“Everybody know this here crossroad belong to Mother Jilo.” A voice spoke from the darkness. “A precious little white girl like you should think twice before she go digging around here. She might not like what she turn up.”
I scanned the bushes, sensing menace but seeing nothing. “Is that you, Mother? I’ve come to see you,” I called out in the direction of the voice. “I need your help.”
Her brittle laughter preceded her footfalls. “Jilo thought her help was beneath you Taylors. That right,” she said stepping out from the trees and onto the moonlit road. “Jilo recognize you. She know who you are. You Mercy Taylor.”
Mother Jilo herself stood there before me, dressed mostly in black now, with a scarf of a dark but indeterminate color tied around her head. An aged leather satchel, kind of like an old doctor’s bag, was clutched in one gnarled hand, and the other held a squirming burlap sack. She sat the satchel on the ground, but held tight to the sack. “Jus’ what kind of ‘help’ you wantin’ from Jilo?” she asked, circling me counterclockwise, keeping her eyes tightly on me. “ ’Cause, girl, only thing Jilo inclined to help a Taylor to is an early grave.”
I turned in time with her movements, determined to keep her in front of me. “I need you to work a spell for me, Mother. I can pay,” I said, but she started shaking and waving her free hand at me.
Laughter tore through her, and her chest started to heave and rattle until she coughed up phlegm. “A high and mighty Taylor witch wanting to hire Mother Jilo to work juju?” She gasped out the words, punctuating them with more mucus. She coughed again then caught her wind. “So tell Jilo now,” she said, her eyes burning bright with the desire to do harm, “who is you wanting to curse?”
“I-I,” I stammered, “I’m not wanting to curse anyone.”
“Well what is it you-you-you is wanting to do then?” She mocked me. She looked up at the sky. “The moon be headin’ to dark. You got your red head here nosin’ around lookin’ for Jilo. And it after midnight. If you ain’t come for cursin’, you must not know what the hell you doin’.” She paused. “So you tell Jilo. What you doin’ here at her crossroad?”
“I came to see you. I want you to work a spell for me. I can pay,” I repeated myself. Here, in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, standing before Savannah’s busiest root doctor, I felt my cheeks heat with embarrassment. I couldn’t look the woman in her eyes. Instead, my focus fell to the grimy ground near her feet. “There’s a boy,” I began.
“Of course they a boy,” she said. “They always a boy when a girl your age come to Jilo. I seen him. That pretty young man your sister been leading around by the nose lately. You in love with him, ain’t you? You want Mother to help you steal him from your sister. You want Mother to work you a love spell,” she said, stretching the word “love” out until it was something dirty. “Little miss got an itch she need scratched.” With her free hand, Jilo rubbed her crotch and laughed again, the croaking sound scaring an owl from a nearby limb.
The old woman was right. I loved Jackson, my sister’s boyfriend, more than I could find the words to say…and had since the moment she’d brought him home six months ago. A mere glance from him made my pulse race and fire rush through me, and I envied my sister his touch. God, how I envied her. But I loved her too.
“No. Yes. I mean,” I stammered, but she interrupted me before I could explain.
“Now Jilo ask herself, why don’t pretty little miss just work it for herself? Just don’t want to get those dainty little hands dirty? Or don’t you want the magic to be trailed back to you? But then again,” Jilo continued, “you ain’t like the rest of your people, are you? That sister of yours. What her name?” she asked.
“Maisie,” I responded.
She acknowledged the name with a slight nod of her head. “Between you two, she got all the power, ain’t she? That mean you gotta do the work just like Mother herself.”
It was true, Maisie, my fraternal twin, was capable of performing just about any miracle she set her mind to. I couldn’t even move a pen without using my fingers. Between the two of us, Maisie had won the genetic lottery, there was no use denying it. Along with her blond hair and bottomless blue eyes, she had gotten all of the power. “It’s true,” I said. “I don’t have any power. I’m not a natural born witch.”
She moved in close to me, so close I could smell her sour breath. “Jilo ain’t no natural born witch, but you think she ain’t got no power?” she asked, her eyes fixing on me. They were black, I noticed now—the irises and pupils merged together into bottomless, burning pits. “You need her to show you what she can do?”
“No,” I responded quickly. The fear in my voice placated her, and she smiled. “It’s just that you know how to tap into the power. I don’t.”
“Girl, ain’t your family never taught you nothing?”
“They taught me that the power isn’t something you can simply draw into yourself. It’s the other way around. A true witch springs from the power. The people who borrow the power, they aren’t real witches. They can steal it from time to time, but the power escapes quickly when it’s clenched in a fist.”
“Oh, that is old Ginny Taylor talkin’ there. No doubt about it,” she said. Her gnarled hand clenched and released as if it were aching to strike out.
“You saying it isn’t true?” I asked, taking a step back.
“No, no. It true enough. That old auntie of yours, she ain’t been lyin’ to you. But it ain’t the whole picture. Just ’cause you don’t own something, don’t mean you gotta steal it. Nothin’ stopping you from borrowing it from time to time. And ’sides, Jilo ain’t never claimed to be any kind of witch.”
“But you can work magic…” I started.
“Of course Mother know how to work the magic. You ain’t gotta be no witch to work the magic. It just take a bit longer. And you gotta be willing to make a few sacrifices.” She shook the burlap sack at me and laughed again as the creature inside began to gyrate frantically. “For a girl like you, it simple enough to learn a trick or two, so why then your family not teach you like Jilo done taught herself?” She didn’t wait for a response. “Jilo tell you why. They look down on Jilo ’cause she has to borrow the power. They’d rather you be ignorant than you be like Jilo.”
I said nothing, as I knew she was right. My family, especially my great-aunt Ginny, did look down on the old woman of the crossroads. Jilo stayed silent too, coiled up as if she were waiting for me to argue with her.
The silence grew too much for me. “Ginny says your kind of magic is dangerous. That it weakens the line.”
“Oh, Jilo heard your Ginny going on about her precious line,” she said, her tension fading. “How it’s what keeps the monsters from crawling up out from under Jilo’s bed and eating her.” She chuckled. “But Jilo ain’t no little girl to scare with talk of demons.”
“They’re real—you know that, right?” I asked, modulating my voice so that she wouldn’t think I was talking down to her.