Memphis(9)

“Excuse me?” Miriam snapped her head from the window to look at him.

“Um. Say, that didn’t come out right.”

“You best not verbalize what foul mess you’re thinking in that Yankee head of yours,” Miriam said. “I’m a good Catholic girl.”

“Sorry. I, I mean—” Jax stammered. “All I meant by it was that I would like to, um, ask for you. You know, formally. How do they say it down south? Betrothed?”

“You’re serious?”

“I am.”

Miriam shot him a look that could’ve intimidated Satan. “Why?”

“Why?” Jax laughed.

“I’m serious.”

“Because you’re the most fascinating girl—woman—I’ve ever met. And it’d be an honor. I think it would be an honor. And that’s just fine if you need more time. Take your time. But I know. I just know. Can’t really explain it. Say, sometimes you just know a thing. And listen, I’ll be honest. I can’t say I’m a good man. I’m not. I hung around some rough folk back in Chicago. I’m not sure I even know what love is, what it looks like. But I do know, what I know more than I know myself, is that I would spurn God for you. So. Who do I need to ask? For your hand?”

“My daddy dead,” Miriam said. She went back to staring out the Mustang’s window. “Beaten beyond recognition. Body thrown in the Mississippi. Never even knew the man.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“It’s all right,” Miriam said, considering. “My mama the one you’ve got to worry about.”





CHAPTER 4


    August


   1978


A knock at the door caused August to stop playing the piano in the parlor. She growled in frustration. She heard the knock again. Then again. She threw her long braids over her shoulder.

“Fine!” she called out. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

She swung herself around on the piano’s swivel stool, slid off, and skipped to the door. She threw it open wide and found herself taken aback by whom she saw there. A tall man stood before her in a uniform she thought looked familiar. He wore a thick, dark-green khaki jacket and a matching cap and trousers. A silver badge on both shoulders caught and reflected the July morning Memphis sunlight.

“We don’t want anything you selling,” she said.

The man laughed. “You must be August. Heard a lot about you.”

August frowned, jutted out her right hip, and placed her hand there. She eyed the man. “Who told you jack all about me?”

“August!” Miriam appeared from behind her, her smile as bright as fireflies in an evening field.

“That’s not how we talk to folk.”

August pointed at the man, incredulous. “That’s how we talk to Yankees.”

“Girl, go play outside.”

“Oh, sure,” August shot back. “Great idea. Let me go grab a Barbie—no, no, you right—let me go play in the street and suck my thumb and catch frogs and let this strange Negro up in our house.”

“I can’t hit you because Mama won’t let me. I ask her every day,” Miriam said.

“You said she had a smart mouth, but damn.” The man removed his cap and placed it snugly underneath his arm. “May I come in?” he asked.

August cast her sister a side look. At almost fifteen, she already matched Miriam’s height.

“Yes, of course. Welcome,” Miriam said, with a rush to her voice August had never before heard.

“We really doing this, huh?” August threw her hands up. “Fine, come in.” She waved. “There’s the piano, the couch, the Victro—the old record player. That’s a random cat that must have come in when you interrupted my piano practicing, a lovely gold rotary phone. You got a carpetbag big enough for all this?”

“August Della North, get yourself somewhere scarce, please, before I do it for you.” Miriam’s voice was a combination of singsong and a cat hissing.

August threw up her chin and bellowed, “Mama!”

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” Miriam said to the man. “We weren’t raised by wolves, I promise. Would you like something to drink? Tea?”

“We’re pouring the thief drinks now? That’s what we’re doing?” August asked. She shook her head and then called out again, “Mama! Mama! Come here. Meer is over here giving sweet tea to a Yankee.”

August heard her mother approaching from the back of the house, muttering to herself, “Lord, give me strength.” August grinned at Miriam and crossed her arms.

When their mother came from the kitchen, she was dressed in her gardening uniform—overalls and a wide Huckleberry Finn straw hat. She had come from the back garden with a basket full of burgeoning okra and turnip greens. She held gardening gloves, caked with dirt, in one hand. She took a long look at the scene in the front room and was silent. Then she said, with cool finality, “August, go play outside.”

She half-obeyed. There was a plum tree that rested along the left side of the house, right against the parlor’s stained-glass windows. Its dark branches created a shady half canopy around the house, its fruit staining the surrounding ground a dark purple.