by Londyn Skye
“Get y’ur ass out here, boy!” Jesse yelled while pounding on James’s bedroom door with the side of his fist. “Company’ll be here soon!”
“What company?!” James yelled through the door.
“Open this goddamn door!”
James got up from where he sat on the edge of the bed and reluctantly granted his father’s request. He said nothing after opening the barrier in-between them and then did his best not to let his face reveal his annoyance.
“I told you three damn days ago that y’ur brotha’s, MJ, and her fatha’ would be here t’night. Now get dressed and get y’ur ass downstairs!”
M and J. Upon hearing those two letters, James could no longer hide his emotions. Fortunately, his father had already stomped away and did not catch sight of the way his face twisted in utter frustration. “You gotta be fuckin’ kiddin’ me!” he griped under his breath. He then slammed his bedroom door, angry about the migraine that MJ was sure to give him. His day had already been filled with enough chaos to drive a man to insanity. With all his current problems, he was fighting to keep a clear head, but after simply hearing that dreaded combination of letters, he suddenly needed a stiff glass of whiskey.
Just before his father’s unwelcome announcement, James had already felt like he had been punched in the stomach. The previous night had been his third attempt at writing Lily a letter and placing it next to her bed. All three letters consisted of thoughts of their baby, how much he missed her, how sorry he was, and any other heartfelt idea that came to mind. He was attempting to soften her with genuine words and to ultimately convince her not to end their child’s life.
When his mind was idle, Lily and their baby was all James could think about as he went about working long, grueling hours with Gideon throughout the day. Gideon was right, business had picked up as soon as people caught wind that James was working there. The constant onslaught of people helped to keep James from dwelling on his troubles with Lily. However, when the madness subsided, the thoughts of her immediately returned. He was glad when the hustle and bustle of his work claimed the inner workings of his thought process. It seemed to be the only time he was relieved of the ever-echoing sentence in his head: I don’t want you or yo’ damn baby! A sick feeling would overtake his stomach when his mind tortured him with the constant loop of Lily’s volatile words. If her words came to mind while he was eating, he would take two bites of his food and struggle to keep it down before abandoning his meal altogether. How he could survive much longer with no desire to eat was beyond him. Why a body rejected food at a time when it needed it for strength did not make much sense to him either. Even though his body seemed hell-bent on working against him, James continued to push himself hard, determined to see to it that he could afford to take care of his family, far, far away from the likes of Fayetteville.
When James was done pushing himself hard at work, he then pushed his horse hard on the way home, praying that he would find a response letter from Lily under his pillow. The anticipation was so great, he barely had the patience to water and feed his horse before leaving the barn and swiftly walking across the field to his father’s run-down home. In his eager rush, he had taken the stairs two at a time. He had entered his room, locked the door, lifted his pillow, and immediately hung his head low. He ran both hands through his hair and blew out a breath of disappointment. For the third straight day, Lily had returned his letter in eight neatly torn pieces and placed them under his pillow. The envelope was clearly unopened on all of them. After seeing four pages of his work reduced to shreds, he sadly sat on the end of his bed and pulled his trunk over. He opened it, pulled out a keepsake box, and placed the torn pieces inside, along with the ones from the previous two days. He placed the keepsake box back inside and caught sight of a pile of letters underneath a book. He lifted the book and dug them out. Ironically, he was holding onto an entire stack of letters that he and Lily had written back and forth to each other while at William’s estate. He thumbed through each one and felt a sense of pride after noticing how Lily’s handwriting had gotten progressively better through the months. He read excerpts from a few that instantly brought a smile to his face, something that he had not done in days. He immediately wished he could dive into the paper and make love to Lily all over again in the same ways that drove her to script the passionate words he now sat reading. He would give anything to find a letter of that sort under his pillow now. Hell, at this point, he would take any words at all: “To hell with your stupid letters!” “I don’t fucking care about anything you have to say!” “Stop writing to me asshole!” “Your letters are meaningless to me!” Any of those expressions would at least confirm that Lily was willing to even read his current letters. Her shredded response, however, proved that she felt he was not worthy of her time, let alone a reply.
As James continued browsing through the letters, he suddenly noticed that in nearly all the ones he had written to Lily, he had signed them with love. That sentiment, however, was absent on every letter Lily had written to him. She had written very candidly about how much she enjoyed him making love to her, but not once had she expressed her love. He realized that the only time she had done so was just before he boarded the train to take Anna Mae back to Ohio: “I really do love you, James Adams. Through everything all these years … I always have,” James easily recalled Lily saying. The vivid memory of her sentimental declaration sent a surge of warmth through him. When the vision faded, though, his heart suddenly sank into the pit of his stomach. He suddenly feared that that was the first and perhaps the last time he would ever hear Lily utter such words. As James contemplated that possibility, his father had banged on his door and mentioned two letters that replaced his melancholy thoughts with something, or rather someone, even more sickening.
Mary Jo Parker was back to her usual self. Her anger over seeing James with Lily after her show had robbed her of the desire to flaunt herself like a princess at her royal wedding during her last trip to Jesse’s farm. But not this time. Mary Jo was currently in route to the Adams plantation, sitting across from her father in one of her formal handmade gowns, with make-up plastered evenly across her pale face, and her lips painted the color of a ripe tomato. Even her spiral-curled, strawberry-blonde hair was bouncing perfectly again around a skull that still housed obsessive thoughts about a man who clearly did not want her.
Even though her appearance had finally returned to its over-the-top ways, Mary Jo’s mind had yet to fully recover from the memory of seeing James with Lily after The Dream Symphony. The hug she saw James give Lily was brief, followed by him taking her by the hand and helping her into her carriage. Though brief as that moment was, it had been enough for Mary Jo to conclude that there was far more than just a master/slave relationship between them. She read into the way James had looked at Lily, the way he pulled her as close as humanly possible, and the strength with which he held her, while slightly suspending her feet from the ground. In just a few seconds, all those subtle details had registered as massive signs in Mary Jo’s scrupled little mind. For once, however, she was not blowing things out of proportion. As William had once put it to James, “even a blind man can see what you feel for Lily.” So, the fact that Mary Jo so easily read into James’s emotions was not an oddity. What was odd, however, was her reaction to seeing the simple show of affection. Mary Jo had gone back to her cousin Julia’s apartment and completely tore it apart. Even though Julia was used to MJ’s overdramatic ways, she was taken aback by the way she had destroyed her home, especially since she had no idea what the catalyst for her outburst was. Mary Jo had refused to speak to Julia for the remainder of her visit. The next morning, Mary Jo packed her bags and left while Julia was at work without so much as goodbye or even an attempt to fix all that she had damaged in the apartment. Mary Jo had a monumental meltdown over a man who had never once hinted at wanting a serious relationship with her, had never professed love to her, nor ever even proclaimed her to be his friend. Those facts did not matter in the m
ind of someone who belonged in an insane asylum, though. As of the night of The Dream Symphony, “Leela” had instantly become her archenemy, because, as Mary Jo put it inside of her twisted little mind: I’ll be damned if I eva’ lose anything in my life to a nigga’.
When Mary Jo and Joseph pulled through the gates of the Adams plantation in their expensive carriage, MJ immediately began her usual judgmental assessment of Jesse when she saw him on the porch. She loved being wealthy but hated having to deal with the “back-woods,” “Podunk,” country folk, who were responsible for her father’s financial success. She especially hated Jesse Adams. She was convinced that he was the product of inbreeding. She saw right through Jesse’s hospitality facade and hated that he would be her father-in-law when she finally married James. Mary Jo even hated the way her father seemed to turn into a “hillbilly” around Jesse. Joseph always drank like a sailor after their meetings concluded. MJ jokingly assumed that Jesse must be putting a special elixir in the moonshine to warrant such behavior from her father. She figured it was the only logical answer to how Jesse had become like a brother to Joseph out of the dozens of clients he dealt with.
What Mary Jo did not realize, though, was that her father was just being a smart businessman. He was just as aware as his daughter of all the things worth disliking about Jesse. But Joseph ignored it while rubbing shoulders with his hardest working cotton distributor. Jesse was too stupid to realize that Joseph was making the greatest profit off his crops. The gap between how much he paid Jesse per pound of cotton and the amount he sold it for was the largest of all the farmers he had contracts with. He knew Jesse would never do his due diligence enough to recognize that he was being robbed in comparison to other distributors. Joseph’s friendship with Jesse through the years had made it easier to manipulate him into selling cheap. As it turned out, Mary Jo had certainly inherited her dirty ways from her father, the difference being that Joseph was not nearly as overt about it.
Despite using Jesse, though, Joseph had genuinely formed a bond with the Adams family and was especially fond of James. Joseph very much approved of James as a prospect for his daughter, above all other men. He saw something special in James as a boy, especially after realizing that he had been miraculously spared from Jesse’s looks and lack of intelligence. If it were not for James as a prospective husband, Joseph sometimes questioned whether his casual friendship with Jesse would be as strong as it was. Mary Jo, however, was positive about what her answer to that question would be. It was for the sake of James, and no other reason, that Mary Jo turned into an award-winning actress around Jesse. She had no problem being fake around people she felt were worthy of her company. But unlike everyone else with Jesse’s status, Mary Jo spared him the true ugliness that lay hidden beneath her handmade dresses, bouncy spiral curls, layers of make-up, and her tomato-red lipstick. Jesse was the only person exempt from her nastiness. For “Leela,” however, that was a whole different story.
As Mary Jo was stepping out of her carriage, making her debut in her usual princess-like fashion, James was upstairs begrudgingly putting the finishing touches on his wardrobe and hair. He suddenly remembered how there was once a time when he looked forward to Mary Jo’s visits, not because he was excited to see her, but solely because of Lily and their endless stream of antics while MJ was there. Like two generals going into war, James and Lily would strategically plan the clever ways in which they could ensure that Mary Jo’s misery was equal to their own. Every prop, line, and movement of their plans were always laid out and executed in a way that would make a soldier worthy of a medal. James stopped what he was doing in the mirror and recalled by far his favorite childhood prank …
On that day, James had asked Mary Jo to join him on the porch for a glass of lemonade after dinner, while their fathers sat drinking and telling over exaggerated life stories to each other in the living room. On cue, Lily walked onto the porch to hand James and Mary Jo their drinks. Lily waited for MJ to turn her head and then quietly picked up a plate that had been covering a planter near where they sat. She then made a quick getaway into the house and waited for the inevitable. As soon as the screen door slammed, Lily’s ears were pierced by the shrill of Mary Jo’s high-pitched screams. Lily turned around and watched through the screen door as MJ dashed from her seat in her frilly little dress out into the fields after a sea of freed crickets began making their escape out of the planter. James immediately bent over howling with laughter after Mary Jo lost her balance in her dainty shoes and face-planted in the mud. Lily threw her hand over her mouth to hold in an outburst of laughter and fled the scene before she got into trouble. Neither of them had a thing to worry about, though. Mary Jo’s father was so inebriated, he was none the wiser to the fact that his daughter had just gotten up off the ground in tears, looking like a little Negro girl with a strawberry-blonde wig. To pull off their childish prank, the mischievous best friends had worked their eleven-year-old tails off for hours that day to catch as many of the six-legged, hopping critters as possible. Their intent was simply to watch Mary Jo sprint like a dog across the field while screaming for her life. The mud-covered spectacle just so happened to be an unforgettable added bonus. “Well, at least she’s finally got some color now,” Lily had said that day as she and James stood on the porch a little while later, watching Joseph haul his mud-crusted daughter away.
… James now stood in the mirror chuckling about the memory just as he had that day, but his brief bout of laughter faded when the current state of his relationship with Lily suddenly returned to the forefront of his mind. Returning along with it was that sick feeling in his stomach that always prevented him from ingesting a full meal. He never knew a man could become physically ill over the emotional absence of the woman he loved. Even his training as a doctor had not prepared him for the strange phenomenon. He held himself up on the dresser with both hands waiting for the wave of despair to pass, all the while wishing he had the chance to start all over again back in the days that he had that unique childhood partnership with Lily. Even now, as a grown man, he still very much needed Lily to help get him through these daunting evenings with Mary Jo. He needed her humor, he needed to see her making silly faces as she peeked her head around corners playfully taunting him … he simply needed her. If anything, James figured Lily would now find pleasure in watching him suffer at the hands of Fayetteville’s finest lady lunatic.
James had long since heard Mary Jo’s migraine-inducing voice downstairs as she greeted his extended family with the fake smile he was certain she had plastered on her face. He jokingly wondered if it was her grating voice that had made him nauseous just moments before. He looked in the mirror for the last time and exhaled. “One big fuckin’ family reunion. Somebody shoot me now.” He held his index finger up to his head and pretended to pull a trigger before exiting his room. He let out a quiet guttural groan of annoyance as he descended the stairs toward the sound of forced laughter and welcome wishes in the foyer. Six of James’s nieces and nephews, some of which he had yet to meet, were gallivanting around the house and making a ruckus. His brothers, their wives, and Jesse had their backs toward him, blocking the view of Mary Jo and her father as they chatted with one another. Jacob and J.R. turned around, however, when they heard James’s footsteps behind them.
“Little brotha’!” Jacob said, walking over and giving James a manly embrace. “Good to see ya’.” He slapped him on the back.
“Hell, he ain’t so little na’more!” J.R. replied, stepping in to give his youngest brother a long overdue welcome home. “Finally got you a razor’s worth ‘a facial hair I see,” he teased, lightly tapping him on the face. “I can’t believe I ain’t laid eyes on ya’ in seven years!”
I wish it was another seven, James thought. “It’s been too long,” he said, letting out a laugh just as fake as Mary Jo’s smile.
J.R. and Jacob’s wives greeted James with hugs as well. J.R.’s wife, Meredith, then introduced him to the new baby in her arms and passed her over to
him. James held his new niece, caressing her feathered hair as he swayed with her. He could not look at her without the sting of envy running through him again. He quickly handed the baby back to Meredith when he felt his tears brewing. He then briefly glanced around at his six other nieces and nephews as they played without a care in the world. He suddenly realized that the privileges of the white race had not weighed nearly as heavily on him as it had prior to learning of Lily’s pregnancy.
Joseph Parker stepped forward and shook James from his envy-induced trance. “Well, well, well, Doctor Adams! Back from savin’ the world!” He took James’s hand in a firm handshake. “Good to see ya’ home again young man.”
“Thank you! Good to be home,” James lied while continuing to shake his hand.
With everyone having exhausted all their welcome wishes, James prepared himself to face the inevitable. He had felt Mary Jo’s eyes on him from the moment his feet hit the foyer floor, but he pretended not to notice. In fact, he did all he could to avoid eye contact with her. But he could ignore her no more. As if on cue, everyone parted evenly in the foyer and the banter ceased. Mary Jo stepped forward and her beady green eyes panned up to the face of the man she had waited impatiently to see. “James,” she said in a semi-seductive tone, raising her hand for him to take into his. She was expecting for him to kiss it and greet her in the same way as all other men.
“MJ,” James replied, taking her by the hand, lowering it, and then placing his other hand gently on top. He knew what she wanted, but he had no intention of letting his lips touch any part of her body, not even her hand.
“So good to see you again,” Mary Jo continued. She stepped forward and embraced him.
James conceded that a hug was innocent enough. He gave in and wrapped his arms around Mary Jo, but then looked over her shoulder, and caught sight of Lily watching their exchange from a distance. The simple hug suddenly felt like a major infraction after he saw the somber look on Lily’s face before she lowered her head and returned to her duties in the kitchen. Suddenly feeling dirty in MJ’s embrace, James immediately broke contact with her and stepped back. “Well,” he said, clapping his hands together. “I don’t know about y’all, but I’m starvin’,” he lied again. Food was the last thing on his mind, but he had to think of a way to get himself to a tall glass of mind-numbing liquor as quickly as possible.
