Page 31 of Junie

Chapter Thirty-One

When Junie gets to the woods, Minnie’s glow illuminates the forest around her like an open blaze.

“It’s time to leave now, Junie. Go!” says Minnie.

“He’s going to die, ain’t he?” Junie says, her breath shaking with rage and tears.

“Junie—”

“Why did you make me kill him?” The words seem to catch in her throat.

“It needed to be done.”

“Needed to be done for who ? For me ? What will happen to me now, Minnie? What will happen to all of us?”

“You were meant to run, Junie,” Minnie says.

“They wouldn’t come,” Junie says.

“Junie, you’re a fool to think you can take everybody with you your whole life long.”

“I ain’t going to abandon our family, Minnie! I ain’t going to leave everyone behind like you did.”

“If this is about the papers, I was gonna come back—”

“I don’t mean your damn freedom papers,” Junie says, her voice breaking with tears. “You left us, Minnie. You did this—you did this to yourself!”

Minnie’s eyes swell into glowing bulbs.

“You must think I’m a fool. I didn’t recognize the smell right away, but now I remember. Those leaves are water hemlock. They grow off in these woods, near the creek, the ones Muh always told us never to touch. You took those leaves I gave to McQueen. It wasn’t some fever that killed you. You did this to yourself. That’s why you’re stuck like this. It’s why you’re cursed.”

“Junie, please,” Minnie says.

“You left me, Minnie. You left me all alone in this evil place. You left me thinking there was something we all could have done to save you.”

Minnie reaches a cold hand to touch Junie’s shoulder. Junie shakes her off.

“Don’t touch me,” Junie sobs. “I thought I did this to you, Minnie! I thought you dying was all my fault because I fell in that river and you had to go after me. This whole time I believed I killed you.”

“You didn’t. You didn’t, Junie.” Tears run down Minnie’s cheeks like dripping candle wax.

“Why didn’t you say nothing about what was happening to you?”

“I-I couldn’t. I didn’t plan it.”

“You got the hemlock, Minnie.”

“I walked through that house every day like the air had left my lungs. I couldn’t keep my head up, couldn’t feel the sun on my body anymore, couldn’t see beyond the hell I was in. You had your books, your writings. All I could see was myself, turning into Muh and Auntie, working myself to the bone, owned by people who would rather see me broken. I did it the wrong way. I thought I could do it their way, the white folks’ way, and when that didn’t work, I didn’t have the guts to do it the hard way. You have to do it right, Junie.”

“What’s right, though, Minnie?”

“I know what’s right now, Junie. That boat ain’t gone yet. You can make it.”

“How do you know about the boat?”

“I’ve been trapped at this riverbank for months, you ain’t think I noticed the boat full of Negroes goin’ back and forth?”

Junie pulls back.

“You just made me poison somebody. How am I supposed to trust you again?”

“Do you understand what that man did, Junie? Do you think our momma chose to be with him? He put her through an unimaginable hell he called love, and when she finally found an ounce of joy with your father he sold her away, all for his own ego. He destroyed our family, Junie. You know how long it took to get him to acknowledge I was his child? To get him to sign for my freedom, only for me to find my papers burnt up in his office and a contract selling me to Lord-knows-where? Death ain’t nothing he didn’t have coming. And it don’t have nothing to do with what you need to do for your future.”

“You could have told me, Minnie.”

Minnie’s fists clench.

“I never intended at first to take the leaves. I just—I wanted some way out, Junie. To know there was some way out that I had control over. I was drowning, Junie. There was so much I knew, so much I didn’t tell you because you’re my little sister, and I was supposed to protect you from the evil, not show it to you. I knew being free would help. I knew getting away from the devils who controlled my life would give me somethin’ better. Would give me the opportunity to give you somethin’ better. When McQueen signed the papers, they gave me some hope. But when I walked into that library and saw ’em destroyed, it was like all the spirit left my body. I was at the bottom of a river with no way up. I just—I didn’t see another way out. I regretted it as soon as the leaves hit my belly, but by then, it was too late.”

“You should have told me,” Junie says. “You ain’t need to be so…You could have told me.”

“I wish I had now. It’s why you had to do it, to get the revenge our family deserves. It’s why you have to run.”

“No, Minnie,” Junie says, her voice growing in strength. “It breaks me inside that you were hurting so bad that this was the only way you saw. But I can’t keep listening to everybody around me about what’s right for me. This is my life, Minnie. It ain’t yours to try and live again.”

Junie comes to her feet, pulling away from her sister and starting back toward the plantation.

“You can’t be foolish enough to go back there?” Minnie says. “There ain’t nothing left there for you! If you go back in, you’ll come out a haunt like me! What’s left there for you?”

“I ain’t sure yet,” Junie says. “But I intend to find out for myself.”

—

When junie crosses out of the woods back onto the main property, she is greeted by the decisive gallop of hooves trailing into the distance. She peers around a tree trunk, watching as the doctor’s carriage light fades farther into the distance.

If he’s already leaving, the master must be well.

If he’s already leaving, then she isn’t a killer.

The property is pitch-black, save for the flicker of lantern light on the edge of the stables.

Caleb. She said nasty things to him, the type of words that burrow under the skin like ants. She’d been wrong to say what she did. She’d been wrong to place her trust in Minnie, a ghost long gone.

She’ll stay now, here with him.

If McQueen doesn’t find out about the poison and have her killed first.

She stumbles toward him, her body too numb to move with urgency. When she comes into his light, he doesn’t look up.

“Caleb.”

His name is less a greeting, and more a plea. He takes another drag of his cigarette before stomping the butt into the frozen dirt. His breath is unsteady.

“McQueen’s dead.”

His words pass over Junie, and her legs give. Her knee splits on a jagged, frosted stone.

“The doctor.” Her voice is feeble. “I saw him leaving. And Auntie and Muh went to him, I thought he must be—”

“Wasn’t nothing for Auntie or Muh to do by the time they got there. Doc found him facedown in his vomit and shit. All he did was call him dead. Probably the easiest five dollars he’s ever made.”

The air is too still for winter. Blood begins to trickle from the scrape on Junie’s knee, the liquid warm against her freezing skin.

“Junie,” Caleb says, dropping down to her level. “The way you came running out of that house, all panicked with your dress ripped—if something happened, if he—”

Junie shakes her head.

“When you came out, you said that something had happened.”

If Junie looks up now, she’ll see Caleb’s eyes, soft and pleading. If she looks up now, she’ll tell him everything she’s done. If she looks up now, he’ll share in her sins.

And she loves him too much to do that.

“Nothing happened,” Junie says, her voice stiff.

“Well, did you see anything that—”

“I didn’t see nothing,” Junie retorts.

“Junie, please, you got to tell me—”

“I ain’t got to do anything,” she says, her voice rising. “I ain’t got to do anything for a coward like you.”

“Delilah June, if you mean—”

“You didn’t come with me when I asked you to run. You wouldn’t even try,” she says, eyes still locked on the ground. “What am Isupposed to think of a boy who won’t take a chance? How am I supposed to be with somebody who’s too scared to be by my side?”

Her own words burn like lemon in a cut. Caleb rises to his feet and shuffles back.

“You…you don’t want to be my girl no more?”

Junie swallows down the tears growing in her throat.

She has to do this. She has to push him away. They’ll find out about McQueen sooner or later. It’s the only way to keep him safe.

“No,” she says. “I shouldn’t have ever been your girl.”

Silence hangs between them. Caleb turns his back and walks into the stables. She hears the click of the door lock. Junie curls back to the earth, the numbness running out of her in sobs. When she clears her eyes, the moonlight illuminates the single tally on her wrist.

She’s done it.

She killed William McQueen.

And for this sin, there is no salvation.