Burying the Honeysuckle Girls by Emily Carpenter

happening at age thirty. I’d never been told anything other than the few sentences my mother had whispered to me in the clearing that night.
    The new knowledge, this thing I held inside me, was too big to comprehend. I could barely swallow. I could barely breathe. After a minute or two I turned to look down at Jay. He was lying on his back, awake, watching me. I stared back, unblinking, breaking contact only once to look down at his lips. By now, the air between us was crackling, and his face had transformed in understanding.
    “I don’t think this is such a good idea,” he said.
    “Nothing I do is a good idea.”
    “You’re wrong.” His voice was soft but hoarse. “I wish you knew how wrong you are. I wish you could see how I see you, Althea.”
    I felt tears flood my eyes. He had to stop saying things like this, these things that made me feel like my skin had been peeled back. But he’d been surrounded by so much care, so much love, he probably couldn’t imagine living in a world that wasn’t brimming over with it. I wanted to tell him to stop, but I was sick of conversation and scared where more of it would lead me.
    Instead, I pulled off the shirt and then my underwear and moved to him. He held aside the covers, and I arranged my body over his. Chest to chest, arms and legs entwined, my head under his chin—we fit perfectly.
    “We shouldn’t,” he said.
    “Yeah.”
    His arms went up and wrapped around me. And he exhaled again, like he’d been holding his breath for a really long time. After a couple of minutes, he shifted me to the side, peeled off his shirt and pants, and pressed himself against me once more.
    I kissed him once, and it couldn’t have been any slower and sweeter. When I felt tears threaten— oh please God, not that —I rolled on my back and pulled him on top of me. I wanted to feel his weight, all of it, on me. I wrapped my legs around him, and we settled into each other.
    “You feel cold,” he said. “In a good way. Like the river on a hot day.”
    He was wrong, though. It wasn’t good, the way I was cold. It was bad. It was a little bit dangerous. I hurt people with my coldness.
    When he finally moved inside me, I forced myself to stay detached for as long as I could, focusing on his shoulder, the way freckles dotted his skin, his smell. But I couldn’t stop myself, he felt too good. I closed my eyes, pressed up and into him. And felt myself slipping away to that place where I didn’t care anymore, not about anything. Only us and this.
    I made a wish. Two wishes, actually: First, that Jay wouldn’t realize that I was doing this, using him, to numb my fear. And second, that in spite of our long history, our friendship and the pact we’d made, this tryst wouldn’t ultimately mean anything more than just two strangers doing what strangers sometimes did.
    Then I let go.

Chapter Six
    October 1937
    Sybil Valley, Alabama
    Miss Isbell, the schoolteacher, sent home a note pinned to Walter’s shirt. He wouldn’t even hold still long enough for Jinn to unpin the thing but tore away from her grip, ripping off the corner as he ran outside. Collie banged on a mixing bowl at the counter while Jinn read the torn note. Then she folded it into a tiny, hard square and tucked it in the pocket of her apron.
    At supper that night, she told Howell.
    “Walter’s been picking on the young ones,” she said. “Pelting them with chestnuts while they’re saying their lines for the Christmas pageant.” She didn’t look at Walter but she could feel him, slouching on the left side of the table, swallowing down a lump of potatoes. His eyes seemed to burn right through her.
    “Practicing for a Christmas pageant in October? Lord God , these women.” Howell forked a piece of ham onto his plate and jerked his chin. Jinn hopped up and ladled a circle of gravy for him.
    She didn’t know if he was referring to Miss Isbell specifically or the long string of schoolteachers Sybil Valley had hawked up