Memphis: A Novel(33)

She was saving for Myron. For the both of them.

For the past six years, ever since that day at Stanley’s, Hazel and Myron had met every Friday in front of the deli, ordered two butter pecan ice creams, and walked hand in hand down Chelsea until they reached Locust and the ancient fading mansion at its flowering dead end. Miss Dawn, the mysterious new owner of the leaning house, begrudgingly let them sit on her wide porch swing. More often than not, she would open a window or door and yell at them they should go ahead, get married, and get their own damn house to live and love in.

“Maybe she’s right,” Myron had said one Friday toward the end of their senior year at Douglass High.

They’d been together for three years at that point. Hazel’s head was in his lap—their customary position atop Miss Dawn’s porch swing. Myron held a branch of honeysuckle over her head. It was 1940, and the talk of a war in Europe was gently kneaded into the evening gossip shared on front porches. Honeysuckle was in full, delicious bloom. He broke off flower from stem and, with a gentle pinch, pulled a droplet of nectar toward Hazel’s open mouth.

“About what?” she’d said, after swallowing the nectar.

“Getting our own house.”

Hazel propped herself up on her elbows. “You want to buy a house?” she asked.

“No,” Myron said.

Hazel relaxed. She sank back into her comfortable position. Closed her eyes. Felt the heat of the Memphis day on her cheeks. They were both only eighteen. Hazel knew her mother wouldn’t let her get married to some neighborhood boy not a cent to his name no matter how much she was in love.

“I want to build you a house,” Myron said.

Hazel’s eyes blinked open.

“You heard me, gi—”

Hazel grabbed Myron’s hand, still holding the honeysuckle branch. Bit him. Not too hard. But she made sure teeth sank into flesh.

He pulled back his hand.

“Woman!” Myron exclaimed, but Hazel knew he lived for her love bites. She noticed that even after they were married, they didn’t behave like the married folk Hazel knew. Often, Myron would chase her around the house he built for her, Hazel’s laughter filling the home, until he had successfully tackled her on their four-poster bed. Sometimes, Hazel would stay up waiting for Myron after a late shift, and they’d sit at the kitchen booth over cigarettes and drink coffee and talk of things to come.

“Are you serious, Myron?”

“As serious as you beating on me.”

Hazel rolled her eyes.

“Nah, I’m serious,” he said. “Why not?”

Hazel was quiet. A hummingbird flitted about the blooming magnolias. “How do you know?” she said.

“Know what?”

“That I’m the woman for you. That you the man for me.”

“Sit up,” Myron said, his tone suddenly serious. He nudged her with his knees.

“No, I’m comfortable.”

“Hazel Rose, you look at me now,” Myron said. He raised Hazel’s head with the tip of his index finger. “You remember the first thing I ever said to you?”

“?‘You all kinds of crazy’?”

Myron gave a small laugh. “It was ‘I got you.’ I meant that. You hear me? I meant that.”

For a few minutes, the only sounds were the hummingbirds and the gentle breeze blowing through the magnolia leaves. Then Hazel said, “I never told you what else I did that day.”

Myron tilted his head and took a long look at her. “I’m afraid to even ask,” he said.

“I went back to the deli.”

“You did what?” Myron’s tone turned sharp.

“I went back. Later that night. I waited ’til midnight. Snuck out. There was a single light on, so I knew Stanley was in there. I knocked quiet as a bird, but he heard. Came out the back holding a frozen lamb’s leg to the side of his face. He opened the door and let me in.”

“What happened then?”

“I gave him one of my lemon meringue pies,” Hazel said. But she had also done something else that day back in 1937, done something that would have gotten her killed in the South: She gave Stanley a kiss. Planted the tenderest of kisses on the left side of his face, bruised and purple as a melon.

Under the honeysuckle above Miss Dawn’s porch swing, Myron and Hazel had made a decision. They would start saving for their future house.

A month later they graduated, and Myron became a Pullman porter, where he’d been for the past three years now. His huge frame suited him for the daily haul of white folks’ luggage at downtown’s Union Station. He worked the overnight shifts because they paid more. Teased Hazel that he didn’t mind being called “boy”; he knew he was her man.

Which was why confusion, heavy as down, blanketed Hazel as she looked up from her quilting to see Myron, breathless, standing before her. He had burst through the shop door, not bothering to knock or ring the buzzer—something he had never done before. He also was never late to work. And yet, there he was—tall and dark and splendid in his uniform.

“My—” Hazel began, but Myron held up a finger, cutting her off.

“Lord, I know you didn’t walk up in my house to shush a grown woman,” her mother said. She was still on her knees in front of Mrs. Finley, but she had stopped pinning the lace hem in place.