My God, Miriam thought. She realized that both she and August had been battling terrors too difficult to face alone. And yet, they had.
Miriam felt shame, like it was Jax swinging at her.
She should have left that son of a bitch sooner. Should have come home the moment, the very first time, he hit her. Miriam could hardly remember when. But it was after the Gulf, after she had forgotten something trifling—an ingredient in that night’s dinner, Joan’s math homework, to post the Jet subscription bill. And he had hit her. Miriam stood holding her burning cheek in open-mouthed shock. He had hit her. Jax. From the record store Jax. She was dumbfounded in her grief. It took time for her to process what had happened. Felt like she had stood at the counter, open-mouthed and silent, for nearly a month, frozen in fear. Why on earth did she stay when Joan was raped and Mya was still inside her? Jax had lifted her off the ground with one hand at the hospital. Lifted her by the neck and squeezed.
Miriam put a hand to her neck and shuddered. Jesus Christ, why didn’t she leave then?
The things women do for the sake of their daughters. The things women don’t. The shame of it all. The shame of her daughter’s rape, the shame of her husband’s violence, her nephew’s psychopathy.
If I ever, ever, ever fail my sister, my daughters, again, Miriam told herself, let demons take me. She made the sign of the cross.
August reached for another tissue. Blew into it. “All of this to say, don’t kill my son. I’m begging you, Judge,” she said, turning to appeal to her directly. “Don’t send my boy to death row. I did the best I could. Motherhood is an anchor. It has devoured me entire. I did the best I could. If love was enough…” August trailed off.
Miriam didn’t know what to think. She had always feared Derek, did not want him anywhere near her daughters—which in turn subtly meant she didn’t want him in the house. But it was his as much as her daughters’。 It was the only home he had ever known. Miriam shifted between pity and loathing, but she steadied herself.
Perhaps it was her faith, but it couldn’t have been solely that, because Jax she could not forgive. Maybe it was blood, having the same line as Hazel coursing through both Derek’s and Miriam’s veins. Perhaps it was her mother’s memory, urging forgiveness from the grave, but for whatever reason, Miriam thought, Pity the boy, Miriam. Pity the poor thing. He ain’t never known a kindness. He ain’t never known. Lord, why?
Miriam heard the ache in her sister’s voice when August said, “Killing my son won’t bring back nobody from the dead. You know this. And y’all going to kill him? That’s the question we came down here for today? How? How, after this, how y’all going to sleep at night?” She turned now to the room at large, her arms outstretched, challenging, beseeching them all.
Her chest was heaving, but her eyes were dry. Hands shaking badly, she reached into a pocket of her black dress and pulled out a pack of Kools and a small, pink lighter. She could barely light the cigarette. Finally, fumbling slightly, she brought the cigarette up to meet her full, peach-colored lips.
The security guard made a motion toward the stand, but the judge held up a palm to halt him. She shook her head in a tender, slight no.
August exhaled a thin stream of smoke. She shook her head back and forth and said, “Men and death. Men and death. How on earth y’all run the world when all y’all have ever done is kill each other?”
“I said, you all right, chile?” Miriam realized she was on her hands and knees next to her now-soiled medical instruments. She hadn’t yet picked up a single one—she was just kneeling there, still. Miriam hadn’t answered her elderly patient’s question.
“My hus—， my ex-hus—” Miriam stumbled. “My girls’ father works in the Pentagon.”
The white woman snorted. Miriam looked up, startled, to see the woman let out a small chuckle.
“Now, is that such a bad thing? Might be a blessing—a dead ex-husband,” the woman said.