“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.
Mama. In the months since Christmas—since I turned in my application to the Royal College—Mama had grown quiet. She still let out a defiant hmph whenever she saw me with my pocket sketchbook, but she held her tongue. I trusted that Auntie August was doing as she promised: was working on Mama for me. I kept quiet and prayed and prayed and prayed every night on rug-burnt knees that I would get in.
Derek kept quiet on the other end of the line, waiting for me to respond.
The anger came then. And it came swift. “I should go,” I managed. I wanted to scream at him, to make him feel some of the fear and shame and disgust I’d felt for years, but the words seemed to be gone from me now.
I was so engulfed in the call, so enraged at the mere fact that I was on it, that I did not see Mya. She must have been standing there for a minute. A socked foot reached behind her other leg and scratched the back of her calf. She wore her nightgown, a long African-print housedress, and she was eating a peach as she stared at me.
She was only fifteen, but Mya planned to follow in the steps of both our mother and grandmother: She wanted to be a doctor. The child was good with numbers and science and all the things that confused me, like dark mass and periodic tables and inertia. And she loved saving things. She’d sit on our front porch steps and tend to creatures—bathe and treat small wounds on the calicos and the tabbies, help birds with broken wings. Mya was equally talented at the guitar. Her genius with numbers transferred so easily to reading sheet music, remembering chords. My wasn’t just technical; she could really play that thing. Her musical talent must have come from Auntie August, who still played at the piano in the parlor every so often. Mya played her guitar for the shop. Had the women in there howling. And every day, she looked more and more like Mama. She took after her—petite and bright, with burgeoning hips.
I’m not sure how her tiny self did it, but in a sudden and nimble move, Mya snatched the receiver out of my hand.
“The fuck—” My anger spun toward my sister. I reached for the receiver, but Mya had it tight in her grasp, held it pressed firm against her ear.
“Mm-hmm.” Mya’s tone was serious.
“My,” I said. I was exhausted. My anger and adrenaline suddenly went to my knees. I felt I needed to sit, have a cup of tea.