Chapter Twenty-Eight

twenty-eight

JEMMA LEFT THE HOUSE THE same way she'd entered, and she ran across the back lawn as if someone was after her, although she knew she had at least half an hour before the Duchons would return from the city. She didn't expect them to visit anyone, as they were still in mourning. She ran straight to the cabin and went into a nearly incoherent ramble about what she'd found in Fosette's trunk.

"Maybe the baby was stillborn. But that family? Who knows? Maybe they killed it. They're insane, all of them, from Honorine all the way down to—" Jemma stopped then, her hands pressed to her chest. "Oh God, what if I'm just as crazy as they all are, just by being related to them? Craziness runs in families. Even if I'm not as far gone as Fosette, I might only have weeks or months before I lose my mind."

She fell heavily into the chair across from Magdalene, wanting, needing, her friend to reassure her, to say anything that would soothe her jitters.

Jemma turned her wrist up, seeing the old jagged scar. Had she really wanted to die at some point not that long ago? She couldn't even fathom her state of mind then. And over Marvin?

Now she wanted to live, desperately. Even though she was penniless and despised by her natural family, even though she'd left everything familiar behind to come here, she wanted to live.

She'd found her real mother. She'd found a friend in Magdalene.

And she was loved by them.

That was enough.

She settled, working to calm her breathing like Mabel Barker had taught her.

Five, four, three, two, one.

"That's good, girl," Magdalene said, reaching forward and grabbing Jemma's hands. "Calm those nerves. We're going to figure this out."

"I don't have much time, if any. And I'll have to go back to the house eventually. I know my work there isn't finished."

"That's not a problem. Whatever you got to face, you ain't going to face alone. But stop that worrying, because it ain't helping."

The two women spent the next day trying to formulate a plan, Jemma grateful for Magdalene's steadying presence.

"You said your mother forgave her family, and you forgave them, too. But now you're not sure if Inès really forgave them."

"Like you said, it would have to be really hard for her."

"Did you ever think that that forgiveness might not be enough? I mean, say you forgave them but you still got some anger in your heart toward someone else. That might be blocking things."

They'd just returned from a walk through the woods. The unseasonable heat and humidity hadn't bothered Magdalene. She was used to it. But Jemma had had enough after an hour. Despite the thick tree canopy and the shade, the bugs bit and stung so much that she couldn't take it anymore. Now she sat on Magdalene's mattress, rubbing a salve over her bare arms and legs while the older woman poked at the branches in the woodstove, tossing in a few sheets of old newspaper.

"Anger toward who?" Jemma asked, her hand paused in the middle of rubbing.

"When you came here, you were mad at that boyfriend of yours, right? For getting that other girl pregnant."

"Yes."

"Weren't you also mad at your daddy? The man who raised you up there in Chicago? Because he never accepted you for who you are?"

"I never really thought about it like that."

"Think about it now, then. All your life, he made you feel like you weren't good enough. Not 'cause of your color. He wasn't like the Duchons. But he wanted a boy and he never got a boy, and he made you suffer 'cause of it."

Jemma set the tin of salve on the floor, her head hanging between her knees. "I don't think this has anything to do with what's going on now, with saving my life."

"Trust me, Emmaline. Everything got to do with everything else. Like they say, no man is an island. And I don't believe in coincidences. Tell me about your daddy, the one who raised you."

It took Jemma a moment to realize how much she'd avoided her true feelings for Carl Barker since arriving here. That wasn't surprising, considering how intoxicated by the Duchons she'd been from the moment she'd met them.

Jemma shrugged, hugging her knees to her chest, keeping her gaze on the cabin floor instead of meeting Magdalene's eyes. "He was a typical daddy, I guess. He only spanked me a couple times that I remember. Mama gave me a few more whippings, but they mostly tried to talk to me first if I did anything wrong. I didn't get in a lot of trouble, though. I was a good kid. But he worked a lot. Sometimes he did double shifts, and then I had to be quiet when I came in from school. It's not hard to be quiet when you're the only child in a house, though."

"What kind of things would he get mad at you about?"

Jemma almost said I don't remember, but then she did remember. The memory bloomed like a strange rose.

Daddy had once gotten tickets to an American Giants game, one of the Negro league teams, when she was about eleven years old, right before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier by playing for the Dodgers. Jemma recalled trailing behind Daddy, a small carton of popcorn in her hand, a baseball cap sitting crookedly atop two stiff pigtails. Mama had insisted that Jemma wear a dress, its clean red plaid pattern a bright contrast to the pristine white collar. But Jemma had had a fit about wearing the Mary Janes Mama had wanted her to wear. The girl had said she wouldn't go anywhere unless she got to wear her peppermint-striped Keds, her "play shoes." Mama had thrown her hands up, complaining about how tomboyish and inappropriate Jemma's outfit was: the baseball cap and old sneakers juxtaposed with the ribboned pigtails and the neat dress.

But Jemma didn't care. She was just happy to have Daddy on her own for a while, even if she didn't know anything about baseball.

So while Daddy tried to interest her in the rules and the players, including one from the opposing team, the Monarchs—"That's Satchel Paige out there, greatest pitcher there ever was; forget about McAfee and them"—Jemma concentrated on her popcorn and adjusting her cap and the boys chasing one another under the bleachers.

A sudden chill next to her made her turn, to find an old man staring back at her while she stared through him.

Jemma's high scream wasn't the worst of it, nor was it her spilling all of her popcorn, fluffy pieces turning black with dust as they hit the ground beneath the bleachers.

It was the warm pee running down her legs as she stood, soaking her white socks and her shoes.

It was having to walk over twenty blocks feeling and smelling the wetness, all while Daddy said nothing, simply held on to her shoulder with stiff fingers that felt like they reached inside her to the bone.

It was hearing the argument later that night, Daddy yelling that Jemma was nothing but trouble, as all girls were.

Mama hadn't been a refuge, either, beaten down as she was by Daddy. So Mama had failed to help Jemma quiet the ghosts that followed the girl and tried to catch her attention, drawn to her child-light like bugs to a bulb.

Both her parents were so busy trying to get her to pretend she didn't see what she clearly saw.

"Turn your face away. Shut your eyes," Mama said. "Ignore them and they'll go away."

"But what if they need—"

"Shut your eyes, Jemma! And don't talk to them! Do you hear me?"

And Daddy: "Knew we never shoulda brought this girl up from there. It ain't nothin' but ghosts down there."

No wonder she was a bundle of nerves by the time she started junior high. Eventually the spirits that clung around the stoop of their third-story walk-up stopped trying to talk to Jemma. The lone little boy, pitiful in his smallness, who wandered the playground across the street no longer waved to her as she passed. Instead, he pressed his back against the fence, his eyes following her down the sidewalk, his arms wrapped around his bent knees. Jemma ignored all of them, just like Mama had taught her. She'd begun to count anytime the anxious feelings started climbing higher and higher into her throat, thickening and spreading, turning her voice into stuttering, breathy hiccups.

Five, four, three, two, one, over and over until she stilled.

Mama was hit by a bus downtown when Jemma was a teenager. One witness said someone pushed Mama into the street, while another one said Mama ran out there on her own, having waited on the corner until the bus was barreling down at forty miles an hour. Either way—whether she did it herself or not—she was gone, and it was just Jemma and Daddy.

Jemma, who still wasn't good enough. And who now had not even the paper-thin barrier of Mama to stand between her and Daddy's discontent.

Once she was eighteen, she moved out, thinking that it would be an escape from all the negativity, the disappointment thick in the air of their apartment. She and Betty lived together for a year, until Betty met some man and moved in with him. Another girl lived with Jemma until Jemma moved in with Marvin. Too ashamed to bring Marvin by to meet Daddy, Jemma told herself she'd do it once she had a ring on her finger. But one year turned into two, and two into three, and no ring.

When Daddy died, Jemma scraped together all her savings to give him a funeral that she hoped proved how much she loved him. It didn't matter that he was dead and wasn't there to see it. She saw.

And yet, although he was gone, she knew it still wasn't good enough to make up for who she was. His displeasure with her had never been just about Jemma's being a girl instead of a boy.

It had been about Jemma not being his own natural child. And he took that out on Mabel and Jemma in big ways and small, breaking his wife underneath it and stripping away any good feelings Jemma had about herself until she was like a defenseless pup, missing any armor in the form of love for herself.

Damn him. Damn him!

She hadn't realized she'd cursed him aloud until she saw Magdalene nodding. "That's right, Emmaline. Get it out. Get it all out. Now, how can you forgive all the Duchons did when you can't forgive your daddy for dying? What about Marvin? You forgive him for what he did? Cry, yell, scream, tear shit up if it makes you feel better, but get these feelings outta you."

And that's what Jemma did for the next half hour. She cried until her stomach ached and her eyes stung from all the tears. She screamed until she was sure she'd ruined her voice for good. She stumbled outside and beat at the trees, kicked up so much dirt that it rained down on her head.

"Be free of him," Magdalene called from the open doorway. "Be free of all of them."

Only when Jemma was sure she'd fall to the ground and pass out unconscious did she finally stop. Dirt covered her from head to toe, wound its gritty way around her lips until she spit out as much as she could. Her dress was a soiled wreck, and aches from various parts of her body made themselves known.

Magdalene helped her inside after Jemma splashed well water over herself, which caused her to drip dirty spots all over the cabin floor. The older woman dismissed the spots with a wave and pressed into Jemma's hands a mug of tepid pine needle tea, a drink she normally would've politely refused, but the liquid soothed her scratched throat.

"Thank you."

"You feel better now, don't you?"

After Jemma drained the mug and set it firmly on the table, she nodded, looking up at her friend from her seat. "It's your turn now."

"What you mean?"

"It's your turn to forgive."

Magdalene scoffed, pushing one braid behind her shoulder to join the other one. "I done forgave everybody who needed forgiving."

"Did you? What about your baby girl? You're still mad at her for leaving."

The older woman shook her head quickly, her lips set in a hard line. "Nuh-uh. Don't do this. You ain't got the right."

Jemma ignored that. "How can you not forgive a child who died? That wasn't her fault, Magdalene! Don't you think that baby would have lived if she could? And be honest. You never forgave my mother for not letting you keep me. Or Dennis for making sure you gave me up. So, you want to talk forgiveness? Then let's talk all of it."

Magdalene rushed toward the door, two large steps getting her there, but Jemma leaped up and grabbed her from behind, pressing herself against the woman and holding her in place. In her arms, her friend was a docile creature, not the gun-toting wild woman who lived in the woods but a timid thing stiff with pain.

"Now you let it out. Tell that baby you forgive her and let her rest in peace. Forgive my mother and Dennis for not giving you what you wanted at the time, but remember, I could never have replaced your daughter. If I'd stayed with you and you raised me, there would have come a time when you resented me for not being her. And I wouldn't have been any better off than I was with the Barkers."

Not until a hot tear splashed on Jemma's arm did she realize that Magdalene was crying.

"I could've been a good mother to you."

"Yes, you could have, but this life wanted something different for the both of us. You gotta let that baby go." The image of the corpse in Fosette's trunk flashed through Jemma's mind. How hard some women clung to their children. "You've been holding on to that anger all these years because that's what keeps her close, you think. But how can she be peaceful when you got your hands around her ankles, not letting her fly free?"

Magdalene shook. Jemma pressed her face into the back of her neck, supporting her, breathing in the tangled scents of earth and pine and tobacco and sweat and root soap.

"She's the only thing I got."

"And she'll always be yours—but let her live in your heart. Just say you forgive her. Let her go."

Finally, after several silent moments, Magdalene inhaled deeply and screamed it out, along with decades of pain. And the two women held and supported each other until Magdalene wiped her face and said, "Now we're going to figure out how to keep you alive."