FIVE
Her feet felt like they’d been replaced with anvils, each step requiring every shred of determination she could muster. “Binah,” she called out, holding the shopping out to her sister. Binah looked up, then ran down the steps and relieved her of the sack’s weight.
“He doesn’t know. He hasn’t seen him,” Binah whispered in her ear.
Jilo placed a hand on Binah’s shoulder and gave her a gentle push. “Take those inside,” she said, relying on Binah’s momentum to set her own feet back into motion.
“There she is, the muse,” the redheaded young man said, standing as she approached. Jilo had been so overwhelmed by the sight of Guy, she’d all but forgotten the white boy was there.
“Muse?” she said, incapable of either looking fully at or fully away from Guy.
“Yes,” he said, drawing closer to the edge of the porch. “You must know that you’re hanging, well, your image is hanging in galleries all over New York.”
“Well, the better galleries, at least.” Jilo froze at the sound of Guy’s voice. He kept his seat in the swing, not rising as the buckra had. She raised her eyes to take him in. Hoping she would hate him, certain that she would. But oh, how she had to fight not to run right up those front steps. Struggle not to throw herself in his arms. “The last one. The large painting I was completing when . . . well, the day . . .” His voice trailed off. “It sold to a private collector. For quite a nice sum.”
“Yes, but it isn’t about the money . . .” the redhead began.
“Spoken like someone who’s always had it,” Jilo found her tongue. “For the rest of us, it’s always about the money.”
The young man looked at Guy, and they both burst out laughing. “You’re right about this one, Guy,” the young man said, surprising Jilo by how he pronounced the name to rhyme with “my” rather than “me.”
“Listen,” Guy said, standing and coming forward, wrapping his arm around the young fellow’s broad shoulders. “Jilo, this is my friend, Edwin Taylor.” He nodded toward her. “Edwin, this is my ‘muse’—” He hesitated, almost like he was looking for a more precise word to describe her. “—Jilo.” Guy released Edwin, then padded forward to the head of the steps and held his hand out to her. “Or as I understand it is now, ‘Mother Jilo.’ ”
Jilo felt a wave of embarrassment wash over her.
“Yes, indeed,” Edwin said. “I was surprised enough to learn the vison in Guy’s paintings lived in my own hometown. Imagine my astonishment when I found she was also the rising star of Savannah’s magical community.”
“It’s just an act. To help make ends meet.” Jilo forced herself to look him in the eye. “There’s no such thing as magic,” she said, the well-rehearsed words shooting out like shrapnel.
Edwin, ignoring the rising bile in her tone, smiled and tilted his head to the side. “Is there not?”
“I met Edwin in the city,” Guy said, coming down the steps, taking her hand in his own. The sparks she felt at his touch nearly made her question her own disavowal of sorcery. “The other night we got to talking about my art. About you.”
“Of course, I’d heard of you,” Edwin said, slipping back into the porch swing. “All of Savannah knows about the amazing Mother Jilo Wills.”
“When we made the connection, we realized we had to see you . . . I,” Guy said, tipping her chin up so her gaze met his, “had to see you.” For a moment, Jilo felt the world around her fall away, leaving nothing beyond the feel of Guy’s gentle touch and the glimmer in his eyes. The old feelings, the good ones, rushed up, like a wave intent on carrying her out to sea.
“So,” Edwin spoke, stifling the inchoate spell that had only just begun to build. She turned to face Guy’s new friend. “We hopped into my car and drove pretty much straight through. It’s a long drive, but then again, I know a few shortcuts.” The way he spoke that last word made Jilo feel it held a different, or maybe enhanced, meaning to him that other people didn’t share. There was something odd about this boy; he struck her as being somehow strange and familiar at the same time.
“I’ve missed you, you know,” Guy said, putting his arms around her. Pulling her close. Pushing away her concerns about the Taylor boy. “I can’t get you out of my mind. I’ve drawn you from memory, painted you, every day. Carried on full conversations with your likeness.”
Jilo felt her heart weakening, but then her mind registered the gist of his last few words. She put both hands on Guy’s chest and pushed him away. “Yeah, ’cause the Jilo in your pretty pictures never talks back, does she?” A hell of a world she was living in, with one man, a stranger, imagining her as his ideal, borrowing her likeness to build his fantasy, and another, the man who’d held her heart, redacting her memory, tracing, erasing, and redrawing the lines until nothing was left of the real her. “Those weren’t conversations, Guy. You weren’t talking to me. You were masturbating.” She pushed around him and mounted the steps to the porch.
“When do you plan on telling me about that baby I heard crying in there?” Guy called after her, causing Jilo to spin on her heel to face him. “The one Binah and whoever the hell else that is in your house are hiding.” He drew near the porch, resting one foot on the steps, and leaned in toward her. “Is it yours?” he asked, watching her. She folded her arms over her chest, trying to look calm, unaffected. She held her tongue. “More importantly,” he said, shifting his weight and mounting the steps to stand before her, “is it mine?”
She tilted her head back, defiant, as if that might stop the tears brimming in her eyes from falling. “I don’t know,” she said. “Is he yours? Have you fed him? Have you clothed him? Made sure he had a roof over his head? Or did you just skedaddle off to the big city so you could play the big man?”
“Perhaps I should be going,” the redhead said.
“Yes, Mr. Taylor,” Jilo said, each syllable coming out barbed, “perhaps you should. And perhaps”—she nodded toward Guy—“you should take this one with you. Get him out of here before he gets pressed into anything so conventional as raising his own child.”
“That isn’t fair. You never told me. You didn’t give me a chance. I didn’t know.” He stood before her, his shoulders slumped, his hands extended palm up toward her, the look on his face wounded enough to convince anyone else in the world that he had been the injured party.
His words made her face flush. For a moment she stood there stammering, unable to find the right words to answer his complaint, but then the right words finally came.
“Bullshit,” she said, two years of anger and fear and hurt pride, yes, pride, boiled up, boiled over. “Bullshit,” she said again, backing away from him, till her backside bumped up against the house’s siding, sure that if she didn’t put some distance between them, she would slap the pained, innocent look right off his face. “You saw me, Guy, you saw me. You saw me grow, swell, and fatten as you painted your damned picture. You saw me sick in the morning. Sick at night. You saw me. You just didn’t want to see me. You didn’t want to know. You wanted New York, and you weren’t going to let anything get in your way.”
“That isn’t quite true.” His face flushed. He puffed up. Stretching to his full height, he leaned in over her, reminding Jilo of her own slight size, her own vulnerability. He reached out both arms and pinned her to the wall. The anger she felt shifted to fear. He seemed to realize he was frightening her, and when he spoke again, it was in a softer tone. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I should’ve seen.” He stepped back, lowering his arms to his sides. “Hell, maybe a part of me did see. But still. You should’ve contacted me. At least to tell me the child had been born.”
“Contact you?” Jilo felt the fire inside her rekindle. “How the hell was I supposed to do that? Write you general delivery?”
“It’s a boy, isn’t it? I have a son?” he said, ignoring her frustrated jibe, and glanced over at the Taylor fellow like he intended to start handing out cigars.
Jilo saw his vanity shine through. He would never see their child as anything more than an extension of himself. A boy to carry on his name. Ensure his immortality. She hated herself for loving this man. Yes, even now. Even in this light, she still loved him. But her feelings for the father came second to her love for her son. “Yes, Guy, my child,” she said, pausing to make sure he registered her claim, “is a boy. His name is Robinson. Robinson Wills.”
Guy pulled back his shoulders and tossed out a laugh, one intended to save face in front of his rich buckra buddy. “But he can’t be a Wills. He’s my boy. He’s a Collier,” he pronounced the name like they would in New Orleans, bringing it out through his nose, the final “R” sound getting lost somewhere in the process.
“He,” Jilo spat out the word, “was born a Wills. He will live as a Wills. And in the long and distant future, Wills is the name they are going to chip into his tombstone.”
“Jilo,” Guy said, his shoulders slumping as he shook his head. “I’m the boy’s father. You have to let me be a father to him.”
“You haven’t been here.”
He took a step toward her. She held up her hand and pointed at him. “You have not,” she wagged her finger with each word, “been here.” Her face felt hot. Her hand felt cold. Her body trembled.
He took another step closer and reached out to grasp her hand. Gently bending the accusing finger toward her palm, he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “I am here now,” he said. She tried to pull away, but her back was still against the wall. “I am”—the words came out slow, measured—“here now.” He leaned in and pulled her into his arms. “And I’m not leaving again.”