Daughters of Jubilation

by Kara Lee Corthron

  I admire my restraint. Because I badly want to burn all of it.

  Doralene barges into my room.

  “What stinks in here?”

  I douse the flames.

  “Just some candles,” I say to her.

  “Why?”

  “Cuz I felt like it.” I wait for the barrage of whys, but her face changes.

  “It’s for that man, ain’t it?” she asks.

  “SHHH!”

  She whispers, “I won’t tell, Evvie. Will them candles keep him from comin’ back?”

  Wow. She’s way more perceptive than I realized.

  “I hope so.”

  “Me too,” she says. “I heard him say he wants to play with me and Coralene, but I don’t wanna play with him.”

  I’m sorry she heard that. I guess they both did.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t let him,” I assure her.

  She sits down next to me on the floor.

  “I dreamed that he came back and he took your smile away. Mama and Grammie Atti tried to get it back for you, but they couldn’t.”

  I pull her onto my lap and try to stay coolheaded. I don’t wanna scare her any more than she already is.

  “Nobody can take my smile away. Yours either. We’re gonna make sure a that right now. Open your hands.”

  She does. I smile like a demented clown and she starts laughin’. I pretend to peel my smile off, leaving my lips in a boring straight line. This makes her laugh harder.

  “Here.” I hand her my “smile.” “You put it somewhere where nobody can ever take it, okay?”

  “Okay. You take mine.” Doralene imitates my actions to a T and hands me her “smile.”

  “Let’s make a deal to always keep our smiles in a nice, safe place. Sound good?” I ask.

  She nods and puts out her hand, and we shake on it.

  Then Mama hollers at us to come down for supper. Doralene races outta the room, her worries forgotten. It’s silly, but I take The Golden Book of Astronomy down from the shelf, open it up and place my sister’s “smile” inside it.

  Nobody’s gonna take it.

  24 Faith

  IT’S THUNDERING AND RAINING OUTSIDE. We’re on the floor in the old colored children’s library. I could stay here all night and be completely happy. I think Clay’s gettin’ bored, though.

  “Maybe we could find a broom. Clean up the cobwebs and mouse shit,” he suggests, looking around.

  I groan. “I don’t wanna clean!”

  “We could get this place lookin’ nice again. Maybe the town would open it back up.”

  I stare at the cobwebs on the ceiling, not mindin’ ’em so much. I know his heart’s in the right place, but not only do I have no interest in cleaning—under any circumstances—at best, if we did make the place look presentable again, somebody would notice and take it over, and it wouldn’t be our secret spot no more. At worst, our work would make someone realize all this space has been going to waste, and then they’d just tear it down to build somethin’ else.

  “I don’t know, Clay. Might be best to leave things the way they are.”

  “I disagree,” he says.

  The door clatters and I gasp but quickly see that it was just the wind, and it’s an old rickety door.

  “Did that scare you?”

  “Nah, I’m fine,” I say, but the truth is the thought of Virgil out there somewhere keeps me on edge. I’m jittery these days, and I never used to be.

  “Nasty,” he says, running his finger along a table, makin’ dust bunnies. Apparently my brief scare didn’t make much of an impression.

  “Okay. You can sweep if you want. While you do that, Imma take a nap,” I inform him.

  He glances at me.

  “Could you—like—clean this place up with your mind?” he asks.

  Before I answer, I check him to see if he’s makin’ fun. Doesn’t look like he is.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t want you to think I’m some freak of nature, Clay,” I tell him.

  “I don’t, Evvie.” He says the words, but he seems doubtful. “It makes sense that you’d have powers science can’t explain,” he reasons.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Cuz you’re special,” he says. He doesn’t stop talking long enough for me to swoon. “The only thing is… What if we got in a fight, or you just got real mad at me? You could hurt me. Badly.” He doesn’t meet my eyes.

  He’s afraid. Unfortunately, Grammie Atti’s pep talk didn’t put his fears to rest. It’s like what Mama said about Jubilation bein’ dangerous to the ones we love. But I know in my heart I am incapable of hurting him. How can I make him believe that?

  “I’m not sure I can say much except that I’d never do anything to hurt you. The scary stuff? It’s only for worst-case scenarios. When I’m in real danger. Or someone I love is. So, if you never attack me with your fists or any other weapons, you got nothin’ to worry about.” It’s the best I can offer, and I hope it’s enough. I don’t think I could bear to lose Clay. I need him to trust me.

  He gives me a crooked smile. “You are somethin’ else, you know that?”

  “Yes.” I grin back, relieved. He seems to trust me for now. He goes back to judging the dirtiness of the library, and I think his fears have melted away.

  “You sure you don’t wanna whip this place into shape with your unique gifts?”

  “Yeah, I’m sure,” I laugh. “Why are you so obsessed with fixin’ it up? It’s fine as it is.”

  He shrugs. “I get restless. Always get like this when it rains real hard.” Then his face lights up; he has an idea.

  “Be right back,” he says.

  “You ain’t goin’ out in that mess,” I tell him. As I say it, lightning illuminates the whole room for an instant.

  And he just runs out in it like a looney tune! I shout after him, but my voice gets lost in the clatter of the downpour. I don’t feel like usin’ magic right now, but I don’t want him to catch a cold, either. Cuz if he’s gettin’ a cold, I’m gettin’ a cold! I sigh and try to focus, but before I can do anything, he bursts back in soaking wet.

  “Look atcha! Why’d you do that?” I say to him.

  “No big thing. Ain’t made a sugar,” he says.

  “Clay!” He’s taken his shirt off. Out in the pourin’ rain in twilight hours with no shirt. “Have you lost your mind?”

  He sets down the thing he’s cradling in his arms. What he used his shirt to cover. His trumpet case. A bit damp, but mostly protected by his sopping-wet shirt.

  “You could catch pneumonia,” I tell him, wiping a few raindrops from his forehead.

  “Not with you takin’ care a me, m’lady.”

  I can’t help but smile at that.

  He opens the case and assembles his instrument. This is a rare occasion, cuz he’s never played it around me before. Wait a minute….

  “Clay? How come you ain’t never played for me before?”

  “Haven’t I?”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  He glances up at me, and now he’s blushin’.

  “Mighta been nervous.”

  “Cuz a me?”

  “Yeah, cuz a you. I also was—well—I been workin’ on somethin’, and it’s takin’ me a while to get it right. I should probably keep on practicin’ before givin’ you a concert, but what the hell?” He clears his throat. “When I’m done, can you tell me what you think of it?”

  “Uh-huh,” I say. I must admit: it is not the easiest thing in the world to talk to Clay and listen to him when he’s standing before me, naked down to his waist, skin glistening from the rain. I wanna grab him right now, but I know how important his music is to him. I do my best to focus.

  He begins to play. A simple melody. A few simple notes in a minor key. And then it gets more complicated, surprising, but still gentle. This is a sad piece. Not quite funeral sad, but sad. The sad you feel when you get old and you look around yourself and realize you haven’t lived the life you longed to
live. How could I know what that’s like? How could Clay? I can’t say, but it’s right here in his music.

  A warm tear slips down my nose. I try to hide it. There’s something I can’t explain or avoid in this piece of music. A beauty that none of us can ever hold on to.

  He finishes it and stares at me without saying anything. My tears keep coming. I give up tryna hide ’em.

  “It’s beautiful, Clay,” I tell him. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t know how to tell him what this piece has made me feel.

  “Didn’t mean to make you cry,” he says. He wipes some of my tears away.

  “No. It’s a gorgeous piece. What’s it called?”

  “ ‘Evalene,’ ” he says, as if I should’ve guessed.

  “Wait a minute. Clay? You wrote it?”

  He nods bashfully, his cheeks gettin’ rosy again.

  “Clay! You have so much talent! I knew you were the best trumpet player around, but if you can write music like that… you could go all over the world!”

  He snickers. “I don’t know about all that.”

  “I DO know!” That music he just made is better than anything I’ve heard on any radio station. Why is he still here when he could be out makin’ himself famous?

  “Have you played it for anybody else?”

  “No. I wanted to know what you thought first.”

  I grab his face and kiss it. “I think you’re brilliant.”

  “You think I’d make it up in Chicago?”

  “What’d I just say? Of course you could make it in Chicago! Or New York or—Clay!—you could go play in Paris! The one in France!”

  A slight shiver ripples through him. Oh yeah, he’s probably gotten chilly without a shirt. I have a little sweater that I try to wrap him in, which barely covers any of him. Then I hug him, rubbing his arms to get the warmth back in them. There’s a loud clap of thunder, and a bolt of lightning strikes something in the near distance.

  “So? You ready to conquer the world?” I ask.

  “Nah. I think that’s your job.”

  Us huggin’ turns into us kissin’ turns into our slow merge into each other. Always the gentleman, after the rubber’s on, he eases inside me as carefully as possible, and I love him for it, I do. But today I feel such a need for him that I can’t wait for his politeness. I roll over on top of him, rushing the process.

  “Damn, Evvie,” he laughs. But then he closes his eyes, and the pleasure he’s feeling is obvious. Evening darkens the sky, and the storm ain’t helpin’. Soon we’re movin’ through each other almost in complete darkness with occasional lightning guiding us. I know him well now, and this is usually his moment, so I brace for it.

  But not yet. He sits up and kisses my half-covered breasts and looks into my eyes, still rockin’ slowly. And now I can feel my moment coming, and he joins me. I don’t know how, but he does, and it’s all said and done at the exact same time.

  He falls backward on the floor, and I kiss his cheek and lay my head on his chest. I know it’s undignified to talk about the sex you just had, but I really wanna tell somebody about this one!

  We rest a bit. I mean, we kinda have to.

  “When are you going to Chicago?” I ask after a while.

  He plays with my hair, wrapping it around his fingers.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “We’ll figure it out eventually.”

  I bite my lip, afraid of what I’m about to say.

  “You should go soon.”

  “Why?”

  “So you don’t miss your chance.”

  “I won’t,” he says softly.

  We listen to the rain. The thunder is faint now.

  “If you did decide to go now… I’d go with you,” I tell him.

  The steady up and down of his chest under me stops.

  “No, you wouldn’t,” he says.

  “Yes, I would.”

  He raises himself up so I have to move. “No, you wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t let you.”

  “Why? What difference would it make?”

  “A helluva difference!”

  “No, it wouldn’t.”

  “Stop it, Evvie. You’re finishin’ school and gettin’ your diploma.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do!”

  I cross my arms and come perilously close to throwin’ a tantrum. Shit. Grammie Atti’s right: I do have a li’l impatient girl inside me with a bad temper.

  I hate this. Yeah, I want to get my diploma, and yeah, I might even dream about college someday. But not like this. If he stays in town because of me, he’s liable to vegetate, and he’ll probably wind up hatin’ me. If he goes now without me, I’ll wanna die every day I have to spend without him. Might sound like I’m bein’ dramatic, but I’m not.

  “Evvie? Don’t worry about it, okay? Baby? We’ll work it out.”

  By now it’s too dark to see each other’s face, so he lights some candles. I look at him, and the smile on his face is so sad that I immediately think about his song. “Evalene.” The piece he named after me. And then I understand that this is what it’s about. Having this extraordinary talent and urge to go and feeling stuck all because of…

  I get up. I pull on my top and my skirt.

  “Please don’t get upset,” he says to me.

  “I can’t help it! You might be the next Miles Davis and, what? You’re just gonna stay in this stupid town like a bum cuz your stupid girl has another year a high school left? I don’t wanna hold you back.”

  He grabs my face hard and kisses me. I try to pull free to keep arguing, but he just kisses me again.

  “Quit it, Clay.”

  “I want you to have the best chance you can in life, and that means gettin’ an education.”

  “But if it wasn’t for me, you’d go tomorrow, wouldn’t you?”

  “Well…” He clears his throat before continuing. “It’s hard to say. I mean—who knows? I might already be there,” he mumbles.

  A painful thought slaps me across my face.

  “Maybe you really wanna go on your own anyway. I’m sure they got some swell girls up in Chicago.”

  Clay cuts his eyes at me.

  “Don’t you do that,” he snaps. “Don’t make me prove I love you when you know I do. That’s beneath you.”

  I feel like I just got scolded by a teacher. I walk over to the window. I can’t always think straight when I’m too close to him.

  “First you wanna take me to Chicago. Now you want me to stay in school. But if you could be, you’d be in Chicago right now. Forgive me, but all I’m hearin’ are contradictions.”

  “Sorry I’m not perfect,” he spits.

  “Me too!”

  We stare at each other for a second, and I think he wants to laugh, but I look away. Not in the mood.

  “Why are you so worked up about this?” he asks.

  I stare out the window at the rain as it tapers off. I can almost hear Mama callin’ me right now. Silently sayin’ Let him go, Evvie. Let him go.

  “A year is a long time,” I say. “It ain’t forever, though. You should go. Without me. Then—” I pause to choke back my tears. “If you still want me to come up after I graduate, I’ll come then. We’ll write letters. It’ll be like you’re overseas in a war. We’ll keep in touch, and if you need to move on? I’ll understand,” I finish.

  I remove my eyes from the rain and turn to Clay. He looks at me like I just tore his heart out. I run over and snuggle next to him.

  “I know we can do it. Stay together. We’d just have to be strong, I think,” I say.

  “I don’t think I’d survive up there without you.”

  “So…? Do you wanna—I don’t know—marry me eventually?”

  He lifts my chin to force me to make eye contact with him.

  “Are you proposing to me?”

  I sigh and shrug. “I guess.”

  “My heavens, this is so sudden,” he says in the high-pitched voice of a southern belle, teasing me.

  “Stop m
akin’ jokes. I’m being serious.”

  He drops the silliness. “You know my answer.”

  I lean against him, and he wraps his arm around me. “Well. You said it. In a way. So we got a spoken agreement now. Don’t forget it.”

  “Never,” he says, and he kisses my forehead, and without any warning, I start to cry. Harder than I’ve cried in a long time. I’m like a wild bawlin’ animal. Clay immediately pulls me into him, rests his chin on my head, and rocks me.

  “Please don’t be so sad, Evvie,” he whispers, and I feel a few warm drops fall onto my scalp.

  He tries to chuckle. “Remember when I told you you might be the smartest person I know?”

  “Uh-huh,” I sniffle into his chest.

  “This right here? This is one a the problems with bein’ so damn smart. You think too much. You just thought yourself into the saddest future imaginable, and I promise you: it ain’t gonna be like that. We’re connected, you and me. I think we always have been.”

  I sit up and try to pull away. He doesn’t let me at first, but he does when he sees that I’m lookin’ for somethin’ to wipe my nose on. I give up and use the bottom of my shirt.

  “Why you think we always been connected?” I ask, the sobs dyin’ out.

  “I bet it sounds strange, but when we were young, even though we weren’t friends, I was always happy when you were around. A game of hide-and-go-seek could be fun, but it was always better when you were there. Bossy as you was.”

  “I was not! Was I?”

  He grins at me. “You were kinda like the sun. The sun goes away sometimes, but you know it’ll always come back. And it’ll always make you smile.”

  He sure can say some pretty things.

  “We weren’t friends, cuz I did my best to avoid you,” I tell him.

  “Why?”

  “Cuz I always had a crush on you, dummy! When we were really little, it wasn’t a big deal, but by about age nine, I got too self-conscious. I didn’t want you to think I was a dodo, so I just avoided you.” I’ve never told anyone that. I don’t think I even admitted it to myself before.

  “But you are a dodo,” he says.

  I kiss his chin.

  “I wish life didn’t have to be so complicated,” I muse.

  He kisses both my cheeks. Then both my hands.