by J. D. Horn
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 coul
d 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.”
Jilo hesitated, but his tone was firm. She placed it in his hand, and he set it on his desk, covering it with a pad of paper, like Adam hiding behind the fig leaf.
“I do not believe this book is appropriate reading for a girl your age. I certainly don’t feel it is appropriate for a man to be sharing with a young lady. As your guardian, I will inform this Professor Ward of that fact myself.”
Jilo felt herself go hot then cold with embarrassment. “But Professor Ward is a married man,” she said, hoping his marital status would somehow convince the reverend of the innocence of the loan.
“That, Miss Wills, is my point exactly.”
THREE
October 1952
Jilo found her eyes resting on the red-and-white tin sitting on the desktop. A lozenge shape bordered the white silhouette of a man on horseback, a jouster by the look of his proud lance. The picture struck her as out of tune with the name inscribed below it—a word that conjured up images of hot sands and cool oases, not Camelot.
A burning log in the fireplace popped, prompting her to crane her neck in an attempt to glance in the sound’s direction. A chill had settled on Atlanta in October’s final days, and Lionel had started a small fire in his office’s hearth to beat it back.
Once, she’d enjoyed sitting by the fireside in one of the two commodious leather chairs positioned on either side of the hearth, talking to Lionel about art, books, and the future—the world’s in general and hers in particular. Now, her back was resting against a blotter, and something sharp and hard—a letter opener, she reckoned—poked her side. An unpleasant but bearable sensation.
Her attention wandered back to Professor Ward, who stood holding her legs up around his hips. She gasped in a breath of air and quivered. There was a feeling like a sharp pinch as he entered her. An unpleasant but bearable sensation. His eyes, framed by the gold round rims of his glasses, were filled with a faraway and glassy look as he moved inside her.
He loves me, she thought. He loves me. He loves me. She repeated the words to herself as he jostled her into a better position, reaching back to wrap her legs around him. She understood that he wanted her to hold them there, so she did.
“I love you,” he whispered, his spoken words sounding in chorus with her own internal chant. His tie—the blue one, her favorite—brushed across her stomach as he leaned over her; his hands, a teacher’s hands, soft with buffed nails, found her breasts. “I love you.” His weight pressed into her, and the metal and wood behind her back conspired together to make her spine and hips ache. His lips only met hers for a moment before he drew back, his fingers pinching into her legs, separating them wider as the pace of his thrusting accelerated, his straining body pressed fully into hers. He moaned once, then again, and let his weight settle onto her as he dropped her legs and left them to dangle over the side of the desk. His chest heaved, causing a button of his shirt to dig into her skin, and then he pulled out of her without anot
her moment’s hesitation.
He stooped to rummage through his pants, puddled on the floor around his ankles, and produced a kerchief from the pocket. “Hold this. Down there,” he said, forcing it into her hand and positioning it between her legs, without really looking at her. “There’s some blood. Don’t want it on the rug.” As soon as she did as he asked, he shifted his focus to removing the latex sheath that he had pulled from the red-and-white tin.
She pushed herself up on one elbow, watching as he tied a knot into the end of the thing. He tugged up his pants and buttoned them, and without looking at her, strode to the hearth and tossed the condom into the flames. He grasped the poker, using its hooked end to pull a glowing log on top of the latex. Then he returned the poker to its holder, and without speaking, knelt to retrieve her dress from the floor. He laid it next to her on the desk, turning his attention to the rest of her wardrobe. Odd, but he now seemed embarrassed to touch the bra he’d nearly torn off her only minutes before. He picked it up and dropped it on the dress. A few steps away lay her panties. He picked them up using his thumb and index finger. She took them from him, hoping that their hands might meet, but he dropped them into her grasp and returned to the fire, keeping his back toward her as she dressed.
She pulled herself together as quickly as she could manage, although she had trouble locating a shoe that had somehow been kicked under a step stool on the far side of the room. She crossed to him and placed her hand on his forearm. He looked down at her, his eyes cautious. He cleared his throat. “We’ll speak of this matter at a later time.”
She couldn’t find words to respond. She only nodded and went to the door. She hesitated for a moment, hoping he’d call her back. Hoping he’d take her into his arms and speak more words of love.
There was only silence.
FOUR
Jilo didn’t know what possessed her, but she found herself walking a mile and a half away from home, toward the red brick walls and stained-glass windows of Five Points Baptist.
