Jaima rolls her eyes. “And ain’t you the poor teen mama Sister Loretta prays over in church every Sunday morning?”

  Byronisha laughs, kissing her baby boy on his big bald head before saying, “You got jokes, I see.”

  Jaima feels her lips twitch. “A few,” she admits.

  Byronisha laughs, shaking her head. “Calvin should know better, anyway.”

  Jaima nods, agreeing. “Lord knows why he keep asking after me when he know I don’t want his sorry butt.”

  “Girl, you know these boys ain’t got no sense,” Byronisha says with a smirk, knocking Jaima’s bare foot with her sandled one. “Plus you’re such a grouchy old lady, what would you two even talk about?”

  Jaima laughs, because that’s what Sweet Ma tells her too—apparently Jaima is not-so-secretly an old lady with a stern eye and a bad temper. She smiles at the thought, tilts her head to the sky, watches the clouds.

  Byronisha reaches out and grabs Jaima by the wrist, squeezing. “You know you my girl,” she says, her eyes soft and brown and round like an owl’s. “Wouldna been able to do this whole mama thing without you. So you know I’ll sit out here in the heat and forget about swimming for another thirty years if you ask me to.”

  Jaima laughs, because Byronisha likes to get real deep sometimes. Before the baby came, summer used to mean just the two of them—free time with no one holding them down; school-less days spent hot and sweaty here at Pauper’s Gorge, running around the pine and hemlock woods with scraped knees and rose-colored dresses, summer braids wound around their heads like African queens. Jaima loved to make up adventure stories about this place, about pirates and hidden gold, about the ghosts trapped inside the trees. Byronisha would follow behind her, a trusted sidekick to her hero. In this place, where the water falls to the earth like a dream, where the forest hugs the riverbank, where the road splits apart—dark woods on one side and stubby hills on the other—Jaima feels like she’s watching two sides of the world love on each other. Great-grandmother river and great-grandfather land.

  Byronisha’s voice is low when she asks, “You still dreaming about it, huh?”

  Jaima’s gaze flicks to her friend’s face, outlines the soft freckles on her nose. Jaima thinks maybe she wants to kiss Byronisha, but she knows that’s kind of a weird thing to be thinking about, so she looks at the ground again and says, “Sometimes,” referring to the dreams. She sometimes has dreams of the flood, ones that flow into her like the water itself, rushed and unnamed. They usually come when she’s in bed alone (a rare thing because she shares a bed with her cousin Tiffany, and they share the room with two other cousins, Lil Bit and Ayesha). But those few times when she is alone in the dark bedroom, she feels like a small thing in a very big place, and she knows she’s back inside that river, twisting about in the cold, scary dark. She can feel the river in her veins even now, rolling like waves under her skin.

  Byronisha is cooing something soft at the baby. Jaima turns her eyes back to the swimming hole, watches the town’s horny teenagers roughhousing and swimming, their slick brown skins shimmering like gold in the noonday sun.

  On Saturdays Jaima works at AJ’s, the gas station over in Cowenville. Even though she’s on the plumper side of curvy, she still manages to fit herself into the station’s regulation tan overalls. Her thick braids she pushes under a baseball cap. Whether standing behind the station counter or pumping gas into mud-encrusted pickups, she draws attention, no matter what. The men who stumble out of their vehicles will almost always glance at her long enough to make her slightly uncomfortable.

  Jaima’s cousin Domino fixes cars in the attached garage, which is how she got the job. He usually manages to keep an eye on her during her shift, to scare away the fools. But today Domino’s in Houston picking up parts, and Jaima’s working in the shop with just the owner’s son, Bobby Greer Jr., who’s been looking her way for far too long from where he’s settled behind the store counter.

  Ass, she thinks as she mops the floor with her back to him, sighing because she knows it means he can see the outline of her butt in her too-tight uniform, but not wanting to turn around and have to look at his face. He’s got this greasy red hair that sticks to his forehead whenever he sweats, and he’s always whistling at her, like she’s a dog looking for a treat. The Greers own farms up and down this way, and the lot of them are sneaky little shits, always stealing things that don’t belong to them, like other people’s land and farming equipment.

  The smell of Pine-Sol is nothing like actual pine, but she’s trying to pretend it is, to remember the story Sweet Ma told her about Great Uncle Left Cheeks, who climbed to the top of a pine tree back in ’89 when the loggers came to try to clear-cut his trees. He ended up falling and hitting his head, spending a month in a coma. Hasn’t been able to walk right since.

  Bobby Jr. whistles at her, and she glances back at him to see what he wants. He’s got to be in his midthirties, with a wide jaw and bug-eyes too big for his face. His lankiness isn’t hidden by his camouflage shirt and his dirty hair isn’t hidden by the matching baseball cap.

  “Why you always ignoring me?” he asks, voice all soft and tender-like. Probably attempting to sound hurt.

  Jaima frowns. “Just thinking ’bout that hundred acres of land your daddy stole from my cousin Odelle last year.”

  “Ah, girl, that ain’t nothing to do with me,” he laughs, shaking his head. “That’s just my daddy’s side business. And it’s the banks that did your cousin wrong, not my daddy.” He stands up and stretches, flexing in a way that Jaima thinks must be his attempt to impress her.

  She sighs and says, “Okay, Bobby, I’ll try thinking ’bout something else, then.”

  Bobby Jr. laughs. “Well, we can start with you just giving me a smile for today. You’re way too pretty not to be smiling,” he says.

  Jaima groans internally, but plasters on a fake smile, hard enough to make her lips hurt with the stretch. Bobby seems satisfied, patting his gut like he’s had some hearty meal. Jaima turns back to scrubbing sticky stains from the cracks in the linoleum floor. She thinks about this place in the woods where the river runs fast over the rocks, flowing into a small pool where deer come down to drink. She’s seen the animals there from time to time, watched the nervous way they looked around before satisfying their thirst. She feels like one of those deer, watching for Bobby as he slinks behind her in the store. She spies him out of the corner of her eye.

  There’s a tightness behind her belly button when she heads home that day, the river inside of her cresting, almost spilling over.

  Come Sunday dinner after church, everyone in Jaima’s family is wondering what the Greers are up to.

  “Snakes, all of them!” her uncle Lester pronounces from his seat on the couch. “They want us gone, but we ain’t leaving.”

  Cheers go up all around and Jaima smiles. The house is filled with their kin, and the loud rumble of voices makes the room sound like a family reunion. Half of them are eating boiled crawfish and potatoes and watching the Sunday game. The other half are playing Spades in the back of the living room, shouts ringing out every once in a while, louder even than the TV. Jaima’s tempted to go jump in and win because she’s unbeatable, but Sweet Ma said today was “wash and detangle day,” and she’s working Jaima’s scalp like she’s got a battle to win herself.

  Sweet Ma currently has her hands all up in Jaima’s hair. Those rough, sure fingers rub against her scalp, pressing and rolling and massaging down with heated olive oil. This must be what the soil feels like when Sweet Ma’s making something grow in the garden, Jaima thinks as the oil drizzles down her forehead and settles behind her ears.

  Jaima’s thick naps catch on the wide-toothed comb’s teeth, and she jerks up when Sweet Ma pulls too hard. “Stop ya squirming, girl,” Sweet Ma chides, and Jaima huffs a breath and settles back against the couch. Sweet Ma’s hands relax in her hair again, parting and oiling, massaging and detangling.

  Jaima looks up to see the twelve-year-old twins, Malcolm and Martin, running around shirtless and covered in the red-clay silt of the backyard, probably chasing the rooster again. The screen door slaps loudly every time they run inside or outside. “Gremlins,” Sweet Ma whispers under her breath in exasperation, and Jaima agrees. Gremlins.

  The littlest girl cousins are arguing over their Barbies, and Uncle Lester is sucking on the head of a crawfish like it’s the gods’ own nectar. He earns a laugh from everyone when he slaps at his gut, sending it jiggling like a big mold of Jell-O. It’s four-year-old Tee-Ray who eventually drops down in front of Jaima, settling himself into her lap without saying a word. Jaima laughs and starts messing with his hair, parting his untamed afro and braiding it like Sweet Ma’s doing to her hair.

  “You got grass in your hair,” Jaima says, picking out the pieces of leaves caught between his fine, dark curls. Lord, it’s like a bird’s nest up in the child’s head. “Where you been, Tee?”

  “Down in Spooky Marsh with Sugarboy and his brothers,” he says, grinning up at her with his gap-toothed self.

  Jaima sighs, exasperated. These children and their bigheaded ideas. If he wasn’t so cute, she’d be tempted to bump him to the floor. “You know y’all not supposed to be down there no more,” she says. “That’s government land now.”

  “It was our land before it was government land, so we can go where we please,” Reggie yells out (unhelpful as always) from the Spades table. Jaima frowns over his way—her older cousin Reggie is nineteen, in college, and full of spit and fire. And usually bad ideas that come from him being so smart and in college.

  “So, Reggie, you gonna take care of these boys when they get arrested for trespassing?” Jaima asks, because she and Reggie are always arguing. Sweet Ma says it’s because they both have big brains, and big brains like to find each other and argue. It’s the law.

  “Look, alls I’m saying is that most of this place used to be ours, all around here surrounding the river,” Reggie explains. He even stands up to say it, because that’s something college boys do apparently. Makes them feel important. He’s dark-skinned, tall and lanky, and built solid like most of the country boys out here who spend their summers running in the woods and diving into the river. “And now we got to fight off loggers, oil companies, the gov’ment, golf course developers, and now them damn Greers,” he says, counting off each a finger at a time. “We ain’t gonna have nothing left soon.”

  Jaima doesn’t disagree, but she still knows better than to encourage these boys to do whatever they please. “Ain’t enough reason to get ourselves arrested.”

  Reggie groans, but settles back down at the table. “When they start damming up that precious river of yours, you gonna care. You know that’s something they’re talking about too, right? We ain’t even gonna have access to the river no more.”

  Jaima swallows and goes back to ignoring him. She hates it when he makes good points. This was land not a lot of white folks wanted back in the day—the thick forests and scattered marshlands proved too much trouble for them. It was wild, angry country, but the runaway slaves and freedmen took to it, made a life among the tangled vines and flooded plains. Even tamed, the place still had a mind of its own. Yet it seems these days everyone wants a piece of it.

  Jaima plucks a twig from Tee-Ray’s hair and tosses it on the floor, an act that sends him squirming in her lap. “Chile, be still,” she whispers as she works the knots out.

  “These children see the glory in this place,” Sweet Mama tells her. She’s working on the last piece of Jaima’s hair, whispering her homemade love into every rough pull of the comb.

  Jaima understands the glory more than most, aches with the understanding of the river’s depths. “I know they do, Sweet Ma,” she says. “I know it.”

  Sweet Ma hums softly. When most of the tangles have been worked through with the oil, she sets to braiding the detangled strands. “You don’t understand it all, Jaima. You ain’t grown yet, even if you think you are. One day though, you gonna understand why this place is made of you, and why you are made for this place.”

  When Jaima looks up from the twists she’s making in Tee-Ray’s head, she sees Reggie watching them with a satisfied smirk on his face, and Jaima sighs, because she knows Sweet Ma’s words are a gospel written just for her grandbabies, and if she listens long enough, there’s salvation for them all somewhere inside of those words. Maybe.

  Summer comes in fast, a series of days that swelter and linger long and wild. She’s chasing the twins through the woods one evening after supper. Following behind them on legs too short for this kind of running. They break into a run every time they see her nearing them, weaving and snaking in between the trees, their skinny little bodies camouflaged by the moss and leaves.

  Jaima’s boots sink into the soft mulch of the forest floor, and she’s breathing hard when she pauses to slow her racing heart, her body bending over, her hand resting against a gnarled tree trunk. She can hear them ahead, their laughter and loud breathing ringing in the forest.

  She loses them at the river, the gurgling rush of water drowning them out completely. She pauses there for a while, the rush of her own river-synced blood loud in her ears. After a time she turns to head back toward Sweet Ma’s, knowing the twins will make their way back when they are ready and not before. It’s still hot out, even for the early evening. The sun slices through the tree cover, the world a mix of dappled light and dark. When she left earlier, the house was quiet, everyone gone down to the river, leaving Sweet Ma to nap on the porch.

  Last night Jaima dreamed of the river, even though she had a bedful of cousins stealing her covers. She kept dreaming Martin was fighting the cops out by Freeman’s Run, that Tee-Ray’s hair was made up of just twigs and golden leaves, and that she was standing at the jutted rock where it was safest to dive into the swimming hole. But every time she went to make the dive, she woke up, breathing hard, heart pounding.

  Sweet Ma says the dreams aren’t any kind of premonition, just Jaima’s mind dealing with things too big for her brain to figure out in the waking light of day. Sweet Ma says the dreams are just about her fear and her trauma. But Jaima’s body feels heavy with the weight of the dreams, like at any moment she could close her eyes and be right there inside the dream, on the edge of the river, diving down. Jaima shakes off the thought, walks the mile to the northern property line, sweating under her yellow sundress and kicking up clumps of dirt with her boots. Byronisha and Jaquan are in Olakusa visiting their auntie, so Jaima’s got some time to run her errands today. This is the area where she usually finds the horsetail roots Sweet Ma uses for her healing teas.

  Because she’s so busy parsing out the weeds, it takes a minute to notice the distant figures parked out by Bullhill Road. She doesn’t recognize them until she crosses through the grove. It’s three of the Greer boys, including Bobby Jr., moving around like land surveyors. She’s heard about them doing this, staking out neighboring acres. She spies on them for a while, making sure they’re not up to something shifty. Mostly they talk amongst each other, talk into their phones, walk around like they’re plotting something. After a time all the Greer boys except for Bobby Jr. leave, and Jaima gets hot and impatient waiting for him to get going as well. After about ten minutes, she makes her way toward him, determined to not let his presence get in the way of her day.

  Bobby Jr. stops her, of course, and says, “Evenin’, Jaima.” He leans back against his truck, white teeth on full display as he takes her in. He wipes the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief, lets out a deep exhale. “Hot as the devil’s ass today. Whatcha doing all the way out here?”

  “Enjoying the heat,” she says, squinting over at him, the sun too bright in her eyes. “What brings you out here? I think your new property ends just about ten yards that way.” She points to a distant piece of grassy meadow just to make the emphasis clear.

  “Well, you know,” Bobby Jr. says, pocketing his handkerchief and scratching at his thick stubble, looking like he’s deep in thought, “land is funny like that sometimes. My daddy found some older maps at the assessor’s office, and we may need to stop by and talk to your Sweet Ma. Looks like some of these lines are off some. You know these big ol’ trees always confusing everything.”

  Jaima is only seventeen, but she’s smart; she’s seen a lot and knows folks’ ugly ways. She’s got river in her blood too, and it’s roaring something fierce right about now. She tightens her scarf around her long braids and looks over at Bobby Jr. for a time, wondering what his game is. She says, “Yeah, that’s funny. Lines and all, they’re funny like that. Always seem to be changing.”

  Bobby Jr. looks at her for a long time, eyes dark from this distance, like he’s trying to figure her out. She knows she’s sweaty, and her dress is covered in dirt and leaves from chasing the twins. She probably looks different out here, more untidy, wilder than she must look in her uniform. Her skin glistens near black in this sun, like the dark earth under her boots. She arches her chin high, doesn’t care if she’s rough-looking. She tries to come off professional, serious. Doesn’t like the looks Bobby Jr. is always giving her. He’s smiling at her now, like he knows something she doesn’t, and she doesn’t like that kind of look either.

  She clears her throat, knows when a battle’s lost. “Well, Bobby, good luck on figuring out those lines of yours,” she tells him, because she’s tired of him giving her the creeps like always, and her stomach is rolling too much, wanting to go back home. She turns around to go the way she came. She’ll avoid Bullhill Road until he leaves, and do her foraging later this week.

  Maybe something in her had been waiting for it. Maybe the river inside of her had been warning her, sounding an alarm as it rushed through her, greedy to devour, because she’s not at all surprised he’s following her with quick steps, his boots crunching loud over the forest floor. Following her like he does in the store, but this time he’s not playing games, and when she turns to look at him, she’s ready for him.