Memphis(46)

“You sure do know how to ruin a good song, Joan,” Auntie had said.

“Sorry, Auntie.”

“Your mama just wants the best for you, is all,” my aunt had said and exited the car off Cooper and onto North Parkway.

I stole glances around the room when Mr. Harrison’s back was turned, sketching the angles of the desks and chairs and pretending they were notes on the lecture. Mama may have wanted what was best for me, but maybe she didn’t know what that really was. Over the summer, she had looked over my shoulder while I sketched a vase of flowers, shaken her head back and forth, and said, “Girl, you are just like your father.”

I didn’t talk to Daddy much after we left Camp Lejeune. I hadn’t seen him in the flesh since. He’d call for birthdays, the major holidays. He sent birthday cards, with platitudes printed in neat fonts, attached to gifts that never fit me: a charm bracelet, a Game Boy, a set of eyeshadow colors. I’d rather have had oils. Inks. Paper. Canvas. Pencils. I’d rather have had a father, frankly. The fact that he could leave us mystified me. Yes, we had fled in a van. But why the hell hadn’t he pursued? Why hadn’t he fought for us? Why didn’t he ever visit Memphis? Why did he care more about his career than us, than me? Why had he given Mama a black eye? He had turned the thing damn near purple.

Mya still talked to him. I’d catch her on the ancient rotary phone in the hallway by the bathroom, twirling her fingers in the cord and whispering. I didn’t blame her. How could I? She wanted a father.

I was satisfied to live without the lot of them—all men did was fail me. Derek was serving out his life sentence at the Riverbend Maximum Security prison, a stone’s throw from Nashville. My Auntie August visited him every month. She’d return from the three-hour drive with bleary eyes and a depression that would last the week. The house would lose its magic in those times. Auntie August was a shell of herself. She’d do hair, but she wouldn’t try her more exotic cuts or riskier styles. Her food would be almost tasteless, made without flavor or her usual, delicious finesse. She gave one-word answers to almost all our questions and went to bed early, hardly touching her plate.

The evening Derek was arrested, Mya and I had been sitting in the shop. Most of the clients had streamed out, and only Miss Dawn was left, getting her ritual wash and set. It was four years ago now, but I could still remember it clear as day. A loud banging on the shop’s patio entrance had startled all of us. It was not the sound of a woman coming in for her treatment. Auntie August pressed a finger to her lips. She ran into the house, and when she returned seconds later, she was carrying a shotgun.

She’d rushed to the door, pulled back the curtain, and slowly opened the door to let in two police officers.

Mya and I ran to Miss Dawn and hid behind her chair. I did not like police officers. Neither did Mya. I was only twelve then, and all I knew was that they meant my parents’ fights had escalated.

I remembered Auntie August asking, pointedly, if the two white officers had read her shop’s sign outside and whether they had a warrant. How her face fell when they told her that they, indeed, did.

Later that night, we’d sat at our kitchen table shell-shocked and silent. My mom had done what she could—she made us all tea. Mya had fallen asleep with her head resting on Auntie August’s lap. August’s head was on the table, folded in the crook of her arm.

My mom had placed a brown hand atop her sister’s shaking one. She reached across and grabbed mine so that we formed a half séance over the table. “We will get through this,” my mom had said.

I snatched my hand back. “I’ve prayed for this night all my life,” I said.

“Joan,” my mom said, sharp, reproachful.

“He’s gone,” I said. “I’m finally safe. Free. We all are now.”

Auntie August’s cackle reverberated throughout the yellow kitchen. Felt like it shook the rafters themselves. “Free?” Her laugh was steeped in the same bitterness when I had asked her about God. “A Black woman hasn’t ever known the meaning of that word, my love.”

“Joan,” Mr. Harrison said again, startling me back to the present. He was at the front of the classroom, a piece of chalk in his hand. “You’re drawing again, aren’t you?” He sighed but didn’t sound angry. More resigned.

Damnit, I thought. I glanced down at my notebook.

“The New Deal” was written in my standard cursive…and nothing else. A lot of drawings of the room. The maple. Random half drawings.

I sighed, too. I would be in the library looking up whatever the hell “the New Deal” was before our next exam. You’re killing me, Teach. Give me war! I almost moaned aloud. At least in a battle, people are fighting for something, I thought. What was I fighting for, sleeping and eating and growing up in the Cold War being waged between me and Derek, and then between me and the memory of Derek? To get out with my dignity, I supposed. To get Mya through safe. To give Mama, despite our fights, a chance to make her own way, to become a nurse. To make sure Auntie August kept eating when she took to her bed.

My gaze shifted to the window again, but I was no longer studying the maple.

Mama had told us countless stories of Papa Myron. His love for his wife became a legendary thing in our house. Mama and Auntie August would mention his lynching infrequently, but it loomed large in all our minds. I wondered whether he’d ever been scared on the front. If he felt more scared there or when his fellow officers turned on him. A man who loved big enough to build Grandma Hazel the house we all lived in now—had he killed, when it came to it? It was easier to imagine that my daddy had. Harder to picture him ever being scared. Is that why he’d chosen the Marines, because he’d always been like that? Or was it the Marines that turned him angry and violent?