“Why, yes, indeed it is,” the elder Maguire said with a broad smile. “I knew your mama, Tuesday, well, my dear.” May forced herself not to react. The day of her mama’s funeral, Miriam had suggested the younger Maguire might have come to engage her mama’s assistance, but this was the first she’d heard for sure there was a connection between her mama and this man. Maguire reached up and adjusted his wire-frame spectacles. “And you are a picture-perfect copy of her.” He let out a laugh, but it came from his chest, not his belly where any good laugh should come from. “Yes, I knew Mother Tuesday well.” He paused. “Or as well as I reckon anyone could. As a matter of fact, our two families go way back,” he said, shaking his head and casting a satisfied glance at his son before returning his focus to May. “You do know, don’t you? My people used to own yours.” The words hung there between them.
May’s mouth went dry as her lips trembled but failed to find the words. Her entire body shook with the effort. “Pardon me, sir—” her voice came out sounding odd to her own ears, like a voice from a scratchy recording, “—but that was a long time ago.”
“Oh, not so long ago, really, May. Not in the grand scheme.” His expression softened and his focus fell to an invisible point between them, almost like he was remembering the slave times with a fond heart.
In her own mind’s eye, she saw herself grasping a knife and running it across this man’s throat in one quick deep slash, sending a shower of his life’s blood all over the white tablecloth and Venetian-red carpeting. The image had come unbidden, and she wished she could say it horrified her. But it lingered, and she didn’t feel horrified. She turned it around in her mind like she might turn a smooth pebble in her hand before sending it skimming across a pond’s surface. No, she felt no horror. What she felt was soiled, corrupted. This man, his words, his actions, his very thoughts, they were an infectious disease, and he was a malevolent carrier who sought to poison all those around him.
May managed to push the image of Maguire’s pale corpse from her mind, praying to be cleansed of the taint this man had put on her soul. She forced herself to stifle her rage. Not for the first time, and she knew not for the last one either, but she felt this might possibly be the most trying attempt she’d ever need face. May nodded and lowered her eyes, not daring to let her gaze meet his.
He motioned toward a chair across the table from him. “Sit,” he said. “Join me. Would you like some coffee? Shall I have Porter here fetch you a cup?” May’s eyes flashed at her boss, who looked as shocked as she felt—and full of quiet rage, besides. Maguire seemed to take note of his resentment. “You know that is the origin of your name, don’t you, son? Porter? One might even say you were born to fetch for your betters.”
“Oh, no, sir!” May said, astonished. “I could never . . .” She paused, hoping to find a tone that would avoid offending Mr. Maguire, but still placate her boss. “This beautiful room is for gracious white folk such as yourself.” She forced the biggest possible smile. “And Mr. Porter,” she tossed a quick glance in his direction, “he’s my boss, sir. I couldn’t let him go fetching anything for me. It wouldn’t be fitting. I know my place . . .” Her words died in the air, cut off by a twinge of the same anger she’d felt the night before. Why shouldn’t she sit here? Why shouldn’t she let that white boy who wasn’t half her age and who never did a lick of real work bring her coffee?
She caught herself, but it was too late; Maguire had picked up on her thoughts, had read them in her eyes maybe. A tight smile curled on his lips. “I insist.” He motioned again with his hand toward the empty chair. “Sit.”
May felt her knees weaken. She certainly could bear sitting down, but somehow she knew this was a trap.
“But Mr. Maguire,” Porter began, protesting for her. “We can’t have a colored sitting in here. It just isn’t done. This is a whites-only establishment.” May wondered at the pride she heard in his voice as he made this pronouncement. “Always has been, always will be. I’m afraid I cannot allow it.”
“You”—Maguire turned the word into a barb—cannot allow it?” Maguire tilted back in his chair and laughed. This time his laugh came from his belly. “If I say the woman sits, she sits. Afterwards, you can buy a new chair. You can buy a new table. You can burn this whole goddamned hotel to the ground and build it anew. And you can send me the bill, but by God, you’d better never contradict me again. You hear?”
Sterling never said a word—May reflected that perhaps he didn’t dare lest his father’s vehemence turn on him—but his eyes gleamed with enjoyment over Porter’s plight. From Sterling’s expression—the way he tilted back his head and looked down his nose at Porter, the tight smile that threatened to morph into a snarl in a second’s notice—May could tell Sterling took far more than his fair share of pleasure in the suffering of others. May herself tried never to be cruel, never to hold hatred in her heart. She knew it’d be a moral failing to delight in this man’s suffering. Still, it was undeniable that a part of her might have enjoyed watching Porter’s already-gray skin blanch a shade or two lighter, enjoyed the sight of his sweat causing the calamine to dampen and run. The thought brought a twinge of guilt, but she knew the suffering headed her way was bound to be much worse than his could be.
“Of course not, Mr. Maguire.” Porter wiped at his forehead, smearing the pink lotion and transferring it first to his hand and then to his pant leg when he lowered his arm. “I’d never intentionally contradict you, sir.”
“Then go on and get the hell out of here.”
Porter began backing out of the room, never taking his eyes off the old man. “Yes, sir, you just let May know if you need anything.”
“Porter,” Maguire called out, bringing May’s boss to a full stop. “I don’t want May here working for you anymore. You go on and hire yourself a new girl.”
May might never have found the nerve to take a seat on the embroidered chair, had these words not caused her knees to buckle. As it was, she barely managed to land on its cushion rather than the floor.
“But Mr. Maguire, I ain’t done nothing wrong, sir. I need my job. I got . . .”
“Yes, yes, I know. You have three children to feed,” Maguire said, waving his hands not only to stop her talking, but also to dismiss her thoughts. How could he know that unless he was the one who ordered those men to take Jilo?
“Go on, Porter. You aren’t needed here,” he said, then waited for Porter to make his exit. May could feel the cloud of confused and angry energy that filled Porter leave the room, even though the thick carpet muffled his footfalls.
The moment Porter was gone, Maguire’s lips curled up into a sly smile. “It’s just us now, May. Family. So please allow me to speak plainly.” He waved his finger at her like she was a naughty child. “Old Tuesday, she done told me that you didn’t inherit any of her magic. She lied.”
TEN
“Oh, yes, your mama done told me a fib, now, didn’t she?” Maguire said, a canary-eating cat smile setting up camp on his face. May knew she was the bird, and that even though he was enjoying every second of batting her around, soon tooth and claw would come out. She hesitated, her skin tingling as she contemplated fleeing.
“Look at it, Sterling,” Maguire’s words pulled her from her calculations. “Isn’t it beautiful?” May’s eyes followed the men’s stares right down to her own hands, her own fingertips that were alive with the same blue-green sparks she’d spent a lifetime trying to extinguish. “This isn’t just some old Doc Buzzard hair, spit, and metal shavings buried under your porch. That there is real magic.”
Doctor Buzzard. A single name shared by many root doctors, men who with varying degrees of sincerity and skill worked Hoodoo, taking your hard-earned money to put a fix on your enemy or—worse yet—remove the fix your enemy put
on you. A lot of the Buzzards were charlatans, plain and simple, but there were a few, a precious few, who really did know how to work magic. These men, the ones who weren’t just playacting, mostly didn’t mess around with curses and fixes. No, the men with real power spent their time trying to help people.
’Course it wasn’t just men. Plenty of women working the Hoodoo, too. The women weren’t called “Doctor,” though. They were always referred to as “Mother.” Folk around Savannah had always assumed May’s mother was just another of these root doctors, but deep down May had always known better. Even though Mother Tuesday had refused to share the details of her magic with her daughter, May had always known her mama had tapped into a source of power that the others didn’t even know about. May had always known that if she so desired, she could draw from that same well.
“Closer,” the older man’s voice startled her. “Closer!”
Sterling scrambled to navigate his father’s chair nearer to May. In his haste, the younger man bumped into the table, causing his half-full coffee cup to jitter around in its saucer. Maguire’s body lurched forward, unprepared for even the slightest jarring. It chilled May’s soul to watch as the elder Maguire looked up at his own flesh and blood with complete disdain. “You clumsy oaf. You tip me out, and I will see you horsewhipped. You hear me, boy?” Sterling blanched, his reaction telling May that this was no idle threat. Maguire pushed on the arm of his chair so that he could turn a tad more toward his son. “I asked if you heard me.”
“Yes, sir. I heard you,” Sterling replied. May nearly felt a twinge of sympathy for this young man. What kind of upbringing must he have had? What daily tortures had he faced at the hands of his own father? Her expression must have betrayed her thoughts, for Sterling seemed to take note of May’s softening toward him. His face hardened, forming creases and lines that shouldn’t find a home on a face so young. His eyes narrowed with a hatred so complete May shuddered under its weight. She looked away before it could bore any more deeply into her soul.