I’d come close to crossing his path if I left now. As I hesitated, he scanned the room, and his eyes rested on me. He smiled, and a chill went down my spine. Instead of teeth, a gold front grill flashed.
I sank slow back to my seat.
Derek had his back to the huge man, hadn’t seen him. His eyes widened a bit, surprised I had taken my seat again.
“Listen—” he began, but I shushed him.
“He’s coming over here,” I whispered, frantic.
Derek frowned. “Who?” he asked. He glanced over his shoulder to see where I was looking. He froze.
The massive man was being steered toward our table. When he got within a few feet of us, he slowed his walk even further. His smirk deepened into true malevolence.
I saw light flickering in the coal black of his eyes as he scanned me, my body. I clutched my backpack tighter to my body to block it from his gaze. But his grin only grew when he saw me retract.
Derek had turned rigid.
The man was upon us now. He stopped, hovering over Derek. The guard frowned, tugged at his chains.
Derek shifted so that his head angled away from the man. But I could tell that this slight retreat would do no good. This man wanted his presence to be known, and known it would be.
I knew instantly, glancing from Derek’s downcast eyes back to the man’s shining black ones, that they knew each other.
The man peeled his gaze from mine, focused on Derek.
Derek’s body was braced as if for some terrible impact.
The man reached up—his chains clanging—and stroked his beard, waiting for Derek to acknowledge him. He made a sound—a combination of the clearing of a throat and a laugh.
I saw Derek, slowly, unwillingly, lift his head to meet the man’s unyielding glare.
The man’s lips drew in from his perpetual snicker to a tight point in the middle of his mouth. There was a sharp intake of air as—in both contempt and domination, in both incitement and provocation—he blew Derek a kiss.
The guard yanked harder at the man’s chains. “Move it!” he yelled.
The giant kept his eyes on Derek for one moment longer, then allowed himself to be steered away, his laughter fading with each step he took away from our table.
Derek said nothing for a time. The chains allowed enough slack for him to rub a long, furrowed line over his brow. He closed his eyes and did not say what was so apparent: that Derek knew—as did I—just what it is like to live among demons. To be played with, unwillingly, like a child holding a magnifying glass over an ant. Or one burying a comb deep in a backyard, underneath a magnolia.
If I had the power to break a man, break him I had. Not a soul, not even Derek, deserved that kind of damnation. And from my hand. I felt utterly ashamed.
After what felt like a lifetime, Derek said, his eyes still closed, “It’s just real nice you came, cuz. Real nice.”
* * *
—
The drive back with Mya took longer than we’d planned.
First, when I left the visitors’ center, I found that Mya had killed the Shelby’s battery listening to K97. When the ignition would not catch, no matter how hard I threw the clutch, I clenched my fist and pounded the car horn in utter frustration.
That goddamned comb. What the fuck had I done? I had gotten the revenge I had waited my entire life for, and yet, I was disgusted with myself. Had I done this? Created this evil? Lord only knew. And I prayed He would forgive me. Because no matter what Derek had done to me, to others, to Memphis, that nigga’s trauma could never heal mine.
I cursed under my breath, then crossed myself. And then, I did what I had to do, what I knew I could do. I kicked open the door, climbed out, popped the trunk, then the hood, and thrust my arms deep into the entrails of that ancient car and fixed it myself.
Once we got back on the road, scattered thunderstorms forced me to steer the Shelby to an underpass and wait it out. We sat for fifteen minutes as hail and sheets of thick rain barreled down around us. The storm got so bad, the radio went out. Sinatra’s voice dissolved to static. I shut the radio off.
The roar of the storm was overwhelming in the silence of the car.
Mya cast sidelong glances at me. She bit her lip the way Mama did when she was deep in thought.
“You weren’t even alive,” I said, finally. “When it happened. Mama was pregnant with you. Daddy was training somewhere, so Mama and I came down to Memphis so she could have you.”
Mya brought her knees up to her chest, rested her head there, and her eyes never left mine as I told her what I could remember. Looking up at the quilts from the floor of the room. How carpet can hurt like hell when a body twists against it with the sharpness of the pain. How I had felt it everywhere. Everywhere. Like electricity going through my body. Like I had been struck by lightning. How I didn’t know if I would die from what Derek was doing to me or from choking on the pain of it. How he had held me down. How he had held his palm over my mouth to muffle my screams.
When I finished, despite all my efforts, I was crying.
“I’m glad I wasn’t allowed in,” Mya said, wiping a stray tear that slid down her face. “I would’ve gone for that nigga’s throat.”
“You don’t understand,” I said.
When I told her all that I had seen in that prison, she unbuckled both our seatbelts and she held me like Mama would have. She stroked my hair and cooed into my ear that I was not evil. Forehead as big as the moon, but not evil. Combs just combs, after all. That I wasn’t in no kind of wrong. That it was a right fine thing I did, agreeing to send Derek drawings while he wasted away in that hell. A right fine thing.
* * *
—
We made it back to Memphis in the early evening hours. I parked the Shelby in the drive. Seeing the house in the pale-blue dusk light, the yellow door set in the evening glow, the calicos on the steps, knowing that inside were my kin, buckled my knees a bit. Seeing that yellow door, I was never so happy to be home. Mya and I, weary warriors, gently nudged away stray kittens with the tips of our Converses as we slowly climbed the wide porch steps.
Always faithful, Wolf greeted me and Mya at the door, her tail thumping against the hardwood. In the kitchen, we found Mama by the stove, Auntie August at the counter, both wearing aprons and fussing over something that smelled delicious and familiar: blackberry cobbler. A delicacy. A godsend. Where they found ripe blackberries that early in the spring, I hadn’t a clue nor the energy to ask. But silently, I thanked God for small miracles.
I settled into the booth. Leaned my head back against a thick cushion and exhaled.
Mya was brilliant. Invented some story about helping Mr. Cook after school. Somehow, she made it seem plausible—our late arrival, our wet and disheveled clothes, our hair loose. The storm, you see. Mya spat it all out with convincing nonchalance. Like we had never been to the bowels of Hades and back.
We never told anyone what we had done, where we had gone, what we had learned. Some things are best kept between sisters.
Mya and I didn’t seem to be the only ones in that kitchen hiding something. Mama and Auntie August threw each other furtive glances like it was the bottom of the eighth and Miller was signaling to Zambrano. Quick, sly.
“Now?” Mama said, once Mya had wrapped up her tale.
“Give it to her. Lord knows, you can’t hold water,” Auntie August said from her place at the stove.