Jilo Read Online Free

“That he did.”

THREE
    Cousins, uncles, and aunties were spread out around Jesse’s mama’s house and yard. The older folk, those around Nana Tuesday’s age, sat crammed tight inside the darkened living room, taking their turns at soughing, snoring, and fanning themselves as one reminiscence after another rose up and got passed around, either prompting smiles or birthing discord depending on the memory and how it was either recalled or misremembered. Family members his mama’s age and younger had taken to the out-of-doors, sprawling out on blankets beneath the shade afforded by the tall oaks at the rear edge of the property, praying for a breeze.
    Jesse’s aunties by blood hovered around the kitchen, getting under his mama’s feet, arguing over the cooking. Aunties through marriage, the wives of his father’s kin, knew better than to join the fray, choosing instead to watch over the children, both the little sleeping ones like Jilo, and the wild, older ones, who were roughhousing and running around, shrieking with laughter until someone would remind them of the passing they’d come to honor. For a time, the laughter would fall silent, replaced by an unnatural, though blessedly temporary, stillness.
    Jesse didn’t like the quiet. When it got quiet he could hear his family’s whispers.
    That his mama owned this place outright stood as a matter of pride for the whole family. Not many folk around Savannah, white or colored, owned their own houses, and this one even had enough land for a vegetable garden. Jesse’s daddy had been a cook on one of the Central Railroad’s executive cars. He’d worked for years to squirrel away the money for this house, not wanting to marry until he had a home for his wife. That was why he’d married a woman sixteen years his junior. “I was his queen,” his mama often said of his daddy, “and this place here,” she would add with a tone of solemn pride, “was his castle.”
    Just a bit south of the cemetery, the house was bounded by a creek and a thick cluster of live oaks and pines, which, to Jesse’s childhood imagination, seemed to go on forever. He knew this house and its land would come to him one day, after his own mama died. Now, though, he and his family lived in the city’s new projects in Yamacraw, joined hips and shoulders to their neighbors with barely the room to spit between. His mama wanted them here with her, but, much to Jesse’s shame, blood between Betty and his mama was bad.
    The silent glares of disapproval his mama cast at Betty were proof enough of her disappointment in Jesse’s choices. She’d sacrificed to get him into the university so that he could become a lawyer or a doctor. Not the dockworker he’d become to support his young wife. Betty refused to live under his mother’s roof, where, to be fair, she had never been made to feel welcome. Instead, she used the dusty and crowded streets of Yamacraw to remind him of his failures without ever having to say a word.
    By any right, the front porch should be sagging under the weight of his extended family, but Jesse sat alone on the freshly lacquered white swing, beneath the fading haint-blue overhang. His kin was either avoiding him or giving him breathing space. Maybe it came down to a little bit of both. Jesse didn’t really give a good goddamn which it was. He’d chosen this seat for a reason, and that was to keep an eye on the bend of the road in anticipation of Betty’s return.
    The screen door cried out as Aunt Miriam, his Uncle Louis’s widow, came out onto the porch, carrying a plate covered with rice and a shrimp-and-okra gumbo. A thick slice of golden cornbread crowned the feast. “Your mama sent this out to you. She wants you to eat.”
    Jesse didn’t want to eat. His pride was hurting. Still, his stomach rumbled at the scent of ginger, garlic, and bay leaf riding beneath the hot sweetness of cinnamon. Biting his lip to keep it from quivering, he shook his head and waved her