Juma

by Madhuri Pavamani

  A quiet block full of stately homes and manicured lawns with trees probably planted soon after General Sherman came through and burned everything to the ground and ghosts who’d witnessed it all. The Landry home was a little wilder than the others, less planned, more carefree, and because I loved the woman who grew up within its walls, one of the more beautiful homes on the block. As much as I wanted to find Juma right then, as tempting as the act seemed, I knew I couldn’t just walk up the front steps, knock on their door, and ask for her. One, it was 12:17 in the morning. Two, her parents didn’t know me. Three, it was fucking weird.

  Compounding the situation was the issue of Juma’s mom—was she dead or reclamated? Did Juma leave to help her mom cross? Or did she leave to kill more Keepers? All of these questions and concerns ran through my brain as I stood in the darkness and contemplated my existence and the steps I would take in the next few minutes in the trajectory of Dutch Mathew. Would I, wouldn’t I, should I, shouldn’t I.

  Unable or unwilling to make a clear decision about anything, I lit a smoke. I was going over my options, all of them ludicrous, when a movement in the house caught my eye. I honed in on the downstairs picture window and there stood a wisp of a woman, small in all the places Juma was not, and yet still so like the woman I loved—brown and beautiful, with all-knowing eyes and pillow-like lips—that I would recognize her anywhere: Mimi Landry.

  She remained in the shadows and stared into the night, focused on nothing in particular but since this was her home, her place in the world, I figured she knew what she wanted to see, and if she was anything like Juma, she wouldn’t miss a detail. So I slipped further into the darkness and continued my study. Where Juma was funky and chic with her short hair and tattoos, her mother was long-hair-tied-up-in-a-chignon elegance and sophistication. Where Juma was all hips and thighs and pure sex, Mimi Landry was petite and slight and regal. But that was where their differences ended. Otherwise they were the spitting image of each other, a perfect mother-daughter duo, and I wondered where Rufus Landry’s DNA figured into Juma’s makeup.

  I stomped out my smoke and considered the thoughts going through Mrs. Landry’s mind at that late hour. Was she aware of her good fortune, that she was not too long ago on the other side of things? Did she know her daughter had helped alter that reality? Had she appeared at the window because she expected Juma? For a moment my hopes soared and I wondered whether my wishful thinking could be reality, but then Mrs. Landry slipped away and disappeared and I was once again alone in the darkness and I knew Juma wasn’t coming. If she had been here at all, she wasn’t returning any time soon.

  And Veda.

  Here, in Atlanta.

  What the fuck was my godforsaken sister doing in Atlanta? That craven bitch rarely ventured beyond the reach of Khan and his fuckboys, so why she had dared travel as far as the American South, a place her high-end, perfectly manicured, clearly enunciated ass would find horribly beneath her station in life, puzzled me for several seconds as I walked a slow perimeter of the Landry home. I kicked at dirt and stones here and there as I contemplated Veda’s behavior and thought back on her words, her threat to hunt Juma down and end each and every one of her lives until there were no more to destroy. I’d laughed in her face that afternoon, finding each syllable ridiculous, but now, standing in the middle of a Georgia backyard, listening to the sound of slow-moving water and animals of the night, I wondered. Was Veda hunting? And had she already found her prey?

  Then I shook off the thought because, for real, Juma versus Veda was hardly a contest. Veda was an idiot, raised in a palace to make the laws governing my kind—the fighters, the killers, the Keepers. She was Junta and knew nothing of strategy or the hunt or the kill. All she knew were words and concepts and ideals and the mechanisms for putting such into play—blood and life and death belonged to others more fit and able to undertake and uphold the twisted and deranged oaths demanded of Keepers and Ren.

  Any updates on

  Veda and her status?

  I punched out a quick text to Grant, touching base with the Dosha in case he knew something I didn’t.

  She’s gone

  Took the portal

  back to the Palace

  an hour ago

  I stared at the words on my screen for a few beats as they sunk into my psyche and screamed their relevance: whatever Veda had come to do, she’d finished it quickly. I shut down everything, all the crazy shit running through my head, the questions, the theories, the curses. I made myself as quiet as possible, closed my eyes, and listened to the night. I let it move around and above and below me, really envelop me in its thick hot inkiness, and then I listened because even if I didn’t know, I did.

  I knew Juma was somewhere here, maybe not on this property, but she was in the vicinity and if she wasn’t already dead, she was dying.

  The little voice inside my head that insisted she’d escaped, that she’d managed to kill Veda’s crew and evade Veda altogether, I shut down that voice, too, because I knew it was full of shit and the stuff of childish fantasies and this right here, this game of lives we were playing, it was strictly adult. Veda had come here on some straight-up killing business with her sights set on Juma, this I finally recognized and cursed myself for all those goddamned moments I scoffed and sneered and ignored the nightmare that was my sister.

  I made like I was on the hunt and tuned out everything but my Poocha, my assigned kill, that wondrous being of grass and light and honey and lemons, the woman I could wrap myself around forever and never grow weary, and I searched the night for her scent, the essence of her that did things to me long before I was ready to have them done. I walked and settled and waited for her to come to me, I knew she would, she always did.

  And it wasn’t a hint of her like I expected, a tease of lemons or a whisper of grass. It was her, all of her, down by the creek on the far back border of her parents’ property, larger than life and loud, demanding my attention, my everything. Her scent surrounded me, overpowered me out there in that dark as fuck backyard and I had to gather myself for a second to get my bearings straight and find her. But once I knew the direction to look, there was no searching. I saw her prone body from where I stood, the outline of her hips and the strange bend of her neck, and instead of moving toward her right away, I stilled as a quiet rage burst through my being.

  I knew without seeing her up close that she had been tortured, mostly because I knew Veda and knew she’d learned her technique from the master of the depraved, our father, Khan. Juma’s beautiful body was carved to pieces, sliced and diced all over, chunks removed from her arms and thighs, and the skin of her throat and stomach shredded and left hanging in strips. It was the Mathew style and Veda had apparently perfected it.

  I stood over Juma’s brutalized body and cursed the very existence of my family, and prayed there would come a day their deaths—Khan, Shema, and Veda—would be just as horrific, if not worse. I wanted them to writhe in pain and fear and loathing, multiple times over, for all of the horror they’d inflicted upon others. But really for the brutality incurred by those I loved, those I held close, those with whom I shared my darkness.

  I texted Grant the address of the Landry home, then took off my shirt and covered Juma, gently picking up her lifeless body for the second time in almost as many days, and waited for the Dosha. Less than ten minutes later, Grant arrived with a car and keys to his condo, disappearing as soon as I tried to thank him.

  Upon reaching the apartment, I took off Juma’s filthy bloodstained clothes, washed her face and body the best I could, and dressed her in a T-shirt and panties I pilfered from one of the drawers in Grant’s bedroom. I stretched my aching muscles, tight with the strain and stress and fuckery of the night, then settled on the couch, pulled Juma into my arms, and began my vigil. I didn’t bother with smokes or bourbon or anything that might have calmed my fury. I didn’t need it, didn’t want it. I just needed her back on this side of the line drawn between the living and dead, the line
she played along on a daily basis, jumping from one side to the other with ease, only of late finding herself more often than I liked crossing that line because she had lost another of her lives and needed to re-up.

  Once upon a time I was foolish enough to believe I could protect all of her lives. These days I mostly dreaded the moment her supply ran dry.

  So instead of focusing on how many lives she’d used and how many remained and all the what-would-happen-ifs, I made a list of Juma’s hurts and how I would avenge them. And while I studied the injuries to her legs, the cuts to her face began to heal and I kind of breathed easy because she was on her way back but I also didn’t because the fact remained that I wondered whether she might be better off staying on her side of the line for a while, the dead side, and making herself scarce while I cleaned up some shit and took care of some things.

  I knew she would never go for such a plan—nor would Avery, Frist, or Kash for that matter—but that didn’t mean it didn’t cross my mind. It didn’t mean I didn’t wish I could place her somewhere safe, hidden from The Gate and Khan and Veda and anyone else with a desire to do her harm, and do everything in my power to make sure not one more of her lives was wasted avenging mine.

  “Dutch?”

  “Hey, you.” I smiled down at her as she strained to bring me into focus. “Easy does it, beautiful. I’m not going anywhere. Relax.”

  I pushed Juma’s hair off her forehead and watched her as she studied me, her eyes moving all over my face as if frantically trying to piece me back into someone she recognized. Crossing back to life was brutal on her body—and this time she crossed faster than I’d seen her do in the past—her senses heightened to the point of painful or diminished to the point of panic, and everything needed time to fit together again. And that was the part she hated, this I knew because I watched her battle fear and frustration each time she crossed.

  “Give yourself a second, Juma.” I tried to calm her, uncertain whether she could hear me, but aware that even if she couldn’t, she could feel me talking to her and that was comfort enough.

  “Dutch.” She whispered my name so low I had to lean close to hear her. “My sweet Dutch.” And she spoke with such sadness, I could only wonder what had happened since we last parted.

  I smiled and tried to assure her all was fine.

  “I’m here.” I kissed her fingers as she traced my lips. “I’ll always be here when you return. Nothing will keep me from finding you, no matter where you are, no matter what happens, I’ll be here.”

  Her eyes filled with tears as she sat up and I sat there in dumbfounded amazement, not because the most beautiful woman I had ever laid eyes upon was in my lap, clad only in a threadbare T-shirt and panties, without any makeup and some bruises around her mouth, looking more stunning than I had ever seen any woman look, but because Juma was so mobile and agile and alive so quickly.

  I touched her arms and felt the musculature of her legs and finally rested my hands on her waist, my body moving in time with hers. Our inhale-exhales commingled and wrapped around one another until they shared the same rhythm, everything about the two of us seeming one as we settled into each other and the night and the quiet. Her mind seemed calm but her eyes betrayed a despair I had never before witnessed and a quiet rage filled me as I considered Veda and all the ways I was going to kill her for doing whatever she did to Juma.

  “Don’t,” Juma whispered, and pressed her hand over my heart.

  I wrapped my fingers around her wrist and felt the slow beat of her pulse, the rhythm both wild with life and quietly calming. We locked eyes and hers filled again, this time a tear escaping and rolling down her freckled cheek. I kissed the saltwater trail and inhaled her scent before pulling away and asking, “Don’t what?”

  Juma leaned toward me slightly and rested her hands on my thighs, a sad smile curving her lips as she cried.

  “Don’t think about what happened to me,” she replied and wiped her eyes. “What happened to me is nothing.”

  “What happened to you is all I care about,” I growled as she shook her head in disagreement.

  “It’s over, I’m alive. Please, just move on from it,” she begged and cried and I couldn’t understand how she expected me to forget it when she couldn’t seem to.

  “If it’s so over, Juma”—I wiped her tears and studied her eyes—“then why do you keep crying every time you look at me? Why do you seem so burdened with a grief that feels goddamned bottomless? Explain that to me and then sure, I’ll think about moving on.”

  I didn’t mean to sound angry, but it was difficult to control my voice and my rage and act as if everything was okay when it was hardly that at all. And I didn’t mean to raise my voice but the stress of losing her and the stress of finding her and all of the bullshit in between and under and around us was taking its toll. And I didn’t mean to make her cry harder.

  “Goddamn it, Juma.” I ran my hands through my hair as she sobbed in silence and I realized that her silence was worse than being loud and enraged because why should she have to control her sadness to make me feel better? What fucked-up kind of shit was that?

  “Please.” I kissed her tears and her lips and her fingers. “Tell me your truths so I can bear some of your burden and hold some of your sadness. Please.”

  My words stilled her, literally.

  She froze and as I quickly thought back on what I said, wondering if something I uttered was horrible or mean-spirited or grievous in any way, she leaned forward and wrapped me in her arms, surrounding me with all of her. She felt like love and tenderness and for a moment I tensed, so shocked was I by her sudden change of mood, but then her honey and grass and lemons and light washed over me and I could not resist her magic for she was my home. I relaxed into her and we held each other in the quiet of the early morning.

  “I know about the marks on your body,” she whispered after several long minutes of rapt silence. “I know what happened to you.”

  Her words washed through me the way they always did—slow and smooth and seductive—something about her slight Southern accent and her low tone came together in such a way that even the worst shit emitted from her lips seemed a little like heaven. But soon after, the poison of her knowledge spread through my system and I recoiled because I had already showered her in enough black horrific shit, she didn’t need any more.

  “Dutch,” she pleaded, and made to move close except I put my hand out and held her at bay.

  “No,” I replied.

  “It’s okay,” she insisted.

  “No.”

  “Please,” she begged.

  And I shook my head because it was impossible for me to refuse her, I couldn’t bring myself to say the word, not when she sounded so bereft, but I had to resist, for both of our sakes. For both of our souls.

  “Veda told me about the dining room and the table,” she leaned back and whispered, as if uttering the very words was enough to darken her soul.

  “Stop it, Juma.”

  “I know about those leather straps,” she continued, despite my growing discomfort and unease, “and the knives.”

  “Enough!” I shouted and she flinched, as if my anger was of the physical kind, but she knew I would never hurt her so she persisted in the face of my repeated dismissals of her concerns.

  “And what your father did with those knives.” She leaned close and took my face in her hands but I pushed her away because the fact remained, all of her good and her gentle had no business being anywhere near my fucked-up shit. I knew this all too well that first night in Frank’s when I warned her to stay the fuck away from me, but then I forgot it and she ignored it and we fell into all kinds of touching and sucking and fucking when we should have stayed very far away from each other.

  Instead, we were here and all of the black shit—my black shit—was in the open and on display and I wanted no part of it. I knew it, I lived it, I didn’t need to hear it spill from her beautiful mouth.

  “He did nothing with those
goddamned knives,” I gritted my teeth and growled, hardly wanting her sympathy, wishing desperately she would shut the fuck up. “Just drop it, Juma.”

  “ . . . to your body and soul.”

  There was a moment, a flash really, when those words left her lips and sat in the ether between us, waiting for me to acknowledge them or her to shrink back from them, a moment when I considered lunging at her, a kind of full-frontal attack on her person to make her be quiet, stop talking, take back everything she said that I wanted to remain unsaid. But it was a flash, a blip in my existence, and as quickly as it entered my consciousness, it disappeared and with it, so did my fight.

  29: JUMA

  There were many moments in our togetherness full of flashes of Dutch’s darkness, hints of danger, deep-seated evil. I knew bits and pieces of its constitution—killing, Kajal, The Gate, Khan—but I never knew the details, the truly gruesome truths woven into that invisible cloak of despair flung over his shoulders, the black one he couldn’t seem to get rid of, no matter how hard he tried.

  Until he did.

  As soon as Veda shared her sick and twisted memories of her favorite room in the palace, I knew everything I’d ever wondered about Dutch’s demons, all the parts came together to reveal the whole, and I suddenly felt like I understood the man I loved in a way I never expected to because as much as he loved me and I him, I figured his scary truths—the stuff nightmares were made of—would remain his and his alone forever, that he would never burden me with their horror.

  And sitting in that strange, dark apartment that belonged to someone I didn’t know, somewhere deep in the Atlanta night, watching Dutch gnash his teeth and growl in the face of my knowledge, demand my silence, plead for me to stop giving voice to his terror, proved I was right. Had Veda never tortured me with Dutch’s story, I would have never known it—he would have protected me from it forever. I knew this just as I knew the sun was yellow and the sea was blue. That was how much he loved me. Fully. Completely. To his detriment.