“Hi, Grammie Atti.”
“Whatcha mean ‘hi’? What’s wrong with you today?”
“He’s botherin’ me. My—what did you say it’s called?”
“Malcreant.”
“Yeah. Him. Last night he got into the house. He threatened to hurt the twins and Clay. Mama doesn’t know about this, and I need it to stop and I can’t do it myself. Whenever he’s around, I’m powerless.”
She leans back, thinking. “What did I tell you to do?”
I plop down in the chair opposite her.
“I know he took somethin’ from me, and I know what it was, but I have no earthly idea of how to take it back, and this is an emergency. I need practical magic now. Please! Pretend I’m just a client. What would tell me to do?”
Grammie adds some tobacco to her pipe and lights it. She studies me.
“You want him to stop botherin’ you? Or you want him stopped?”
I pick at my fingernails, and I really think about it. I know what she’s asking. Honestly, I’d be happy if he just left us alone, but would that mean he’d go after somebody else? I’m not sure. Still, I’m not ready to sign off on what she’s implying.
“I want the pain he’s been causing me to boomerang back to him.”
“Good. That was a test. No way in hell you ready for a death hex,” she says. She goes into the other room. I look around at her spirit cards, voodoo dolls, statues, poppets, bottles, and a mess a novelty salt and pepper shakers. She never talks to me about her trinkets. Her “tools.” I ponder all the thousands of stories Grammie Atti must’ve collected over the years and the hand she’s played in the destinies of others.
When she returns, she has two prayer candles: one white and one black.
“You have something personal a his?”
“I got some of his hair.”
“Which hair?”
“Which…? From his head!” I don’t wanna think about how I’d get any of his other hair.
She wrinkles her nose, unimpressed. “Nothin’ else?”
Dammit! I thought that’d be enough. Then I remember that I do have more.
“I have a note written in his hand,” I say. She smiles and nods when she hears this.
“Use the note with the hair. On the right day, just before twilight, light the candles. Speak what you want done, and in your mind, see it done. You know how to see now. Speak it and see it until you’ve done it enough.” She cracks her back in a way that gives me the shivers.
“How do I know when it’s enough?”
“You’ll know. Now if you don’t mind, I have some real clients comin’. The payin’ kind.”
“But wait a minute. The right day? How will I know it’s the right day?”
She sighs like I’m her idiot child she hides in the basement when company comes over.
“It’s the day when you can’t blow the flames out. That’s instinctual. You should know that.”
“Sorry, Grammie Atti.”
She pounds the table with her fist. “Quit it with the sorries! It’s weak. Don’t be sorry. Do better,” she lectures.
She hands me the candles, and I inspect them. They’re dusty and cracked, even though the wicks look like they ain’t been lit yet. These candles are old. So old, I’m worried they might not work.
“That’s all. I will see you later,” she says, pointing at that ugly cuckoo clock.
I mumble a thank-you and leave the way I came in. I’m walking back down the path to the street, and I see R. J. again.
“You still out here?” I ask him.
“Um.” He quickly stamps out his cigarette. “Yeah. Thought I could walk you to work.”
I sigh. “That’s okay. I can get there by myself.”
“Haven’t seen you hardly at all in weeks. Feels like months.”
“Just been busy,” I say, quickening my pace.
“Do you hate me?”
I stop. I really don’t have time for R. J. and his feelings. Especially now.
“Of course I don’t, R. J. I just have to get to work is all.”
“I’ve only ever been nice to you, and you treat me…” He shakes his head and looks around, like he’s searching for the right word. “Like I have no value,” he finishes.
Oh man. I didn’t know I made him feel so bad. I guess I didn’t think about how he was feelin’ at all, which is pretty unkind. “I don’t mean to be like that,” I say.
“Then why are you?”
I don’t know what to say. He doesn’t want to hear the truth. Nobody wants to hear it when it hurts.
“You can walk with me. If you want,” I concede. He does, and we don’t speak for several uncomfortable moments.
“So?”
“So, what?” I ask as if I have no idea what he’s talking about.
“So why can’t you be nice to me?”
“I guess—I was worried.”
“About what?”
“I just… I didn’t want to give you false hope.” I wish I could’ve found a better way to put that.
His pace doesn’t decrease, but his shoulders sink a bit. This is why I didn’t wanna talk about it. I don’t always know how to say things right. I meant for that to be gentle, but it didn’t come out that way.
“Those are my feelings. What you do or don’t do isn’t gonna change ’em,” he replies.
“I’m sorry, R. J. That I haven’t treated you so nicely,” I say.
“Thanks for sayin’ that.”
I expect him to walk away after my apology, but he doesn’t. I don’t know what else to say, so I ask him about his folks. They’re fine, he says, but he accuses them of bein’ too overprotective. He wants to join the actions the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee has taken around the South, but he has to wait until he graduates, cuz his parents won’t let him go now. He thinks they treat him like a child.
All this catches me off guard. I didn’t know R. J. had it in him. Demonstrators get spit on, called nigger and every other name in the book, beaten, and thrown in jail. I hope not, but I
