The Memory Thief (9 page)

“There just isn’t enough room for all of us and my cousins,” Hannah said.

It hurt her to hear deliveries pull up. And it hurt her again to hear the new shrimper laugh at her
mermaid hair
. Ridicule wasn’t new. But once, not so long ago, she had been called pretty.

At night she sat at a picnic table under the snake tree with Cora and Sissy and listened to them talk about men and raising
babies.

“You have a man?” Sissy asked her.

“No.”

“Ever had one?”

“No.”

“She’s lyin’, Momma,” Sissy said, a sly grin on her face. “Look at ’er. She’s lyin’.”

“Leave her alone,” Cora said. “Just ’cause you like to share your business with everybody don’t mean she wanna.”

“I’m not lying.”

Sissy giggled. “Was it Sam? We ain’t blind, you know.”

“Hush,” Cora said. “Her people would stone ’er.”

“Yes,” Hannah said, as a tear ran down her face.

“Aww, what’s wrong?” Cora said. “He not good to you?”

“He doesn’t love me.”

“He’s a little boy. Can’t love nobody but hisself right now.”

Cora put her arm around her. “But you. You’re a woman. You never
been allowed to be a baby girl.”

“It hurts sharp,” Sissy said. “But another’ll come along one day and ease that pain.”

“There’s never supposed to be
another
.”

Cora laughed softly. “Said somethin’ like that myself once,” she whispered, and looked at Sissy. “About your daddy.” She turned
to Hannah. “Poor baby girl, you’re more right than you know. But honey, we lost the garden a long time ago. Devil’s done twisted
this earth as crooked as a live oak. We livin’ in the snake tree now, and there ain’t much that goes the way it oughta. On
the chance that it does, it’s so God can whisper one more testament of his presence to a dyin’ earth.”

“Amen,” Sissy whispered.

“My husband was killed,” Cora said. “Loadin’ freight down in the harbor on the big boats. Somethin’ wasn’t stacked right.”

She held up her hands. “They put a check in these empty hands. Some kind of apology or maybe just best wishes. I threw it
across the room. Stomped on it. Even put it in the oven once with the gas turned on. I didn’t want to be a check-holdin’ widow
any more than you wanna be a Yankee Holy Roller. I just wanted to be his wife. That’s the way my life, how’d you say it? Was
supposed
to be.”

Hannah nodded.

“I learned, like it or not, that’s who I was. A check-holdin’ widow. And as I stared at that check, I began to see it different.
It wasn’t the thing that took my husband from me. Instead, it was the last thing that he would ever give me. I had four babies,
and I had to make it count.”

“So here we are,” Sissy said. “Twenty years later. Momma raised us in that motel. We had a home and a business, all because
she decided to turn the gas off and get that check back out.”

“Wasn’t as easy as Sissy likes to say. She’s my baby sunshine,” Cora laughed. “It was hard on ’em. I ordered the kids to sleep
outside under the snake tree when the rooms were full and the late-nighters were watchin’ TV in the lobby. It was a sad sight
to look out there and see their hot faces peekin’ in the windows, the boys’ dirty hands—little boys’ hands is always dirty—wavin’
at me. It hurt me, but we needed the rent money bad. And now there’s a real sweetness to it. They was wild, all four of ’em.
But they laid under that tree all night for me. They never once acted up. I can’t imagine how hard that must’ve been on ’em.”
She shook her head. “They’ll break for you. If that’s what they think you need. They’ll lay under a twisted snake tree and
never once cry
Momma
.”

“She don’t tell it right,” Sissy said. “We was good kids, for one. None of that wild bit that she likes to talk. And we was
happy ones, too. Sometimes at night, if no renters were here, Momma’d have all our cousins come and we’d have the biggest
sleepover. We’d eat cheeseburgers, not a shrimp to be found. We’d jump on all the beds, run races down the hall, turn out
all the lights and play hide ’n’ seek. Sometimes Momma’d pretend she couldn’t find us and start hollerin’ that she’d have
to eat all the ice cream herself and, oh mercy, we’d come flyin’…”

“Our point is,” Cora said, interrupting Sissy, “we livin’ in the snake tree now. Things ain’t how they oughta be. Won’t be
till Jesus himself comes to uproot us all. Till then, you gotta make do.”

They fed her sweet tea and key lime pie all week long. And at night, she would lay in Number Four and think about snake trees,
falling freight on big boats, babies breaking themselves. But the thing she thought of most, the thing she whispered into
her pillow like a sweet lullaby, was the thing Cora first whispered.
You poor baby girl
.

When the week ended, the cabdriver drove her down to Folly Beach for one last look before driving to Columbia.

She lingered. Searching for something different. The piled rocks of old broken fishing piers were the same. The war cry still
matched the beat of her heart. The people, staring at her four-foot-long hair whipped around by ocean winds, seemed the same.

Still, though, something was different. And though the cabdriver honked his horn, Hannah could not leave until she knew what
it was. She took off her shoes, felt the deep chill of the ocean. Dipped her hand in the water, to scoop up a shell. Brought
her hand to her mouth to taste the salt.

And then she smelled it. Not like before, with the smell of salt. She could smell all of it. The dead fish and the clean live
ones. The rocks being pounded into sand. The bait that had been discarded at dawn. The nylon of summer swimsuits. The oil
of old shrimp boats.

Something stirred within. Like a storm inside her body. Like hot snakes twisting in the sun. She was working to build a new
universe. From her blood and bones and tissue. It wasn’t that she felt a baby. It’s that she could feel the
making
of one.

She faced the ocean, her arms wrapped tight around herself as she whispered, “Poor baby girl.”

A
NGEL

Inside my left front pocket is a picture. Daddy’s back is turned, but if you could see his face you’d see love. Real as any
of us ever knew. You’d see pride, too, as he gently scrubbed that car. You’d understand why he called it Baby. Why he used
to joke that it made up for the fact that Momma didn’t give him a son.

It was a 1970 Chevy Chevelle that shot little bits of fire from its muffler. It was green, but not rich like grass or yellow
like tobacco. It was an in-between shade that Daddy called Money.

Momma took that picture on a hot September afternoon. We were all outside in our cutoffs, Momma and Janie wearing bikini tops.
I was a bare-chested five-year-old with nothing to cover.

That afternoon he parked like he always did. As close to our trailer as he could get without splitting the tin walls.

“Bring me buckets,” he yelled.

We hurried inside to start the shower and fill up anything we could find. A mixing bowl. An empty milk jug. The little plastic
bucket that Momma kept her curlers in. We carried them to him, careful not to spill any water and encourage the rust that
crawled across our tin home.

“Bring ’em quicker,” Daddy ordered. “If the sun sets, there’ll be water spots.”

We worked as fast as our skinny-girl arms let us. We didn’t talk or laugh. We didn’t even stay to watch him pour the water
over the car. We carried water, over and over, to the front door.

“Bless him,” my baby mouth whispered.

Like he had sneezed. Or given me a gift. I learned the words from Mrs. Swarm before she served a farmhand supper.
Bless this food, Lord.
But I found the desire by my grandma’s grave.
Let’s pray over your troubles
, the preacher comforted us. There were many things I did not yet know about my daddy. But there was one thing no one needed
to teach me. He was trouble.

Momma slid from the trailer as Daddy polished the car with a soft piece of deer hide. She wore red lipstick, her shirt knotted
up in front. She leaned against the car, showing herself off. I hid behind the corner and watched her. Leaned my body against
the trailer. Matched the angles of my shoulders, the arc of my back, to hers.

“Woman, git one smudge on this car and I swear I’ll…,” Daddy began, before Momma stood up and yelled, too.

They argued over that car more than where the money went. More than over all the hours Daddy spent gone, long after farm work
was done.

“Weren’t for me, wouldn’t be no car,” Momma liked to say. “It’s been as much home as any you give us.”

She was right. We lived in that green car the first half of summer, after Daddy lost his mechanic job and the peach crops
didn’t need any more workers. After two months of not paying rent, the sheriff showed up with a piece of paper covered in
big words that no one in my family could read. “What it means,” the sheriff hollered, “is if you don’t have the money, you
have to git.” With nothing but old clothes piled in the trunk and my green baby blanket clutched in my fist, we left Daniel
Island. “It’s awright,” Momma whispered to herself. “Promise land’s waitin’.”

I was the baby, and a small one, too. So while Janie slept curled up on the backseat and Momma and Daddy leaned their bucket
seats back, I snuggled into a ball on the car floor. When morning came, Momma would drag me from the car to pee in a ditch
by the road, my legs too numb and confused to move.

We crossed state lines twice. Daddy found weekend work at old garages. Just enough for gas money and a little food to keep
moving. We entered East Tennessee, on our way to the big city of Memphis. But in that part of Tennessee we didn’t pass any
cities. Just miles and miles of land with barns and old houses scattered across it. Occasionally we’d drive through a hub
with gas stations, grocery stores, and a local diner. But it would quickly end and we’d drive back into empty land.

Daddy coasted down hills in neutral to save gas, but our tank was nearly empty. Out of desperation he turned down a dirt road
with a hand-painted sign staked at the corner:
Swarm Tobacco. Established 1893
.

Tobacco as tall as Daddy and healthier than Momma waved like a welcome banner. It led us to Swarm house. A place more like
a king’s throne than anything else.

Daddy said he felt like saluting, the way he was taught the month he was in the army. Momma said she felt like praying, the
way the preacher did over Grandma’s grave. Janie mumbled a cussword, because at ten that’s as big as it gets. And my hungry-baby
eyes wondered if we were still on earth at all, or if Carolina had been the end. Maybe everything beyond was the heaven preached
at Grandma’s grave. If so, I doubted they’d let us in.

The Swarms walked out, one in overalls with a slick bald head, one in a gingham apron with gray hair tied back in a braid.
Daddy told them about being raised in the fields. About running tractors since he was knee-high. Momma chatted with Mrs. Swarm
about me and Janie.

I hid behind Momma’s leg like I always did. Momma joked that I was more shy than a broke-down dog. And told how when we’d
stop for gas, I’d tuck myself into the floor of the car so nobody could see me.

“Must be good at hidin’,” Mrs. Swarm said. “That’s somethin’ to brag over when you’re a kid, ain’t it?” She peeked behind
Momma and winked at me. “Might as well stay for supper. No place within miles to feed these babies.”

“We got groceries in the car.”

It was a lie. The money had run out so long ago I couldn’t remember the last time we’d eaten anything more than stale snack
cakes from the gas station.

“Your babies look pale. Give ’em a break from that car for a few minutes. Let me fix ’em a plate and run it out.”

In all my years on Swarm farm, I never went inside that home. Long ago, Mr. Swarm had been robbed. Somebody stole his granddaddy’s
shotgun and his grandmother’s engraved silver goblets.

“Who’d ever want a goblet that says Swarm anyhow?” he’d ask, every time he told the story.

Swarm house rules allowed only family and friends inside. We had many names on that farm. Bacca farmhands. Folks from Carolina.
People living in Black Snake trailer. But we never confused any of them for the word
family
or
friends
.

That first day on the farm, Mrs. Swarm made trips in and out of the house carrying bowls of stewed beef, plates of cat-head
biscuits, and pitchers of milk and tea. We sat around a picnic table underneath a giant sycamore tree. The trunk as wide as
Daddy with his arms stretched out. The leaves as big as my head. I looked all the way up, at the shaggy bark peeling off in
chunks and wide strips, showing raw wood beneath. A trail of ants marched down the trunk. When Mrs. Swarm stepped inside to
bring pie, I pointed them out to Daddy.

“Ants is killin’ that tree.”

Daddy looked and then shook his head. “Hurts to grow. Bark’s gotta yield to a risin’ trunk.”

Mr. Swarm said the tree was famous.

“Biggest one in the state, they say. I don’t set too much by it, though. Look out that way, beyond them fields. Think of all
the trees nobody’s lookin’ at. One of ’em’s bound to be a big ol’ sycamore.”

The land looked like my green baby blanket when Momma shook the dust from it. But in the distance, mountains circled. We weren’t
in
the mountains. But we would never be far from them.

They watched us eat that day. Saw how I used baby fingers to pick up biscuit crumbs and tuck them in my mouth. Saw how Momma
pushed the food around her plate, like she didn’t know what to do with it. Food never mattered much to Momma. She preferred
a good smoke and a cheap drink. Her bony knees poked out from tanned-as-leather legs. Knobby shoulder blades humped up beneath
her bikini straps and showed off her heart-on-fire tattoo. And her cheekbones never needed the flame-pink blush she smeared
across them. No one could miss them, those bones that sharply divided her face and always made her look sick. Especially when
she smiled.