The Memory Thief (15 page)

I earned that red ring the hard way on the day the milk spilled. The day I learned Momma and Daddy could hurt me. But they
never owned me.

Daddy’s car had died. He had tried to get it running all week. It would start at first, sputter, then die. But by the end
of the week, when he turned the key there was only a click. And then nothing.

“I could fix this with some money,” Daddy yelled. “Woman, git the money. It’s ours by rights.”

Momma sat on the couch, nodding. “What you reckon I oughta ask for? Fifteen?”

“We could buy a whole new one and a motorbike, too.” He smiled.

“How will I git there?”

“If I can git it runnin’, will you go?”

He pawned her gun, promised to buy it back with the money she’d bring home. Bought just enough parts and gas to rig it to
Carolina. I remember the day she left. How she kissed me on the forehead. How I jerked back in surprise, and then hated myself
because I did.

“I’m gonna tell ’em she’s sick and dyin’,” Momma said, as she pulled away.

Daddy smiled. “Be back in two days, baby.”

It took four days, and Daddy paced and yelled and pointed his finger at me like I’d done something to keep Momma away. The
day she came home, I was laying in the bacca wondering whether we’d make the farmhand picnic. Every year right before the
harvest and auctions, the Swarms held a picnic under the sycamore. The tables would be loaded with chicken and ham, all kinds
of pie. It was as close to Christmas as our family ever came.

I heard the car pull up, got as close to Black Snake trailer as I could without being seen.

“Woman, where the hell you been?”

“Weren’t there,” she said, her hands raised, palms up.

“You go to Lizbeth’s?”

“She wouldn’t even open the door for me. I scrubbed that woman’s toilets on my hands and knees, and she acted like she never
knew me.”

“So that’s it, then,” Daddy said. He sat down on the hood of the car, his head in his hands.

“Lizbeth told me where they used to live. I went there, then went next door and told ’em I was lookin’ for the Holy Roller
family. They said they moved years ago, but a few months after the man called ’em. Sent ’em a check to ship an old bike. He’d
given it away, but wanted it back again. Said somethin’ bout bikin’ in the mountains come fall.”

“Where’d they send the bike?”

She shrugged her shoulders, pointed to the mountains in the distance, whispered, “Somewhere near Boone.”

We went to the farmhand picnic. Daddy wore his nice jeans, the ones that didn’t have a Skoal ring burned into the back pocket.
He shaved his face and slicked his hair back with water. Momma wore a see-through sundress. It was white cotton and she made
sure her bra and panties were a matching hot pink. I wore cutoffs, tried to knot up my shirt but couldn’t get the tie to stay.
So I pulled the collar open a bit, to make sure everyone knew I was finally wearing a bra.

We sat six to a table. Me and Momma and another farm-hand wife on one side. Daddy, a farmhand, and another little girl on
the other. The Swarms were busy passing platters of chicken and biscuits. Plates of corn on the cob. Mrs. Swarm brought a
half gallon of milk and a pitcher of sweet tea to our table. She blessed the food and we all started to eat.

“Car won’t ever be fixed now,” Daddy said through gritted teeth.

“You seen that sycamore, Daddy? I bet it’s growed another foot.”

“I bet this trip killed it for good, too,” he continued. “Hundreds of miles on a half-dead car. All for nothin’.”

“Well, if we had done it my way,” Momma said, “we wouldn’t be in this mess. We could’ve bought somethin’ that wouldn’t die.
We could’ve bought land. Or our own business. But no, you had to buy somethin’ that would wear out. Somethin’ that you could
show off and be the big man. How’s it feel now? We ain’t got nothin’. No money. No car. Just her.”

Daddy raised his arms to stretch, like he was shaking her words off. But I could tell from the flush on his face that he felt
every word. He looked at me. Reached across the table for my glass of milk.

Something hit me. And as I blinked wet eyes, I saw milk dripping onto my T-shirt. I cried, “Momma.” But in an instant, forks
returned to plates. Daddy started talking to the other farmhand about the differences in tractors. Their speeds, digging strength.
Others started passing plates for seconds, laughing about how there’d be no room for dessert. I sat stone still, my face covered
in milk and tears.

I didn’t know if it was real. No one else seemed to think so. But then I remembered the shock in their eyes. How the little
girl across from me gasped. How her momma shushed her. And I remembered how Momma’s head turned away, to stare at mountains
when I cried out for her.

I reached my hand up and touched the sticky wetness.

“Why Angel, you’ve spilled your milk all over you, sweetheart. Let me get you somethin’ to clean up with,” Mrs. Swarm said.

I felt her apron, warm from the heat of her body, as it wiped across my face.

“Just a little milk. No big deal. Nothin’ to cry so hard over. I got more,” she whispered.

I reached out and grabbed that plastic red milk cap. Held it, tight and sweaty in my palm, until the picnic ended. When Momma
got drunk later that night and sobbed out the details, about five thousand dollars and the pregnant preacher’s wife, it felt
familiar. More like an echo than a memory. Like something I had spoken long before, returning again with Momma’s voice.

That night my hurting heart clenched tight. Till it was more like a fist than anything else. I kept that milk cap underneath
my mattress so that all I’d have to do at night was reach my hand down and feel it. And I tucked it in my pocket before I
burned Black Snake trailer.

But lost on that winter mountain, I knew I had made it as far as I was going to go. In the end, though, I was finally
Somewhere near Boone.
And if I blinked my tired eyes just the right way, I could almost see you, sitting there in those wet leaves.

I held the milk cap out. “This is a piece of a war,” I whispered. “A hard one, fought inside me. One that finally ended with
the truth that I belong to someone else. You. With your starry hair streaming behind you in a Tennessee sky. You can make
the very stars reach out for me.”

H
ANNAH

Hannah didn’t fall through the porch of the old plantation, like Sam once predicted she would. Instead, her feet carefully
stepped over the empty places that dropped six feet to the ground below. And she passed easily through the front door, though
the handle was lost long ago. The house was dark inside even when the sun was strong. Trees covered the outsides of the windows
and dirt covered the insides. The house was cold, too. Even on warm fall days, heat wouldn’t go where light refused to.

Hannah counted ten rooms on the main floor and looked up a broken staircase to guess of many more. Her suitcase was missing,
left behind on Folly Beach or in the back of the taxi that drove her to the plantation. But she never once thought of it.

Instead she pulled down old curtains, the hems gnawed by the same gray creatures that scurried around her at night. She pulled
her hand across dusty velvet and marveled at the softness of it. She took off her clothes and let dirty polyester fall to
the floor. Then she wrapped that velvet, decades old, around naked skin. She shivered with pleasure at its softness.

She explored her new home, and found a hand pump on top of an old well that she used for water. In the old orchard she dined
on fallen peaches, well past harvest, that lay on the ground and had begun to rot.

Something lived in the chimneys of that home. Especially at night, she could hear it, scratching, beating,
living.
She waited, her eyes open, and eventually saw an owl fly out; it had a wingspan of three feet. The other gray creatures,
the ones that now wallowed in her polyester, scattered. The owl flew perfectly, under arched doorways and fallen beams, until
it escaped out a broken window.

Other things lived in that home, too. Haints. They were all around her. Sometimes they called to her. Other times they sang.
Either way they always looked the same. White blond hair falling down their backs. Polyester clothes hiding pale skin.

One was ten years old. She sat on a box in the corner of the room while her mother brushed her hair.

“Some day you’ll be a mother, too,” the mother said. “And you’ll brush your little girl’s hair, just like I’m brushing yours.
Hopefully she won’t have as many tangles.”

“When?”

“Stop squirming. When you’re much older. Right now you’re still mine.”

The child giggled. “I just turned ten.”

“Still too little,” the mother said.

“Will she have long eyelashes? Like a teacup princess?”

“If she does, don’t ever let her know.”

And then they would disappear back into the rotting walls. Hannah waited for them every night. She’d sit wrapped in molded
velvet and pull her fingers through her hair. Until she could feel the brush that moved in the mother’s hands.

There were others, too. A girl, looking the same as the ten-year-old child, only older. Sadder.

“Mother?” the girl called.

“Yes, child. What’s the matter?”

“Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” the mother asked, looking worried.

“There’s blood.”

The mother smiled and took the girl’s hands. “How wonderful!”

The girl started to cry. “I don’t understand.”

“You’re thirteen years old. You’re a woman now.”

“But why is there—”

“It only means you will have babies one day.”

Hannah had it memorized. Her mouth mumbled the words like a favorite passage from one of her books. And when she got to the
part where the mother said
you will have babies one day
, she laughed loudly. But the walls of that plantation hadn’t heard laughter in decades and didn’t know what to do with it.
The sound bounced unclaimed from room to room.

She was not afraid of the haints. She called out to them. Brought them peaches from the old orchard. Decorated their corners
with red and yellow leaves and carefully arranged clumps of Spanish moss.

She spent week after week in her new home, caring for her new family. The smells of rot and mold didn’t bother her. Neither
did the taste of rusty water or browned peaches. She liked her velvet corner. She never planned to leave.

But then one day, after so many safe days inside her tomb, light poured in. She pulled her velvet closer, wrapped it around
her face, and closed her eyes. She heard a scream and clutched her curtain tightly. Something clawed at her. Pulling and tearing
until the curtain split open and she felt cold air across her naked skin. She saw horror on the faces around her, and watched
them stumble back in confusion.

Fists raised above her. She turned herself into the corner, but the fists came down on her. And the screams cut her. Someone came running. Poured himself over her, around her, until the fists stopped. “What are you doing?” he yelled.

“Look at her!”

Hannah reached for her curtain and saw it was thrown to the middle of the room. She tried to pull her body low to the ground,
but discovered she could no longer lie flat for the new swell beneath her. And so, with a naked stomach filling the space
between her and the rotting floor, she crawled. Hand over hand, skin pulled across splinters. Her eyes fixed upon velvet.

Somewhere in the room was moaning and weeping. A shrill scream, that made Hannah long to cover her ears. It was like a colicky
newborn that nothing would comfort. Like an abandoned baby that no one would help.

Father carried Hannah into their old shack on James Island. He laid her gently in bed and left the room without speaking.
Mother came to her, sat by the bed with a list in her hand. Mother stared at the paper, never once looked up, as she read
off each question.
Who. When.
As Hannah answered, she thought of deep water.
The Grapes of Wrath.
And the beautiful plantation.

“His name was Sam, and it happened two weeks before we left,” she said.

Mother nodded slowly. Then held up her hands to count silently. “You’re going to have a baby in about four months.”

A funeral began in their home. Bethie guarded the door, shook her head to the mailman that wanted to deliver a package. Her
father answered the phone and whispered lies about reinforcing bridges over the Cooper River. Then he paced, his heavy steps
giving a
boom boom
percussion on the hardwood floors. Mother wailed all night. On and on with no relief.

Day came. Hannah could hear Father.

“We’ll move west after she has it and say the baby is ours. She can move on with her life and always be the baby’s sister.”

“I am sixty-one years old.” Mother laughed bitterly. “I am not Sarah. You are no Abraham. And this baby is certainly not our
promised land.”

“Well, the boy should know. She’ll be eighteen in a year. We were married then. Maybe, with our help, they could make a go
of it.”

“No,” Mother hissed. “For seventeen years I’ve turned a blind eye to you. I let you give my baby dirty books. I listened while
you challenged her to question
why
she followed the creed we live by. This is your mess. I’ll clean it up; that’s what a mother always has to do. Clean up messes.
But now it’s your turn to look the other way.”

That night Mother brought her a plate of supper. A turkey sandwich and sliced pears.

“I’m not hungry.”

“Doesn’t matter in the least,” Mother replied, forcing the plate into her hands. “Time you stopped thinking of only yourself.”

Hannah no longer shared a room with Bethie, who was ordered to sleep on the couch in the living room. She spent her days alone,
hiding her stomach beneath piles of blankets on her bed and eating the trays that were carried to her.

“Get up,” Mother said one day, setting a tray of food by her bed. “Go for a walk. It isn’t good for you or the baby to be
in bed all day.”