Memphis: A Novel(38)

Stanley hadn’t been able to do it. He was weak from his latest stroke, confined to a wheelchair. But he was there. Right before the wedding, he wheeled himself up to August, tugged on her sleeve. His speech had altered so much from the stroke, but his German accent had never lessened over all the years.

“Umwerfend,” he said. German for “stunning.”

August had kissed his cheek.

The old lace of Miriam’s dress made a lovely sound as it swept the floor. As Miriam and Hazel began to walk down the aisle, August sang the first notes of “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man,” almost in a whisper. Even with the veil, August could tell her sister was holding back laughter. Likely thinking to herself, “That girl. That crazy, crazy girl.”

August’s voice grew stronger. She’s not just a plaything. She added vibrato. Leaned in on certain notes, let up on others. She’s flesh and blood just like her man.

Hazel shot her a look that could have cut a block of ice.

August sang on.

“You lucky I love you,” Miriam whispered to August when she and Hazel finally reached the altar.

Her mother’s face was set in stone, but August could make out the birth, the beginnings, of a smirk.

“August Della North, your daddy turning over in his grave,” Hazel scolded into August’s ear before kissing Miriam’s cheek and making her way to the front pew.

But it didn’t much matter. The entire congregation was in hysterics. Not so much at the song August had chosen, but at how she sang it. A fifteen-year-old girl—fatherless, dark, tall—singing Aretha like Aretha should have sung the song.



* * *



—

The wedding had been short, bless God, August thought as she entered the Officers’ Club an hour later. Catholic weddings were usually not longer than a traditional Mass. Miriam’s had taken place in the morning—a Southern tradition—the reception held at three in the afternoon at the Officers’ Club.

As August wandered around the packed room, she scratched at her thighs, though she knew she shouldn’t. But the mosquito bites were plaguing her, and the lace of the stockings was agonizing against the frantic itch of the bites. August had been covered in them, layering bites over bites ever since she’d eavesdropped on her sister’s proposal in that plum tree at the beginning of summer.

She looked around at all the people packed in the Officers’ Club: dancing, eating, and grabbing drinks from the bar. August didn’t understand it. Shouldn’t they all be in black? Grieving a loss? Isn’t that what this was? Some no-name Yankee nigga no one knew from Cain coming to take away her sister. Camp Lejeune. It sounded like a prison. Camp. Something told August it wouldn’t be the summer camps she had been sent off to every July down in Mississippi, where she had learned to build a fire, catch and gut trout, use a compass—rituals her mother had claimed every God-fearing Southern woman should know as easy as the Lord’s Prayer when she had driven her down in the family’s Coupe de Ville. No, this camp would be different. Her sister would not be frolicking in unkempt bramble and unruly thicket, but August figured Miriam would indeed learn new ways of Southern womanhood.

But here August was anyway, dressed in a pale yellow, the color of one of her sister’s lemon meringue pies, holding her petite junior bridesmaid’s bouquet of violets, resting, glaring close-mouthed at all the people acting like there was something to celebrate today. Trying, desperately and discreetly, not to scratch at her bites. Or, at the very least, to scratch discreetly.

“You brought that house of the Lord down.”

August turned her head to see Miss Dawn, who looked like she was traveling toward her on a cloud. Miss Dawn wore a white gown with cumulus clouds for sleeves, a single pastel cowrie shell hung from her long locs, piled high atop her head. She held a tiny porcelain plate painted with English tea roses and overflowing with red velvet cake. She forked cake into her mouth and nodded.

“Brought down the house.”

Miss Dawn had known August her whole life. She’d even been there at August’s birth. As Miriam told it, their mother, Hazel, did not trust the attendings and nurses where she worked at Mount Zion Baptist to deliver her baby. Not after Hazel’s first delivery, when the white doctors and staff had to restrain her from setting the delivery room afire. In the middle of a late August night in 1963, Miriam ran from the family home and down the street to the leaning pink house at the end of the block, screaming for Miss Dawn to come and to come quick. Pulling her head back in from her bedroom window, Miss Dawn had sprinted back with Miriam and found Hazel on all fours near the clawfoot tub, a moaning and calving heifer of herself. Miss Dawn had placed a hand on Hazel’s belly, another cupped August’s crown, and she cooed and guided August into existence.

Miriam—eight at the time—stroked her mother’s face with a damp towel. Placed soft kisses on her forehead. “I got you, Mama. I got you,” she’d whispered over and over.

Miss Dawn speared another chunk of red velvet cake and pointed it at August. “You should sing more often, child,” she went on. “God talks to every baby when they’re born. Every single one. But I believe He talks to some a bit longer. Whispers something only He can understand, I suppose. Some magic bestowed to certain children. You one of them. You and the whole North clan, really. Though don’t a one of y’all see it.”