Memphis

by Tara M. Stringfellow

For years in this country there was no one for black men to vent their rage on except black women.

And out of the profound desolation of her reality she may very well have invented herself.

Talking Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Faulkner, they agreed how none of them, not a single one of those white boys, could write a sentence as good as Zora Neale Hurston.

Miriam realized, with relief and horror, that her worst fear—Joan’s being taken away from her—was no more than fantasy. She doubted that this man would ever give a damn about the life of a Black child.

Laughter that was, in and of itself, Black. Laughter that could break glass. Laughter that could uplift a family. A cacophony of Black female joy in a language private to them.

Maybe it was the fact that they were all together again—North women underneath one roof. Maybe it was seeing Joan’s drawing and the rush of love and protection that had welled up in her in that moment. Wanting Joan to always cherish her gift made her want to honor her own. August couldn’t rightly explain it herself, but she figured her mother would have been right proud. So, maybe she did it for her. How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.

That is what broke Miriam. Where shame met motherhood. She had snapped at her child for simply wanting to exist as a child.

The things women do for the sake of their daughters. The things women don’t. The shame of it all. The shame of her daughter’s rape, the shame of her husband’s violence, her nephew’s psychopathy.

“Men and death. Men and death. How on earth y’all run the world when all y’all have ever done is kill each other?”

History had awakened me to the fact that racism is the only food Americans crave.

Some things are best kept between sisters.