by Isla Morley
To lend Pa support, Jubilee says, “We can’t keep him, Mama. This will get us into a lot of trouble, especially if someone gets the notion we kidnapped him.”
“What makes you think you have any say in this? You changed your color and now you aim to behave like them, is that it?”
“Gladden.”
On the subject of Jubilee’s new skin color, Mama’s had nothing to say—she’s barely looked at Jubilee—but now it’s blue-this and blue-that. “Blue wasn’t ever something Levi was ashamed of, but it’s not good enough for you.”
Pa sends Jubilee on a made-up errand, and appeals to Mama to mind her words, but before Jubilee steps out the back door, Mama hollers at her, “Why don’t you go live with them if you like being right-colored so well?”
“Gladden!”
Jubilee returns to where Mama now bestows on this child the affection she has craved since her return. “I thought my color would make you happy.”
“Happy?” Mama snorts and nods at Pa like she’s being asked to reason with a turnip. “When did happiness ever have anything to do with color?”
“You can’t say because you’ve never been blue.”
“Birthing you counts for nothing, does it? Loving blue and fearing for blue and mourning blue? Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know about blue!”
“You don’t have to worry about blue anymore, that’s all I’m trying to say.”
“You walk around pretending to be someone else, and I’m not supposed to worry?” She clicks her tongue. “Do whatever the hell you want, just don’t tell me changing yourself is on my account.”
Only after the evening star comes out can Jubilee bring herself to go back indoors. Sitting at the table with his head propped up by his hand, Pa has brought the law into it and Mama is talking like a gunslinger, saying Sheriff Suggins, the judge, the whole damn town is no match for her. “This baby is making up for what they stole from us. This baby is our justice. Why are you crying, Delbert? For goodness sake, this is a happy day. A happy day, don’t you see? This is our second chance.”
This is another kind of madness than the one to which Jubilee came home, but Mama shines. Oh, how she shines.
JUBILEE
What her new skin hasn’t done for the Bufords, the baby does overnight. Grandma forgets all about her suitcase and no longer eyes Jubilee as if she’s about to make off with the valuables, Willow-May is handing out musical instruments and telling everyone babies love singalongs, and Mama appears to have taken up living again, except now as if with all the company of heaven. This morning the house is filled with the smell of warm milk and fresh bread, the sound of women cooing like turtledoves, and the glow of stolen treasure.
Bringing home Levi’s child felt like a rescue yesterday, but today it’s just plain stealing.
Pa and Jubilee meet at the table, each of them ill at ease while Mama bustles around the kitchen with the baby in the crook of her arm. As a way to win her affection and make amends for their quarrel yesterday, Jubilee’s forgone taking her pill today, and is surprised to feel more like her regular self. Back to blue is like putting on favorite old clothes only to realize the ball gown never did fit quite right in the first place and was nowhere near as comfortable.
Willow-May skips up to Jubilee. “Mouth harp or spoons?”
Mama’s face gives nothing away regarding Jubilee’s color, but she does hand Jubilee the baby and asks her to change him, gesturing to the pile of diapers she’s cut from an old cotton sheet. Jubilee fetches one and lays the baby on the table. He is an alert little boy, too afraid he’ll miss something, and he behaves as though he understands every word Jubilee speaks.
“I think we ought to name him Lenny,” Mama says, “After your father, Del.”
“It’s not our business to name him,” Pa replies, doused-looking.
“Well, whose business do you think it ought to be? Are we to wait until he’s old enough to tell us himself what he’d like to be called?”
“We said we’d keep him just one night, Glad.”
“No, you said just one night.” Mama was never one for letting her emotions out, but her anger pops off now as easy as a drunk’s pistol. “If I have to, I’ll raise this child myself, Delbert, so help me God, I will!”
Jubilee keeps her head down and unwraps his swaddling, and is taken aback by his fading color. The skin behind his knees and in the crease of his elbows even has a hint of pink. Has Mama not noticed this? She tries to catch Pa’s attention, but Mama snatches up the baby and sends Jubilee outside with the pail of soiled diapers.
While she is doing the washing, Pa trudges toward her.
“What are we going to do, Pa? She’s not going to give him up.”
Mama eyes them from the back door, ignoring Pa’s signals for her to go back inside.
“I’d planned to ride down to Eddie’s already and get the lay of the land, but your ma’s glued to me.”
“I could go.”
Pa won’t hear of it. “I don’t want you anywhere near Eddie. Besides, if you take the baby it’ll only put more of a strain between you and your ma.” Pa says he’ll try for Eddie’s before lunch, but in the meantime, he will continue to press Mama. “She’ll come around to it by then.”
If Pa’s so sure nobody’s going to get wind of them keeping a baby who doesn’t belong to them and that everything’s going to be settled by noon, why does he go out to the shed and collect his box of ammunition?
With this turn of events, Jubilee can’t go to Havens, and she knows he’ll grow worried before long. As soon as Pa leaves with the baby, she’ll run down to her aviary.
When she goes back into the house, Mama’s roped Willow-May into her fantasy, listing all the functions of a big sister. “Most important, you’ve got to watch him all the time—you can’t ever let him out of your sight.”
Willow-May makes a note of this on her chalkboard.
Jubilee fetches a sheet of paper and the tin of buttons and corn kernels, and challenges her sister to a game of Fox & Hens, but she cannot be coaxed away from Mama. Each of Pa’s bids to get Mama to part with the baby fails the same way. For the first time since Jubilee’s return, though, everyone comes together at the table for a meal.
By late afternoon, Jubilee corners Pa again, and he whispers something about working on a new plan, which, as far as she can tell, entails circling the outskirts of Mama’s willpower. To give herself something to do other than stand and chew on her nails, Jubilee goes out to the wash line. A weak sun today means everything is still damp and will need to be draped over the furniture. She unpins the diapers, pausing to take in how suddenly life can change, right down to a wash line, and her attention is pulled to a lone figure some distance down the path. At first, she fears it’s someone come about the baby, but that stoop, that foot-scuffing gait as though sandbags are tied to his calves, can only belong to one man. Havens. Her heart is a bell with a clapper that’s too big. She tries waving at him to come no closer, but he quickens his pace. She lifts her skirt and rushes to meet him.
He removes his hat. He is sweating and flushed and in a state. In a raspy voice, he says, “Thank goodness you’re here! I’ve been so worried! Are you okay? Is everything all right?”
Jubilee glances back at the house.
“I know I shouldn’t be here. I’m sorry. I would’ve sent Chappy, but I couldn’t find him, and I couldn’t wait any longer. You have no idea what’s been going on in my head.” He takes a big breath and lets out a sigh. “I’m just so relieved to find you here. I don’t know what I would’ve done—”
She wants to hold him, but she can’t chance it. “I’m okay, but you should go now. I’ll explain everything tomorrow.”
“What’s happened? Has someone upset you?”
“Nothing like that. It’s just something with Mama.”
It takes a good deal more assuring for him to agree. He is about to put on his hat, but stops and smiles. “You look—”
“Blue again, yes.
” What is he to make of her—blue, not blue, then blue again?
“I was about to say beautiful. You take a man’s breath away.”
His expression changes, and Jubilee turns to see the cause—Mama is coming at them as though to drive off a flock of crows from a cornfield.
“She’s not well” is Jubilee’s hasty warning.
Havens tucks his shirt tight into his trousers and smooths down his hair. “It had to happen sometime.” He gives Jubilee a look of reassurance.
Mama sets herself between Jubilee and Havens.
“Mrs. Buford, good afternoon.”
She narrows her eyes. “You think you can come back here, given all that’s happened?”
Havens is in the midst of offering his condolences, when she says, “Come to gawk at her again, is that it? Once wasn’t enough? You leave us be and go find someone else to abase with your picture-taking.” It doesn’t even sound like Mama’s voice. It sounds like it belongs to a woodcutter, someone accustomed to stubborn timber.
“Mama, please.”
Steady-tempered, Havens says, “I can’t abase what I believe to be perfect.”
“Perfect, is she? With a dead brother, that’s what you call perfect?”
Pa joins them now, brow wrinkled the way it is when he’s made a stack of coins and realizes there isn’t enough to solve his money problems. “Why are you here?”
“I’ve returned to Chance to court your daughter, sir.”
Mama brings color into it, one moment charging he’s only interested in blue, and the next that it’s only because of her curing, and this time, Havens is the one doing the objecting. “Blue or not blue is for Jubilee to choose. To me, it doesn’t matter at all.” Havens doesn’t rush his words. “The truth is I love her and if she’ll permit me, I’m ready to prove myself a candidate for her affection.”
Pa looks as if his land has just been sold out from under him. Turning to Jubilee, he says, “You don’t want him. Tell the man.”
“Please don’t make me choose, Pa.”
“It’s an impossible notion!” declares Mama. “We won’t permit it!”
“You need to leave,” Pa orders.
“I certainly understand your misgiving. In your shoes, I would feel the same.” Havens puts on his hat. “Nevertheless, Jubilee is the one to decide.” Turning to her, he pats where his heart lies. “You know where to find me.”
“What does he know about being in our shoes?” Mama says, watching Havens head off.
He loves her. The wind could pick her up and carry her away.
* * *
Back inside the house, it’s no use trying to lie to Mama and Pa, so she tells them straight-out where she’s spent the last few days and that she intends to see him again and promise herself to him. They could not appear more unnatural than if they were pillars of salt.
“Have you forgotten your brother made this mistake?” Pa asks, which provokes Mama into insisting that Levi didn’t make any mistake and that Sarah Tuttle’s solely to blame. Jubilee wonders why her parents cannot see their daughter full, whole, for the first time believing she deserves the love of a kind man and deserving, too, of being allowed to make her own choice about loving him back.
“Love isn’t ever a mistake,” she insists.
Mama plucks up the baby, clicking her tongue.
“You’re bound for hurt,” Pa says. Why isn’t he minding Mama and the hurt she’s bound for with that baby still in her possession? Why hasn’t he seen about returning him yet, instead of standing here and telling Jubilee about hurt?
“Is that why you didn’t tell me about his letter?”
“You mind your pa; he knows better than you what’s best,” Mama scolds.
“What would you have me do with the rest of my life, Pa? Hide? Because hiding didn’t solve anything—it just made things worse. We’ve hidden ourselves for so long we’ve become lost.”
“I know exactly where I am,” snaps Mama.
“No one’s saying you should hide,” Pa says. “You’ve got your pills now, so there’s no need to hide. We’re saying, he’s not right for you. There’s bound to be another man who’s more suited.”
“You don’t think those pills are a way of hiding?” Jubilee challenges. “I take those pills and go to Smoke Hole and all anyone sees is pretty skin. And another man? What man wants to go to sleep with a Right-colored and wake up in the morning and find a Blue in his bed?”
“I’ve never heard such nonsense,” says Mama.
“You said yourself I’ve been trying to act like someone else, Mama, and it’s true. I thought if I could just look like everyone else, everything would be okay, but I took those pills and ended up feeling lost in my own self. I’m formed around blue, and there’s no pill for that. But that man you’re so set against is the one person who loves what’s inside, and if I don’t let myself love him back, then I’m destined for a coward’s life, just like Levi said.”
“What about children?”
Telling Pa why he doesn’t have to worry about any more blue offspring doesn’t much console him. “Two makes a family,” Jubilee says. She goes to the front door. “Now I’m going to give him my answer.”
At Levi’s grave, Pa had said the deceased don’t stay in their graves, but Jubilee doesn’t believe this. As long as she’s given her heart to someone who still walks the earth, she might just thank the Lord kindly when it comes time for her soul to make its final journey, and consent instead to stay in her grave until his body is put to rest, and should he be an unbeliever and what they say is true about there being no heavenly welcome for heathen folk, then she will wait with him till the earth crumbles and the dust of them mixes together and a great wind carries them away in a cloud.
* * *
Dusk wafts in on an expectant breeze and when she reaches the meadow, Havens is sitting with his back against the shed facing her direction. As soon as he sees her, he leaps to his feet. This time he doesn’t wave and he doesn’t move toward her. He waits for her to make up all the distance on her own, giving her the freedom to change her mind at every step. He wants her sure.
To love someone is to keep them safe, that’s what Jubilee used to believe, that’s how she loved Levi, how she thought Sarah ought to love her brother, too, but what if love and safe-keeping have little to do with each other? What if love calls a person out from her shelter, way out?
She reaches Havens sure as she’ll ever be. He takes her wrist as though it were the oar of a canoe run ashore and leads her into the aviary, closing the door with his foot.
He kisses her.
“I’ve never—you know—”
He nuzzles her neck in reply. He runs his lips up her neck to her ear and tastes the tip. His breath makes every seam in her tighten, then go slack, and what was stitched up all these years by fear and shame is no match for his fingers at the loosening thread. She pulls the clips from her bun, and he fills his hands with her hair and buries his face. He pushes a sleeve off one shoulder and kisses her skin, and she pushes aside the other sleeve, letting her dress fall away like a shadow.
“You are so lovely, Jubilee, so beautiful.” For a long time, he just admires what he sees. “You have no idea, do you?”
She shivers.
“Can I show you?”
“Yes.”
Gently and unhurried, he outlines her shape, feeling his way around a curve, sliding the edge of his hand into a soft corner. She believes in his love. His touch makes her proud, and for the first time, she feels fully at home in herself.
He makes a bed for them with the blanket and his clothes, rolling up his jacket for a pillow for her, before laying her down.
This is how the forest grows when nobody is looking. Thick roots curl over one another, vines make loops and latch onto tree branches, bark shivers when moss scuttles over it, and leaves unravel all at once, making a tree quiver—all this while the ground softens and arcs, and the river, once dammed at the bend, surges ahead into the ready cree
k bed.
Outside, the dark woods stand guard, the stars start sprinkling themselves in the tree branches like tinsel, and the moon glints like a coin tossed into a wishing well.
JUBILEE
At first light, she is still awake, still thinking of Havens, still imagining his hand running across her body, which feels so different now after his loving. Her whole being feels strummed. She can’t stop humming. As soon as she hears the baby crying, she gets up and dresses with haste. Why has Pa still not done something about this?
Mama is bending over the squalling child. “You’ve done this!” she accuses Jubilee, lifting Lenny from Grandma’s suitcase, which serves as a crib to show Jubilee her crime. Gone from him is any trace of blue. “You’ve given him your pills!”
“No, I didn’t.” Reassuring doesn’t work.
Hair matted and eyes narrowed, Mama is one part Gladden, three parts witch. She screams, “Get out!”
Jubilee finds Pa in the barn saddling Lass. To get a read on Pa’s mood, a person need only check how he’s positioned his hat. Sitting far back on his crown and exposing his face all the way to his hairline means he’s in good spirits and will gladly converse, squared and yanked down so his ears bend means his task is not to be interrupted, and positioned at an angle means you can expect a song or a joke, but if it’s the way it is now, front brim pulled low to hide his eyes, it’s best to rectify your ways or keep your distance. Jubilee broaches the subject of the baby’s color, and he says he already knows. He admits Mama’s reasoning has worsened, too.
“She plans never to be parted from the child,” Jubilee says.
“That’s why I’m going to force the matter.” Pa says the minute she sets Lenny down, he’s going to take him. Pa tugs the brim of his hat even lower when she offers to help.
Jubilee is bringing a bundle of wood inside when she sees that Pa has somehow blown his cover. Milk is boiling over on the stove, Pa is trying to strike some sort of deal, Mama is pounding her fists against Pa’s chest, yelling that he will take Lenny away over her dead body, and Lenny is lying in the suitcase-crib wondering if someone’s ever going to feed him. There’s but one way out of this. Jubilee snatches up Lenny, runs out of the house and down the steps, and unties Lass from the porch railing.