Caul Baby by Morgan Jerkins (read any book .TXT) 📕

verify that she really saw what she saw, but when she finally stared straight ahead again, Robert and the two women were gone.

There was a deafening ringing in both of Amara’s ears as she whipped her body around to face Jill and Ethan. Jill’s face transformed. Every aspect of her profile transformed into a delirious excitement. The smile that hung in the middle of her face was not normal. It alluded to another secret. Then Jill turned toward other guests, as she had done when Amara and Ethan approached, letting them know that their time interacting was over for now. Ethan grabbed Amara’s elbow and pulled her off to the side.

“What the hell was that? Where did you go?”

“What do you mean? I was standing right there.”

“That’s not what I mean. You just completely lost focus back there. What’s going on?”

“Nothing, just stop being overbearing.”

“Are you drunk?” He tried to look into Amara’s eyes, but she kept dodging his line of sight. “You need to pull it together; this is important.”

“How many times are you gonna say that? You’re not my father.”

“Then stop acting like a child.”

“Fuck you, Ethan.”

Ethan held his finger up in Amara’s face and said, “I’m gonna go mingle with the other guests. Get your shit together and don’t make us look bad.”

Amara stumbled after Ethan walked away, yet she still had enough sense to move away from the main area down a small hallway. It was there, in that hallway, with its gold barocco wallpaper and green carpets, that she heard a glass shatter and a pair of feet running, followed by Jill’s laughter. There was a cracked door with a beam of light that drew Amara closer and closer. From the sliver of space between the door, Amara could see a white hand holding a lighter with an ignited flame and hear some whimpering coming from another place in the room. Her mind swarmed with the possibility of what the hell was going on in there.

She returned to the main area, found the nearest waitress, and took one glass of merlot in one hand and a glass of chardonnay in the other. She knocked them both back quickly. The liquid courage she now felt coursing through her body was enough for her to entertain conversations with other gentlemen in the room as they spoke about their time at Princeton and Yale, respectively, the latest New York Times headlines, or how and when their social calendars would coincide again. Soon she was lounging on a sofa laughing at some white man’s jokes before she chimed in with her own, then made an extemporaneous speech on her imminent run for district attorney, to which she received tons of applause, handshakes, and negotiable donations to her campaign. Everyone was smiling at her and she back at them. She was able to nod and back herself into the same corner where she and Ethan had their argument so that she could run down that same hallway to the bathroom at the end.

After Amara emptied all the contents from her stomach in the nearest stall, she opened the door to find another woman standing at the sink in front of the bathroom mirror. Her face was just as flushed as Amara’s, cheeks reddened and tear-soaked. Amara squinted and thought she was seeing double: her reflection in the mirror and a doppelgänger standing to the side of her. The girl was wearing a simple black dress with pearls, and her curly hair was half pulled up in a bun while the rest of her hair fell down the sides of her face. She was beautiful, but Amara was not sure if this woman was real or the merlot and chardonnay had produced a hallucinogenic effect that she had never experienced before. They didn’t say a word to each other, but the woman stared back at her in disbelief, her jaw suspended in the air. She looked a bit younger and a little shorter, but not by too much. And Amara recognized the caul that was visible on her wrist and parts of her neck. The room started to spin, and Amara hobbled around while grabbing her stomach.

The woman faced Amara to get another good look at her and then dashed out of the bathroom. Amara stood still and felt the breeze from the departure. She could not have conjured that breeze. She could not have conjured the water beads still sliding from the sink that her likeness had just hovered over. She touched them to make sure. But before Amara could follow after her, everything disappeared into darkness again and she lost consciousness. When a restaurant staff member found her minutes later, she attributed Amara’s state to food poisoning and moved quickly to nurse her by placing a cold compress to Amara’s forehead until she came to, and then by giving her glasses of ginger ale.

20

I can’t believe you,” Josephine said to Hallow on their ride home. She leaned against the window and shook her head. “I cannot believe that you did that.”

Hallow did not expect to snap in the way that she did, and now there was nothing she could say. When she received an invitation to the Epelbaums’ party at the Plaza, Josephine harangued her with the rules of dinner etiquette as well as the importance of sealing this deal to maintain their brownstone and family business. She memorized what she would say from notes on index cards, had her clothes dry-cleaned, and shined her best patent leather heels. Because Maman wasn’t feeling up for socializing, she allowed Hallow and Josephine to go, but they could not have been less in sync with each other. A few short hours before a driver was scheduled to pick them up from their home, Hallow spied on Josephine excitedly stuffing many dresses and blouses into a large, vintage trunk suitcase while humming a little melody. On the ride to the Oak Room, Josephine could hardly sit still in her