Jilo (16 page)

BOOK TWO:
JILO

ONE

Atlanta, Georgia—April 1952

“Why does that man insist we get up at the goddamned crack of dawn?” Jilo pulled the pillow over her face to shield herself from the demanding brightness of the overhead light. Her mouth was dry, her tongue wooden, and a headache was forming behind her eyes.

“I don’t see what you’re complaining about,” Mary said, tearing the pillow away. She stood glaring down at Jilo’s bed, the merciless light’s halo giving her the appearance of a smug angel. “They used to make the girls who lived on campus get up at 4:30 a.m. every day to wash and iron their dresses. You’ve gotten to laze around until the sinful hour of six.” Jilo reached out for the pillow, but Mary snatched it away and tossed it over to her own bed. “And you better not let the pastor or Mrs. Jones hear you taking God’s name in vain. They’d kick you right out of this house, or at least take a switch to your backside.”

“They might kick me out,” Jilo mumbled as she closed her eyes, “but it will be a cold day in hell before that man lays a hand on me.” Still, she knew at least part of that statement was true. The pastor and his wife ran a tight and God-fearing household, and she lived under the constant threat of being sent packing. It was a delicate dance. Jilo hated it here. Nothing would make her happier than to leave. After all, there were other boarding houses near campus, nicer ones. And cheaper, too. But Nana worried about the effect the big city would have on Jilo’s moral comportment.

Three months before Jilo began classes, Nana had made the trip to Atlanta with her. Nana had given her the choice of either living here in Pastor Jones’s virgin vault or heading right back home to Savannah. It wasn’t really a choice at all.

Living under the pastor’s roof meant spending the greater part of every Sunday with your bottom stuck to one of the hard pews at Pastor Jones’s church. It also entailed rising every morning for devotional prayer and Bible study. Jilo had wanted none of that. After all, she couldn’t even remember the last time Nana herself had attended church. Pointing that out in a less than respectful tone had not gotten Jilo very far. Her nana knew how badly she wanted an education. Somehow, and she wasn’t quite sure how, Jilo had managed to survive nearly three years under the good reverend’s supervision.

“He isn’t my daddy. He’s just the landlord.” She could feel sleep, warm and delicious, calling to her. She tried to roll over and answer its bidding, but Mary caught her feet and spun them around and over the side of the bed.

“No,” Jilo protested, but Mary had already taken ahold of her hands and was pulling her up.

“You need to get up and get dressed. You cannot be late for morning devotional . . . again. Mrs. Jones will give you another demerit.”

Jilo had collected at least thirty of these demerits, when the official rule was that a girl would be kicked out after accumulating three. The pastor and his wife liked to make their threats, but they didn’t have the stomach to back them up. “Her damned demerits don’t mean a damned thing. Mrs. Jones can take her demerits and stick them up her—”

“You are lucky enough you didn’t get caught sneaking in at two a.m. We both are . . .” Mary’s voice fell off under the weight of worry. “I could get in trouble for covering for you. Or maybe,” Mary continued, her tone turning defiant, “I should just go down and tell Pastor and Mrs. Jones what you been up to. Sneaking out at night and going off to Auburn Avenue. Just what are you getting up to in that Kingfisher Club anyway? You meeting a man there, ain’t you? Is it
him
?”

Hell. She certainly was not going there to meet a man. Oh, sure, there were plenty of them buzzing around her, hoping to plant their little stingers, but a man was the last damned thing she needed. At least right now. A man would be fine someday, but she wasn’t going to let a pointed pair of trousers stand between her and what she wanted. The only man Jilo had room for in her life right now was her biology teacher and mentor, Professor Ward, the “him” of Mary’s inappropriate question.

The country had medical schools now that were graduating women. Black women. Professor Ward had promised her he’d do all he could to see that she was accepted into one of them.
Professor Ward
. She’d learned not to mention his name to Mary anymore, as Mary kept insisting Jilo was infatuated with him. But Mary didn’t understand. She was too old-fashioned to believe a man and a woman could share a purely intellectual connection, an appreciation for each other that lay beyond any physical attraction that might exist between them.

It was true that the professor was a handsome and fine-minded man, but their relationship was platonic, built on the mutual respect they shared. Besides, even if there had been a physical element to the attraction, the professor was a married man. Nothing would happen, could happen, between them. Still, he had warned her that she mustn’t speak too freely to others of the private discussions they shared; small minds might make something sordid out of their friendship.

It was absurd, really. Her interest in the professor was anything but romantic. The world was changing, and she was going to help it change. Other girls could waste whole trees of paper scrawling their names as Mrs. This or Mrs. That, but not her. When she sat dreaming, the name she scribed for her future self was Doctor. Dr. Jilo Wills.

Still, a body needed to have a little fun from time to time, so on occasion, Jilo sneaked out to the clubs on Auburn. Hardly a sin, and sure as hell not a crime.

She opened one eye, doing her best to remember how much she loved this girl yapping at her. “Mary Ellen Campbell. You know better than to say ‘ain’t.’ You are an educated woman. You need to speak like one.” Pulling her hands free of Mary’s grasp, she let her other eye pop open too, her vision still a little blurry from sleep. “And no, I don’t go there to meet
any
goddamned man. I go for the music.”

“There, at least you’re awake now,” Mary said, her eyebrows rising as a self-satisfied smile rose to her lips. “Now you better get moving.” She wagged her finger in Jilo’s face.

“You better pull that thing back unless you want to be left with a bloody stump.”

“Mmm,” Mary said, dropping her hand to her hip. “You sure are mean when you’re hung over. Maybe next time you sneak out, you should do a bit more dancing and a bit less drinking.”

Jilo wished she could see her own expression, because whatever came across her face was fierce enough to shut Mary up instantly. Her friend wandered over to the cracked mirror that hung on the wall, her back to Jilo, and began smoothing her hair. “I’m only trying to look out for you,” she said, an obvious quaver in her voice.

“Oh damn it,” Jilo whispered under her breath. She hadn’t even made it all the way out of bed, and she’d already hurt her best friend’s feelings. She pushed herself up. “Listen. I’m sorry.”

Mary spun back around. “You’re always pushing your luck. Trying to see how much you can get away with before you get caught.”

“I’ve been caught plenty of times.”

“Yes, and for some reason the rules don’t seem to apply to you,” Mary said, her voice heating back up, “the way they do for the rest of us.”

It was true. The other girls faced swift and certain repercussions when they stepped out of line, but that line did seem a little less straight and narrow when it came to Jilo. Though she wouldn’t say so out loud, she figured Nana must have cut a deal with the reverend. Seemed that the papists hadn’t completely cornered the market on the selling of indulgences.

Fat tears fell from Mary’s eyes, missing her cheeks entirely and dropping to the floor like rain through their leaky roof. “Sooner or later you are gonna go too far. And Pastor Jones is going to kick you out. And your nana, she’s gonna make you go home . . .” Her words petered out as her moist eyes widened. “And I’ll miss you when you’re gone.”

She eyed Mary up and down, testing her for sincerity, trying to determine if this was just another ploy to get her to do as she wanted. Jilo pursed her lips and looked down at the floor, doing her best to convey that she was not in the least little bit impressed by Mary’s histrionics. Still, it was the damnedest thing, but she could tell Mary really was worried.

“All right. All right.” Jilo threw up her hands. “I’ll get ready.” She went to the chest of drawers and took hold of the bucket where she kept her toiletries—her permitted toiletries, that was. Her blue eye shadow and Venetian-red lipstick were hidden in the false bottom of a hatbox that she kept in the closet.

“I’ll make your bed for you,” Mary said, suddenly all sunshine.

Mary’s sudden transformation fired up the worst in Jilo. She said the one thing that was sure to get her friend going again. “The pastor has no business going on thinking he is morally superior to the rest of humanity anyway. None of this God stuff is true. There is no such thing as God.”

Mary’s mouth fell wide open, causing Jilo to chuckle at the sight.

“Oh, Jilo. Don’t you go saying that,” Mary said, once her jaw started working again. “I know you don’t believe any such thing. You are simply trying to get a rise out of me, but it ain’t gonna work.”

“It
isn’t
going to work,” Jilo said, correcting her friend’s speech automatically, out of habit.

“No it isn’t,” Mary said. It was easy to pin the exact moment when she realized Jilo hadn’t taken her point, and was just correcting her grammar again. “You don’t believe that. I know you don’t.”

Jilo wondered at her own mean streak. She had no reason to try and shake her friend up. No other reason beyond that it was too early, she was hung over, and, well, even under the best of circumstances, perkiness just kind of ticked her off.

“ ’Course not,” she said to mollify her friend. As soon as the smile returned to Mary’s face, Jilo looked away. She couldn’t risk having their eyes meet, for then Mary would know she was lying. Truth was, having grown up surrounded by her nana’s put-on magic, Jilo didn’t believe in anything she couldn’t see with her own eyes. Oh, sure, she couldn’t see things like magnetism, radio waves, and electricity, but there were scientific tests to prove that those things were real. That they existed. As far as Jilo knew, no one had managed to come up with a test that would prove the existence of the bearded old buckra in the sky.

A rap on the door pulled Jilo from her thoughts. “Miss Wills,” Mrs. Jones’s voice came through the door. “The pastor needs to speak with you. Immediately.”

TWO

Mary’s eyes locked with Jilo’s, and Jilo gave a nod at the door. After crossing the room as silently as a cat, Mary reached for the doorknob like she was afraid it might burn her. She opened the door a sliver, doing her best to block their landlady’s view of Jilo. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Jones, ma’am, but Jilo, she isn’t quite dressed yet. She’s not been feeling too well this morning.”

Mrs. Jones’s left hand clutched the edge of the door and forced it open, pushing Mary back into the room. The pastor’s wife was a plain woman. Although she was decade younger than the good reverend himself, she still looked plenty old enough to be her husband’s mother. Her face bore no wrinkles, but her hair was streaked with gray, and she had a weary look that never left her. It was this perpetual exhaustion that aged her more than the gray in her hair.

Jilo crossed her arms over her chest and planted her feet firm. The older woman’s puffy red eyes and small tight-lipped frown told her that she’d finally been caught doing something that might be bad enough for them to send her home. Had they noticed her sneaking in?

The reverend’s missus approached her, pressing her palms together as if she were about to break out into prayer, but instead she reached out and gently placed her hand over Jilo’s temple. Her skin felt rough, weathered by years of scrubbing floors and dishes and the mountains of laundry she did each day for her boarders.

“Jilo, my girl,” she said, “you know that the good Lord has never seen fit to bless me with a child. But He has given me you girls. You are my children. My beautiful daughters.” She swallowed back a tremolo that had come to her voice. “You girls who live here under our roof. You got that fine college of yours to take care of educating you in the things this world values. But the pastor and I, we gotta look out for your moral education. Your spiritual well-being. We take this charge seriously.”

Jilo forced her face to freeze so that it would betray nothing. Not the anger she felt that this uneducated woman, barely a decade her elder, was talking to her as if she were a child. Not the love, which in spite of Jilo’s best efforts, she had come to feel for this gentle lady. She bit her tongue.

“We know you are a strong-willed young lady, and we have allowed you far more liberties than any of the others. But this is a holy house,” Mrs. Jones said in the face of Jilo’s silence. “A
righteous
house.” She dropped back to stare at Jilo. “You go on and get dressed now. The pastor is waiting for you in his study.” She turned to Mary. “You come on downstairs with me.”

“But I . . .”

“I said come,” Mrs. Jones cut her off. Evidently she’d had enough of rebellious young women for one morning.

Mary followed Mrs. Jones out of the room, but not before casting one look back at Jilo, her raised eyebrows and rounded eyes begging her friend to kneel before the seat of mercy and plead for forgiveness. Jilo might be more inclined to do that if she were sure exactly which sin they’d discovered.

Jilo grabbed her pail of toiletries and headed to the bathroom she shared with Mary and three other girls. Most mornings it was nothing but elbows and pardons, but today she had the space all to herself. The other girls weren’t early risers like Mary, so either they had been told to stay out of Jilo’s way this morning, or they’d made that choice for themselves. She set the pail down on a stand next to the sink and took a good look at her own puffy-eyed reflection. “Hell, girl, this might be more serious than you thought,” she said out loud as she grabbed hold of her toothbrush and tin of tooth powder. Her eyes drifted down to the pail while she brushed her teeth. Had they found her makeup hidden in the hatbox? Unlikely. The pastor and his wife were straitlaced, but they respected a person’s privacy. She couldn’t imagine either of them digging through their boarders’ personal belongings. Of course, she wouldn’t put it past one of the other girls, especially Louise.

Maybe they had spotted her breaking the house’s curfew, or someone else—someone she hadn’t seen—had witnessed her good times at the Kingfisher Club. But, the more she thought of it, the less likely that seemed. Who in their right mind would implicate themselves by admitting to having seen her? No. It was without a doubt something to do with Louise. Little Miss Goodie Two Shoes was always looking to land one of her housemates in a pot of trouble.

After she finished cleaning her teeth, she washed her face with cold water, not wanting to wait for the hot to come clanking up through the pipes. The frigid touch of the water didn’t help the aching behind her eyes one bit, but it did clear a bit of last night’s fuzz from her brain.

She dabbed at her face with a hand towel, then attacked her hair with a brush, doing her best to smooth it. She was just about to dive back into her room to dress when she remembered the smoke that had filled the air at the club last night. Neither Mary nor Mrs. Jones had mentioned picking up the scent, but Mary wasn’t the most attentive of witnesses, and it wasn’t Mrs. Jones’s way to mention such things. Whenever she smelled smoke, she’d leave it to her husband to find the fire. It could be used as another strike against her.

“Damn.” Jilo dropped her pail back down on the table and dove into an icy shower, soaping herself as best she could with a pat of Camay so tiny one of the other girls had left it behind as having no value. Sopping wet and teeth chattering, but now fully awake, she dried herself and pulled on her robe. Back in her room, she dressed herself in a gray shirtwaist dress with sleeves that covered her arms past the elbow. Jilo hated the damn thing—Nana had made her buy it—but the pastor had complimented the style as being suitable for a young Christian woman. If it came down to playing the part of a repentant sinner, a good costume would help.

Jilo made her way downstairs, giving a wide berth to the large communal dining room, where she could still hear bits of Paul’s Letter to the Corinthians being read aloud. Jilo surmised that the apostle’s thoughts on the topic of charity were intended to fortify Mrs. Jones’s resolve to remain patient with her. Lord knows, the pastor’s wife had quoted the passage often enough to her over the past years. The thought elicited an eye roll, and Jilo barely remembered to adopt a suitably remorseful expression before knocking on the frame of the pastor’s door. The door itself stood ajar, the amber light from his desk lamp spilling out into the hall. She stood in the doorway, waiting for the pastor to look up from his studies.

For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her. He remained bent over a thick concordance, scratching notes on his pad. Finally, he laid down his pen and looked up at her. “Miss Wills.” He waved her forward. “Do come in,” he said, folding his hands before him on his desk. “Close the door behind you.”

After doing the pastor’s bidding, Jilo turned to face his beatific stare. He let her stand there for a moment, just long enough for the silence to grow awkward, then pushed back in his chair. “Please, sit,” he said, extending his hand toward a chair opposite him. Normally she had to face his private sermons standing; this chair was a new addition to his space. Though its cushion now wore a different fabric, and a back leg had been repaired with a brace created from splints of wood and heavy screws, Jilo recognized it as a poor relation of those that were still used around the dining table.

“Don’t worry,” he said, watching her eye the repair work. “I mended it myself. It may have been broken once, but now it’s stronger than it ever was.” She stepped around the chair and lowered herself onto the seat. “Just like the human soul,” the reverend added, the smile on his lips showing her he was quite pleased with his own simile.

Jilo crossed her legs at her ankles, just the way the mistress of comportment at the college had shown them all to do on the first day of classes, giving the hem of her skirt a slight tug as she did so.
Smile. Keep quiet.
Jilo had played this game with the pastor more than a few times over the years. Experience had taught her that the biggest mistake she could make would be to assume she knew which infraction she’d been caught committing.

She and the pastor sat face-to-face as the clock on his desk ticked off a full minute. Twice. The entire time, his eyes searched her. The smile fled his lips, replaced by a stern expression meant to intimidate her and wear her down. “All right,” he said with a sigh. “I’m sure you can guess why I asked to speak with you.”

Jilo had been composing a mental list of reasons, but shook her head. “No, sir.” She made her voice come out as sweet as dew on the morning grass, but then the devil himself twisted her tongue. “Are you in need of spiritual guidance?” The words escaped her before her common sense could close the gate.

The pastor jerked his head back as if she had slapped him. “Spiritual guidance, indeed.” He puffed out air and tapped his finger on the desk. Ten times. He was obviously counting. He stopped and relaxed his shoulders. “You may not be aware of this,” he began, seeming to have decided on another tack, “I’m unsure of how much your grandmother has shared with you, but I once had a church not far from her house.” Despite herself, Jilo betrayed her interest by leaning just a bit forward. It was the first she’d heard that the pastor had any connection to her world. She ran through a list of churches in the area, trying to figure out where he’d come from.

“That’s right,” Jones continued, “your family and I go way back. As a matter of fact, the first time I laid eyes on you”—for a fleeting moment a smile came to his lips—“you were nothing but a tiny bug of a thing.” His focus weakened, as if he were reliving the memory, but then his attention snapped back on her like a mousetrap. “Your grandmother did not send you to live in this house by chance. She sought me out, and I believe her reason for doing so was that she knows I am quite familiar with the women of your family. The best are willful and stiff-necked. The worst, weak. Given to sinning and always ready to drag the nearest man down along with them.”

Jilo very nearly lost her cool, but sensing a weakness in the man, she instead took a moment to sharpen the stick she was about to jab in a very soft place. “I see you’ve met my mama.” She leaned her elbow against the arm of her chair and rested her chin on her hand, smiling sweetly.

The pastor flushed, but collected himself in the next instant. “Indeed,” he said, a sadness filling his voice. He shifted in his seat and leaned over to open a drawer. He reached into the drawer to retrieve an item, then flashed her another, knowing look, before placing it on the desk.

It was a book, the cover of which she instantly recognized, even though it was upside-down from her point of view. He pushed it toward her, never taking his eyes from hers. “
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
.” He raised his hand to preempt the question he anticipated. “Before you ask, how this came into my possession is beside the point. I know even you would have better sense than to leave such a work sitting out for any and all to see, so you can believe me when I tell you the girl who brought it to my attention has been heartily reprimanded for going through your personal belongings.” He tapped the image on the cover. “This bird appears as if it has already been caught in the fires of hell. My aim is to make certain you don’t share this poor misguided creature’s fate.”

“It isn’t a regular bird. It’s a phoenix,” Jilo said. He shook his head, not understanding. “A phoenix. A mythical bird that renews itself by setting its nest on fire. Through the fire, it is reborn.” She reached out to take the book, but he pulled it back. “In this case, the fire is symbolic of passion . . .”

“I have examined this book,” the pastor said. “I am well aware of the nature of what it contains. Still, the narrative concerns me less than what I found written here.” He opened the book to its frontispiece, then pointed to a name printed on the facing title page.
Lionel Ward.

Jilo bit her lip, waiting again for the pastor to take the lead. Professor Ward often shared books from his personal collection with her, books he felt would enrich and broaden her mind. Many were banned from the public library, so it would have been hard for her to obtain them on her own.

Jones closed the book and reached over the desk to hand it to her. She accepted it without daring a word.

“I am not a prude, Miss Wills. I believe that our Lord made relations between men and women pleasurable because he wants us to find pleasure in them.” He paused, as he often did when giving a sermon, to emphasize the point he was about to make. “But God intended for these relations to take place within the bounds of matrimony.”

“I understand, Pastor. It was wrong of me to bring this book into your home. I’ll return it to Professor Ward today, right after classes.”

Jones raised a single eyebrow. “I’m not sure I’m making my concerns clear. I do appreciate and accept your apology. Strangely enough, I think it may have even been somewhat sincere. But I am less concerned with the imagined sins in this book than I am with the possibility of actual sin between creatures of God.” He held his hand out to her, palm up, signaling that she should give the book back to him. “I will return this book to its owner.”