Daughters of Jubilation

by Kara Lee Corthron

  “I’ve lived here my whole goddamn life, and I ain’t welcome here. Neither was Clay.” He says that last part softly. “How can someplace be your home if you can’t be safe there? Why do we put up with it? Just cuz it’s where we’re born? That ain’t a good enough reason. Not for what they do to us.”

  I keep staring straight ahead, but I am listening to him. He’s right.

  We sit a while longer. I wonder how long we’ll sit here, who will leave first, and if I’ll care. A cool breeze blows, and I momentarily think about makin’ it snow again. It’s a fleeting thought. I don’t do that shit anymore. I think back to what Miss Corinthia said. Would she be disappointed in me? Probably not, given the circumstances. But I’m disappointed. I wanted to save lives. Not end them.

  I failed.

  “I don’t have any answers, honestly. I don’t know what’s right,” he finally says, “but if you need somebody to be your punchin’ bag for a while? I’d happily accept the job.”

  I turn and look him right in the eye.

  “Or not. I’d just be willing to do whatever it takes to bring you back to yourself again,” he says.

  I want to say something to him, thank him maybe. But I can’t. I don’t know why. Instead, a dam breaks inside, and I weep. I throw my arms around him, and he hugs me back.

  “It’s okay. You cry,” he says. “Go on and cry.”

  I cry oceans, drenching his nice school shirt. When I can’t cry anymore, he brings me home. Mama made chicken and dumplin’s and offers some to R. J., who accepts. And believe it or not, I’m actually kinda hungry.

  29 Gifts

  I GO EARLY. FIGURE THAT’S the best time to catch her before she gets too busy. When I get there, I hear voices inside, so I just sit and wait.

  Them chickens. Always makin’ noise. Always lookin’ at me when I’m here. They have to know more than they let on. They see everything. I don’t envy them.

  I can smell some kinda burnin’ herb and wonder if they’re just gettin’ started or finishin’ up. I’m sittin’ on the bottom wooden step, close to the ground. From under the steps, a little furry thing wriggles out and nudges my foot. A rabbit. She looks exactly like the rabbit that crawled on me the early morning of the meteor showers. It can’t be the same one. That would be absurd, wouldn’t it? At the same time, I know this one is a girl too, and her size and markings are identical.

  The li’l thing hops up to the step so she’s beside me. She crawls into my lap and starts tappin’ on my abdomen just like before.

  “That is such an odd thing to do,” I tell her. And she does it again. I can’t help but giggle. She’s so cute and it tickles. How can this not be the same rabbit? How many of ’em tap-dance on people? Are they a special breed? Never heard of it in my life.

  The screen door opens, and the rabbit vanishes back under the steps. A woman in her thirties or forties comes out. She’s surprised to see me sittin’ there, but then she nods a hello, and I nod back and she goes on her way. I do our old special knock: three times, pause, two times, and without waiting, I enter.

  She’s not in the kitchen, which is unusual, but I can smell her pipe smoke, so she ain’t far.

  “Come in here,” she calls from the sittin’ room. I go through her beaded curtain into the dark room that is nicer than the kitchen, but colder. Energy-wise, not temperature-wise.

  “Hey,” I say.

  She nods and welcomes me to sit on the wicker sofa with the comfy cushions.

  “Didn’t expect to see you here again,” Grammie Atti says.

  “Is it all right that I’m here?”

  “You can come here anytime you want,” she scoffs. “I mean, I didn’t imagine you needed me much anymore. I been tryna call you, ya know?”

  “I know.”

  “Why you ain’t answer me?”

  “I don’t know. Couldn’t talk to nobody. Don’t wanna use magic.”

  She doesn’t nod or anything, but I can see her thinkin’ about how to respond. She slides a dish with cinnamon candies toward me. I take one.

  “I actually do need your help with somethin’, Grammie Atti,” I say, slightly ashamed.

  “Ah. Here it comes. What?”

  From my bag, I pull out the music box with the colored ballerina. The beautiful box I love so dearly.

  “I need this destroyed,” I tell her. “I can’t have it near me, and I don’t know how to do it.”

  She picks it up and inspects it. She opens the lid, and she’s also in awe. It is really a stunning piece of craftsmanship. So unique and detailed. I’ll probably never see anything like it again in my life. But I can’t keep it. Every time I look at it, I feel like I’m dying, and I don’t want anything that’s had Virgil’s hands all over it anywhere in my life.

  “It’s a gift from that white man, yeah?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “You could keep it. If you wanted to. We could put an enchantin’ spell on it to cleanse it of his evil.”

  I shake my head. “No. I can’t have it around me.”

  “All right.”

  I suck on the spicy candy; she puffs on her pipe.

  “What are you gonna do with it?” I ask.

  “What does it matter?”

  “Just curious.”

  She takes another inhale.

  “Ain’t decided yet,” she begins. “Usually I put a bindin’ spell on an evil object, and then I burn it.” She exhales. “Thing is, this ain’t an evil object. It passed through the hands of an evil person. There’s a difference. Outta context, the object itself has absolutely no power. It’s just a pretty jewelry box. Its power lies in the memories you associate with it. And I can’t burn your memories,” she says. Her voice softens. “Don’t worry. If you never want to see it again, you shall never see it again,” she promises.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Thank you for—for all the help you’ve given me.”

  She waves my words away. “What’d I tell ya about gettin’ all sentimental? My part was easy. You had to do the hard work, and you did. All there is to it.”

  “Uh…” I have more than one reason for being here. This next one is family-related, so who knows how she’s gonna react? “I don’t know if you remember or not, but Thursday’s my birthday. Mama and I are makin’ dinner and havin’ a couple friends over. You could come if you want to,” I offer. I’d like her to come, but I don’t want her to feel pressure.

  Her eyes widen. I think she’s surprised to be invited. But then she just gives me a smile that seems half-wry, half-wistful. “That’s kind, but I’m not a birthday party person. If you’re glad to be alive, celebratin’ it only once a year just seems stupid. Come over Friday. I’ll give ya a special reading. You can find out what your next loop around the sun has in store for ya,” she says.

  “Okay.”

  “What else is on your mind?” she asks me.

  “You mean you don’t know already?”

  She chuckles to herself. “Believe it or not, I don’t know everything.”

  Maybe she don’t know everything, but she’s not wrong. There’s more I need to know. I guess there always will be.

  “What’s the point of Jubilation?”

  “The point?”

  “Why do we have these abilities? What are they for?”

  “Survival. You know that as well as I do.”

  I feel my jaw clenching in anger, and I give myself a moment to get calm. I don’t know exactly how to put into words what I’m feeling, and it’s fucking frustrating.

  “Survival,” I begin. “Specifically, the survival of a handful of select colored women, right? This is something we’ve had since slave days, right?”

  “Before.”

  “Uh-huh. To fend off predators. Usually white ones. Am I getting this all right?”

  “Yes, Evalene.”

  “I used everything I had. You used everything you had. Mama stepped up with everything she had. You brought spirits back from the dead, and we STILL couldn’t save Clay,�
� I cry. “What. Is. The. POINT?”

  She presses her hands together in her lap and gazes out the window.

  “I don’t know,” she says quietly. “And I didn’t bring ’em back alone. You had a hand in that too.”

  I wipe the tears away from my cheeks. I’m tired a cryin’, but seems like cryin’ ain’t tired a me.

  “We’re human, granddaughter. There’s only so much we can do.”

  Again, I think of my human flaws. If only I’d waited for Clay that night…

  “He’d still be here if I hadn’t messed up in the first place!”

  “You didn’t put a gun in that demon’s hands,” she says sharply.

  “There’s no joy in it, Grammie Atti,” I tell her. “It only brings pain.”

  “Not true, but you hurtin’, so it feels true.” She stands up and walks through the beaded curtains into the kitchen. I hear her moving things around in there.

  She reappears with her arms full of junk, which she drops on the coffee table. She separates out about a dozen tiny poppets all wearing some shade of purple, like the haints. Despite their grotesque faces with sewn-on lips and Xs for eyes, there’s something almost sweet about them. She arranges ’em in a group on the table.

  “Imagine that these ladies are all of us. Don’t ask me how many of us there are, cuz I couldn’t tell ya, but there are a lot of us.”

  Then she takes a handful a bleached chicken bones and makes a triangle around the poppets.

  “Now. Here are some threats from the white world. They come in numerous forms, but these represent direct danger.”

  She stares hard at the ladies on the table until they all stand up and attack the bones, tearing at them, crushing them, sending them flying in every direction. My mouth could probably catch flies, cuz I know it’s just hangin’ open in awe. Whatever she’s doin’ here is clearly advanced.

  “They did well, didn’t they? Predators didn’t have a chance. But what about now?” She picks up a canister and pours a thick circle of sugar around the dolls. At once they all collapse, lifeless again.

  “They’re small, but imagine each grain a sugar is anyone who wants to keep whites at the top and us at the bottom. This can be the grand wizard a the KKK, a sweet white lady who won’t let you use her toilet, the white person who claims to be your friend but looks the other way when you’re in trouble or somebody tells a nigger joke, or—and this is the saddest of all—a colored person who hates her skin so much, she’d betray you or me for the approval of anybody white. We are surrounded by multitudes that want to keep things the way they are. We can’t overpower the whole world,” she explains.

  I stare at the mess of sugar on her table. The poppets look like defeated corpses.

  “So. Our magic will never be enough. They’ll always win,” I say.

  “You think Virgil Hampton considered himself a winner?” she snaps. I look up at her. She’s remindin’ me that I’m a murderer, and I don’t need remindin’. I feel bad and ashamed, because I feel no remorse for taking his life.

  I shake my head.

  “What I’m saying is we have the power to save lives and we do, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes it ain’t gonna work out the way we want it to.”

  “Mama said somethin’ like that about God.”

  Grammie Atti sighs, with a slight roll of her eyes. “Yeah, well a broken clock is right twice a day.”

  “Are we broken?”

  “No magic is perfection, Evvie. It’s just another part a life. You will not win every battle. Any victory is a gift to be cherished.”

  I knew she wouldn’t have a definitive answer. How could she? I can’t explain it, but I feel better talkin’ it over with her anyway.

  “And think about it. If we could make every blessed thing happen exactly the way we want it to, wouldn’t we be runnin’ the goddamn planet?”

  “Yeah. I guess so,” I admit.

  “Don’t try to shut it outta your life like your mother. Goin’ that route’ll make you unhappy and keep you that way. Find a way to live with it,” she says.

  I nod and stand. Feels like it’s time I should go, but the shit on the table irritates me.

  “Grammie, where do you keep your washcloths?”

  “Oh please, you ain’t a maid,” she says. I bend over anyhow to pick up the poppets, but she grabs my hand.

  “Sorry. I won’t touch ’em,” I say.

  Grammie Atti looks at me in a funny way, like she’s just noticin’ somethin’.

  “You had a rabbit tappin’ on you?”

  “Yes! It happened right outside today, and it happened like two months ago too! What does that mean?”

  She stares at me for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.

  “Please don’t tell me it’s bad luck. I can’t handle any more,” I tell her.

  “Ain’t said it was bad. Can mean different things. Be prepared for abundance,” she says.

  “I’d rather have less than more of anything these days.”

  “Well. We’ll see.”

  I don’t know why, but I have an urge to give her a hug or somethin’ before I go, but that’s not her style. Plus, it would make it seem like I’m never comin’ back, and I will be back. I plan to be a regular at Grammie Atti’s until she gets sick a me.

  When I get to the back door, I ask her one last question.

  “Will ’63 be a better year than ’62?”

  “You tell me,” she teases.

  I step out onto the back porch and go down the steps to the front walk.

  “Evalene?”

  I jump. I didn’t know she was still behind me.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t ignore me next time I call you,” she says sternly, but I can see a faint smile at the corners of her mouth.

  “I won’t.”

  * * *

  “Evvie, I have a secret for you,” Coralene whispers.

  “Okay. What is it?”

  “I have to tell you later, cuz everybody will hear me.” Nobody’s paying any attention to her. Doralene is showing R. J. and Anne Marie the tooth that fell out of her head earlier, and Mama’s tellin’ her to get that nasty thing away from the table.

  “You can whisper it. They won’t hear,” I tell her.

  She’s skeptical but decides to give it a try. “You’re my favorite person,” she whisper-spits into my ear. Then she kisses my cheek and runs back to the other side of the table before I can say anything. I smile at her and blow her a silly kiss. She beams. It’s rare, but every now and then, the twins are kinda angelic.

  Since it looks like everyone’s done, I start to clear the table.

  “No! Let me do it! You’re the birthday girl,” Anne Marie protests.

  “I do it all the time.”

  “That’s my point,” she says, takin’ plates from my hands. I still help. Gets it done faster. Eventually, it’s just me and Anne Marie doin’ it. R. J.—bless his heart—is a li’l clumsy in the kitchen and broke a glass. He was immediately excused from duty. And Mama said she had to go “see about somethin’.” That’s cute. Like I don’t know what she has planned.

  “Seventeen now. Does it feel good?” Anne Marie asks.

  The idea of anything feeling “good” since losing Clay confounds me. So I’m pretty shocked when I find myself answering in the affirmative.

  “It does. It’s a different feeling,” I reply.

  Anne Marie studies me as she wipes some crumbs from the table.

  “Can you describe it? What you feel?”

  “Not in a way that makes any sense,” I tell her.

  “Tell me in a way that don’t make sense then.”

  I grin at her. “I feel larger. Not heavier or like I’ve grown physically—”

  “Definitely not heavier, you skinny thing. We gotta fatten you up!”

  “I just feel like there’s more to me than there used to be. That’s all.”

  Anne Marie stops what she’s doing and regards me.

  “See?
Toldja it wouldn’t make any sense.”

  “No, I think I understand,” she says, though I can see her tryna puzzle out exactly what I mean.

  It’s better to expand than to shrink, ain’t it?

  I glance at her, and she’s rinsing her hands in the sink. I don’t know why I tried to speak to her with my mind’s voice just then. I guess it’s possible that I might miss jubin’. Possible. Regardless, it’s all right that she can’t hear me. Lately I’ve been usin’ my regular voice just fine.

  “Here. Have a seat,” Anne instructs, pulling out a chair.

  “Why?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Evvie! Just do it,” she teases.

  I sit down and pretend I don’t know what’s about to happen.

  Mama, the twins, and R. J. enter from the living room singing “Happy Birthday to You.” R. J.’s creepin’ along all slow cuz he’s afraid he’ll drop the cake. At last they set it down in front a me, just as they finish singing. I close my eyes.

  Tell me about your thing, Evvie.

  My what?

  You know! Your thing. The thing that gets you excited. The thing that can take the blues away. Stars and such, right?

  I open them again, and I blow out all seventeen candles at once. Everyone claps, and the smoke cloud dissipates. I can’t believe my mother went through the trouble of lighting seventeen candles. That’s what love looks like.

  I cut the first piece, and they won’t let me cut any more so I just take it. She did a lovely job. It’s a ginger ale cake with pistachio frosting. I don’t know how she made this without me seeing or where she hid it, but I’m touched. She must’ve really wanted this birthday to be a nice one.

  “Evvie, what did you wish for?” the twins ask me in unison.

  “She can’t tell you,” Mama says. “Then it won’t come true.”

  I take a bite of the delicious fizzy cake.

  “No, I can tell you. I ain’t superstitious. This is really good, by the way.”

  “Thank you, baby,” Mama says proudly.

  “No matter what pain may come to the people in this room, I wished for you all to find your thing. The thing that gets you excited when nothin’ else does. The thing that can take your blues away. That was my wish,” I say. They all get quiet, and Mama’s eyes get real glassy.