VOLUME | ONC 2023

Bonus Chapter: Throw In the Towel

I took measured breaths to still my heart as I siphoned the courage to move. Saturday mornings were customarily earmarked for chores, but this Saturday would make a divergence in the wood.

I rehearsed the plan in my head. Without a blueprint, I'd fail – whatever magic had been sprinkled onto good liars missed me altogether.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, unsure if I was more frightened by getting caught or the prospect of seeing him.

I peeled the covers back, watching my sister's form rise and fall with breath from across the room.

My eyes stayed fixed on her as I slid my neatly folded blue dress from underneath my pillow. As if some rapid change would take place in the time it took me to whip the garment over my head, I tore out of my nightgown in urgent silence.

My focus lassoed by my attempts at regulating my breathing, I slipped into the dress, enjoying the weight of the cotton. In it, I felt secure – comfortable. I felt pretty; it was my favorite dress.

Hooking a peace sign in the back of my beat-up Mary Janes, I lifted them from creaky wood floors with agile fingers. An old wool thing fashioned by my grandmother's capable hands, my cardigan was next. I raised it from its position on the chair, the fabric making my hands sweatier than they already were.

The humidity of sorrow still hung in the air, damp and heavy.

I'd avoided him like the plague, frantic and skittish remembering the way I'd launched myself at him. With something akin to discomfiture, I recalled how I'd accused him of deriving sexual gratification from the cruel history of slavery in the antebellum South. I'd punished myself – and him – for an entire Winter. Just as temperatures were wintry and frigid, so was I.

And much like a Magnolia bud in need of Springtime coaxing, I unfurled. Slowly but surely, I unfurled, my petals delicate, young, and tender.

I hadn't known what to do with myself then. I hadn't a way to describe what was happening to me. Love didn't seem to quite characterize it – it felt sweltering and light, all at the same time. It felt tawdry and innocent. It felt awfully wrong, albeit very right.

And despite all the whimsy present in our arrangement, I was still the realist.

I crouched to pinch a quarter from the jar beneath my bed. I swallowed the dry feeling in my mouth as I left the coin on Dorothea's desk; she'd know what it meant.

My socked feet avoided the old familiar creaks as I tiptoed toward the door. I looked over my shoulder one final time. The house was still.

"Where you goin'?"

My head snapped to the left of the porch where Mama was rocking in her chair, potato peels littered at her feet, and a handful of the starchy, white crop in a pot on the dusted floorboards.

"Good Lord, Mama. You scared me," I caught the screen door before it slammed.

"Mhm. I ain't scared you. You was scared as soon as you got up this morning."

I slipped my shoes on, vacillating between whether to fib, or to avoid speaking altogether.

"I agreed to help Mr. Marshall with litigation. I didn't wanna wake nobody."

It was almost the whole truth. We had planned to go over a couple of cases – planned being the operative word.

With a small splash, a naked potato fell into the wide pot.

"That man ain't trynna write no closing remarks with you, girl."

"Mama... it ain't like that. You know it ain't like that," I sat down on the step, listening to the sounds of a mourning dove call out in the dusky, warming morning.