“My God,” August whispered. Her glass fell then, toppling into the folds of her kimono and soaking the cushions of the porch swing.
Miriam did not remember standing up, but she must have moved like lightning, because she was suddenly on her knees on the porch floor, her arms around Joan, trying to absorb her daughter’s body into her own, whispering, “Oh honey, oh honey, oh honey,” as if it were a spell that would make everything all right. She’s three, she kept thinking. She’s only three years old.
August found the wire hanger in Derek’s room. One end twisted, slick with blood.
A week later, Miriam and Jax sat in a pediatrician’s office in Midtown Memphis. She wore a pink suit with big black buttons that ran down the front, lace gloves, her hair pinned up. She had wanted to appear as respectable as possible. Within the chaos of the week, the Department of Children’s Services had visited the house, had taken Derek away for counseling, for state-mandated therapy, taken him away for months. What if the same were to happen to Joan? It was a thought too frightening to bear. So she put on her Sunday best. Made sure Jax did the same. He wouldn’t let her adjust his tie in the morning dawn. Swatted her hand away without a word. Miriam noticed the sweat dripping from his thick, close-cropped hair, as if he had sprinted from the plane. He likely had.
He had taken leave from officers’ training school the moment Miriam called. Took a helicopter from a discreet military facility, hopped on a military flight, and landed in Millington a day later. Entered the ancestral Memphis brick home, swung open the wide yellow door and scooped up his daughter. Spoke to no one but her for days. Kept stroking her soft, tight-coiled curls. Whispering into them, My Joanie. My Joan of Arc. My brave Joanie girl.
They were ten minutes early for the appointment. Miriam had made sure. Told August to wait in the car. Take Joanie for an ice cream, maybe. Or eggs, since it was still so early. They shouldn’t be longer than an hour.
Miriam had seen awareness spark in her sister’s dark brown eyes as she spoke. Looked like amber shining. Miriam didn’t have to say more. She had reached into the car window. She gave her sister’s hand, on the Cadillac’s steering wheel, a reassuring pat and followed Jax into the hospital. She didn’t need to look back. She didn’t need to verbalize her worry: What if they take her? What if they say I am an unfit mother and take my daughter? Get her out of here. Get her the hell away. Her sister had understood: That amber gleam in her eye flickered as she sped away, Joan strapped into her car seat in the back.
Dr. Seth Cobb was a petite man with long, slender fingers and a large forehead accented by glasses with thick black frames. His office was in the sixth-floor children’s ward of the Mount Zion Baptist Hospital, the same Memphis hospital where both Miriam and Joan had been born and where Miriam’s mother, Hazel, had worked as its first Black nurse.
The doctor was sitting in a plush tufted-leather chair with an array of degrees framed behind him, arranged on the wall like an offering. Joan had been seen by him earlier in the day, and before, on the night of the rape. Miriam and Jax now sat across from the man, who held his small chin up as he spoke, as if he were looking down on them.
Miriam twisted her gold rosary, while Jax, next to her, sat completely still. He wasn’t in uniform, but a crisp white Oxford shirt and pressed trousers.
Miriam withdrew teeth from lip and blurted out, “What are the next steps?”
“Her hymen broke. She has some scarring, but she will heal. I’ll send you home with some antibiotics for that.”
My God. My baby, Miriam thought. “She’s allergic to penicillin.”
The doctor poked his chin out even farther as he reached to examine some notes in front of him. “What happens when she takes penicillin?”
Miriam didn’t like his tone. There was doubt in it. Like he didn’t believe her. But she knew damn well what her firstborn was and was not allergic to.
“She breaks out in hives.” Miriam’s voice was strained. She spoke slowly, trying to be polite, cordial.