Memphis: A Novel(6)

CHAPTER 3


Miriam


1978


Miriam did not look up from her novel when the bell above the record store door announced a new customer’s entrance. It was all she could do not to roll her eyes. She took a bite of the peach she held, buried her head farther in her Bront?. Miriam did not like working at the record store; she did not much like working. She preferred to be studying. Chemistry. Physics. Anatomy. This was a summer job—a gig to make some money in between her college graduation and the start of nursing school that fall.

The record store was decadent and dusty, walls lined in vinyl covers: smiling Bessie Smith, a forlorn Roberta Flack, and the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Overflowing stacks lined three sides of the store, and a high reception desk the fourth. Afternoon light streaked in through the tall windows, creating long diagonals of floating dust motes.

Miriam wore her hair in a large, curly Afro that rivaled Diana Ross’s. Her halo of tight-coiled curls shook at the slightest turn of her head. Except for her hair, she was the spitting image of her mother. Her breasts had grown, not much, but enough to attract attention. The beauty of her shape rested in her hips—as wide and welcoming as a front porch. And yet, Miriam knew, men usually found her the opposite of welcoming. She was indifferent to their catcalls, invitations, and their hanging around by her house. She’d shrug her shoulders at their compliments or cock her head, bemused, and walk back in the house, muttering to herself that men were strange things.

“Got any EJ?”

Miriam did not want to take her eyes off the page of her book. Heathcliff had returned, victorious and furious. Catherine, pregnant, had fallen ill. “Lord, if his woman dies…” she said.

“You know—EJ! EJ? Elton John. ‘Beh-beh-beh-Bennie and the Jets.’?”

Miriam rolled her eyes. She did not rightly care if this nigga was asking for Elton John or for the pope. She cocked her head to the right, her eyes attached, deep to her book. “Over. There,” she announced the words slowly, separately, making sure her irritation was known.

“Engrossed in your book, huh? I understand. Hell of a one. I’m convinced Heathcliff was Black.”

Miriam lifted her dark brown eyes from her novel and fixed them on the stranger in front of her. Miriam—who had only ever regarded men as inevitable oddities and annoyances, nothing more than mosquito bites in the summer, moths that made their way into chests in the winter months, the dust that settled atop books—Miriam, ever indifferent to the wiles of men, fell in utter, marrow-boiling love the moment her doe eyes locked with those of the young man in front of her.

She had never seen anyone that dark. He was the color of a lonely street in the middle of the night. Almost indigo. He had a wide nose that became a bulb at the end, and large lips that curved to a fine point at the top. It was all Miriam could do not to kiss them. And his hair—Miriam stopped herself from running a hand through it. She could tell his hair was curly because even though it was cut short, waves slick with sheen glistened in the shop’s morning light.

Taking in the full measure of the man, Miriam felt something in her insides stir. He wore the same Marine Corps uniform that had been her father’s. Khaki shirt, left breast ablaze with ribbons detailing where he had been stationed, the medals he had received. Dark-green trousers, a cloth hat that folded into the tuck of a belt. Her mother still pressed her father’s old uniforms every few months or so. She’d catch her mother laying them all out on her sleigh bed and staring at them for hours, before putting them away again.

Miriam knew she should answer this young man, but for the first time in her life, she had lost the power of speech. She figured if she spoke, she’d only stutter out some half word. She sat and stared at him, slightly open-mouthed and blinking. She felt a deep blush start and spread to her fingertips.

“So,” the man said slow. He rocked back and forth on his heels, hands thrust in his pockets. “I’ve got to say, and I hope you don’t mind. You must hear this all the time. But you have the prettiest eyes. They’d give Miss Diana Ross a run for her money. Say, I’m new to Memphis. Well, Millington. I’m at the base out there. Just made first lieutenant. Sorry. I feel like I’m rambling. I talk too much, Mazz always says. Mazz—Mazzeo—Antonio Mazzeo. Jesus, I was just making bee sounds at you. Mazz. Mazz. He’s this friend of mine back on base. Say, what are you doing tomorrow? Saturday night? Sorry, you probably know tomorrow is Saturday. Don’t need me telling you. Anyway. A few of us are going to the Officers’ Club. It’s nice, I promise. And there’ll be other girls there. Sorry, other women. Girlfriends and wives. Not that I’m asking you to get married. Did I mention I talk too much? Say, is it always this hot down here? How you survive it?”

His shy smile, his nervous laughter, the way he ran his hands through the soft waves of his hair throughout his rambling put Miriam at ease. Perhaps, just maybe, Cupid had struck them down both.

Miriam straightened in her seat, squared her shoulders. Tried to conceal the long exhale from her quivering lips. She bit her lip. Lifted a page from her novel and dog-eared it. “You in Memphis now. No more EJ,” she said and rose from her seat. “The only white boy we listen to down here from Tupelo.”

She pushed open the small swing gate that contained her behind the counter. She made sure to sway her hips as she walked down the crowded aisles of the tiny record store. Made sure to brush against the man’s khaki sleeve ever so slightly as she did.