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.”