The Memory Thief (7 page)

“Beautiful. And wild.” With Spanish moss twisting off the trees and onto the columns and porch frame. Like a first bite, before
the earth swallowed the house.

“It’s ours, Hannah. One day we’ll claim it. Too rotted to even step up on the porch now. But someday, we’ll rebuild it together.”

“Yes,” she whispered, looking at him instead of the house.

“See the four chimneys? Imagine a home grand enough to have four
fireplaces. Slave quarters been demolished for decades now. And cotton ain’t grown on this land in who knows how long. But
this house has got life to it yet. It don’t wanna die, won’t admit it is, even as it rots on the frame. It’s waitin’ on us.”

“When will we?”

“When we’re ready.”

It was a simple answer. One that should have told her
Never.
Or that should have told her
I’m just a seventeen-year-old kid.
But somewhere along the way in Carolina, truth went missing. Hannah heard whatever she wanted. She heard
in a couple years
, or
after college
, or
when your father agrees
.

“Look, look there.” He was pointing to the porch ceiling, whole boards missing and sagging low. “See that chipped paint? That’s
a whole lot newer than the rest of this house. Bet that’s from the last owner. Know what it means?”

She took a step closer and looked. She saw dusty chips in a muted, electric blue.

“No.”

“That’s haint blue. Your people call ’em ghosts. Haints won’t cross water. So if they see that blue on your porch, they think
of water and won’t go in.”

“How long will it take? To fix this up?”

“Years. And not just the house. We’d need to get the fields mowed down. These trees need choppin’ back. Replant the orchard
that must have been here at one point. A house like this is somethin’ a man can dream on all his life and never grow tired
of.”

He pulled a rolled blanket from under his backpack and spread it underneath the largest live oak Hannah had ever seen. It
wasn’t that it was so tall. Only that it was wide, nearly as wide as the house. With branches scooping and swirling like they
were more than just alive. Like they were growing as Hannah watched. They sat on the blanket, ate the sandwiches he brought,
and shared a thermos of tea. They were silent, both of them staring at the house until the night was so dark they had to imagine
it before them.

Hannah could never explain
why
she let him pull her close under that oak tree. Other than that she wanted him to. And that place made it so much easier.
They were in a world of their own, one that died over a century before. They were in a room of their own, too, made of growing
branches and covered with Spanish moss curtains. It was all lies, but in that place there were no parents to go home to. There
was no God to pray to. There was no husband to wait for. There was only history around them. Their love was the last good
thing of a once-great plantation. Nothing else was real.

Good-bye was too easy for him. Hannah’s parents were starting to pack the few things they’d brought. Mother was starting to
wring her hands, thinking of all the Carolina children that she would never help.

Hannah kept expecting something from Sam. Something as big as the dread she felt when she stared at her suitcase. Something
permanent from him, like the gift she’d already given.

But on her last night there, he smiled. And spoke too happily about football camp starting in two weeks. “Wish you could see
me play. You think your parents might come back to visit this winter? Your daddy check on the bridge or somethin’?”

She shook her head.

“It’s awright,” he said. “Always next summer.”

She exhaled slowly. That was all he could give her. Next summer. He whispered softly into her hair. “Gonna miss my pretty
Yank.”

Something thick and hot, like smoke, filled the back of her throat. She choked. He brought her a drink of water and she forced
herself to suck in air, her body making little humming noises with every breath.

“It’s the moss,” he said. “Some people have allergies to it.”

The moss did have an earthy scent. But until that moment, she
never knew it could crawl down her throat and choke her.

“We won’t see each other for a whole year?” she whispered with the first breath that she could.

“That’s the rotten luck of kids. But what’s a year anyway? Some day it will take ten years for us to rebuild the plantation.”

They used Cora’s Sharpie marker to scribble their addresses on the back of each other’s hand. He drew a sloppy heart around
his.

“Get your suitcase packed,” Mother called out when Hannah walked in the door. “We’re leaving six a.m. sharp, with or without
all your clothes.”

She piled it all away. The polyester, the Steampot T-shirt that Cora let her keep, a dried bit of Spanish moss taken from
the live oak at the old plantation. She put her suitcase in the trunk and watched as Mother gave her bike to the kids next
door.

Driving home, Father talked about revisiting colleges to help her think things over and about securing her place as valedictorian
before graduation. Hannah nodded. But she was thinking about life ten years later. She was thinking about repainting an old
plantation house.

At home, fall had arrived. The air was crisp and clean, such a change from the heavy heat that still clung to the South. Their
home seemed bigger, too. With plenty of space for each of them to hide away. Bethie would have her own room again, where she
could study sign language in privacy. And Hannah only had to lock her door to find the strength to write her first love letter.

She began writing about the classes she was taking. About helping Bethie with her homework and leading the four-year-old children’s
choir at church. About reading
Wuthering Heights
for the first time. After two pages of details, she felt brave.

I’ve been thinking about our plantation, and the way the sun turned the gray wood orange. I’ve been thinking of all that chipped
blue paint. And how I’m gonna take that off one day. A home that big should have room for anybody that wants to be there.
Besides, read Wuthering Heights. It has such lovely ghosts.

Remember the live oak? I’ve a piece of it here in my room now. I sleep with it under my pillow. It reminds me of you.

I miss you. I love you.
Hannah

It took him three weeks to write back. Sometimes at night, during the wait, she’d grab the moss under her pillow and squeeze
till it started to crumble into little bits of brown dust across her palm. She’d squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, trying to
shut the words out of her mind.
What if he never…

Bethie brought his letter. Her eyes focused on her sister. She pulled a pen and notepad from her skirt pocket. It was her
backup plan for important conversations, one she’d developed after school started. It didn’t take long for the teachers to
call Mother and Father with questions about why Bethie no longer spoke at school. No longer stumbled over the word
p-p-p-present
, but instead waved her hand wildly to declare her attendance. When she signed her answer in Algebra class, the teacher threatened
to suspend her unless she gave a clear answer. So Bethie rose from her seat, walked calmly to the chalkboard, and wrote
X=3, Y=2
. It took her five seconds to write that answer. And if she had tried to speak it, it might have taken her thirty and probably
would have come out incorrect. Hannah had noticed that before. They’d do their homework together, Hannah’s correct answers
marked across Bethie’s pages. But if the answer couldn’t be spoken clearly and smoothly, as so often it would not, Bethie
would desperately grab for something easier.
Three
was difficult. So if forced to speak Bethie would have said
t-t-t-two
.

Who from?
Bethie wrote.

“Friend from work.”

Boy?

“No.”

Says Sam
.

“
Samantha
.”

Hannah hid in the Mission Room to read it.

Scored a winning touchdown last night. Wish you could’ve seen it. Everybody went crazy over it. Classes aren’t too hard, so
that’s good. I’m not into Wuthering Heights so much. I’ve no use for Heathcliff. He’s all temper and no results. And what
the heck you talking about taking down the haint blue? That sounds about like a yankee, ha ha. Wish I could see you.

Love,

Sam

She folded the letter up and smelled it. And when she couldn’t smell him, she pressed it to her lips. She pretended to remember
his kiss.

Bethie stood in the doorway. Signed the letter
T
and pointed to her shirt, smiling.
T-shirt secrets.
Hannah shook her head. “Not like that.”

Bethie laughed, and Hannah knew she didn’t believe her.

“Bethie, why don’t you try it on?”

The sisters hid in Hannah’s room while Bethie slipped on the extra-small T-shirt. She looked at her reflection and was as
amazed as Hannah had been. So many sweet things could be seen. The soft curve of her shoulders. Even the rise and fall of
her breath.

Let me keep it
, Bethie wrote.

Hannah shook her head. “It’s too dangerous. Mother would kill us.”

Bethie shrugged her shoulders and wrote back,
She already has.

Bethie kept the shirt. She’d lock herself in Hannah’s room so that someone else could see her, even if it was just her sister,
and wear it all afternoon. She played with it sometimes. Rolled the sleeves up, even knotted the front, like the cheerleaders
at school. Bethie had her shirt. And Hannah had her love letters.

But Sam had written a note, not a letter. It didn’t even take up a quarter of one page. Hannah didn’t think about this as
she pulled out several pages of her best stationery. She congratulated him on the touchdown. Told him she wished she could
have seen it. And then gave him the details of her past three weeks. About trimming her hair, just an inch. Seeing the dead
cat on the road. About the cheating scandal at school. After two pages, she found courage again.

I wish I had introduced you to my father. He wasn’t raised in the church either. He wouldn’t hold that against you. I think
if he saw us together, saw how we feel about each other, he’d understand. He might even help us with the plantation. He would
help us get our start. Do you think you could come meet him? Maybe over Christmas.

Love always,

Hannah

He wrote back quickly.

Relax, Yank. Our summer was the best. I had more fun with you than any other girl ever. Next summer will be great too.

Did I tell you in my last letter that I’m nominated for Homecoming King? It’s because of that touchdown. It was the winning
play against our biggest rival. Don’t know who I’m escorting yet. I’ll find that out tomorrow. But how’s that for a great
start to senior year? Hope everything is as cool for you as it is for me! See you in Carolina… unless I’m drafted by the pros,
ha ha.

Love,

Sam

Hannah thought about queens. She imagined beautiful girls who wore mascara to curl their eyelashes. Sexy girls who wore short
skirts with tall boots. It was clear now that Sam had other happiness. He had football and homecoming queens. He probably
went to dance parties and drank beer under the stadium bleachers, like the bad boys at Hannah’s school.

Hannah was different. She was locked behind the gates again. Stuck with her floor-dragging skirt and no bike to escape. And
her nearly seventeen-year-old heart lied to her. Told her those weeks with Sam were the only time she had ever been happy.
Told her he was the only hope.

She waited. A test to see if he would write without the prompting of her own letter. He did not. Maybe he loved her, but Sam
loved lots of things. Lost somewhere up north, she was easily replaced.

What began with a Steampot Motel T-shirt, turned into late nights at the high school typing lab. Hannah told her parents she
was working on school reports. It occurred to Mother once that Bethie still took the bus home. That she never had reports
to type. “If you would just try a bit harder, Bethie,” Mother said. “No one expects you to be as smart as Hannah, but it doesn’t
look quite right to fail, either.”

Bethie knew, of course. Hannah tried to convince her that she was doing extra-credit reports for classes where she struggled.
But Bethie had spent all her years sitting right behind Hannah. By the time she was in first grade, she had accepted defeat.
Hannah would never struggle.

Hannah took a bus to the shopping center. Used what little money she had to buy Bethie two T-shirts, one red and one purple.
It was a bribe, but it was love, too.

“His name is Sam. I’m going to go see him. And you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, Bethie. You were born to wear
bright colors.” Bethie twirled around the room in royal purple.

Hannah’s “reports” weren’t delivered to teachers. They were edited, scrutinized, even researched, for the benefit of Father.
He looked over them, asked a few questions, and then signed the bottom of six pages that gave his permission for Hannah to
attend a weeklong tour of the best colleges in the Northeast. Sponsored and chaperoned by her school, and reserved only for
those students in serious contention for the honor of class valedictorian.

He drove her to the bus station, where a Greyhound was supposedly being warmed up for her and her classmates. He gave her
two hundred dollars in cash. He told her he was proud of her. And to remember which colleges were her favorite, so that they
could visit them together.

Just as Hannah had expected, he did not walk her inside the station. It wouldn’t have changed anything. But later, he would
cry as he remembered the way she struggled to drag her suitcase inside. How strangers held the door open for her.

It was the strangers that made him unable to walk her into the station. His heart had always shrunk back from the spectacle
his children made when they got on the school bus. All that hair slung over their shoulders and hanging almost to their knees.
And braided, it was even worse. It reminded Mother of a halo, but he saw only a noose.