Jezebel by Koko Brown

stairs.
    “ Come on now don’t
have a melt down on me now,” Trudy shushed her, while fishing
in her cousin’s hand for a handkerchief.
    “ Sorry,” Celeste
mumbled. She accepted the hanky, Trudy held out for her, but didn’t
use it. Instead, Celeste crumpled the fine linen in her hands and
allowed the tears to flow unchecked.
    “ Bad day,” Trudy
ventured.
    Celeste nodded. Trudy waited
for her to expound. She had all the time in the world now, since
eating before tonight’s gig flew out the window the minute the
cabbie carted Celeste through the front door.
    “ Why didn’t you
tell me about the Reverend…how he…how he,”
Celeste clamped her mouth shut and a faraway look entered her eyes
    Before
she fell over the edge again, Trudy reeled her back in, “What
about the Reverend?” she prodded.
    To her
relief, Celeste seemed to snap out of it. Sniffling, she reached
inside her purse and pulled out a piece of paper. She unfolded it,
and then handed it over. Celeste’s finger shook as she pointed
to a line labeled ‘manner of incident’. “Why didn’t
you tell me?”
    “ Where did you get
this?”
    Celeste
pushed herself from her seat on the stairs. Fists clenched, she paced
or rather weaved back and forth. “Stop trying to sidestep the
question, Trudy! Why didn’t you tell me?”
    Trudy’s mouth felt
like someone suddenly stuffed it with cotton balls.
    “ I–I didn’t
want to cause you any more grief. Despite how you both parted ways,
it was a shock even to me. Suicide just isn’t natural.”
    Done rambling, Trudy
anxiously licked her lips. Hopefully, her cousin would be able to
piece it all together then, come to realize she’d withheld the
facts surrounding her father’s death only to protect her.
    Celeste grabbed hold of the
stair post and rested her cheek against the pineapple-shaped newel.
“You know he didn’t do it, right?”
    Knocked off kilter by the
question and stymied by her own opinion, Trudy struggled with a
response.
    “ He didn’t do
it, Trudy,” Celeste asserted in the face of Trudy’s
silence. “My daddy might have been a lot of things, but he
wasn’t like us.”
    The hairs on the back of
Trudy’s neck snapped to attention. “Like us?”
    “ Sinners.”
    Trudy
couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Celeste had actually
bought into her old man’s shit hook, line and sinker. Not in
the mood for her cousin’s sudden brand of crazy, Trudy stood
up, pulling her cousin with her.
    “ Where
are we going?” Celeste asked, yet allowing Trudy to guide them
up the stairs.
    “ I’m
putting you to bed. You’re better than this. I’m better than this.”
    Before they could reach the
top of the stairs, Celeste started to hum.
    Recognizing
the chorus to Bye
Bye Blackbird ,
Trudy joined in. They used to sing the jazz standard whenever things
went southward, which was more often than not.
    “ Pack
up all my care and woe … here
I go, singing low …”
Celeste wrapped her arms around Trudy’s waist with a drawn out
sigh, “…I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
    “ Almost, but I stopped
you.” At the top of the landing, Trudy turned down a short
hallway. “Nothing but blue skies from here on out, blackbird.”
    “ Here
on out!” Celeste crowed, while Trudy hustled her over to the
bed.
    “ No more spoiling
what’s rightfully yours?”
    “ Rightfully mine,”
Celeste affirmed, falling back into the mattress.
    Trudy yanked off her
cousin’s shoes and placed them on the floor. Her cloche,
fur-lined over coat and her dress followed, leaving her cousin in
nothing but silk stockings and a slip.
    “ Know why?”
Trudy tugged the chenille spread from under Celeste’s hips and
then draped it over her. Enveloped in the all-white covering, her
cousin looked more like a little girl than a grown woman of
twenty-six years.
    “ Cause’ I’m
naked, drunk and stupid.” Giggling, Celeste kicked her leg,
disturbing Trudy’s handiwork.
    Trudy tried to smooth the
covers, but