Memphis(3)

On the drive to Memphis, I had noticed deer grazing in the woods, right alongside the highway. While we were eating tuna sandwiches atop a park bench at a rest stop west of Knoxville, high in the Smoky Mountains, a family of deer had walked right up to our table. Mama placed a pointed finger over her mouth to signal silence. We said nothing, but I sat open-mouthed as Mya fearlessly, gracefully, extended an apple slice. A young doe had plucked it like Eve must have that apple. Without much thought at all. Simple desire. Later, in the car, Mama had explained that deer will walk right up to you if you’re silent, or on horseback. They really only fear us when we’re hunting them. But if you’re silent among them, it’s almost like you’re invisible. You blend in with the nature around the deer.

Seeing Derek now, I wanted to disappear into the flora and the fauna of the front porch and yard. The cats hunting the birds, the hummingbirds competing with the bees for honeysuckle—that all made sense to me. There was a logical order to the chaos. But no one, not even God, could sit there and explain to me why that boy had held me down on the floor of his bedroom seven years before.

August leaned back from Mama, taking shaky breaths. “Well, come on in, y’all,” she said, with a new warmth in her voice that their embrace had seemed to kindle in her. “We standing out here like y’all some salesmen, like we ain’t kin. Come on, I’ll warm something up. Made lamb chops last night. Y’all welcome to it,” August said, drying her eyes on the sleeves of her kimono. Her hands trembled slightly with emotion as she finally lit her waiting cigarette.

“It’s Friday,” Mama said. Her voice sounded small, exhausted.

“So?” Derek asked.

August smacked Derek hard on the back of the head. “Watch who you talk to. And how. Meer, y’all going to eat meat, eat your fill today, so help me God.” Derek slipped past her, into the dark room beyond the door.

I would not, could not, move.

“Joanie?” Mama asked. “You all right?”

Suddenly, I felt Mama’s hands on my shoulders, and I jumped almost a foot in the air.

Auntie August paused on the threshold, one foot inside.

I couldn’t seem to move my eyes from the darkness of the hallway behind her, not even to look at Mama. The blackness started to overtake my vision; I realized, vaguely, that I was holding my breath. He was in there, somewhere. From the inside, I heard a grandfather clock strike a half hour.

“The girl don’t speak?” Auntie August asked.

My heart was pounding in my ears. Then—

“My God,” August said, clasping one hand to her mouth. She pointed her lit cigarette at my pant leg.

The lion’s snout on the door appeared to sneer at me. I felt paralyzed, as if I’d live the rest of my life standing in this spot on the front porch until I grew ivy myself and became just another vine for the bees to explore. The bees—the buzzing came from far away now. I realized, as if from a distance, that the volume of the whole world seemed to have been turned down. Except for the warning sound of my heart pounding.

“Joanie?” Mama spun me around so hard I nearly stumbled. Her big eyes had flecks of yellow in them that caught the sun streaking in between the vines, the sudden brightness assaulting my eyes. I felt warmth all down my left leg, a wet heat that was quickly going cold. It was pee, I realized, feeling vaguely surprised, as if I were observing someone else’s body, someone else’s life. I didn’t even feel embarrassed. Mama shook me hard.

“She’s just exhausted,” she said, now looking into my eyes. “We had a long trip.” I felt Mya’s eyes on me, watchful.

“Well, y’all home now,” Auntie August said, her voice slightly higher than before. It sounded almost like a question, or maybe a prayer.

“Come on now, Joanie,” Mama said softly, in the same voice I remembered her using to soothe Mya when she was only a baby. “Let’s get you cleaned up.” In a louder voice now, as if answering a question, she said, “Mya, you go on ahead.”

Auntie August held out a hand. Mya looked at me, then Mama, then me again, then took our aunt’s hand and began to follow her inside.

It seemed impossible to ever move again. I thought I would die right there. I even hoped to. Except…Mya.

“Come on, Joanie.” Mya had turned back. Mya. My baby sister. Seven years old and yet, unafraid. Something small sparked back to life within me. I might not be able to move an inch for myself, but for Mya…I forced myself to take one step and then another. I would not let her walk in there without me. I had to, at the very least, be a fortress for Mya.

I entered, Mama’s hands still on my shoulders.

Inside, the parlor was a continuation of the front porch. There was foliage everywhere. Black wallpaper with hand-painted pink peonies covered the tall walls and mounted to a high octagonal beam in the center of the room. The windows were the kind I’d seen in old Mafia movies set in Chicago, corners lined with stained glass that was flecked with intricate emerald vines and purple violets, casting the room in a gem-studded light. After adjusting to the melody of dark and light, the contrast of the black wallpaper with the brightness of the painted peonies, the morning sunlight hitting the stained-glass windows just right, so that the ivy vines danced upon the floor in a rainbow of light—my eyes took in the furniture. The room was filled with antiques: a pearl-handled rotary phone that rested atop a small Victorian-looking maid’s table; mason jars filled with stuffed yellow birds; the same blue butterflies I’d seen outside, but pinned on parchment and framed in glass; a Victrola; a piano.