Miriam
1968
In the early evening, Miriam paused on the way home from her piano lesson to regard her figure reflected in the sheet of ice coating a house window. There was no denying it. She was the exact image of her mother. She had the same doe eyes, the same shade of brown skin; she even bit her lip the same way when she was deep in concentration. She was beginning to grow hips that she expected would eventually turn into the curved vase of her mother’s figure.
Miriam sighed, disappointed.
She had wanted to look like her father: tall and dark. It was her way of being close to the man she had never, and could never, meet. Let me have his face, please God, Miriam prayed. Instead, she thought she looked like one of the calico kittens that came to her porch in the evenings: bright and petite, the spitting image of Hazel. She couldn’t hate her looks, though, not after August was born five years before and Miriam saw both her and her mother’s eyes staring up at her from her baby sister’s face. And maybe God had been listening, just a little late, because even though she knew August’s daddy wasn’t Myron, her sister had that darkness, that long body, that Miriam had always wanted.
The blizzard of two weeks before had added an extra minute to Miriam’s routine walk from Douglass Middle to her home on Locust Street. It was still freezing outside. Patches of ice and dirty snow lined the curbs. When the snow began, Miriam’s mother had gone into a dark lacquered chest with Japanese geishas painted across the top and pulled out Miriam’s winter coat. Her mother shook her head, muttering that she had just put the coat away for the season.
Although it was March, a freak blizzard had dropped ten inches of snow and ice on the city. No one knew what to make of it. Miriam and her friends played in it: built ice forts and hurled snowballs at the kids who went to Trezevant, Douglass’s archrivals. Miriam was delighted to have a few snow days off school, a small miracle for southern children, and August was equally delighted to have her sister home on what felt like a holiday.
Miriam was still wearing the wool coat as she admired her reflection. It was tied at the waist and was the color of moonstone. She thought back to the last time she’d worn it before the blizzard. It was early February. She had opened the door to find her mother home. Rare. She was sitting on the chaise sofa in the parlor. No quilt at hand. No radical pamphlet clutched in her grip. Even more unusual: Her mother was sitting in the dark, not looking at anything in particular.
“I saw the bodies,” Hazel had said, after some minutes of silence.
Miriam knew exactly which bodies her mother meant. Everyone in Memphis knew. In the hospital, her mother had seen the two sanitation workers who had been crushed to death by the very trash compactor they serviced, the two men’s cries and screams falling upon the deaf ears of their white counterparts.
“They were all crunched like, like folded-up paper,” her mother had said, staring at an indistinct point on the wall. “Just like paper,” she had muttered again.
That very night, after August had gone to bed, Miriam had helped her mother paint big, bold, black letters onto a large white placard. The sign, so simple, stated, I AM A MAN.
The two North women had regarded their work and smiled, pleased.
The deaths of the sanitation workers had provoked an already tense Memphis. Ignited the place with a fury. Miriam could feel the anger well up in her city. Folk spoke different. Had an altered, higher pitch to their voices, the end of their questions rising in a way that made Miriam wary.
Memphis had raised Miriam. After her father’s death benefits had run out, a mere year after Miriam’s birth, her mother had had to go to work. That or sell the house Myron had built for the both of them. And as her mother often told her, it was the talk of the town that Southwestern, over on Parkway, had a nursing program. One of the first in the country to offer admission to Black women.
Miriam had grown up with her mother’s passion tied around her like yarn: revolution. Ever since Miriam could remember, their house had been filled with leaflets proclaiming the power of Black women, detailing the humanity of Black men. The built-in bookshelves in the parlor were filled with faded spines that still sparkled with gold lettering. Books written by Frederick Douglass, Claude McKay, and Nella Larsen. On Friday nights, the porch and the front parlor would be filled with other young, chain-smoking, and cursing-like-sailors revolutionaries. Women in dark leather jackets wore sunglasses with lenses the size of mason-jar lids, even when they were inside the house. Even with half their faces obscured, Miriam could tell they sneered at every woman who walked by with permed hair. They rolled their eyes outright most of the time any man said anything.
As a baby, Miriam had been passed between the hands of Miss Dawn and Miss Jade. A revolving carousel of established, notable Southern women in the neighborhood came together to fetch Miriam when Hazel needed to study or work or sleep. They left pies at the doorstep. The men left deep coolers of fresh-caught crawfish.
The priest, Father Hunter—a big, round, jovial man who had baptized her mother—came over once a month, religiously, for dinner. Always brought over a case of wine and a pound of red meat, waving away Hazel’s objections, calling out in his homily voice that this is what Fathers were for. Over the years, Father Hunter had taught little Miriam how to fish. How to hook a bouncing cricket without flinching. How to cast perfectly, as if steered by the hand of God.
When Miriam turned six, Stanley insisted in his thick German accent that she must learn to ride a bicycle. He stood outside the house, one hand attached to a lipstick-red Schwinn with a bow on its handlebars the size of a bird, his other hand honking its tiny horn.
And it was Miss Jade who took Miriam to get her ears pierced when she was eight years old, just after August was born. Which simply meant she marched a shaking Miriam down to Miss Dawn’s leaning pink house, where the wise woman sat on her porch, fire-hot sewing needle in one hand, cigarette in the other.
Although the neighborhood had raised her and raised her with love, Miriam missed the father she’d never known. Was curious as to how the mere mention of him would send her mother to another room. Always, her mother would reemerge, red-eyed, but ready to answer any and all questions Miriam might have about Myron.
Would he recognize me, Miriam pondered. Miriam looked for another long moment at her figure in the iced-over window. She placed her mittens against the small of her back, poked out her chest, and thought, Maybe, one day, I will be tall.
She continued the short walk home, turned right onto Chelsea, and passed Stanley’s. For a moment, she thought about entering. But it was too cold for butter pecan ice cream, and Miriam had never taken to other cold-weather sweets—peppermint, licorice, gingerbread.
A woman exited the shop. She was older. Miriam could tell by the way she clutched at the door handle and took careful, deliberate steps toward Brookins Street. She was wrapped in a beautiful pale-pink coat with a high collar. The pink reminded Miriam of Miss Dawn’s house. Odd, Miriam thought. The woman was crying. Sobbing openly. Not even bothering to wipe her face.
Miriam furrowed her brow and continued on her cold walk along the icy streets of North Memphis. She turned left onto Locust Street and was taken aback by all the cars parked along their street. As she climbed the porch steps, she could hear the soft voices of adults inside.