Mama just stares at me with this strange look on her face that I can’t read. Shock? Disgust? Confusion? I don’t know how I know how to do it. Nobody taught me. All I know is when he entered me for the first time, it just came to me and it worked, and it’s been working ever since.
“Ain’t that a trick lotsa girls use?” I ask.
“No! And don’t you tell none of ’em about it either.”
“So you know what I’m talkin’ about?”
She purses her lips. “It’s a jube thing. Not everybody can do it,” she explains. “And it don’t always work,” she warns.
“It has for me.”
“It don’t always work. Don’t make me tell you again.”
How would you know? I think it, but she heard it.
“If ya don’t believe me, go ask Coralene and Doralene. When you’re done with them, ask your own damn reflection,” she retorts.
I swallow. “Oh.”
“Don’t misunderstand me: I wouldn’t trade any a y’all for anything. But what you are doin’ is risky, and I ain’t raisin’ no grandkids.”
I nod, cuz I get it, but why she been lookin’ at me like I’m a weirdo when she’s done the same thing?
“And you know what else it can’t do? Keep the clap away.”
“Mama! Eww!”
“Damn right eww. You think life’s fun when you crawlin’ with coochie diseases? No, it ain’t!”
I feel like I might throw up. Mama takes out a cigarette and lights it.
“You have got to be more careful, Evalene. You wanna do adult things, but they got adult consequences.”
“Okay, Mama. I promise you I will be more careful. I’ll… make sure he uses ’em.”
She takes a deep inhale, and her leg starts bouncing, a nervous signal. “Love can make a normal person act stupid, but it’s a whole other thing with people like us. Has your grandmother talked to you about love and Jubilation?”
“Love? Definitely not.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured. You know how if you’re fryin’ somethin’ and a grease fire starts, the worst thing you can do is throw water on it?”
I nod.
“If love was a grease fire, Jubilation would be a kettle of water thrown on top.”
“But everybody feels love. I love you and you love me. Are you sayin’ that’s bad?”
“Not that kinda love, baby. It’s the kind you feel for a man that gets us in trouble. The things we can do require clear judgment. Love muddies the waters.”
“Well, what can I do? I can’t just never feel love,” I say.
Her leg starts bouncin’ faster.
“No. But you can see Clay less often.”
Before I have a second to think on that, I’m already shaking my head no. My body won’t even give me the chance to lie. The last thing I wanna do in this life is see less of Clay. If I could be with him twenty-four hours a day, I bet I’d want twenty-five.
She studies me for a minute. She’s tryna speak, to say things she can’t out loud. She’s not doin’ such a great job, since she rarely uses her skills, but I hear her. She’s pleadin’ with me. She wants me to let Clay go. She thinks we’ll both be better off.
I answer her back, and I ain’t defiant about it at all. I’m sorry about it. I know she wants what’s best for me, but I love him too much to let him go.
Tears fill her eyes. “You’re as stubborn as I am. We are all the same. Why do we keep on makin’ the same damn mistakes?”
I don’t know what she means by that, but I refuse to believe that lovin’ Clay is a mistake.
In any case, all I want right now is to put her mind at ease. I know she’ll worry about me no matter what, but I need her to know that I’m not a walking time bomb. So I reach out and hold her hand.
“I’m fine, Mama,” I say. “Grammie Atti says I’m gettin’ good at jubin’. She’s taught me a lot. Trust me: I know what I’m doin’. I swear I do.” I say it with as much conviction as I can summon, so I can convince her and myself.
She dabs at the tears in her eyes and takes another long drag. The ash on her cigarette is growin’ long, and I wanna find her an ashtray before it falls, but I feel like I can’t move. Mama ain’t lettin’ me move.
“The next time you feel the urge to hurt someone or… worse? Do me a favor. Run as fast as you can and put your target out of your mind as fast as you can. No matter who they are or what they done. And then you pray. This is my prayer: ‘I am a child of God. I am not ugly. I will do no harm.’ Use it, or you can make up your own.”
I squint, tryna picture this scenario. I wanna harm somebody so I run, try to put ’em outta my mind, and then I pray? This doesn’t seem very practical to me.
“Doin’ that works?” I ask.
She smiles sadly. “Doin’ that helps.”
I can’t imagine runnin’ off and prayin’ the next time I see Virgil. It’s weak.
“Have you ever wondered why me and your daddy ain’t together no more?”
“Cuz he went to prison.”
She sucks her teeth and waves me away. The ash misses my bedspread and drops to the hardwood floor. I watch it closely to be sure it holds no embers.
“Before that. Donchu know?”
I don’t say anything. I don’t know. I just thought they couldn’t get along with each other.
“I sent him away for his own good. I loved that man like crazy. I still do.”
Really? I would’ve never guessed in a million years that she still loved Daddy or ever loved him “like crazy.”
“That love brought out the ugliest of urges from me. When I thought he wanted to leave me for my cousin, I took his voice away from him for seven days. He lost his job cuz a that stunt.”
Damn. Mama didn’t play around.
She finally notices the ashes and wanders off to find an ashtray, I guess. I still can’t seem to move. Is she sayin’ I could hurt Clay cuz I love him? What kinda sick shit is that?
She comes back into the room with an ashtray, looking as tired as I feel.
“I sent him away. He was scared a me, and he was right to be. I didn’t like myself when I used my power to do such things. I didn’t like myself too much at all in them days.” She stubs out her cigarette. “That’s why I started goin’ to church. You may think it’s funny, but I know it’s what saved me.”
“That’s why you—why you don’t jube no more?”
“I don’t feel the need to no more.”
I just nod. What do I do with all this information?
“You gotta fight the ugly, Evvie. You might not get a lotta time to do it either. That’s why you run. That’s why you ask God to intervene.”
She kisses my forehead and leaves without saying another word.
I sit stewin’ on everything Mama just dumped on me. Now that I’m startin’ to understand my powers more, the idea a disownin’ ’em outta fear just seems half-baked. If she feels better the way she is, that’s fine. Honestly, though? Goin’ against my nature to repress the jube sounds much worse than just livin’ with it. I may be stubborn like her, but I’m different from Mama. In more ways than one. Nothing could make me send Clay away.
I turn off the light, and I still can’t sleep. Curse my stupid family for stickin’ me with this niggery witchy bullshit. Who needs it? What good does it do any of us really?
Then I think about Miss Corinthia and how it saved her and her mother’s lives. I see how it’s useful in an emergency. Unless you’re me, and your emergency is Virgil Hampton.
I start to drift off finally as I imagine what it must be like to be born without weird powers. To have the choice to believe in God or religion or magic. To view these things as interesting concepts for an enlivening discussion, as opposed to knowing how real they can be. And how dangerous.
19 Normal
MY TWO-HEADEDNESS HAS BEEN workin’ overtime lately. I’m way too attuned to what’s going on around me. Just now, when I was readin’ to Abigail, I got the sharpest feelin
g that somethin’ was wrong with Anne Marie. It was so strong that I handed Abigail the book and stood up mid-sentence to go to the phone.
“Evalene, you can’t stop before it’s done. I’m ascared a the pale-green pants in the dark!”
She trails after me, draggin’ the book that I’ve read a hundred times and that can’t possibly scare her at this point.
I dial Anne Marie’s number.
“Read the book first! You’re bein’ mean,” Abigail hollers.
While it’s still ringing, I lean down close to her. “If you be good and quiet, when the pale-green pants come to pay a visit, I’ll tell ’em you don’t live here no more so you’ll be safe.”
“The pale-green pants knows where I live?” In a panic, she runs into the living room cryin’ and throws herself onto the couch. Dammit. Here I thought I was bein’ nice.
“Hello?”
I’m not sure who it is that’s picked up, but the voice doesn’t sound so good.
“Hi, um, is Anne Marie at home?” I ask.
Silence on the other end. All I can hear is Abigail blubbering in the next room.
“Hello?”
“It’s me, Evvie,” Anne Marie says. I’ve never heard her voice sound like this before. Something awful has happened.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
“What is it you want?” she asks in a strange way.
“I had a feelin’… that somethin’ was wrong. With you. So I got worried. That’s why I called.”
I hear her breath catch on the other end. Then more silence. All I hear is Abigail’s cryin’ fit, which has already dwindled to a few whimpers and hiccups.
“I can’t—uh—I can’t really talk right now,” she says.
Hearing her like this hurts my heart. I don’t know what to do. My instinct is to run out the door and find her. But I have three more hours of work left.
“Can you get out? You could come over again,” I offer.
She sniffles. She’s been cryin’ for a while. “No. I can’t do that.”
“What about right after I get off at six? We can meet at the fountain?” There’s a fountain in town that we once discovered is almost exactly halfway between our houses. It’s a good rendezvous spot in an emergency.
“Could you meet me at church later?” she asks, her voice cracking.
“Yeah. Of course. It might take me about ten minutes, but I’ll get over there as soon as I can.”
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Is—is there anything you can tell me now? Or anything I can do?”
“Yes,” she says. “Please pray for me.”
* * *
The second Miss Ethel opens the door, I fly out of it.
“See you tomorrow,” I throw behind me as I reach the sidewalk.
I slow down so I don’t draw attention to myself, but I move at a fast trot, wantin’ to get to the church as quickly as I can. Dreadin’ what I’ll find when I get there.
Anne Marie’s outside on the front steps.
“Hey,” I say. “Tell me what’s goin’ on.”
She’s got her arms around her knees, and her head lays on ’em to one side. She hasn’t made eye contact with me. She’s hasn’t acknowledged me.
I stoop down and try to get her to look at me.
“I wanna help, but I can’t if I don’t know what’s wrong,” I tell her.
She then tentatively lifts her head to look at me, and I swallow my urge to gasp. Her eye socket is red and badly bruised. By tomorrow, she’ll have a black eye. I don’t know if she has any other injuries, so I delicately lift her to her feet and walk her around to the back of the church, where there’s benches and shade and some degree of privacy.
“Who did this to you?” I ask her once we’re sitting.
“It doesn’t matter, Evvie. There’s nothing you can do.” She sounds hopeless.
“Fine. Let’s assume I can’t do anything,” I say. “Then what difference would tellin’ me make?”
God she looks so defeated. I’ve never seen her in such a state.
“Uncle Roland,” she whispers.
I knew it! I knew it was that bastard uncle that moved in with them!
“I don’t care what he told you, you have got to tell your parents so they can kick his no-count ass outta there today!”
At first she nods a little bit, but then she bursts into tears, falling into herself, and I throw my arms around her.
“It’s okay, Anne. You can cry or scream or yell. Nobody’ll hear ya but me. And possibly the choir, cuz it’s practice night, but they’ll survive.”
Usually when I try to toss a joke into a serious situation she laughs. Didn’t work this time.
“Is this the first time he’s hit you?” I ask.
She nods. “He threatened before. I never thought he’d really do it,” she says.
“Why would he hurt you? You’re the sweetest, most thoughtful person in the world! What kinda animal is he?”
Anne Marie leans away from me, sitting up straight. She tries to wipe a tear away from her discolored eye and winces.
“Do you want me to come home with you?” I ask. In an instant, I’m thinking about my red-orange band and the caliber of damage I could do to Roland with it.
She shakes her head violently. “No. That’s not a good idea.”
“I mean…” I try to put my revenge fantasies aside. “I could just be with you while you talk to your parents, if that makes you feel safer.”
With shaking hands, she takes out a cigarette and lights it. I can faintly hear the choir singing from the church basement, since they got the window open.
“It’s complicated, Evvie,” she says, really looking at me. I feel a chill as I catch a flash of Anne Marie twenty years from now, sittin’ on this same bench, smokin’ and lookin’ just as beaten down as she does right now. It comes and goes faster than an eye blink.
“Maybe if you say what happened out loud, it’ll seem less complicated,” I suggest.
“I have no privacy. Nothing that can just be mine,” she says.
I wait for her to continue. I don’t want to rattle her thoughts with my interruptions.
“Since the seventh grade, I been keepin’ a diary. I started it after we read The Diary of Anne Frank in English. Not that I ever expected to be locked up in an attic for two years or anything, but I thought it might be good to write my thoughts and feelings down.” She stops and shakes her head, takin’ another drag off her cigarette. “How wrong I was. I never much appreciated the sanctity of that diary. Till today. I went out to pick up groceries, but I had to come back cuz I forgot my change purse. Mama and Daddy were at work, so the only person that was home was Uncle Roland, which is not unusual. So I went up the stairs and saw that my bedroom door was shut, and I knew I didn’t leave it that way. I only close it when I’m in my room. I opened the door, and there was Uncle Roland on my bed. Reading my diary and laughin’,” she says.
“Does he have no shame?”
“Please. That man wouldn’t recognize shame if it crawled up his leg and bit him on his lazy ass,” Anne Marie replies.
Things are bad when Anne Marie curses without excusing herself.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
Her face changes. Righteous indignation replaced by fear.
“He tried to throw it across the room and deny he was readin’ it. Like I hadn’t just seen him with my own two eyes. I scream at him for bein’ in my room and gettin’ into my personal business. Then he pulls that ‘don’t raise your voice at me’ crap, and I told him to drop dead. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor. Him standin’ over me, like he was darin’ me to get up.”
As she’s talkin’, I’m listening to her and sympathizing, but part of me keeps on thinkin’ of all the glorious harm I could do to this good-for-nothin’ without lifting a finger. I try not to, though. Anne Marie’s so virtuous, she’d probably end up hatin’ me, too, if I took it upon myself to punish him.
“He sat down o
n my bed again, and he looked a little scared himself. I got up and promised him I’d tell Mama and Daddy everything. Then he quit lookin’ scared. He’s half smilin’, and he says to me, ‘No you won’t.’ I tell him there’s nothin’ he can do to stop me.” She stops speaking then. She finally finishes that cigarette and drops it to the ground.
“That’s true, ain’t it?” I ask, confused. “I mean, there ain’t nothin’ he can do to stop you.”
She turns to me, and I wanna hug her for my own sake. So I wouldn’t see the profound pain in those eyes.
“He can tell my parents what he read,” she says simply.
I hadn’t thought of that. Mostly because Anne Marie’s such a good girl. Smoking’s her only vice, and she feels guilty about that. What could he possibly have found in her diary that would upset her like this?
“Well. He can,” I begin, “but it’s not like you’re out runnin’ around committin’ crimes. And you’d be smart enough not to write about ’em in your diary if you were. Like it or not, you are a good girl. You have nothing to be ashamed of,” I tell her with full confidence.
“Evvie,” she says, “I like someone, and I wrote about it in my diary. I wrote a lot. Things that—if my parents saw some of the things I wrote, I’d wanna die. I’m not joking.”
Jesus! She may not be joking, but I certainly hope she’s exaggerating.
“They may not want to know these things about their little girl,” I begin, imagining how Mama must’ve felt when she bought me that box of condoms. “But it’s just life. Things everybody has felt, including them. They might be upset for a little while, but they’ll recover. It’s normal,” I finish.
Anne just stares at the ground.
“Either way, the awkwardness you and your mama and daddy might feel won’t last. It ain’t worth lettin’ some ogre knock you around,” I add.
“It’s normal,” Anne repeats, and I can’t tell if she’s asking a question or making a statement.
“As normal as hoppin’ John on New Year’s Day,” I say, giving her a warm smile.
“What if the person I wrote about is a girl?”
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