Memphis: A Novel(23)

“Girl, Stanley done died,” Auntie August said. My aunt stood over the stove, tossing the last of the fried green tomatoes back and forth in bacon grease, not taking her eyes off the pan.

“No!” Mama crossed herself, then pressed the cross at the end of her gold rosary to her lips.

“Same month as Mama,” Auntie August said. “Ain’t that something? But his son run it now. Good stock. Look just like him.” She flipped a green tomato over in the skillet.

“Why didn’t you tell me!” Mama shouted.

“Girl, you was eight months pregnant. Mama had just died. Wasn’t that enough hell?”

Mama sighed, turned to us. “Well, take it down to Stanley’s anyway and say it from the North family, and hopefully, his son will know why,” she said.

“I want to eat it,” Mya said.

August laughed.

“I made us our own pie,” Mama said.

Mama’s pies had been famous back on base. She’d pass them out as Christmas gifts to all the neighbors, our teachers, the mailman. During the holidays or any one of mine or Mya’s birthdays, our kitchen counter became caked with flour and meringue and branches of blackberries for the cobblers.

“Why?” I asked.

“Why she’d make us a pie? Are you crazy? They’re delicious,” Mya said, hitting me on the shoulder.

“No,” I said. “Why we got to deliver a pie?”

Mama sighed. I could tell she wanted us out of that kitchen.

“Because that family done your mama’s daddy a good deed back in the day,” August said.

“What do you mean ‘your mama’s daddy’?” I asked.

“If y’all don’t get out of this kitchen,” Mama said.

Mya slid out from the booth and attempted to balance the pie on the top of her head.

“August, get my children before I do.”

My aunt turned from the stove to see Mya’s balancing act. “Well, at least the oldest got some sense,” she said, and returned to cooking.

“Mya, if you drop that pie I spent all morning on…” Mama warned, ushering us out of the kitchen. I could hear in her voice that she was trying to conceal a smile. Wolf was already by the door, tail thumping against the Persian rug.

“Mother, hush. You raised us right,” Mya said in a strikingly accurate British accent, pie still balanced atop her head.

Mama opened the front door for us, shaking her head.

Wolf bolted out toward the two calico cats perched on the porch steps.

“Don’t burn my city down,” Mama called out when we reached the sidewalk.

“It’s our city now!” Mya shouted back in that same British accent.

“Where the hell did you learn that?” I whispered, then made the sign of the cross. I was convinced that if I crossed myself whenever I cursed, it would cancel out any sin.

Mya turned sharply, almost dropping the pie. “Mary Poppins! How can you—? Don’t you remem— You sat right next to me and watched it, child!”

I rolled my eyes. My mom had been right; we could see the butcher’s shop from the sidewalk in front of the house, on the corner of the next intersection. If we turned to our right, we’d be there in a few minutes and back. But if we turned to our left…

Mya and I exchanged knowing looks.

“Right then, old chap, hold this,” Mya said as she handed me the pie. She whistled—something I’d never learned to do—and Wolf left the cats she had chased up a pecan tree and came to us.

“We still got to deliver it,” I said.

“Yes, yes, hush hush, old sport,” Mya said and attached the leash to Wolf’s collar.

At the end of our street, in the opposite direction of Stanley’s, where it dead-ended into blackberry bush, there was an old pink house. It was the largest on the street, bigger even than our home in Camp Lejeune, but the oldest by far. The crumbling Southern plantation leaned heavy on its foundation, like a Black woman exhausted from a day of picking cotton. It was pink—or it had been when the house had been built, likely hundreds of years ago. Now the pink had faded to a dull mauve, cracking and bubbling at the base of every column on a porch that wrapped around the house. Originally painted white, the porch, too, was peeling and faded. A hawk’s nest was perched on an upstairs windowsill.

Mya whistled in wonder as we approached. I felt like I was in some ancient Southern tableau and that, at any moment, a ghostly Confederate general would appear on the porch steps, smoking a cigar and declaring that the damned nigger-loving Yankees would be licked by Christmas.

Instead, a woman the color of the muddy Mississippi River’s banks sat on the porch steps. Her long locs were piled atop her head and wrapped in an intricate kente cloth. She wore a flowing blue dress as faded as her house. Twin wicker baskets rested on a lower step in front of the woman. As we walked closer, I could see the baskets were full of greens. The woman took long-stemmed legumes, snapped the ends off in a quick motion, and threw the pieces into their respective baskets.

As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to sketch her hands. They were exquisite. Her long, dark-brown fingers captivated me, entwined as they were in a fluid dance with the green beans. I couldn’t tell her age—she looked both young and ancient at the same time—but it was obvious, from her dark skin reflecting the morning light, that she was beautiful. Maybe Memphis won’t be so bad after all, I thought. All these dark-skinned women around me. So much to sketch. So many colors to paint.