I drove us around Memphis instead. Mya and Uncle Bird were in the backseat, and he was showing her his gun. He had triple-checked that it was unloaded before giving it to Jax for a second look; Jax had then handed it, begrudgingly, to his daughter.
“Okay, see that bend in the road?” Daddy had his eyes on the gearshift. “I usually take long turns in second.”
“Why not just shift to neutral and coast it?”
“More dangerous that way. You always want to be in a shift when you’re in motion.” He saw my blank, uncomprehending stare and continued. “Okay. Say a kid runs out in the street. If you’re driving along—say, in third—fine. You brake. Hard. Right then. Stall out the car. Whatever you got to do to get it to stop, right? But say that kid came out when we were turning this corner and we were in neutral. To stop in neutral, you’d have to throw the clutch and hit the brake. Too many movements to make in that split second. So, always, always, drive stick in a certain gear—first, second, doesn’t matter. Use neutral only when you’re parking.”
I felt the power of the car underneath me as I shifted into third after the turn and we roared down Poplar. As I drove, the demands of my art class dwindled away. I lost track of time. I began to fall in love with driving, with the power it gave me.
When I took a right at the corner of Poplar and McLean, by the Memphis Zoo, I made sure I shifted down to second, instead of riding it out in neutral. I kept my eyes on the road, but I could still see Daddy smile wide as I made the turn.
I had not forgiven him for abandoning us. That was too big a thing to forgive. But driving in the Shelby through the streets of North Memphis with my daddy, I couldn’t deny how lovely it felt to have one.
He left in the early hours on the third day. I heard the door of the quilting room creak open. Wolf’s head immediately left the comfort of my lap, but then I heard her whine in that way she did only for him.
I’d felt the edge of my bed sink from the weight of him and pretended to sleep on as he perched there. But it was all I could do not to sob outright when he planted a kiss on my forehead, rustled Wolf’s mane, and closed the door, quiet, behind him.
Mya twisted the radio station dial. The Mustang went from blaring Three 6 Mafia to 101.1, Memphis’s Smooth Jams. With all my heart I love you baby came out soft as butter.
“God, that woman can sing. Mama damn near wore out her Fairy Tales album,” Mya said. She began humming along.
“She gets it,” I said, thinking of how I’d never really said goodbye to my daddy either time.
“Gets what?” Mya asked.
“Heartbreak,” I said.
* * *
—
“That your kid?” That was our welcome to Riverbend three hours later.
“No,” I said.
“That his kid?”
“No!”
“Well, then, no minors without a parent or guardian.”
The prison guard who ran the visitors’ office had a Southern accent that was slightly different, a tad more tonal, telling me we were far from home. He had a dark, full mustache, in direct contrast to the growing bald spot at his crown. He sat at a desk behind bulletproof glass and barely looked up from his paperwork as he spoke.
“My, you may have to sit this one out.”
The Riverbend Maximum Security Institution was a massive compound made up of tan slabs for buildings, cut against the green, sloping Nashville acres surrounding it, giving it the impression of a pyramid rising up out of the earth. The colossal fortress could be seen from I-40 a mile out. Giant oaks lined both sides of a narrow access road that led to the prison’s gates. The visitors’ center was a heavily guarded separate building to the immediate left of the prison’s main complex. To enter, Mya and I had passed through two sets of metal detectors before reaching a windowed box that contained the gruff prison guard refusing Mya entry.