Memphis: A Novel(14)

Mazz paused then. Raised his eyes from the table and looked at me head-on for a moment. Then he noticed his glass was empty and waved it in the air. An obliging waiter hurried over.

“How the hell were we to know that the room was full of kids, Meer?” he said. His voice was louder now, closer to his regular pitch. “A girl, ’bout Joan’s age now, holding fort. Protecting her siblings. We just shot the first thing that moved. The room was dark as shit, dust and debris floating in the air. The power cut out from the artillery shells long before. You ever seen something happen so fast you only realize what you saw in hindsight? It wasn’t till after that I realized it wasn’t another army, their guns, that had moved. It had been a tiny palm held up in plea. And even through the Oz green of the night vision, we could all see the bright red of a single tiny shoe. Attached to a brown foot, a bit of the tibia sprouting from the ankle, it lay on the floor alongside a crib.

“It was the red shoe that broke him. We entered the room. All the kids were dead. Most of them in more than one piece.

“I found Jax afterward, walking in circles by the burning carcass of the army Humvee we had been sent in to save. Where his M-Sixteen should’ve been—strapped to his chest, the metal crossing his heart like a crucifix—was the red shoe. The child’s foot still inside. I tried to pry the foot out of Jax’s hands, but he wouldn’t let go. Kept mumbling about how Joan is mad about The Wizard of Oz. Said he’d just given her a pair of those red shoes for Christmas…” Mazz took a long drink from his tumbler.

“And I wear red shoes tonight,” Miriam said. Her voice sounded stronger than she’d thought it would.

“And you wear red shoes tonight,” Mazz repeated. He took another drink.

Miriam sat back. The story was horrifying. It was. But she was no stranger to fear. Terror. Grief. Rage. She thought of Jax sitting in his armchair in the early hours that morning, black coffee in hand, saying with a bitter coldness, “Having you for a mother is worse than having no mother at all.”

“I’m glad,” Miriam said.

Mazz cocked his head.

“That nigga will remember the night I leave him.”





CHAPTER 6


Joan


1995


I awoke to the sound of a tornado. I heard the crash of something heavy downstairs and tossed off my many quilts, looking over at Mya through the stack of L. M. Montgomery and Addie books that were piled on the nightstand between our matching twin beds. The room was dark but for the pink nightlight Mya insisted be left on every night. I went to Mya. She lay fast sleep in her bed, snoring. Whatever earthquake roared in our house, Mya would sleep through it. Our room had a slanted, vaulted ceiling and a giant bay window that faced the street. I used to sit at that window for hours when I was younger, gazing at the stars, convinced Peter Pan would appear, teach me how to fly.

I loved our house. Victorian style and three stories, to Mya and me, it was an exact replica of a dollhouse. We charged the other kids who lived on base dollar entry fees to explore the uneven floors and the hidden butler’s pantry and the unexpected maid’s stairway that led to back bedrooms. The attic was a buck-fifty. “The Secret Garden House,” Mya and I called it. Mya had been afraid the house was haunted. But I’d say, What them dead white folk going to do? Turn off the lights? Still, Mya had insisted that the pink nightlight above our stack of books be turned on nightly. Stamped her feet, in fact. So, we left it on every night. I never let it slip that I hoped the pink light might, just might, let me catch the moment my toys came alive.

I heard another crash. Sounded like a skillet hitting the floor. I crept to the door and closed it quiet behind me, so as not to wake Mya, so as to let my dolls come back alive and talk of things to come. At the top of a spiral maid’s staircase that descended down into the kitchen, I saw Wolf. She was the color of snow and about the same size as me when stretched out, nose to tail. Her black-tipped ears went upright as I approached. She paced the top of the staircase, agitated.

“It’s just me, girl.”

Wolf relaxed when she saw me. Settled into herself, resting her massive head on her large front paws, and gave a tired sigh.

I scratched Wolf’s ears in the way she liked, then made my way down the stairs, careful to tiptoe on the carpeted part to mask my approach. I tucked the folds of my long, pale-blue nightgown into the crook of my arm. The light at the bottom of the stairs grew brighter as I crept down. I found my perfect perch, one I’d used many times before, where shadow met light, where I could catch a glimpse into the illuminated kitchen and where the thick banister kept me masked in shadow.

I understood why Wolf had stayed at the top of the staircase.

The fights between my parents had escalated over the year. A few times, the police had been called. Not by us, never by us: the neighbors. The noise of it all. Their shouting could shake the house. It isn’t any wonder they were called. The banging of pots; the smashing of china. The police, deferential to my daddy—he was a high-ranking Marine Corps officer, after all—would knock before entering, and my parents would quiet. Daddy pressing an angry finger to his lips, a snarl like Wolf’s still curling over them as he ever so slowly let the officers in.

It looked like a storm had blown through our kitchen. The refrigerator door was open, and food had spilled out. Heads of lettuce, green tomatoes on the floor. Pots and skillets hung at odd angles from the rack in the center of the ceiling. The big silver pot my mama resurrected every Christmas to cook chitlins lay on its side on a burner. It rocked slightly to and fro.