She studied my eyes, and I knew she could see I meant what I said. “You’ll be okay, Jessie,” she whispered. “I know you will.” She stared at me hard through her tears and then hesitantly let me go. “I’ll tell your momma and daddy the same thing,” she called over her shoulder. Then she turned around in fine Gemma fashion and pointed into the darkness. “You just make sure you don’t make them worry for long, you hear?”
As I watched her walk away, it felt like my heart was made out of a string that had gotten caught on her shoe and unraveled with each step she took. Out in the middle of the darkness, with a man’s blood on my hands, I felt the ache of loneliness.
And I knew for certain that this was only the beginning.
Chapter 20
Sometimes there’s a place in your heart you know is there, but you don’t know all the colors of it. You see it in black and white, but then one day it comes to life like a rainbow, all clearly painted in colors so vivid, there’s no way to avoid the truth of it.
That’s what happened that night when I watched Delmar Custis bleeding his very life out onto the grass and then turned and walked away. I’d known the feeling of hate. I’d had plenty of it poured out on me and my loved ones over the years. I knew how hate kills the senses and traps conscience in a net. And I’d wondered time and again what could make a body hate so much that he’d want to kill.
Now I knew.
I stumbled across the fields slowly, taking furtive glances at the blood that stained my clothes, even though I hated the sight of it. It was like I was compelled to look at it, as though facing up to the bloodstains would make me face up to the blackness of my heart. For all I knew, Delmar Custis had bled to death by now and I was a full-blown murderer.
By the time I reached the gazebo on our property, I was nauseated and worn through. I dropped to my knees inside the shelter. There I was, in the place my daddy had made out of his love for my momma, coming to terms with the fact that I was living for hate. And I remembered that day years ago when I’d questioned my daddy about the evil things that had been done to us the summer we took Gemma in. I remembered how my daddy looked when he emerged from the woods that day, with the weight of all the rage and betrayal of our neighbors making his gait slow and uneven. I remembered the way he lifted me up so that my toes skimmed the ground, cradling me in arms that gave as much love as they searched for.
But most of all I remembered how his words had come out of his mouth with an emotion that burned them into my soul.
“I ain’t capable of hatin’ like that,” I’d said about those men who had haunted our summer.
But Daddy had looked at me with eyes that held all the feelings in his heart at once and made his voice stern so I couldn’t avoid knowing how serious his words were. “Jessilyn,” he’d said, “ain’t no man can’t get someplace he never thought he’d get to. You let enough bad thoughts into your head, you can end up doin’ all sorts of things you never thought possible.”
The recollection of those words made my whole body ache and shiver, and I lowered my head so I was almost folded in two. That was me. Those words described me. I had become one of those people I had said I could never be like.
“Daddy,” I whispered, “you were right.” My face touched the knees of my bloodstained pants, and the terror of that night poured out of my heart into salty tears that soaked the crimson splotches. “I’m so sorry.” The words spilled out in tandem with my sobs and joined the chorus of night creatures in a mournful wail.
I lay there until I didn’t have any tears left, and even then I stayed on the floor of the gazebo hiccuping air that I didn’t feel I deserved to breathe. There in the middle of the thick, hot air of that summer’s night, I felt claustrophobic, closed in by my sins and failures so tightly, I didn’t think I’d ever escape. How could I go home again? How could I face my mother and father? Gemma? Luke? Miss Cleta? How could I face those who had loved me and cared for me, only for me to grow into a person so blackened by hate and rage she’d been capable of murder?
Most of all I wondered where I could go to get away from the agony of what was inside of me. Where do you go to escape your mind? There is no place on this earth where your thoughts can’t plague you. I would forever be trapped in this nightmare where my own mind accused me every second of every day for the rest of my life. And deservedly so.
Somehow, though, those breaths that I hadn’t earned calmed down and led me to a sleep so thick, it was like I’d been drugged. My body had finally given out from the strain, and when I opened my eyes again, it was to find what I thought was sunlight streaming across my face, only it wasn’t the daylight that so often made the cares of the nighttime seem distant. It was moonlight—soft, brilliant moonlight that bathed the wood of the gazebo in a shadow-strewn glow. For a few blissful seconds my mind was blurry, uncertain of where I was or why I was there, but then it all came rushing back to me in a flood of memory. A sick feeling immediately grabbed at my insides, and I struggled to lift my top half off the floor for a look at my surroundings.
The world seemed much the same as it always had, the scene around me one that I had known since childhood. But something had changed, something inside of me, and once the cobwebs of sudden but short-lived sleep slipped from my eyes, that change gripped me anew. My movements were those of someone who was ill or worn with age, but even still I managed to get to my feet and stumble to one of the pillars and peer at the moon. Dark, bold clouds surrounded it, threatening to steal the light away.
The wind whipped up something fierce, and I stepped down from my perch on the gazebo and tipped my face up to catch it. I had allowed myself to be dirtied by bitterness, cut into by the claws of evil that I’d learned about all my life but had chosen to ignore. And now, as I watched my soul slip away into darkness, I wanted nothing more than to get it into the light.
Sometimes, as a child, I would help Momma wash the windows, and she’d tell me that window washing was like what God did to our hearts. “See how hard it is to get the sunlight in the house when these windows get so filthy, Jessilyn?” she’d say. “But once we wash them up, that sunlight will just stream on through. Baby, that’s what God does with our hearts when we ask Jesus in. He cleans all those dirty spots off so His light can shine on in. And then, once His light’s in our hearts, it’ll shine right back out for all the world to see.”
And you know what? I’d seen that light. I’d seen it all my life in my momma and daddy, in Gemma and her momma and daddy. I’d seen it in Miss Cleta and Mr. Poe. And even Luke. But I’d never once appreciated it. Not once. I’d loved who they were and what they were to me, but it never occurred to me until just now that they might not have been the people I loved if God hadn’t lit them from the inside out. Maybe they wouldn’t have let their hearts get as dark as mine, but still they wouldn’t have shined the light on me quite so much as they had.
And suddenly, for the first time, I wanted that purity Momma always talked about. But what kind of person denies something all her life until she has need of it and then expects it to just plop right into her lap? I’d been a thorn in God’s side since the day I learned to speak my mind. I was always doubting Him, always resisting Him, sometimes even cursing Him. I had no right to ask Him to just up and clean house in my heart, lickety-split, mopping up the mess I’d made on purpose.
The wind blew angrily now, and I lifted my arms out at my sides, wishing it could just pick me up and carry me to a place where I wouldn’t have to feel anymore.
I looked off into the distance and willed my mind to stop working, but it wouldn’t turn off. The thoughts in my head haunted me, whirling over and over, images of the past and frightening imaginations of the future. When I was thirteen, I’d lived a summer possessed by the fear that I’d accidentally killed a man, and I remembered the feel of the relief that consumed me once I’d found out I hadn’t. But now here I was, six years later, realizing that I had almost willingly left a man to die. And for all I knew, he was dead at this
very minute, dead because I had let him bleed for those moments of my indecision.
As the wind whipped around me, I gripped my trousers in my hands where the dried patches of blood lay like the stain of sin, and I knew I couldn’t live like this. Not like this. My conscience would eat me up inside until there was nothing left of me. I needed peace in my soul like I needed water, and I was afraid I’d dry up and die if I didn’t find it.
In my mind, a sort of chant started. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t live like this. I can’t. I lifted my face to the heavens and cried out loud, “I can’t!”
And then clear as a bell, I knew who could.
I’d heard it a million times before. I’d heard it from Momma and Daddy, from Miss Cleta. I’d heard it from the minister at church, especially on Easter Sunday. I’d even read about it in books. But it hadn’t ever meant a single thing to me. Until this night, mired in the bleakness of my soul, with the moonlight illuminating my murky heart. That’s when it all suddenly went inside me like it had sunk into my pores and found its way into my bloodstream.
I tipped my face upward and whispered one word. “Please.”
It was the most important little word I’d ever said. It was a word I’d used a million times in my life, but it had never held so much meaning before in all my days. God must have known exactly what I meant by that one word because the second I spoke it, my heart dropped all its weight like someone had reached in and pulled all the burdens out.
I guess someone had.
Chapter 21
Two days later, Cole Mundy’s momma found him hanging from the rafters of their barn.
Only this wasn’t any lynching. Cole Mundy had hanged himself from those rafters because he couldn’t live with what he’d done. I imagine sometimes what must have gone through his mind the days after he watched Noah Jarvis breathe his last up there in that old tree by the roadside. I imagine he saw those desperate, pleading eyes every time he closed his own, that his dreams were haunted by pictures of a young boy’s body twitching until all life left it.
I had an idea of how he felt, after all. I’d come about as close as he had to having blood on my hands, and I knew what it was like to carry guilt around like heavy chains that wrap you up until you can’t move or breathe without the hurt of it all.
I never thought to see the day when I’d feel sorry for Cole Mundy, but I did now. I’d walked a little bit in his shoes, and I wished he’d found the forgiveness I had. I wished his heart had been washed clean instead of beating its last there in the barn.
The day of his funeral was sunny, a day like any other. It was more a day for a picnic than a day for mourning. I stood at that graveside listening to the minister’s voice like it was in the background of my mind because all I heard was Cole’s momma crying her whole life out onto the dry summer dirt.
I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to cry at Cole Mundy’s anything, much less his funeral. Once upon a time, I’d have thought his funeral should be a national holiday to celebrate with fireworks and gifts. But I didn’t see things so much the same as I once had anymore.
With the minister’s voice just a buzz in my ear, I looked around at the people standing at Cole’s graveside. Klan, most of them, men who spent much of their time hating and thinking of ways to act out that hate. I didn’t wonder why like I used to. I understood it more now. Even though I still wanted to see them all behind bars for what they did, I understood that the sort of hate they lived with came from all sorts of different starts but ended up looking mostly the same in the end; all it really came down to was they didn’t have the benefit of knowing what I knew now. Like Gemma said, without Jesus, we don’t do much but sin and mess things up.
Cole’s momma reached down to pick up a handful of Virginia clay and struggled to get back up, her body was so racked with the ache of loss. And as I watched her, I wondered how many more mommas would ache from the loss of a child as long as we had our same troubles here in Calloway. Would we forever have the white folks and the colored folks living on opposite sides, just waiting for violence to erupt?
Just as always, I didn’t know. No one but God did, my daddy would say if I posed that question to him, like he always did when I asked something about mankind that was beyond any man’s ability to answer. I was learning more and more every day that part of knowing who God was had to do with remembering that we’re awfully small compared to Him and there’s no way on His whole green earth we’ll ever know why He does things the way He does.
But sometimes He gives us a little bit of a hint. And that summer day, as we all stood at the graveside of a man who had taken his own life rather than live with who he had become, God saw fit to bring some hope our way.
It was the sudden break of the minister’s endless drone that snapped me out of my reverie. I looked up to see every eye pointed toward the Mundys’ field. I turned my own eyes that way and my knees nearly buckled at the sight of Noah Jarvis’s momma weaving her way slowly through the tall grass, her hair done up just so, wearing what must have been her best Sunday dress.
Thoughts coursed through my mind over what might be about to take place. This wasn’t only a colored woman coming upon the funeral of a Klansman attended by other Klansmen; it was the momma of the boy those Klansmen had taken away from her.
There wasn’t one other colored soul even close to this place. Even Gemma had stayed behind for fear of starting up trouble. But here came this woman, weary yet determined, struggling across the field to step foot by the grave of the man who had helped kill her son. Daddy stood by my side, and I reached out to take his arm. My eyes darted around to see the reaction of the other men, but I didn’t have to see it to know what it would be. They all looked murderous. But nobody made a move or said a word.
I’d learned a good thing or two about miracles of late. After all, the change in me was miracle enough for my whole lifetime. But I saw another one that day as those men stood stock-still just watching Mrs. Jarvis come the whole long way. It was like God had put chains around them and sealed their lips shut.
Mrs. Jarvis stopped at the edge of the grave, staring at Cole Mundy’s momma the whole time, and then she stooped down and swept up a handful of dirt, letting it sift through her fingers onto the casket.
I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if she’d meant it as a good-riddance to men of his kind. I didn’t know if she’d lost all her senses and gone stark raving mad. But I wasn’t left in doubt for long.
Mrs. Jarvis walked past us with such determined strides, we all backed up to give her plenty of room so she didn’t slip into the hole with Cole Mundy’s body. She slowed her steps in front of Cole’s momma and stood there for a few seconds that seemed to me like an hour. Then she wrapped her arms around her and gave her the kind of hug that looked like it came straight from God Himself.
Cole’s momma started to sob so violently, the humid air echoed with it. Her knees buckled and she let herself fall so hard against Noah’s momma, I didn’t think Mrs. Jarvis would be able to stand up straight.
But stand up straight she did. And as we all stood by and watched that colored woman consoling the white woman, sharing the pain of losing their sons, there wasn’t much that a body with any decency could do but join them in their tears.
As I stood watching them, my legs shook beneath me, and I was thankful that for the first time in my life I understood something of what forgiveness was. After all, I’d been given a heaping dose of it myself.
My momma stood on the other side of Daddy, gripping his hand like a vise, but she dropped it and moved to take a spot alongside the two grieving mothers, no doubt feeling deep inside what she would feel if she’d lost one of her own girls.
I’d seen a lot in my life, enough to know that people are funny to figure out. There isn’t often a time they do what a body figures on them doing. And now in the smothering heat, with the finality of death staring us all in the face, I watched in awe as, one by one, the women of Calloway t
ook up vigil with a white woman and a colored woman.
Death may be painful and final, but I discovered that day how a door closing on one life can open up new life for others. As those women all huddled there, joined by the ties of motherhood, I began to believe that Calloway might just find a way to win out over all the hate that had poisoned it for years.
The husbands of most of those women stood by solemnly, heads bowed, but a few of the men watched the scene with hard faces, gripping their wives’ wrists until they wrenched away. Three of those men succeeded in keeping their women back; only two of them had no need to use force because their womenfolk were just as hard of heart as they were.
Those two couples left in disgust, holding their heads high as though their dignity was far above all those they left behind.
But it wouldn’t have mattered if they’d cursed us all up one side and down the other. Because that day, in that lonely old field, life in Calloway changed for most of us, and for the first time in all my days, I saw the hand of God working . . . and knew it for what it was.
Chapter 22
It would be a fairy story to say that all things bad in Calloway up and flew off that day, just like it would be a fairy story for me to say that I became a perfect angel the day I asked Jesus for forgiveness. But I can tell you one thing that happened at that funeral: people saw forgiveness up close and personal, and there just isn’t a whole lot a body can say or do to destroy that. Some things just stand too strong to be knocked down.
Maybe the raw emotion that poured out all that day didn’t seep into everyone’s heart, but it did enough to get rid of the Klan in our parts. I don’t know if any of those men ever saw the error in their ways or if it was just that their wives threatened to get out the shotgun if they didn’t stop parading around town like white-robed fools, but one way or another we didn’t see hide nor hair of them in our parts again. Oh, if I ever went crazy and had a hankering to hunt down some Klan, I’d find them easy enough over in the next town. But for all the rest of my years in Calloway, I never laid eyes on one again.
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