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.
“Give what?” I asked.
I saw Mama reach into the front pocket of her apron and pull out an envelope the color of butter pecan. She took a few steps toward me, then faltered, stumbled slightly. Caught herself on the counter, and covered her face with the envelope, sobbing into it.
“Mama?” I started to rise from my seat, but Mama held up a warning finger. She shook her curls.
“No, no. I can do this,” she said and composed herself. She wiped her tears on the back of her hand quickly and stood tall. As tall as her petite frame allowed her. But Mama seemed like a giant to me in that moment. A goddess. She straightened out the wrinkles in her apron and took two slow steps toward me. She placed the envelope on the Formica kitchen table I knew so well, slid it to me.
I caught it with my fingertips and felt the heaviness of the envelope before I saw the neat typewriter font on the front, before there appeared the pale face of Queen Elizabeth minted on British stamps that covered the thing.
Touching its corners, I thought then about all that had passed in the eight years since we arrived in Memphis. The eighteen-hour drive in a busted-out van. The screaming matches with Mama every time I opened my sketchbook. Derek. Seeing him again and being so stricken with fear that the piss just came. I remembered the night Derek was arrested. Auntie August, beside herself, muttering that a Black woman would never know the meaning of freedom. And I realized then that even my auntie could be wrong. Because I knew it now. Freedom. As God as my witness, it tasted just like one of Mama’s warm blackberry cobblers.
I didn’t need to open the envelope to see the victory within. Glory was so plainly etched on Mama’s and Mya’s and Auntie August’s faces. And then, I just knew.
Perhaps I should have known all along. Perhaps this was always in us: this gift. Maybe each of us had always carried it around, unknowingly, like a lost coin in a deep pocket. My hands likely knew what to do, the rubric inside me somehow, placed there eons ago.