Page 40 of Junie

Chapter Forty

“He’s gone,” Junie sobs. “I left him, I—”

Minnie floats toward the back of the boat, pushing it across the water until it moves gently without Junie’s rowing.

“We have to turn back! What if he’s hurt, what if he’s—” Junie stops, unable to make her mouth form the final word. “And Muh, and Granddaddy, and Auntie! What will Taylor…We have to turn back, Minnie! We have to—”

“There ain’t no going back now,” Minnie says. “This here is your only new beginning. If you turn back and follow this river the way it wants to flow, you ain’t never gonna find anything better in this life, for you or Caleb or anybody else. But you got to face it on your own.”

“I can’t leave him there, Minnie,” Junie sobs. “We’re supposed to have this beginning together.”

“He’ll find you again,” Minnie whispers. Her cool hands run against the sides of Junie’s face. “One way or another, he’ll find his way back to you. The way you found your way back to me.”

Junie goes silent, too spent to speak. She collapses into the hull, shaking with sobs and cold until the exhaustion takes her.

She sleeps without nightmares.

Instead, she dreams of the smell of Granddaddy’s jacket, the taste of blackberry cobbler, the way Caleb’s arms feel around her. She sees the sparkle in Violet’s eyes opening a new book, she smells the wood’s leaves after the first rain, the look of the land at dawn from the top of Old Mother.

She hears Caleb’s voice.

You deserve more than a pretty view.

You deserve to take all the beauty of this world and hold it in your hands.

You deserve to bite it like a peach and let the juice drip ’til your fingers get sticky.

Her eyes creep open to the first light of dawn. The boat floats along the snaking river, now gliding past the Montgomery riverfront. In the distance, Junie spots the hall where they’d held the ball, where Caleb had spun her in his arms. She sees the warehouses on the edge, where Black folks like her are marched in and out while they wait to be sold.

As she drifts past Montgomery, she wonders how a world can exist where love grows like weeds in a burning forest.

The river doubles back on itself in a sharp turn, broadening between the maze of pine trees and wild pear blossoms on the banks. The water rushes faster now, filled by the two rivers. The currents twist together like a braid, each flecked with the dawn light, draining into the Alabama’s mouth.

This is the farthest she’s ever been from home, in a place completely unknown. As the boat turns the corner, Junie recalls the words of a poem she’s memorized and recited more times than she can count.

While with an eye made quiet by the power

Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,

We see into the life of things.

The waters, split into three, dance around a small island and mingle at its shores. The trees reach for one another in the winds, bending to embrace.

Here, where the three rivers meet, she sees the life of things.

The boat skirts into the muddy shore. Junie places her foot on the solid ground, the mud creeping between her toes. She bends down to run her hands over the red dirt, smelling its familiar, metallic scent. The sun begins to rise as the waters fade into rippling pinks and oranges, expansive woods rising around her. The wind whispers between wild pear blossoms and wisteria: home, home, home.

The final mark disappears from Junie’s wrist with a sting as light envelops her periphery.

She turns toward the light, watching Minnie’s body glow like the sun, as her hair unwinds around her. For a brief moment, her light fades, and she is as she once was again; beautiful, soft, human.

The living soul. The rose stripped of its thorns.

Minnie smiles, stepping forward to touch Junie’s cheek. Her hands are warm now, like the last embers of a fire.

Tears ball in Junie’s throat. She wants to call for her to stay, to hover awhile longer here at her side. She wants to lean against Minnie the way she did when they were children, feeling her sister’s fingers on her scalp soothing her after she cried. She wants to play Snow White again, and wake Minnie the moment her eyes seal shut.

But, to hold Minnie now would be as impossible as catching the moonlight.

Junie reaches for her sister’s cheek, even as her hands can’t meet her glowing skin. This goodbye will be the final one, a goodbye her lips can’t seem to form. Minnie looks into her eyes and smiles knowingly, leaning forward to leave a warm kiss on Junie’s head and stroking her hair.

“See all the beauty you can, my sweet sister.”

Minnie disappears in the burst of white light, her body disintegrating into radiant threads that fade into the cold morning breeze.

Junie falls to the earth, exhaustion and grief overtaking her. Her hands press into the red mud, the same color as home, but different here. She made it, free and alone. Granddaddy, Muh, Auntie, Bess, Caleb; left behind. The sunbeams illuminate a log cabin on the northern bank with a roof of straw. The trees are cleared around back to make space for a vegetable garden and rocking chair. Uncle George’s cabin. Her safe haven. She just needs to make one more crossing.

The sunrise spills across the sky and river like peach juice. In the first light of dawn, the land stretches before her. Houses, towns, and cities exist beyond the trees, but Junie can only see the beauty here and now. When she was a girl, she would have wanted to catch a moment like this in a jar like a lightning bug, or mark down her dreams with charcoal. Instead, as tears run down her cheeks like the river’s current, she stands, a witness to the sublime.

She has no right to possess or speak for this land—nor does anyone else, for it has a living soul.

This land will be where her mother’s lost spirit can find peace.

This land will be where Bess finds safety in the arms of her parents.

This land will be the home Caleb returns to, like the island filled with sugarcane with his mother on the shore.

This land will be where she writes the poems that will live long past her.

This land will be where her children run, their eyes the same warm brown as Caleb’s, splashing into the water, thoughtless and free.

She looks down at the river, watching the ripples flow southward across the rocks. The current pushes against her, the water dark and unknown. Caleb can find her. She has to believe he will find her. For now, she’ll have to swim with the strength of every muscle to make it across.

As she wades into the water, the river pulling her back toward the only home she’s ever known, she swears she hears Minnie’s voice, whispering through the trees.

Carefree.

Junie smiles, and dives in.