Jayla follows. “He was protecting the people in Loot’s place. Don’t be mad.”
“Mad? If he wasn’t Ma’s favorite, I’d knock him straight out.”
Jayla tilts her head and gives Charles ayeah, rightlook.
Tired of hearing his mouth, I close the distance between us and get right in his face. “Is that a threat? Test me, and I’ll knock you out.”
“Calm down, twin.” Jayla pulls my arm, yanking me back. We all know Charles is just talking mess. He’s the brains in the fam. I’m the muscle.
“Look, I wasn’t trying to fight,” he admits.
“Nah, you were trying,” I reply.
“I-it’s dangerous to travel alone,” he stammers. “You could have been shot or even killed. When Uncle Joe went out by himself, we had no idea where he disappeared to till twelve years later when we read about his death in an old newspaper archive. If you died back in 1904, where would that leave Ma? All of us? Your actions affect more than just you, Malcolm—”
Yeah, but if anything happened to me, Jayla would go through heaven and hell to fix it. “If I didn’t do anything, they would’ve died.” I head back to the stairs.
“They’re already dead!” Charles shouts.
“I’m saving people, so you can save the lecture. I ain’t got time for it,” I yell, before stomping away and up to my room to sleep off Loot’s moonshine and the night.
SPLASH!
“What the hell!” I sit up in bed, shaking. Freezing-cold water drips down my face. My sheets are wet and stuck to me. I look over. A figure stands between a hazy Tupac poster and a poster of the Roots. My eyes adjust to the light, and I see Charles holding a bucket.
“Are you serious?” I shout, my mind waking up and realizing what this jerk has done. My black velvet bedspread looks like wet dog fur. I spring out of bed ready to fight.
Jayla rushes through the doorway and blocks me.
Charles scrambles out of the room.
“Big-Mama wanna see us,” Jayla says. Her cat-eye glasses glisten in the light. Behind them, her brown doll-like face is stern. Her eyes are colored with blue eye shadow, and rhinestones are stuck by her lashes. She got on blue lipstick, too. And for some reason, she’s wearing a metallic silver catsuit.Did she go somewhere this early?
“Ma-a-an,” I say, trying to get around her. “Grandma needs to see me after I lay hands on him!”
“Now.” She puts a firm palm on my chest.
I glance at the tattoos on her hands as steam clouds up around her thinfingers. She presses me back. Hard. “Look.” Jayla takes her cell phone out of her pocket, swipes at the black screen, and points it in my face. I know she’s trying to get my mind off fighting, but curiosity makes me glance down anyway.
“There’s nothing online about the folks in the juke joint dying anymore,” she says.
A smile spreads on my lips.
“Bet you feel like a room without a roof, huh?” Jayla adds. “You look about as happy as Pharrell Williams. You should be. I went to the library. No record of it in the archives or microfilm there either. We did it, Malcolm. All those folks are gone die when they’re old now.”
“And Loot?” I ask, hopeful.
She shakes her head. “The Klan conjured another reason to kill him.”
My shoulders sag, and my stomach knots. “Ma-a-an.” I’m sad, but not surprised. We’ve run into things we couldn’t fix before. But we keep trying to win this brutal cosmic game against fate.
“Hurry up,” Jayla says. “You know Big-Mama don’t like waiting.”
I put on black jeans and a matching shirt along with my vintage Jordans before I head downstairs.
I find Ma and the family seated around our long mahogany table. Ma’s dark hair is piled in a bun. The gold feathers at the base make it look like a dark rosebud. Matching jewels grip her neck, and a dress made of black feathers clings to her. Clearly, Jayla helped dress her today.
Ma’s light brown face breaks into a smile when she spots me. She’s been cooking again. There’s cheese eggs, pancakes, French toast, bacon, grits, biscuits and gravy, and all kind of eats spread out, surrounded by gold candlesticks with black flames that flicker and shine. So I ignore Charles’s ugly mug and sit down next to Ma, who hands me a plate.
