Daughters of Jubilation

by Kara Lee Corthron

  I do have a theory, though. I think it’s got somethin’ to do with the haints.

  I was seein’ haints before I knew I had the strangeness inside me. Probably before I could walk. These are restless spirits that can’t seem to get to wherever they sposeta be goin’. A lot of ’em are angry. All of ’em are sad. Not everybody can see ’em. I tried to introduce one of ’em to a neighbor girl when I was about three or four, and she couldn’t see a thing. That’s when I learned that they weren’t people.

  I can ignore ’em usually, but I know they’re always around. I know this because if I focus, I can know what’s goin’ on in more than one world at a time. Imagine you could tune your radio so you could hear several different stations at once and understand everything you hear perfectly. That’s the best way I can describe it. So I wonder if the heat is such a trial for me cuz I got haints flockin’ all around me, crowdin’ my atmosphere all the time.

  R. J. attempts to dance over to me while looking hip, but he can’t pull this off.

  “Evalene. You not gonna come out here?”

  I pretend I don’t hear him and sorta walk-dance with my homemade fan over to the grill to salvage the meat that ain’t been burnt to a cinder. I try to overlook the heat as I plate a couple hot dogs, the few burgers that survived, and when I turn around…

  “Hey, Evvie girl,” he says to me, and I try to act cool, like I ain’t jumping up and down inside at just the sight of him. He smiles this real shy smile, and I smile back even though I know he’s a liar. There ain’t nothin’ shy about Clayton Alexander Jr. Least I ain’t never seen that side of him.

  “Hey there,” I say back. “Didn’t think you was gonna show.”

  “And miss an opportunity to see you in a dress? Am I a damn fool?”

  I roll my eyes but keep on smilin’. Only Clay can get away with flirtin’ with me like this.

  “I don’t know. Are ya?” I flirt back.

  He chuckles and looks down at his feet, but he doesn’t say anything. I wish to high heaven I had a hand mirror right now and two minutes of privacy so I could pat down my hair in the spots that have poufed up and double up on my cherry bomb lipstick.

  From the corner of my eye I catch R. J. watchin’ us like a lost puppy. If he didn’t look so pitiful, I’d fling a burnt patty at him. I shift my position to cut him outta my view.

  Because it’s still in my hands, I hold out the plate to Clay. “Weiner?” I offer, regretting the word as soon as it left my lips. I honestly thought that was gonna sound sexy when I said it. Lesson learned.

  He just grins. Once again, I think he’s tryin’ not to laugh at me.

  “Well…” I try to regain my dignity. “Do you want anything to eat?”

  He doesn’t answer. He just keeps lookin’ at me. The way he looked at me last summer when he pulled me outta that puddle. I feel dizzy in a good way, but I try not to let it show.

  “Okay then.” I put the plate down and walk back to my seat and my lemonade. If he has somethin’ to say to me, I’m sure he’ll say it sooner or later. I ain’t gonna beg him to talk to me.

  “Evvie?”

  I take a big gulp of lemonade before answering, just to show him how much more interested I am in it than him. “Yeah?”

  “Will you come dance with me?” he asks. Now, if I didn’t know better, I could swear that Clayton was just a teeny bit nervous asking me that question. Did he really think I’d say no?

  I take one more sip and close my eyes, savoring the sweet, tangy goodness before I look back at him.

  “Why not?” I offer him my hand. He smiles and takes it, leading me to the trampled patch of grass that has become the dance floor. Just as we stop, feeling that we’ve found the optimal dance spot, not too far away from the music and not too close to anybody else, a different song comes on. A slow one. He encircles my waist, and I start to feel another one of them goddamn headaches comin’ on.

  No. Not now. I take a few deep breaths.

  “Are you all right?” he asks, his voice full of a particular kind of masculine concern. Not paternal and certainly not brotherly, but somethin’ I know I’d never feel from another girl.

  No. Honestly, I am not all right. Sometimes—some very unlucky times—I get these special headaches.

  Everybody gets a headache once in a while. You just take an aspirin or two and go about your business. Not these kinda headaches. They’re rare, but they’re bad news. Part of me not bein’ normal is my ability to do strange things. Like make the ground shake or knock down an oak tree on unsuspecting bigots. For some cockeyed reason they call it Jubilation. It ain’t the typical kinda jubilation, though. Not the definition you’d find in Webster’s. It’s a catchall word for the spooky magic shit that runs in my family. The headaches are almost like a warning bell that lets me know I’m about to do something dramatic. Something I probably can’t control and probably won’t remember.

  Took me forever to figure out what brings ’em on. I think I finally know. Fear, anger, and desire. Sounds simple, right? Sounds like if I know that much, I oughta be able to prevent ’em, right? I wish.

  Typically, this is how it goes: the pain starts behind my eyes, then gradually moves to the base of my skull, and then… then I black out. And time passes like I’ve been in a coma, but in a coma where my body does things that my mind chooses to hide from me.

  The first time it got dangerous, I was just about to turn twelve. I scratched this girl’s face so hard she bled. This is what I’ve been told. I have no memory of ever doing such a thing. I did see dried blood under my nails later on, so it must’ve happened. I came outta my daze in the church basement alone with my mother, and that’s when she informed me that puberty would mean a helluva lot more for me than the birds and the damn bees.

  But it’s not a hopeless plight. When a bad headache starts, there are two ways I can prevent a blackout. 1) I can nullify it by forcing my mind to focus all of its attention on neutral images. A tomato plant. Hanging laundry. A pair of scissors. Or 2) when it’s too far gone for neutralizing, if I make myself vomit, it goes away. I hope number one works, cuz I certainly can’t do number two right now.

  In the midst of my anxiety, somethin’ troubling has just occurred to me. With the Pritchards and that fallin’ tree? Not only did the headache come so fast I didn’t have time to react to it, I was conscious the entire time. I think my powers are evolving, and I can’t imagine that’s a good thing.

  “Evvie? You need to sit down?” Clay asks.

  I catch sight of the grill and think to myself, Grill. Charcoal. Metal. Spatula. Grill. Tryin’ like hell to go neutral. I start to feel like I’m fading and know my time is running out. I take a step backward, preparing to run, but Clay holds me steady, pulling me even closer, and I’m terrified I’m about to throw up all over him. But I get lost in those eyes of his, and something changes in me. I wrap my arms around his neck, and he squeezes me a little tighter.

  And I don’t puke. I don’t black out. I’m here and present, and I feel good.

  At that moment a large ball of flame erupts from the grill up into the air with a loud roar. A few people scream and holler, and then it’s gone in a blink. Everybody blames Leon cuz he was the one closest to it when it blew, and he swears he didn’t do a thing. Anne Marie throws salt over the hot coals. Bernadette informs her that baking soda is best, and they bicker about it, but there’s nothing left for them to fight over. All that remains is a shallow flame. I laugh to myself, nervously. I know I did that, and I know it could’ve been a lot worse.

  “This party’s goin’ bananas,” Clay jokes.

  I look up at him, and despite the chaos around us, we share our own secret laugh. My headache’s gone. I wonder if Clay has something to do with that.

  Fear, anger, desire. Maybe cuz my desire has a real flesh-and-blood destination right now that makes me stronger. Wish I could ask Grammie Atti. She’d know, but she and Mama aren’t speakin’, and I don’t think she’s ever liked me much anyway.
Don’t help that she’s terrifying.

  “What you thinkin’?” Clay asks.

  I smile at him and shake my head. “Nothin’ really. Just enjoyin’ the song.”

  We start to sway at the same moment. I ignore the perspiration making our skins stick together and focus on the lyric that tells the truth: I only have eyes for him. I lean into his upper chest. Now he takes a breath, a short breath, like he can’t quite keep up with his own breathing. I feel his heart beating like a baby bird’s against my cheek. And I ain’t worried about accidental magic. I ain’t worried about a thing. Everything is fine. Everything is perfect.

  3 Juneteenth

  LATER IT’S JUST A FEW of us left. The sun’s been down for ages, and we sit around shootin’ the shit. Because he’s got class, Clay’s next to me, but not with his arm around me, tryna show off or nothin’. A few times he brushes my hand by “accident.” The third time he does it, we look at each other, and he raises an eyebrow. I just grin and turn my attention back to whoever’s talking at the moment. That’s about when R. J. finally takes off, which is a relief. Bless his heart, I don’t think I could’ve taken one more second of him staring at me.

  Now Anne Marie’s complainin’ about her uncle. He’s always in her business, and now that he’s living in her house, he wants to act like he’s her second father. I tell her to stand her ground and not to let him intimidate her.

  “Easy for you to say,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “Cuz nobody intimidates you,” she tells me.

  “That ain’t true,” I say.

  “Feels true,” she replies. I don’t know what she means. I get intimidated by people all the time. Only thing is I do my best not to show it. That’s the onliest difference between me and her.

  “Well it ain’t,” I say. “I bet you good money if you let him know what’s what, he’ll quit botherin’ ya. He’s just actin’ like a big, dumb dog. Show him he’s in your territory.”

  She nods but looks down at the ground. I’m probably sayin’ too much. Sometimes I do that. Besides, it’s always easy to give advice from a distance.

  To change the subject, Leon starts tellin’ the cheesiest story about seein’ Wade Hampton’s ghost. We laugh. Nobody here believes him. I don’t, because I know what it is to see a ghost, and it ain’t like what’s he sayin’.

  “Quit laughin’! Y’all weren’t there,” he protests.

  “What was you doin’ in the General’s Woods anyway? That ain’t nowhere for us to be,” Clay says.

  “That’s beside the point. Listen. I swear on my granddaddy’s grave—”

  “That ain’t Christian,” Anne Marie points out.

  Leon sighs in frustration. “Whatever! I swear on my own life then. Let heaven strike me dead right here if I didn’t see Wade Hampton’s ghost sittin’ on top a his horse in full Klan regalia at the top of a ol’ moss tree. You tell me how the hell he got way up there, and, more importantly, how’s Wade Hampton gonna be ridin’ his horse anywhere when he’s been dead a hundred years?”

  “Sixty.”

  “What you sayin’ now?”

  “Wade Hampton the Third has only been dead for sixty years,” Anne Marie says. She’s always been a history wiz.

  For a heartbeat all the fun and silliness desert us. It’s unsettling to think that South Carolina’s own Wade Hampton III—Confederate general and one of the KKK’s most loyal sugar daddies—died only sixty years ago. When we ain’t thinkin’ about it, somethin’ like that feels like forever ago. When we are thinkin’ about it? It was yesterday.

  Not that it would matter much if he was still breathing. I’m sure he’d be pleased to know that the Klan is alive and kickin’ without his fat checks.

  Leon finishes his story and promises to get proof if he sees him again. I can’t wait to see what kinda “proof” he’ll come up with.

  Gets quiet for a couple minutes after that. I know why I get quiet. I can’t help but think about the wiry chocolate boy with girl’s eyelashes and giant eyes like a li’l baby deer’s who’s sittin’ just to my right and who keeps slidin’ closer to me. Maybe everyone has their own version of what I got goin’ on in my head in theirs. I look around our little circle and catch Leon starin’ at me. He clears his throat and looks away. Then I notice Bernadette looking at Clay like he’s a cool glass a water and she’s stranded in the Mojave. For the tiniest second, I think about twistin’ her head right off her neck, but I glance at Clay, and I don’t think he’s even noticed. If he did, I don’t think he cares. He ain’t lookin’ at nobody but me.

  Anne lights a cigarette and inhales. I try to catch her eye, but she got one a them thousand-yard stares right now. I wonder if she’s gettin’ sick of us. Ready to put an end to the festivities.

  “Y’all wanna hear the thing or not?” she asks.

  “Yeah!” I pipe up first, and then the others do too. I don’t want her to think we totally forgot what we’re here to celebrate.

  She takes another drag off her cig, reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a folded piece of paper, from which she reads aloud.

  “ ‘The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired laborer.’ ”

  When she finishes, no one knows what to do at first. Clay looks at me like, Should we clap? Real quick I grab a cup of spiked punch, and I hold it up high.

  “Here’s to absolute equality of rights,” I say. And then I add, “When that finally happens!” I was careful to say “when” and not “if.” In response, there’s a chorus of amens, hear hears, and yeses. Anne Marie smiles at me, and I can tell she’s already feelin’ better.

  * * *

  Bernadette gets loud again, talkin’ about this movie she saw, recountin’ every detail. Somethin’ about a man so afraid of bein’ buried alive that he opens his father’s tomb and has a heart attack right there cuz the tomb’s empty. I don’t care for horror flicks. They don’t get anything right.

  I yawn, for the first time thinking about my early morning, when Clay gives my pinky a tug. I turn to him, and he tilts his head toward the road.

  “This was so much fun,” I say to Anne Marie, interrupting Bernadette’s endless movie report, “but I gotta get up early.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Clay says, standing up behind me.

  “It ain’t that late yet,” Leon protests.

  “Late enough,” Clay says with a smile. “I’ll walk Evalene home.”

  “Bye, y’all,” I say, but they’re already talkin’ again. Anne Marie waves. Sad eyes again. I’ll call her later to make sure she’s all right.

  Clay and I walk, his fingers interlaced with mine, and instead of heading to the main road, he gently points us toward the woods. Well, he stops and stares in the direction of the woods, and I lead us that way.

  “How many days a week you work?” he asks as it gets harder and harder to see each other, the trees and their shadows surrounding us.

  I sigh. Just thinking about work makes me wanna curl up and hide somewhere. “Five usually. Sometimes six.”

  “Damn. That’s a lotta time to be around that brat.”

  I laugh. “How you know she’s a brat?”

  “If she was an angel, I’m sure your boss lady would wanna spend more time with her herself,” he says. And that is a real good point. I’d never thought of it like that before.

  “You’re right. She’s a terror.”

  “It’s too bad.”

  “Who you tellin’?”

  “No,” he says, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me to him, “I mean about your schedule. I was hopin’ to see a whole lot more a you this summer.”

  I stay calm and try not to tremble. But this is it, right? It has to be. All the time I’ve spent wonderin’ if I�
��ve been imagining things, wishful thinking and all that, he has never been this overt. I don’t think I have to wonder anymore. Clay likes me. He likes me. I look down so he can’t see the size of my grin. But I can’t get too carried away. Nothing’s official yet.

  “I don’t see why you can’t,” I say.

  “When?”

  “You work too. We’ll just have to be… creative.”

  “Oh, is that all?” he asks, eyes sparkling with mischief. “I can be creative.”

  “Really?”

  “Evvie girl, you ain’t seen creative yet,” he jokes, and I laugh, moving in even closer. He leans down so our foreheads touch. I look into his eyes. I love those big eyes of his. If I had to stare at ’em all day long, it wouldn’t be long enough for me.

  But now… He ain’t lookin’ in my eyes now. He’s lookin’ down at my lips.

  “You have no idea, do you?”

  “Idea of what?” I ask him.

  He chuckles and blinks, and his eyelashes brush against my skin. He swallows.

  “You’re like nobody else,” he whispers.

  It’s slow, but he leans down the rest of the way, following what his eyes desire, and kisses me, and I think my body is finna melt into a pool a heat and feelin’ and taste. I kiss back, and we kiss so hard and for so long, my lips start to get tingly, and I don’t mind a bit. His mouth finds my earlobes, my neck, my collarbone.

  “Oh, Evvie,” he breathes.

  And the unwelcome thought of Mama pops into my head outta nowhere. She would be livid if she knew what her baby girl was doin’ right this very minute. I have a feelin’ if anyone’s gonna put on the brakes, it’ll have to be me. I know that we shouldn’t be doin’ this so soon, but I can’t stop us. So Clay does.