L. Banks: My Big Fat Supernatural Wedding

Hattie McCoy smoothed the front of her flowing white dress and sat down by an adjacent tree. Her gaze fondly drifted over to the pair of young lovers, and she sighed with contentment.

"Now, Hattie," a warm, familiar voice said before the apparition that came with it appeared. "We ain't supposed to be spying on kin like that, specially when they in delicate situations. Just because we spirits, and can, don't mean that we should."

"I know," Hattie said. She watched her friend of many years fully materialize to sit beside her. "But just look at 'em. So young, and so in love."

Ethel Hatfield smiled. "If them two don't watch out, they gonna make a baby this afternoon, if you ask me."

"I know," Hattie crooned, clasping her hands in joy. "Wouldn't that just be divine?"

Ethel nodded and then frowned. "But that danged celibacy spell both our families cast is gonna get in the way." She glanced up. "Gonna storm, too. Them Hatfields and McCoys is at it again! Don't make sense—always thirteen women aunts conjurin' on one side against them thirteen uncles on the other . . . chile, you know how it goes through the genes on each side, but why can't folks just stop and let sleepin' dogs lie?"

"That's why I came here," Hattie whispered, standing and putting both hands on her disappearing hips. "All these years and our fami­lies are still feudin'? Don't make no kinda sense. Working roots on each other, casting evil spells, dabblin' in hoodoo—humph!"

Ethel floated toward the tree near the two lovers. "Girl, you block that tree limb and try to shoo them off the blanket 'fore it falls. I'll try to whisper some sense into these two lovebirds to try make 'em hold off until we can get this all straightened out."

Hattie covered her mouth and giggled, loving that they'd both been allowed to take on their old girlish forms once they'd crossed over to the other side as ancestors. "Chile, I don't think they'd mind right now if lightning did hit 'em. Gonna be mighty hard to get in between them two."

Ethel laughed. "Not sure that I want to, given how they's rubbing and bumping and grinding all up on each other. Have mercy!"

"Aw, girl, don't act like you don't remember those days. Love is a mighty powerful thing, magic all by itself," Hattie said with a mis­chievous wink.

Both ghosts laughed and danced about in the shards of sunlight, becoming shining pollen motes.

"Oooh, honey!" Ethel exclaimed. "What you think they'll make first—a boy or a girl?"

He pulled out of their kiss like a man drowning. Odelia's sweet breath washed his lips in warm temptation, her mouth so close to his that he could still taste the mint iced tea she'd had only minutes ago. His hands slid down her shoulders, his eyes coveting every inch of her dark, satiny skin, wanting to lower the thin straps of her yellow tank top.

"I know it's hard to wait, but we can't," she whispered. "We shouldn't."

He searched her face, rendered mute for a moment by the plea within her beautiful brown eyes. But the conflict he saw in them, the passion they belied, while her body against his created a hot seal that rivaled the muggy afternoon, it was more than a man could bear.

"But we're gonna be married soon," he said quietly, his thumbs lazily stroking her upper arms. "We're engaged." He swept up her hand and kissed the back of it, then the center of her palm, as his other hand stroked her long, velvety braids.

She hesitated, glanced at the two-karat stone that picked up sun­light and splashed prism-sent color against his cheek while she gen­tly brushed it, and then stared into his eyes. What could she say to this man?

A yearlong whirlwind college romance in their senior year had turned into an engagement. A whole year of trying to abstain, like Minister had said, had been the toughest thing she'd had to endure in her life. A year of them both mysteriously neglecting to inform their families of this new development was torture. She knew why she'd omitted Jeff's existence from her family's purview, and also knew why he'd never taken her home to meet his people.

She could only pray that Jeff's folks weren't still carrying the gen­erational grudge that was legendary between their families, and that they didn't conjure, too. According to her family's crazy view, his folks were wicked spell-casters and so was everyone in his extended family. No. Couldn't be. Jeff seemed so logical, so levelheaded, and so removed from the old superstitious ways, it was impossible that his people were like hers.

As she stared up into Jefferson McCoy's intense brown eyes, she knew there was no way to explain the insanity she'd grown up with. Once married, they'd be his kin, too. Maybe she'd break it to him gently after the wedding. Yet, how did one explain that her daddy was as close to a Dr. Buzzard-root-master as one could get, or that her aunties all worked roots, with serious, inexplicable consequences befalling the unfortunate individuals who'd dared to cross them? She'd escaped to college to get away from all of that backwoods stuff. Intellectual pursuits and the campus church had been a cloak and a shield against the kitchen conjuring her folks could do. If her family spooked this man, she'd die a natural death.

"Jeff," she said quietly, unable to draw her body away from his, "I don't want anything to mess up what we have. I don't want to tempt fate, or draw down The Wrath. If we just get married quickly, pri­vately, me and you . . . I—"

"You want to elope?" he asked in a ragged murmur, bringing his lips to her neck and breathing out the words. The more he thought about it while caressing her, the more her idea had merit. It was stu­pid to think that two weeks before graduation they could just drop this announcement on their families and turn what were initially supposed to be individual graduation parties into a combined, sur­prise wedding. At the time, it had seemed like a reasonable concept; there would already be a cake, food, people gathered, and a minister present—all that would be needed was a license, a few flowers, and a dress. He already had a good suit.

"Okay," Jeff finally choked out, unable to stop kissing her. "I can't stand a long engagement and all the drama of a wedding, anyway."

His ardent attention to her earlobe under the private canopy of trees, where they were just supposed to be having a picnic lunch, was making her forget everything Minister had said, and about the fam­ily dangers of going too far. The way Jeff's hot breath scored her ear sent tiny shivers along her spine. He smelled so good . . . deep, rich, male, and earthy . . . and felt divine; his tall, six-foot frame was like solid oak. Lawd. She couldn't help but allow her lips to taste his Hershey-toned skin, and before she knew it, her fingertips began to tingle as they grazed his short-cropped, thick hair.

"You'd do that for me?" she whispered, as he made her breath hitch with a slow kiss on her shoulder.

"I,d do anything for you," he said into her ear hotly. "Anything. I love you, girl."

It was almost too good to be true. She'd escaped. They might be able to have a life together. He'd be fresh out of law school and prac­ticing at his first big job with his new degree in Seattle. She'd have her master's, could go there as his wife, and could pursue social work, far, far away from home. They could make love day and night, with­out fear of reprisal, because the union would be under the protective cloak of the Almighty; even her folks couldn't mess with that—or could they? she wondered. Maybe her children with Jeff might even be born "normal," and not have the conjurer gene or the proclivity.