by Eden Royce
“Blood brothers?” I shook my real brother’s shoulder. “You’re already somebody’s brother—mine!”
“It’s not for true,” the boy said, reaching out with the knife again. “Are you stupid or something?”
That’s when Susie made a sound in her throat like a growl. “No, she’s not.”
The boy gulped, then bent down and grabbed his books before running off, back to the school gates.
“What did you do that for?” Jay said, his eyes angry. “I wanted to have a brother.”
“Why? I’m—”
“My sister. But you ain’t no boy, so you ain’t the same.” He grabbed up his books and ran off toward home, leaving me standing there with Susie.
My mouth dropped open in surprise, my heart sinking into my stomach. I knew things had gotten strange between us, but I didn’t know Jay wanted a brother. Was I not . . . enough?
“Jez?” Susie nudged me with her shoulder.
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. After all the times Mama and Doc had told me and Jay to look out for each other, after the poppet in the marsh had almost got me . . . I stood there, frozen. The poppet’s words echoed in my head. Lonely girl.
Then Susie touched my arm, turned me to face her. Her eyes looked like little flashes of lightning. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know,” I told her.
“Come on, let’s walk home.”
My bag slid down my shoulder and I hitched it up. We walked the path side by side. Birdsong accompanied us, along with the scuttle of fat-cheeked squirrels searching for nuts among the trees. I took a deep breath of sweet-hot air and blew it out. The worry about Jay was slowly flowing away, like the tide ebbing back out to sea.
Susie cocked her head in my direction but didn’t change her steps. I noticed her hair wasn’t in the usual crown of braids. It looked almost exactly like mine: parted in the middle with a Goody elastic on each plump, twisted ponytail. “Are you mad at your brother?”
I thought about it for a minute, letting the fresh wind blow over me. I could smell the last of the heavy, ripe watermelons on the vine in the fields as we passed. “More surprised? I didn’t know he wanted a brother.”
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t care about you,” Susie said.
“I know, but we—” I stopped, not sure I wanted to tell her everything in my head.
Susie looked at me with her eyebrows raised but didn’t say anything. She waited for me to speak, but I didn’t know what to say. I thought I’d found a power inside myself when I escaped that poppet in the marsh. I’d felt connected—to my ancestors, my past, and my future. This business with Jay made me think that it was my present that was the real problem.
While I walked with Susie, all I could hear was the sound of home. The wind through the live oak trees. Our shoes scuffling on the hard-packed dirt. Shirts on nearby clotheslines snapping in the wind. The splash of birds fishing in the water. Susie stayed next to me, let me walk without saying anything until I was ready. It felt comfortable. It felt good. It felt like what having a friend should feel like.
“Me and Jay used to tell each other everything,” I said finally. “Do everything together, look out for each other. We’re twins.” I looked down at my shoes as I said the words, barely missing stepping on a dead grasshopper. Ants marched all over it, on top and around, taking pieces of it home for the winter. I rubbed the goose bumps that prickled on my arms away. “I don’t know if he wants me around anymore.”
She nodded. “You feel like a part of you is gone.”
I nodded.
“I understand.” Susie sounded as sad as I was. “What about rootwork? Is there, I don’t know . . . some spell that can help you fix it?”
I hadn’t considered that. A root bag might work, but it also felt strange to think of using magic to make Jay care about me again. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still new to it. There’s a lot to learn. Do you have a sister or brother?” I asked, changing the subject.
Susie shook her head. “That’s one of the reasons I’m glad I found you to sit with at lunch this year.”
I smiled. “Me too.”
“Can I ask you something?”
“I guess,” I answered, shrugging. “About what?”
“Rootwork.” Before I could say anything, she spoke again, quickly. “I’m not going to be nasty, I promise! It’s just, I can’t help but hear kids talking about your magic, what your family does. Some of them are mean about it, but it’s not like their families do magic, so how would they know?” She met my eyes. “So I wanted to ask you personally.”
This was more than anyone else at school had ever done. Asking me about root, instead of joking about something they didn’t understand.
“Sure, you can ask.”
“What is root? Is it real magic?” Susie asked.
I didn’t answer at first. What should I tell her? She wasn’t family, but wasn’t it a good idea to try and educate people who didn’t know about root but wanted to? Wouldn’t that help to fix the problems I’d been having, the ones Mama and Doc had spoken about all rootworkers having? That no one—not even other Negroes—understood what it was we did?
I thought about it for a long time without talking; soon we’d be at the road that led to my house. Susie kicked at a mound of fine dirt, and a flood of reddish ants poured out, but she walked through them without a blink. “My family doesn’t do root magic,” she said, like she was confessing something. “They don’t even talk about it. Except to tell me to stay away from anyone who does it because they can hurt me. But I don’t think you’d ever hurt anyone.”
“Is that why you can’t have me over to your house?”
Susie sighed. “Yes, I’m sorry.”
“Thank you for being honest with me,” I told her. “But you don’t have anything to worry about. Root is . . . a part of my family, part of our history. A connection to the earth and our ancestors.” I didn’t know if I should tell Susie much more than that, about haints and boo-hags, and all the other strange things I was learning about, the strange things I was learning to do. Maybe someday.
“But is it real magic?” she asked, looking at me with her black patent-leather eyes.
I thought about what Doc said to me and Jay when he first told us he was going to teach us root. “It is to me,” I said and smiled.
We walked faster the closer we got to home, where the live oak trees spread their branches wide, giving cooling relief from the sun’s embrace. At least I think we did, because the time seemed to fly away faster than usual. When we got to the edge of the marsh near our farm, where Susie usually stopped, she kept walking with me.
“Do you want to come over?” I asked. I could see Doc’s cabin and our haint-blue house from where I was.
When Susie looked up, her steps halted. “No, not today, Jez. I only wanted to walk with you a little longer.”
“Sure you don’t want to come in? My mama probably won’t be home, but we could have a snack.”
“Sorry, I can’t. I have to leave now,” she said. Tilting her head toward me, she waved. “See you later, okay?”
Susie seemed to glide when she moved away. After a few steps, she turned back and gave me a strong hug. Then she ran off, disappearing into the thick stalks of corn bordering one of the farms that led around the opposite side of the marsh.
15
I watched the place where Susie had been, then turned around. I walked slowly the rest of the way home, knowing Jay would be there. Now that Susie was gone, my anger had popped back up, like weeds after a hard rain. I didn’t want to see him right now.
I jumped over a black-feathered chicken in our yard and stomped up the front steps and inside. I was right that Mama wasn’t home. As I put my books down on the table, Jay cut his eyes at me and went back outside, letting the screen door slam behind him.
If he wanted to be like that, fine. I grabbed the metal canister of rice Mama kept on the counter, the shaking grains sounding like a rattlesnake�
�s warning. Mama was probably still at her stall; she’d be home soon to start dinner, but I didn’t care. I was hungry, more than I could ever remember being, and I wanted a bowl of rice now. I pried the tight lid open, working it back and forth. A powdery smell hit my nose, along with a light puff of rice dust.
Before I could start cooking, I heard a voice and froze.
“I’m telling.” Jay stood in the doorway, a slight sweat stain ringing the neck and underarms of his shirt. A smudge of dirt ran from his front pocket to his waist. “You know we ain’t supposed to eat anything this close to dinner.”
I jerked back, mad at myself for not thinking Jay might come back before anyone else. I put the lid on the canister. “Don’t you dare tell on me, James Turner.”
He laughed, his mouth wide open like a barn door. “Oh yeah? Why not?”
“If you do, then I’m gonna tell about you and that boy with the knife.”
His laughter stopped and he almost turned white under his brown skin. “You wouldn’t.”
“I would so!”
“That’s wrong. You a mean, hateful sister.”
“No I’m not!” I yelled so loud my throat hurt.
“Or you jealous, that’s what it is,” he said, sticking his nose up in the air. “Jealous because I got lots of friends and you ain’t got none.”
“You never walk home with me after school. You’re never there for me at school.” I shoved him and he rocked back against the kitchen counter, but he didn’t fall. “Maybe that’s what Mama was talking about, with woman trouble. I get bullied every day for working root, but you’re my brother, and no one gives you a hard time.”
He didn’t push me back. He just rolled his eyes. “That’s because I got friends.”
“Well, I have one now too. Susie.”
“Ooooh! One friend. So what?”
I was hurt and angry all at once. And I was a little scared. Was Jay going to turn his back on me too? “Of all people, you know what the other kids are like. How could you forget about me?”
Jay sighed in that heavy way he had before he knew what to say. But I didn’t have any patience for it. I punched him in the arm with all my strength. His face was furious, but he didn’t hit me back like he usually would.
“You’re not gonna hit me back?”
He shook his head slowly. “I shouldn’t hit you because you only a girl.”
I saw red, I was so mad. I jumped on him, sending him to the floor. He pushed me hard. I kicked out and my foot scraped his cheek. Jay made a sound like a growling dog as he scrambled up and ran at me. I swung at him, and he ducked out of the way, but he smacked his head against the counter. I laughed until he threw the canister of rice at me. Then it was my turn to duck.
The canister flew across the room and hit a cabinet, spraying rice grains all over Mama’s clean floor.
“Uh-oh,” we said at the same time.
That took the fight out of us. We both stood there, breathing hard, staring at the wash of rice grains that had tumbled out of the canister and spread to almost every corner of the kitchen. I pressed my back against the counter and slid down to sit on the floor. “We never used to have secrets from each other, Jay. We used to have them from other people.”
“Okay, okay.” He sat down on the floor across from me and ran his hands over his face like Doc did when he was thinking really hard on a problem. “It’s just I been—I don’t know how to talk to you about this stuff.”
“You can tell me anything. We’re brother and sister. Even more, we’re twins. That’s supposed to be special.”
“I know. I’m sorry, Jezzie,” he said.
“Me too. I’m really sorry.” I felt sick to my stomach. My belly churned from worrying. This fight with Jay, on top of everything else, left me feeling so cold inside. I shivered thinking about Lettie, Deputy Collins, and that voice in the marsh. Was I a witch? Was I evil? “I just want us to be like we were before. Telling each other things. Being friends.”
He rubbed his arm where I’d hit him. “I want that too.”
“Okay,” I said. “Does that mean I can ask about your . . . your blood brother?”
He shrugged, then leaned back against the other side of the counter. Our legs both stuck out in front of us, making an L shape. I didn’t press him about it, because he could be stubborn and not want to talk at all. But I was so curious—nosy, Jay would call it.
“Only if I can ask you about Susie.”
“I guess so. She’s new this year, in my class. She’s been friendly to me since the first day, and we sit together most lunchtimes. She’s . . .” I hesitated, realizing I didn’t know a lot about her. Not what school she went to before, or who her family was, even though it seemed to me they probably had money. All I knew was that she was a little strange, like me, and she didn’t seem to care about what any other kids said. After a moment, I could only come up with a not-good-enough word. “. . . nice,” I finished.
“Yeah. Tony is nice too.”
“Mmm,” I said, to keep him talking.
“I dunno,” he said, lying back on the floor. “Tony asked me and I been knowing him, so . . . I figured why not?”
He still looked like my brother, but there was something in his face now that made him look a little older. I was fascinated and terrified and I wondered if he could see the same changes in me.
“I don’t want us to grow apart,” I blurted out. “I still want us to be close, even after we grow up. Like Mama and Doc.”
“But Doc didn’t come here until after Daddy was gone, when Mama needed help. We only had stories about him before that.”
“Do you think he didn’t like Daddy?” I asked.
“How could anybody not like him? Nobody in their right mind, anyway.”
“Suppose,” I said, my body feeling light and heavy at the same time, “suppose our dad left for a special reason. Like he was a warrior who got called for a mission and he had to go save the world.”
“Like, a secret mission?”
“Yeah.” I pulled my legs under me and sat up. “We would have to cover up any signs of Daddy, so the bad guys wouldn’t threaten us because we’re his family.”
“Oooh! Maybe he’s a spy.”
“Or maybe someone like Dr. King.”
He laughed hard now. “You think Martin Luther King is our daddy? That he secretly run around calling himself Danny Turner, out here in South Carolina? You crazy.”
“No, not that he’s actually Dr. King. That he’s someone who—” I lay back on the floor and looked up at the ceiling, frustrated. “You don’t understand.”
“No, no, I get it. I’m just messing with you. I think the same thing sometimes. Like Daddy had to leave without telling us anything to protect us.” His voice sounded far away. “But other times . . . I don’t think that’s what really happened.”
I stayed on my back, then put my bare feet up against the wall. My toes were straight, but dirty. The cuts from scratching mosquito bites I got over the summer were now fading thanks to the cocoa butter Mama made me rub on my legs at night. She said no one would want a girl with scarred-up legs. I used the butter to make her happy, but I really didn’t care about anyone wanting me. Maybe when I grew up, but now I had more important things to think of.
“Then what do you think he is?” I asked Jay.
“Maybe he was like Doc. A magic man. A witch doctor.”
“Was?” I asked, sitting up fast. I wished I hadn’t, because the whole room started spinning and I felt my stomach twist. Good thing we hadn’t had any dinner yet.
“He might be dead, Jezzie,” he said. “We don’t know.”
Jay shook his head, and watching it move didn’t help my dizziness. I’d never thought of him as dead before. My stomach had felt like it was a used trash bag, and someone was crunching it up in their fist. Now it felt like they were stretching and shaking it out. I shuddered.
My brother must have known what I was feeling. He smiled. “It’s nice to think of h
im alive, though. Fighting bad guys like a hero.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “You have blood on your face.”
“And your dress got a rip.”
Jay was right. I’d have to sew it up really fast. “We better get this rice and us cleaned up before Mama gets home.”
“Too late for that now.” Mama’s voice boomed across the room, filling my chest up with sound.
16
“What in the world were you two thinking? Fighting like street cats!”
I looked at Jay, but he was staring at his hands. I was surprised he hadn’t already said it was my idea. And I wasn’t going to admit that to Mama.
“Huh?” she prompted. “Neither one of you got a thing to say? Fighting in here while I’m busting my hump at that market. And you two are eleven years old!”
“We already worked it out. It’s over. We’re friends again, right?”
Jay nodded. “Right.”
“Were you going to eat rice instead of your dinner? I’m sure that was you, Jezebel. You know better.” She put her hands on her hips, and one of her feet tapped an impatient rhythm. “Never in my life have I seen the like. What I ought to do is whip both of your tails.”
I prayed she wouldn’t do that; I already felt bad enough. Plus I was hungry. So hungry I couldn’t think straight. I sat there waiting to see what else was going to happen.
“Well, get to cleaning this rice up, you two.” She gave me the broom and Jay the dustpan, then wiped her hands on her apron. “Lord Jesus, give me strength.”
We went to work sweeping up the rice. Since Mama said her floor was clean enough to eat off, she made us put the grains in a bag to save them, while she boiled fresh rice and reheated okra and tomato soup. We were almost finished when Doc came in.
“Did I miss the dinner call?” he asked, scanning the empty tin of rice on the table.
“No, I just gave the kids something to do to keep them from killing each other.”
