Duet for Three Hands by Tess Thompson Read Free Book Online Page A

that felt like a vise. Outside the windows, the crickets chirped a rhythm that after a time began to sound like: I’m afraid. I’m afraid. I’m afraid.
    Finally, just before dawn, the crickets ceased, and the emerging day fell silent. She might have uttered a response to fill the quiet, but nothing came, not even the sound of William’s voice.

Chapter 3
    J eselle
----
    O n a cloyingly hot day in early September, Mr. Bellmont demanded roast beef for his supper. So after breakfast, Mama left for the market, wearing her yellow straw hat and the brown, cotton dress with the bell sleeves that cupped her muscular shoulders. “Jes, wash up the dishes while I’m gone.” Almost six feet tall and lean, Mama pushed open the screen door using her backside; it slammed against the side of the house and then came to a close with a bang. Mama powered across the yard, scattering the brown, decaying magnolia blossoms with the force of her rapid gait, and then disappeared around the side of the house.
    To the hum of the ceiling fan that swirled warm air around the kitchen and offered little relief, Jeselle scrubbed away the morning’s grits stuck to the bottom of a pan, perspiration soaking the collar of her thin cotton dress, where her hair hung in two braids. She was small for thirteen, willowy, with a delicate bone structure. Jeselle looked like her father’s mother, according to Mama, with the same heart-shaped face and dimples on either side of her full mouth. Unfortunately, Jeselle would never be able to judge for herself if this were true or not. Her father and his parents were all dead, buried in the colored cemetery on the other side of town. Jeselle was only weeks old when he died coming home from work, killed by white men for the dollar he’d made that day washing dishes. Mama had come to the rich part of town looking for work and through divine providence, there was no other way to explain it, claimed Mama, she’d found Mrs. Bellmont.
    While she worked, Jeselle watched Whitmore in the garden, sketching a fallen, forgotten peach, shriveled brown and punctured with holes from a bird’s voracious feast. The other peaches, harvested in June, were in jars, canned by Mama and lined in neat rows in the cool basement. He sat on the grass under the shade of the peach tree with his sketch pad propped on his knees. His eyes moved from the peach to the paper and back again, while his left hand sketched, holding the pencil in a way both assured and relaxed. With his other hand, he occasionally swiped at flies and bees hovering near his head.
    He was growing so tall, she thought. For years they’d been around the same size, but around six months ago, he’d started to grow tall and lean, and now at fourteen—just a year and one month older than Jeselle—he was a full head taller than she.
    “Study of a wounded peach,” she thought. She would tell Whit later. It was her job to name his drawings and paintings.
    He scrambled to his feet, looking up at the sun, mostly likely estimating the time and what it would do to the light. Then he walked toward the kitchen, stopping on the top step and calling out to her, “Jes, please tell Mother I’ll be back for supper, would you?”
    “She won’t like it.” She went to where he stood in the doorway.
    He lowered his voice. “I know. But it’s Saturday.” Mr. Bellmont was home all day on Saturday, and Whitmore did whatever he could to avoid seeing him.
    “I think he’s still in bed.” Sleeping off the booze from the night before, according to Mama, waking only long enough to dictate the menu for supper before falling back to sleep, snoring.
    “But he won’t be for much longer.” He tugged gently on one of her braids. “I’ll bring you a caramel from the candy shop. The biggest one they have.”
    Jeselle washed the plates next, hurrying, pining for the next chapter of Pip and Stella that waited for her on the kitchen table. She was like Pip, she’d decided, even though he was