
The woman didn’t seem to notice. Instead, her gaze narrowed on Jilo. “Wait, you say she was your grandmother?”
Jilo nodded. “Yes, ma’am, she was indeed.”
“Then you can help me, can’t you?” The woman grasped Jilo’s forearms in her small, pale hands, made to look even paler by the scarlet nail polish she wore. “That’s how it works with your kind and this Negro magic isn’t it? It gets passed on through the blood. Right?” The woman shook Jilo’s arms, tugging hard enough to make Jilo take a step closer. “You can help me.” The words sounded more like a statement of fact than a question.
Jilo smiled and began shaking her head. “No, ma’am, I can’t . . .”
“I’ll pay you.” To Jilo’s surprise, the woman fell to her knees sobbing, pressing Jilo’s hand to her tearstained cheek before pulling back to kiss it.
Jilo jerked her hand free. “I don’t know,” she said, the wheels in her mind spinning fast. “The work is dangerous. And I’m not as practiced at it as my grandmother was.”
“I will pay you well.”
Jilo took a couple of steps back and placed her hands on her hips, giving the fine lady the very same stink eye she’d given Binah only minutes before. “You tell me what Nana—I mean, Mother May—did for you, and I’ll see if I can help. No promises, though. And it’s cash up front.”
The woman’s hand flew up to her breast and she froze in place, suddenly, it seemed, cognizant of her humble position. “There’s a woman. An ungodly and lascivious woman. A rival for my husband’s affections.” She rose, turning her back to Jilo, undid a button on her suit, and tugged a stash of bills from her brassiere. “Again. Last time, she tried to turn my husband’s affections from me. This time, she’s determined to take my life so that she can have him. She’s put a fix on me.” She carefully peeled off two five-dollar bills, which she held out to Jilo. “I need you to remove it.” Jilo stepped forward, amazed at her own temerity, and took the rest of the bills from the woman’s other hand, leaving the woman clutching the two fives.
“But that’s so much more than your grandmother would have ever charged,” the woman protested.
Jilo tilted her head and rested her left hand on her hip. “My grandmother’s just a bit up the road at Laurel Grove. You think you can get a better deal from her, you’re more than welcome to try.” She wanted to sound confident, and to her own ears she did, but she held that wad of cash in a death grip.
The woman relented, lowering her head. “All right. But this had better work.”
