Memphis: A Novel(40)
The college sent Miriam and her classmates to Baptist Memorial to change bedpans and dressings, insert IVs into waiting and needy veins, and hold the hands of the dying. She did this in fourteen-hour shifts, three days a week. Her hospital work was unpaid, part of what it took to get her combined bachelor’s and nursing degrees.
Miriam knew she could not let her and her girls be a strain financially on August. After class, she would head to Rhodes and work overnight in the library, down in the bowels of the microfiche and microfilm storage. Gigantic shelves on sliding wheels, containing boxes and boxes of old archives, could be moved with the push of a button. Miriam would climb up a ladder and restock and relabel into the early morning hours. The job allowed her to contribute to the grocery and MLGW bills. She knew she had to apply for food stamps when she snapped at Joan for squealing with joy when they drove past a Blockbuster Video. Ashamed she couldn’t spare the dollar for the Hitchcock rental, she had called her daughter selfish. But what child doesn’t want to watch a movie? That is what broke Miriam. Where shame met motherhood. She had snapped at her child for simply wanting to exist as a child.
Miriam found herself snapping at Joan nearly every time the girl opened her sketchbook. Joanie wanted to draw everything. The dark floral wallpaper in the parlor, the curve of the piano’s hutch, August standing by the stove chain-smoking her Kools. Didn’t the girl realize the state of the mess they were in? How on earth was art going to save them?
When Miriam and her girls arrived in Memphis, their bank account and fuel tank were near empty. August was bringing in good money, but not nearly enough to provide for an extra three mouths and a wolf of a dog to feed. Miriam realized she had to do something. She was the elder sister; she had to provide for herself, her daughters; August, too. She applied for government assistance. Without shame. She figured it was better than the shame of asking Jax, the man who had hit her, for a dime.
And Stanley’s son, bless that man, never said a word. Must have inherited more than his looks from his late father. The only question Mr. Koplo Jr. asked when Miriam showed up with her stamps was if she needed help toting her bags home.
After a month of eating spaghetti or rice and beans, the food stamps were manna. Thank God, Miriam thought. She had cried then, after Mya and Joan had put away the groceries. She fled to the bathroom and ran the tap so that no one could hear. Cried for joy at a full-stocked fridge. No, she did not understand how Joan could live in some fairy tale, oblivious to the newfound poverty they now navigated. Why couldn’t she be more like Mya? Present. Practical. Excellent already at math and science. Whereas Joan’s A’s centered on her poetry classes, her art, history—all subjects at which it would be a lifelong struggle for a Black woman to earn a cent.
After the food stamps came the pittance of the state’s housing allowance, which Miriam dutifully handed over in full to August, who had always been good with money, who was in charge of the household’s shopping. August tried to hide the relief in her face when Miriam handed her the very first check, but Miriam knew her sister. She knew money had been a storm cloud hanging over them all. Miriam promised herself not only that she would—no, must—graduate, but that she’d graduate top of her class.
The hospital had a small café solely for staff—doctors and nurses and medical students—if a coffee station and stale bagels counted as a café. But Miriam was grateful for the break in her shift. Grateful for the cup of hot hazelnut, her favorite, in her hands, as she waited in line to pay.
She had been on her feet for about eight hours. She had a six-hour shift at the library ahead of her, one that started at eight that evening. While she’d been showering that morning, she’d heard a car honk, summoning Derek. She shook her head and kept scrubbing. Miriam, too, was afraid of Derek, but what was to be done? She did not hate him. Her faith stopped her from hating her own kin, but she felt a pang of pity whenever she saw him. Maybe the boy just needed a father. But didn’t her children? All she could do was monitor Derek and Joan when she was home. And when she wasn’t, both Miriam and August agreed Derek could never be left in the house alone with the girls. Could never enter the quilting room. The east wing of the house was segregated—the girls and Miriam occupied this space, with Derek and August on the west side of the house. The kitchen became the family’s hub, the only room were Miriam allowed her girls to be with Derek, and always, always with supervision. It hurt Miriam to think of it this way, but think of it she did: Derek was a rabid dog, and her girls, though lionhearted, were still children. Miriam loved her sister and was grateful for shelter, but she felt a different kind of shame, a deeper kind when she would glance from Joan to Derek across the round kitchen table.
She slugged along in the trail of exhausted human beings on the front lines of fighting cancer and virus and depression. Twisted her gold chain rosary absentmindedly in her fingers.
“That boy’s got your eyes.”
“What now?” Miriam said. The voice had come from a surgeon behind her, someone she didn’t know. He held a cup of coffee in his hands as well and gestured with his coffee back and forth between Miriam’s face and the television mounted high on a wall.
The surgeon flushed at Miriam’s confused face. “Oh, hell. I’m just joshing you. Been in surgery too damn long. No offense, ma’am,” he said. “Y’all don’t look alike,” he muttered more to himself than to Miriam, going on about how he had a bevy of Black friends, some of his closest, in fact. Still confused, she looked more closely at the television.