“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.
“I was minding my business,” she whispered to herself as she climbed the plum tree. “I swear I was minding my business. Kicked out of my own house. And all I wanted to do today was play the piano.” She reached a branch right underneath the window. “Perfect,” she told herself.
And it almost was. The voices coming from the parlor would become muffled whenever a loud car’s engine rolled down Locust Street. But August heard enough to know that her sister would be leaving Memphis.
“So, you want to take my joy from me? My firstborn? What a Yankee won’t steal from a Southerner, God only knows.” August heard the contempt in her mother’s voice. “You want to take my Miriam from me? My sole daughter of Myron’s.”
August gasped, shocked that her mother was telling their business to a stranger, and a Yankee at that. She knew, of course, that she and her sister had different fathers—her mother had been open about that for as long as she could remember—but she’d never heard her mother volunteer that information to someone outside the family. Outside Memphis.
“My word, speaking of that August, did she not offer you some sweet tea?” August heard laughter well up in her mother’s voice. “That one. Spitfire. Acts like she was raised by wolves instead of a God-fearing Southern woman.”
“I’m fine, thank you,” came the man’s deep voice.
“So, you come to take Miriam off me. My only proof I ever loved a decent man.”
“August’s father wasn’t decent, I take it?” the Yankee asked.
“You wouldn’t believe who that girl’s father is if I told you, which I am not doing on this Sabbath. This Sabbath, I’m giving you an honor I doubt you can live up to: making Miriam happy for life. Now that’s a bigger honor, a bigger responsibility than any of them shiny badges and medals on your shoulders.”