by Terri Garey
Joe hadn’t done anything wrong here except not tell me about Ivy Jacobson’s involvement with his paper. He’d been nothing but good to me—even offering me a safe place to stay until nine-night was over.
I was ashamed of myself. For about two seconds.
Then I went in search of his stack of dirty magazines.
CHAPTER 13
“You got a phone call while you were at lunch.” Evan stopped fussing with Marilyn Monroe’s cleavage just long enough to fluff her yellow organza skirt. “Somebody named Albert.” He stepped back to admire Marilyn’s new outfit, gesturing absently toward the register. “I left his number on the counter.”
The only Albert I knew was Granny Julep’s Albert. “Did he say what he wanted?” I stuck my purse under the counter and picked up the slip of pink paper.
Evan shrugged, absorbed in his vision. Evidently, Marilyn was going to a glamorous spring picnic, straw hat, sunglasses, and all.
“Nope. Just asked for a call back. What do you think, the white rhinestone glasses, or the yellow ones?”
“The white,” I answered automatically as I began dialing the number. “Very cool.”
“I thought so, too.” Evan always pretended to take compliments as a given, but my opinion mattered. We’d once gotten into a huge blowup over Jayne Mansfield’s ability to carry off a somewhat demure cocktail dress from the fifties. I’d won, and now Jayne wore nothing but sexy and flirtatious.
Privately, I liked to think that if mannequins could talk, Jayne would’ve thanked me for it.
“Hello?” A rusty male voice?definitely someone elderly.
“Albert? This is Nicki Styx. I’m returning your call.”
I didn’t bother to ask how he’d gotten my number. Handbags and Gladrags was in the phonebook.
“Granny Julep wants to see you.” Albert made it sound like a summons.
“Um…okay. I’ll be here the rest of the afternoon if you wanna come in. But you can tell her that everything’s fine—I’m staying with a friend until nine-night is over and I’m doing everything she told me.”
Evan, who was listening shamelessly, rolled his eyes at me when I described Joe as “a friend.” Things were way beyond the friendship stage, and he knew it. In addition to living in his apartment and sleeping in his bed, I’d had lunch with Joe two days in a row.
There was silence on the other end of the line for a moment. “She too tired to go out. I’ll come pick you up.”
Too tired to go out? I unbent a little. She was old, after all.
“Thanks anyway, but I’ll drive myself. Just give me directions and I’ll come.” I hesitated. “Is she okay? She’s not sick or anything, is she?”
“No.” Albert kept it brief, as always. “She just tired.”
He gave me slow, precise directions to Granny Julep’s place, which I wrote down on the back of a slip of paper. I promised to be there by four, knowing Evan wouldn’t mind closing by himself tonight. Then I hung up, a sense of unease hanging over my head.
“Going to see the voodoo woman?” Evan clicked his tongue at me while he draped a scarf over Marilyn’s hat and tied it loosely under her chin. “I wouldn’t go looking for trouble if I were you.”
He had a point—I’d had two blissful nights of duppy-free sleep at Joe’s apartment. He was still working nights, so I’d been free to go to bed early, waking in the early dawn when he got home. He’d slip in the bed beside me, naked and freshly showered. We’d steam up the sheets, then I’d leave him to get some sleep of his own while I went to work.
“I’m not looking for trouble, just visiting an old lady.”
“Oh my.” Evan whipped off Marilyn’s scarf, apparently dissatisfied with its effect on the hat, and flounced it at me. “Is it time for your good deed of the month already?” His eyes sparkled. “With all the”?a giant sweep of the scarf?“love in the air, I almost missed it.”
“You are such a fairy.”
Evan’s answer was to drape the scarf over his head and neck, tossing the end over his shoulder in a dramatic flourish. “Thank you.” He slipped on the yellow shades and struck an elegant pose, à la Grace Kelly. “No autographs, please.”
In the next instant he’d whipped both off and was moving toward the accessory racks, obviously not finished with Marilyn’s outfit. “So where did Dr. Yummy take you for such a late lunch today? Chinese? Italian?”
“Hospital cafeteria. It was breakfast for him, lunch for me.”
Evan couldn’t have looked more horrified if someone had told him spandex shorts were back on the runway.
I shrugged. “What can I say? A girl’s gotta eat.”
He opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t say it,” I warned, only half joking.
We giggled like the girls we were, and spent the next hour designing a summer theme for the front window—checkered tablecloth, picnic basket, and all.
“If you’re gonna go, go ahead and go,” Evan said as flipped through the clothes racks, looking for a halter top that would fit Jayne’s generous curves. He was going to pose her sunning on a blanket. “It’s Friday night. Most everybody’s more interested in what bar they’re going to instead of what they’ll be wearing tomorrow.”
“I know.” We hadn’t had a customer since I’d gotten back from lunch. “You sure you’re okay to close up?”
Evan waved me off. “I’m fine. I’m outta here at five o’clock sharp. I’m meeting Butch for drinks.”
I waved my hand in front of my face as if mosquitoes were after me. “Sorry? I couldn’t quite catch that—there’s so much love in the air I almost missed it.”
“Smart-ass.”
“Takes one to know one.”
Granny Julep lived in a shotgun-style house in the Decatur area of Atlanta. Shotgun houses are a very old Southern tradition. One room wide and three or four deep, they’re called shotguns because a bullet fired from the front door can go straight through the house without hitting a thing.
The neighborhood Granny lived in was old, but a lot of the houses showed signs of tender loving care; fresh paint and nice yards. There were kids playing in the street, parents watching from their porches. Granny’s house was as tidy and neatly kept as any, white with black trim, side garden filled with blooms.
Albert was waiting for me at the screen door. He let me in without a word and motioned me to follow him toward the back. I could hear a TV somewhere, but barely got a glimpse of the place before we were in Granny’s bedroom.
Granny Julep was propped up on pillows, watching Oprah. Her gnarled hand reached for the remote, but Albert got there first. He turned off the TV and put the remote back on the bed next to Granny, closer to her than before. Then he turned around and left us alone, closing the bedroom door behind him.
“Albert doesn’t say much, does he?”
The lighthearted comment was a cover. Granny didn’t look well.
“We done said all we’ll ever need to say to each other, my Albert and I.”
I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Are you sick, Granny Julep? Is there anything I can get you?” Her cocoa brown skin had a grayish cast, and her eyes were deeply sunken in their sockets. Despite Evan’s teasing about my lack of noble qualities, I found myself worried about her.
She smiled at me, shaking her head. “I’m just tired, girl. Old and tired. Been up most nights for Caprice’s setups, so I been takin’ my rest during the days. It’s hard on an old woman.”
Granny motioned me toward a straight-backed wooden chair near the bed. “Sit. I need to talk to you.”
The quilt on the bed was beautiful, a patchwork of bright yellows, reds, and blues. I knew without asking that Granny Julep had made it, because its colorful spirit suited her. If only she didn’t look so gray beneath it.
“I did what you said with the seeds and the straw charms, Granny.” For some reason, I wanted to make her feel better. I pulled aside my shirt collar so she could see the black beads she’d given me.
“I haven’t taken these off. It seemed like everything was working, but I messed up. Caprice almost got in.” I shuddered, remembering the drums. “I couldn’t take it anymore, so I’m staying with a friend until nine-night is over.”
Granny Julep frowned, considering. “She must’ve found a cottonwood…she’s stronger than I thought.”
Her statement made no sense for a moment. Then I realized what Granny meant, and at the same moment I saw, in my mind’s eye, the tree in my front yard.
My special “fairy” tree. How dare she?
“She’s in the tree?”
Granny nodded. “The roots are powerful. She can rest there during the day, underground, soakin’ up their life force.”
Great. Just great. A childhood joy corrupted, and a zombie in my front yard.
“It’s good you stayin’ somewhere else.” Granny Julep sighed and closed her eyes, leaning her head back against the pillows. “It’ll all be over soon.”
I didn’t like the way she said that. A sense of unease returned, pushing aside my annoyance. I waited, wondering if I should let Granny drift off and then slip out, or stay until she woke up.
I waited, but the wait wasn’t long. Granny opened her eyes and lifted her head, then shifted herself higher on the pillows. She looked tired, but her dark eyes had lost none of their shrewdness.
“I wanted to ask you about the Light,” she said.
The statement caught me off guard, though I quickly realized it shouldn’t. For all her secrets and all her wisdom, Granny Julep was still human, and very old. I knew what she was asking.
She was asking if the beliefs she’d based her life on were worth having. Odd, how I knew her so well when I knew her so little.
Then again, maybe not.
“It’s the most peaceful, beautiful place you could ever imagine,” I said slowly. “The Light isn’t a who or a what— it’s a place, a being, a state of existence nearly impossible to describe. Everyone’s there, and when I say everyone, I mean it, you know?” Granny Julep nodded, as though I’d just confirmed something she’d known all along. I knew I could tell her everything, freely, and she’d believe me. “Time, distance, age…they just don’t matter there. There’s music. Music like nothing you’ve ever heard…and you’re a part of it. Part of it all.”
Granny Julep reached out a hand and I took it, letting her squeeze my fingers while I told the rest of the story. “I understood everything. I knew everything. And it was all…beautiful. But then the Light said it wasn’t my time.” I allowed myself to remember that moment, right down to the pang of regret that I couldn’t stay. “He sent me back and told me to ‘do unto others as I would have them do unto me.’” I ducked my head, swallowing an unfamiliar lump in my throat. “Sounds cheesy, I know, but that’s what He said.”
I squeezed her hand gently, careful of the birdlike bones beneath my fingers. “But you’re not going there yet, are you?” And I held my breath, hoping she’d say no, she was just tired.
“Not yet.” Granny Julep’s eyes were suspiciously moist, and so were mine. “I got to save my granddaughter. And while I’m at it, I’m gonna save you.” She smiled a sweet smile. “And now I know how.”
What a relief. “How?”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways, child, and so do I. You don’t need to know how. But you once asked me for a favor, so now I’m gonna ask you for one.” Why was I not liking the sound of this? “You come to the nine-night on Monday. You be my hands”—she held both of them up in the air, letting me see their shaking—“and draw the veve. The pattern gotta be perfect, or Papa Legba won’t help us.”
There was that “lost in translation” feeling again. I didn’t speak voodooese.
“The veve?”
“Every loa has a symbol, child. We draw it in cornmeal to call them down, like I did for Damballah.”
An ugly flash to that darkened room in the back of Indigo, where a wooden snake came to life.
Shit.
“And this Papa Legba? Is he a good loa or a bad loa?”
“Papa Legba is the guardian of the crossroads. He the One who has final say over whose soul goes where.”
“The voodoo version of Saint Peter. I get it.”
Granny Julep frowned. “Don’t make fun of things you don’t understand, girl.” She lay her head back against the pillow, adding, “You of all people should know better.”
Three hours later I sat in the middle of a big mess, cornmeal on my clothes and in my hair. Joe’s formerly clean kitchen floor was now in desperate need of vacuuming.
Granny Julep had given me a complex diagram of flowery squiggles, and explicit directions on how to reproduce the pattern a pinch of cornmeal at a time. She’d even made me practice on a tray Albert brought from the kitchen, and she wasn’t satisfied until she’d explained the symbolism of every swoop and curl. Like I’d ever remember.
Then she’d sent me off to practice on my own, content with my promise to come back on Monday afternoon to draw the veve for the ceremony. It didn’t sound so bad, really, because Granny didn’t want me to actually attend the ceremony.
“You’d just be a distraction, child, and make the others uneasy,” she’d said. “We’ll draw the veve early, while it’s still daylight.”
Thank God. I had no desire to meet any more voodoo deities, whether they slithered or walked upright. Once Monday night was over, I hoped I never heard the word “voodoo” again.
It was painstaking work, and I was on my third try at getting a good-sized veve just right. The sound of a key in the front door caught me off guard. I had a palmful of cornmeal in one hand and a pinch in the other, and the kitchen was a total disaster area. Before I could decide whether to claim that a box of muffin mix had exploded or just tell the truth, there was Joe.
“Well, well, well.” Even wearing two days’ worth of stubble and wrinkled green scrubs, Joe looked good. He grinned at me as he tossed his keys on the table by the door and came into the kitchen, cornmeal crunching under his feet. “Morticia Addams meets June Cleaver, perhaps? I thought you goth types were supposed to draw pentagrams on the floor with chalk, not bread crumbs.”
I grinned back. “It isn’t bread crumbs, it’s cornmeal. And they’re not pentagrams.” It was easier to dispute the facts than explain them. “And I’m not goth. Not anymore, anyway.”
“Well, in that case, maybe you should know that normal people usually prepare food on the counter, not on the floor.”
“Why is everyone I know such a smart-ass?”
Joe laughed, obviously not upset to find his kitchen looking like I’d been feeding chickens while he was gone. “Takes one to know one.”
He sounded just like Evan.
“I’ll have you know that I’m practicing how to draw a veve,” I said loftily. “It’s a delicate art.”
Joe’s smile died. “A veve? That sounds like voodoo.”
“Give the man a cigar.” I tried to keep it light, not liking how quickly his good mood faded. “It’s a favor for Granny Julep.”
“Give the man a break,” he answered flatly. “Don’t you remember what happened the last time you helped that old woman with her ‘voodoo’? She scared you to death with that snake…Haven’t you learned your lesson yet?”
I stared up at him from my cross-legged position on the floor. “What lesson is that, Joe? Don’t die and go to heaven because if you come back you might see dead people? Or don’t tell people the truth because they’ll think you’re a wacko?”
My sarcasm was tinged with bitterness, surprising me as much as it apparently did Joe. He didn’t answer immediately.
I was tired of people thinking I had some kind of choice in all this. I was fighting to regain control of my life, to get back to the relatively carefree existence I’d once had. And to do that, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
“Nobody thinks you’re a wacko.” Joe’s voice was very quiet.
“Oh, really? And who was it that insisted I go see I
vy Jacobson, huh?” Oh my God…I was picking a fight. Worse yet, I was beginning to enjoy it. “And by the way, don’t you think you could’ve mentioned Ivy was doing a”—I used cornmeal-coated fingers to make hash marks in the air—“‘blind study’ on me for your precious paper? Don’t you think I should’ve been given the courtesy of being asked if I wanted to be somebody’s lab rat?”
He seemed genuinely surprised by my anger. “I didn’t think you’d mind. It’s a win-win for everybody—you get reduced fees, I get additional credentials for my paper, and Ivy gets another case study for her files.”
“I’m not a case study!” I yelled. “And you could’ve told me!” I threw my hands up, disgusted with his lack of sensitivity. Unfortunately, I forgot about the handful of cornmeal I’d been holding. A cloud of dry crumbs flew up.
Joe blinked, clearly unsure how to handle an angry woman covered in cornmeal. Then the corner of his mouth began to twitch.
“Damn you, Joe Bascombe.” My own lip was twitching in response, so before it got away from me, I scooped up a handful of cornmeal and threw it at him.
He ducked, but only halfheartedly, giving me a wicked look as he bent and scooped up a handful of his own.
“I think you missed a spot,” he said as he tossed it over my head.
I shrieked with laughter, scrabbling backward on the floor and shaking dry crumbs from my hair.
“You’re gonna pay for that, buddy,” I warned between giggles. The next handful of dry crumbs went straight down the front of his scrub pants.
Joe tickled me mercilessly in an effort to fend me off, then grabbed me around the waist. We ended up on the floor, both of us now covered in cornmeal. He rolled onto his back and pulled me with him, so I lay on top, laughing down into his eyes.
“And for the record, you are not a case study.” He wrapped his arms around me and squeezed. “Unless it’s a study in individuality. Or spontaneity. Or whether a man can survive an erection with cornmeal in his pants.”
“Quit teasing for a second.” I had to know. “Do you believe me when I tell you I see spirits?”