Since Derek’s trial, getting out of bed had become a daily battle. Sadness would not overtake her so much as cynicism. It would come in waves. At first, a small, malicious thought would creep into her head as she swept cut hair from her shop floor: You going to die alone. She’d shake her head to try and push the thought away, but then she’d hear: Just like Mama. Alone in your garden. She’d stop sweeping. Let the broom fall to the floor with a small thud. It was as if her appetite for everything—for doing hair, for cooking, for singing in her shop—had left her, and all seemed so tasteless. What was the point of anything? What did it matter if she got out of bed? If she ate that day? If she sang? Fried up green tomatoes? She had been up the morning D gunned down two human beings. Her being up or staying in bed couldn’t stop the chaos inside or outside her house.
August propped herself up on her elbows and yawned wide. She reached for her kimono—the only damn thing her baby daddy ever gave her—and she was off to investigate who was playing her mother’s piano, the piano that hadn’t been touched in years.
The melody was hypnotizing. August walked through the house and wondered how everyone else could sleep through this. Each individual note sounded so light and yet carried so much weight. The song seemed to envelop the house within its melody because August’s footsteps on the hardwood creaked in time and in tune with the music coming from the parlor.
When she reached the parlor, she was momentarily blinded by all the light streaking in. The morning light hit the stained-glass windows, creating a million refractions of the ivy leaves unto the floor. Dust bunnies danced and floated through the air, somehow in sync with the music.
Bird sat at the piano. August saw his back sway gently with the classical tune. A trickle of smoke rose from a cigarette caught in his mouth. August saw his fingers move deftly over the keys. Then, with a slight awe, she noticed that his head was not bent forward. He wasn’t even looking at the keys. He knew the melody perfectly by heart.
Part of August didn’t want the song ever to end. She wanted to stand in that parlor illuminated by morning light and listen to this Black man beat away at a classical French ode on an old, untuned piano.
August waited until the song was over before she spoke. It broke her heart to ruin such a moment. “You looking rough,” she said.
Bird sat on a small stool and he spun it around quick to face August. He smiled.
To August, Bird was the damn-near clone of Jax. But there was something that she had always liked about Bird, ever since she saw him stride into her sister’s wedding reception, pistol-whipping white men and dancing with her all night. August looked him up and down and tried to figure how this small, dark man who badly needed an edge up and a shave ran most of Chicago’s South Side.
“Yeah? I could do with a cut.” Bird ran a hand down the back of his neck. “I heard your shop was famous.”
“That all you Yanks do? Lie?”
Bird’s smile never faded. “Don’t be like that, sis.” He drew from his cigarette.
“Ah, I forgot,” August said, crossing her arms, “y’all hit women, too.”
Bird had risen to discard his ashes in August’s white teacup turned ashtray, perched atop the mantel, but he stopped midstride.
“I’ve never—”
“Come on, then. Follow me. Can’t have no half kin of mine walking ’round looking like Kunta Kente. Let’s at least get you looking like the Ike Turner you is.”
He trailed her into the kitchen. “Hey now, didn’t your son kill some women?”
August froze. How did he—？ She answered her own question mid-thought: Mya, the only one who talked to Jax anymore. She wondered briefly what Jax had thought when he heard, but she pushed the ugly thought out of her head and rounded on Bird, ready to attack, when it suddenly struck her what he hadn’t said. He was trying to give as good as he got, but he wasn’t aiming to kill—just to spar.