“Okay.”
“What else is on your mind?” she asks me.
“You mean you don’t know already?”
She chuckles to herself. “Believe it or not, I don’t know everything.”
Maybe she don’t know everything, but she’s not wrong. There’s more I need to know. I guess there always will be.
“What’s the point of Jubilation?”
“The point?”
“Why do we have these abilities? What are they for?”
“Survival. You know that as well as I do.”
I feel my jaw clenching in anger, and I give myself a moment to get calm. I don’t know exactly how to put into words what I’m feeling, and it’s fucking frustrating.
“Survival,” I begin. “Specifically, the survival of a handful of select colored women, right? This is something we’ve had since slave days, right?”
“Before.”
“Uh-huh. To fend off predators. Usually white ones. Am I getting this all right?”
“Yes, Evalene.”
“I used everything I had. You used everything you had. Mama stepped up with everything she had. You brought spirits back from the dead, and we STILL couldn’t save Clay,” I cry. “What. Is. The. POINT?”
She presses her hands together in her lap and gazes out the window.
“I don’t know,” she says quietly. “And I didn’t bring ’em back alone. You had a hand in that too.”
I wipe the tears away from my cheeks. I’m tired a cryin’, but seems like cryin’ ain’t tired a me.
“We’re human, granddaughter. There’s only so much we can do.”
Again, I think of my human flaws. If only I’d waited for Clay that night…
“He’d still be here if I hadn’t messed up in the first place!”
“You didn’t put a gun in that demon’s hands,” she says sharply.
“There’s no joy in it, Grammie Atti,” I tell her. “It only brings pain.”
“Not true, but you hurtin’, so it feels true.” She stands up and walks through the beaded curtains into the kitchen. I hear her moving things around in there.
She reappears with her arms full of junk, which she drops on the coffee table. She separates out about a dozen tiny poppets all wearing some shade of purple, like the haints. Despite their grotesque faces with sewn-on lips and Xs for eyes, there’s something almost sweet about them. She arranges ’em in a group on the table.
“Imagine that these ladies are all of us. Don’t ask me how many of us there are, cuz I couldn’t tell ya, but there are a lot of us.”
Then she takes a handful a bleached chicken bones and makes a triangle around the poppets.
“Now. Here are some threats from the white world. They come in numerous forms, but these represent direct danger.”
She stares hard at the ladies on the table until they all stand up and attack the bones, tearing at them, crushing them, sending them flying in every direction. My mouth could probably catch flies, cuz I know it’s just hangin’ open in awe. Whatever she’s doin’ here is clearly advanced.
“They did well, didn’t they? Predators didn’t have a chance. But what about now?” She picks up a canister and pours a thick circle of sugar around the dolls. At once they all collapse, lifeless again.
“They’re small, but imagine each grain a sugar is anyone who wants to keep whites at the top and us at the bottom. This can be the grand wizard a the KKK, a sweet white lady who won’t let you use her toilet, the white person who claims to be your friend but looks the other way when you’re in trouble or somebody tells a nigger joke, or—and this is the saddest of all—a colored person who hates her skin so much, she’d betray you or me for the approval of anybody white. We are surrounded by multitudes that want to keep things the way they are. We can’t overpower the whole world,” she explains.
I stare at the mess of sugar on her table. The poppets look like defeated corpses.
“So. Our magic will never be enough. They’ll always win,” I say.
“You think Virgil Hampton considered himself a winner?” she snaps. I look up at her. She’s remindin’ me that I’m a murderer, and I don’t need remindin’. I feel bad and ashamed, because I feel no remorse for taking his life.
I shake my head.
“What I’m saying is we have the power to save lives and we do, but there are no guarantees. Sometimes it ain’t gonna work out the way we want it to.”
“Mama said somethin’ like that about God.”
Grammie Atti sighs, with a slight roll of her eyes. “Yeah, well a broken clock is right twice a day.”
“Are we broken?”
“No magic is perfection, Evvie. It’s just another part a life. You will not win every battle. Any victory is a gift to be cherished.”
I knew she wouldn’t have a definitive answer. How could she? I can’t explain it, but I feel better talkin’ it over with her anyway.
“And think about it. If we could make every blessed thing happen exactly the way we want it to, wouldn’t we be runnin’ the goddamn planet?”
“Yeah. I guess so,” I admit.
“Don’t try to shut it outta your life like your mother. Goin’ that route’ll make you unhappy and keep you that way. Find a way to live with it,” she says.
I nod and stand. Feels like it’s time I should go, but the shit on the table irritates me.
“Grammie, where do you keep your washcloths?”
“Oh please, you ain’t a maid,” she says. I bend over anyhow to pick up the poppets, but she grabs my hand.
“Sorry. I won’t touch ’em,” I say.
Grammie Atti looks at me in a funny way, like she’s just noticin’ somethin’.
“You had a rabbit tappin’ on you?”
“Yes! It happened right outside today, and it happened like two months ago too! What does that mean?”
She stares at me for a minute, but doesn’t say anything.
“Please don’t tell me it’s bad luck. I can’t handle any more,”
