Memphis(53)

Miriam rose. The tray shook slightly in her hands. “Growing up without a father…” She paused, considering. “It’s a lonely life, ma’am.”





CHAPTER 23


    Joan


   2003


Thunder sounded again, rattling both the house and Wolf. She whined as I petted her, scratched her ears.

Used to the raging weather all that month, my family slept through the storm. No one but me was awake when the rotary phone in the hallway rang. Or maybe they simply couldn’t hear it over the rage of the storm. I yawned and hurled pounds of quilts off me. Wolf whimpered in the blankets, nestled herself farther into them.

“I don’t blame you, girl,” I whispered.

The phone rang again. I shuffled into my pink slippers, wrapped myself in my matching pink terrycloth robe. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”

The grandfather clock in the hallway read five-fifteen. Who on earth?

A thought blossomed in me, overtook my mind like the large leaf of a moonflower. What time was it in London? I wasn’t supposed to hear back until early May, but that was only a few weeks away. I picked up my pace, forgetting in my excitement that colleges don’t call; they write. I grabbed the receiver, and it shook in my hand on the third ring. I held the pearl-handled receiver up to my ear, and before I could say, “North residence,” I heard a loud voice recording at the other end of the line.

“You have a collect call from”—there was a pause, a click, then a man’s gruff voice—“Derek North.” The automated voice recording continued: “An inmate at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution. To accept, press or say ‘one.’?”

In all the years since he’d been arrested, I had never once answered a call from Derek. Never had to—he timed his calls for when My and I were at school.

Instinct told me to hang up. But I didn’t. I hesitated. And I swore I heard Miss Dawn’s voice: Hardheaded women.

Maybe she was right. She’d been right that year we first moved to Memphis. I remembered waking Mya at midnight, shaking her gently, a forefinger pressed against my hushed lips. We tiptoed in our matching pink slippers to the shared bathroom, lifted Derek’s comb—I’ll never forget the weight of it, the wooden handle—and went through the kitchen, crept through Auntie August’s shop and out the back door. We knelt underneath the magnolia in the back. The moon was a sliver of silver crescent above us. Mya held a flashlight. What we didn’t plan for was the digging. I scanned the yard for something, anything, to dig with, and saw nothing. I dug with my hands. My nails were filled with grass and fertile Memphis soil. Mya was above me with the flashlight, and when she tried to pull me from the earth, I pushed her away and kept digging. I was crazed. A nail broke off. I winced, continued. Ignored Mya’s exclamations. She kept asking what had the boy done to me. I ignored her. Ignored the worms I found in the warm soil. Ignored the blood from my broken nail pouring forth, mixing with the ground. I used my elbow when my right hand grew numb.

When the hole was deep enough, I whispered hastily for the comb. Snatched it from Mya when she wouldn’t give it, threw it in the dark earth, and smeared dirt atop it. I told Mya to angle the light so I could inspect my work, and inspect I did, wiping my hands down the front of my nightgown.

Hardheaded women. Miss Dawn’s words came to me then.

Fine, Miss Dawn, fine. This North woman will listen to you.

Now I said, “One.” I curled my finger in the coils of the phone cord and bit my lip in expectation. The phone’s pearl-handled receiver was cold as stone against my cheek. Despite the years, despite the distance between Derek and me, the prison bars that separated us, my stomach dropped out of its bottom as I waited for the click that would announce our call had been connected.

“Mama?”

I froze. The voice—so male, so obtrusive—took me back to the moment we moved to Memphis and that massive corn yellow door swung open. The voice had lost its edge of adolescence. Derek sounded full grown now, and his voice was deep, almost a baritone.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” I said, after a long pause. “It’s Joan.” I heard static. Derek was silent. After a time, I said, “Listen, I’ll tell Auntie August you—”

“No,” Derek interrupted. “I’ve been here awhile now. Had time to think. I have something I want to say to you. I think it’s time.”

I knew what he meant. After all, I had dug up that comb. And now this phone call. Part of me wanted to listen to him. To see if Miss Dawn’s magic was real. To see if I could stomach Derek. It would be a lie to say I hadn’t thought about the perfect string of curse words to hurl at him. I’d fantasized about what I could say to him to hurt him as badly as he’d hurt me. Felt like I’d been building toward this moment since I was three years old. I was all of eighteen now. Had just turned the month before.

“I reckon so,” I said, slow.

Derek gave an unexpected small laugh, cutting some of the tension. “You sound like Auntie Meer,” he said.

“Well.”

“How she doin’?”

Mama had shocked us all—she had graduated nursing school a year early. It was unheard of. Her years of throwing herself into her studies, years of falling asleep on top of her books, in mid-conversation with me or Mya—they had paid off. August, Mya, and I had all attended her graduation ceremony. She had asked us to wear white. This, this was her wedding day, she had proclaimed. We had all helped her with her valedictorian’s speech. Auntie August chain-smoked, and pointed to the page, saying it’s got to wow them. Mya, of course, wrote the jokes.