The Memory Thief (30 page)

“More!” the men yelled. I nodded as I opened my last bottle. After all my years of trying, I was Momma leaned so sexy against
a green car. I was Janie, dancing in a shed and smelling like dead flowers.

Boom! Boom!

I turned to the noise. Fell as I walked toward it. Hit my head on something and tasted blood in my mouth.

Boom! Boom!

It was coming from my door.

“Angel?” someone yelled.

I crawled back to my stage but couldn’t find my bottle. Someone had stolen it. I looked at the men in the crowd. Their mouths
full of biscuit crumbs. I looked at the slot in the door and wondered if old hands had somehow reached through.

“Which one of you took my whiskey?” I yelled. My head hurt. I brought my hand to my face and felt wet blood. I remembered
Momma’s face, twisted, ugly, and yelling for whiskey. “Tell me who took my damn whiskey!” I reached for the dirty dishes that
were stacked on a tray in the corner of the room. I picked them up and threw them at the men, at the slot in the door. I smiled
at that old familiar sound. Of something breaking. Of something being ruined forever.

There was knocking again. Someone yelled for me to go to bed. I ignored it as I searched for my whiskey. I looked under the
bed. In the shower. Behind the dresser.

“More!” the men yelled.

I looked in my bag. Under the covers. I couldn’t catch my breath. I couldn’t hear anything but the
boom
on the door and the shout of the men all around me. I picked up the tray and threw it against the wall.

I curled up on the floor and sobbed, “More.” Cried “Whiskey” until my body trembled. The heat swarmed over me again. Like
the Tennessee sun rose in the middle of that room. I tried to open the window to cool off the room. But I couldn’t push the
lock. I yelled for the men to open my window. To give me whiskey.

When they didn’t come, I turned toward them, furious. But they were gone. I was alone, surrounded by piles of broken dishes.
By the blood that dripped across the floor. By that lace bed, covered in vomit.

I ran back to the window and leaned hard against it. I stared at the stars outside and pretended to know them. Pretended to
name them. But just as I started to draw your picture with sloppy drunk hands, something else caught my eye. Blue. There in
the window, just a slight tint of the glass. I remembered the antique and hardware store in Tennessee. The shelves of blue
mason jars. How I had picked one up, held it toward the light so I could look through it at a new blue world.

“Careful,” the old man working the front called out. “That’s older than your great grandpap, I bet.”

“Sorry,” I said, as I set the jar back down.

“Don’t worry ’bout it. You like ’em?”

I nodded.

“Most people pass ’em by. There are so many fakes out there now. Prettier than these real ones, too. People don’t care so
much for what’s real as for what’s pretty these days.”

“Why are they blue?”

“Keeps the bad out,” he said, as he shrugged his shoulders. “Ever seen a woman can food?”

I shook my head.

“Take the lid off. See that old seal? Most of it’s rotted by now, but that jar wasn’t made to toss loose change in, be stuffed
with smell-good cinnamon sticks, or even sit on the shelf in this antique store. Long ago, before these shoppin’ centers full
of tin cans, a woman had to work hard to make her food last past its season. She had to work hard to keep it safe, stored
inside jars. There was one thing, though, that was easy enough. Start with blue. It keeps light and heat out of the jar. That
stuff can make food rot so that it would kill a person.”

“Blue keeps the bad out,” I whispered to the window inside Red Castle. I studied it. The clear pale blue. After a childhood
lived out in green, it seemed to glow like a promise. Like sweet peace.

“Blue’s keepin’ me from you,” I cried to the stars on the other side. “I’m too bad to git to you.”

I backed up all the way to the wall on the other side of the room. I closed my eyes and ran. I ran as hard and fast as I could.
Like a baby running into the bacca. Like a black snake running from the hoe aimed at its neck.

I never stopped.

B
ETHIE

It didn’t take much to remind Bethie of her sister. Sometimes it was something as small as a stack of T-shirts on a department
store shelf. She’d stand and let her hand touch them softly. She’d hold one up over her own T-shirt and remember days on James
Island, nearly eighteen years ago, filled with sweet sister secrets. She’d remember that though Hannah was buried away somewhere,
she was still
alive
.

But alive is not the same, or nearly as good, as
together
. Hannah was gone. Maybe forever. And all Bethie had of her were memories of T-shirts, and the promise of a redneck girl staying
with Mother on the mountain. In Hannah’s old room.

And then one day, Dr. Susan Vaughn called to invite Bethie for a visit. She said yes before the question was finished, and
agreed to come the very next morning. As she drove to the hospital, she remembered the last moment she shared with Hannah.
How dirty the jail cell had been. How incoherent Hannah was. Bethie tried to communicate with her. She resorted to old tricks
and tried signing, hoping Hannah would grab onto those signs like the secret language of their youth. But Hannah only cried
as she shook and mumbled broken sentences about sweet corn. And velvet corners. About the color blue.

Bethie wondered as she left the jail feeling so helpless, if that was what her own mother felt that day on James Island when
she had refused to talk. She drove from the jail straight to Daniel and Hannah’s home. She needed him to tell her it was going
to be okay. He was an attorney, after all. She needed him to tell her that he could fix it.

She found him sitting on the couch, his head in his hands.

“Daniel,” she called from the open front door.

He looked up at her and shook his head, clamped his hand over his mouth. She saw the strain in his face from holding back
his grief. She went to him, put her arms around him, felt him sob against her shoulder. He pulled away and nodded toward the
hall that led to Hannah’s workroom. “All her pottery,” he whispered hoarsely.

Bethie followed him to the workroom door. It was the one place Hannah never fully left. Standing inside her workroom was almost
the same as standing next to her. Hannah’s energy, her love, her mysterious sadness, all of it pounded down into the mud that
lined the shelves.

But that day, something was different. Orange dust was scattered across the room. Orange pebbles, orange rocks… orange shatters
everywhere. Daniel walked in and picked up half of a loose rectangle.

“This was my favorite piece,” he said. “She gave this to me the first time I visited her workroom, up on the mountain.”

Bethie stared at the piece and remembered it well. It was the old cradle, the one Daniel carried away. It looked like it had
exploded.

Daniel sat down in the dust and wept. “It’s all ruined.” Bethie watched as he took a box from the closet in the hall. Picked
up all the pieces from his favorite works and lay them gently inside the box. He carried them out, shut and locked the door
to the workroom for good. Years of Hannah’s work, years of the art she and Daniel loved, lay broken on the other side.

“Can you get her out of jail?” Bethie asked him. “We can help her, if you can just return her to us.”

“She won’t even look at me,” Daniel said. “She’s lost somewhere, inside her own mind. She keeps mumbling nonsense. I tried
over and over to get her to speak to me. But I don’t think she knew I was there.
She didn’t even know I was there!
”He shook his head, panic in his eyes. “How am I supposed to help her like that? How?”

“I don’t know,” Bethie cried.

And she still didn’t, even as she drove toward the asylum determined to somehow help. She checked the map and tried to shrug
off the memory of Hannah’s first day in jail. It was a skill she had learned over time and polished on a daily basis. She’d
take a deep breath, raise her shoulders, give her head a slight shake, and push the air forcefully out of pursed lips. With
the air went her heavy thoughts.

She replaced the thought with a sweeter one. About her own wedding day. Hannah helped her zip her dress. She adjusted the
lace around her veil.

“Remember that time I said I wanted to be a slanteye?” Hannah asked.

Bethie laughed. “Yes.”

“I meant it.” Hannah turned the mirror that stood by the closet toward her sister. “Look at you. You are so beautiful, Bethie.”
The two sisters stood in front of a long oval mirror, one of them pale with glowing hair, the other golden with hair the color
and gloss of wet ink. Bethie leaned her head against Hannah’s shoulder.

“In a way you are,” Bethie said.

Hannah laughed. “How?”

“No one else on this entire earth knows as well as you what it’s been like to live in my skin.”

A car honked its horn as it passed her. Bethie looked down, saw how slowly she was driving. She sped up and set the cruise
control. She was only an hour away. She glanced in the rearview mirror, and had that pain of loneliness that she always felt
when she saw the empty car seat. Little Corbin was home with his daddy for the day. They were probably digging in the backyard
sandbox. Or maybe going to the pizza shop for lunch. She always thought it odd that she could spend all her days with that
child, rock him to sleep every night, be driven to a frazzle by his constant wants and demands and tantrums, and then miss
him when he wasn’t near. Miss him whenever she spotted his empty car seat. She reached her hand down to her tummy. Felt the
firm rise beneath her waistband. It was too soon for the new baby to move, but already she was rubbing the skin of her belly
with anticipation. Longing for the day she’d feel that first turn or swish. Longing for the day she’d feel something entirely
new to this earth taking hold within her.

It wasn’t that she romanticized babies. She knew firsthand the work, the total exhaustion, they brought with them when they
entered the world. But she also knew, better than most, how important it all was.
Life
within her. The tending of that life. And the protecting.

She hadn’t known how to dress for the visit with Hannah. The doctor advised subtle colors, and she wondered why. Hannah had
never seemed sensitive to color before. But the doctor was very clear with her instructions.
No Reds. No Purples. No Yellows or Oranges
.

One thing was for certain, Bethie didn’t want Hannah to know she was pregnant again. The day she told her about Corbin had
been hard enough.

“I’m pregnant.” They were at lunch with Mother, and Bethie surprised them all by blurting out her news. She had guessed, or
hoped, that Hannah already knew. She was nearly six months along by that point. But Bethie would never forget the shatter
that spread across Hannah’s face. Or the way Hannah’s teeth bit deeply into her bottom lip. Bethie saw blood.

Mother saw it, too, and started talking fast. About redoing the wallpaper in the foyer. About installing a garbage disposal
and all the plumbing challenges it presented. About plans for new tile. Everywhere. The bathrooms. The kitchen. The laundry
room.

“Hannah?” Bethie had whispered, tears welling up in her eyes. “I wanted you to know. You’re going to be an aunt. We’re going
to have a baby in our family.”

Hannah leaned over the table and vomited.

Oh, how Bethie was angry that day. As Mother half-carried Hannah to the car. As they let the door fall back on her on their
way out. She was the one having to waddle for all the pain and pressure that was settled in her hips. She was the one having
to heave herself into the car, the hot backseat no less, because Hannah felt nauseous. She sat back there, the window rolled
down, and whispered hate to the mountain wind. Later she’d remember her words and blame them on hormones. How they make you
say things you don’t mean. How they make you do things that embarrass you. But the truth was, she was sick of the game. That
old family game that made
everything
,even her own blessed pregnancy, somehow all about Hannah.

“No,” Bethie whispered, as she drove toward the asylum. She would not tell Hannah she was pregnant again. She would not tell
Hannah that the baby’s heartbeat was much faster than Corbin’s had ever been. That Mother promised a fast heartbeat meant
girl
. That Mother sewed a lace gown, complete with the tiniest lace booties.

If Hannah noticed that she’d gained weight, she’d laugh and say she never lost the baby weight from Corbin. But then Bethie
winced and wondered bitterly whether it was safe to mention Corbin. She would always wonder if he had been the trigger. It
had only been two weeks after Bethie announced her pregnancy that Hannah ended up in jail. When it first happened, when Bethie
first learned what Hannah had done, she felt guilty. She felt a sharp sense of responsibility. Maybe her joy broke her sister
down.

The next thing she felt, though, was something more true than guilt. She lay in bed and felt Corbin swishing inside her like
the magic bean he was. She started sobbing. Not because she was sad. Not because she felt guilty. But because in the end,
it was right
. It was right that Hannah was locked away. It was right that Hannah was in a dirty jail cell mumbling crazy words. She deserved
it.

Bethie started having nightmares. She mentioned them to her doctor. “It’s hormones,” the doctor assured her. “From a biological
perspective, it’s just your body’s way of preparing you to be up all night feeding a little one.” She didn’t tell him what
they were about. How she saw herself carrying her baby to the park. Or to the store or the library. She walked looking down
on a sweet blanket filled with love. But when she looked up it was always the same. She was surrounded by thieving monster
women. With reaching hands and guilty eyes. Women like her sister. Like her mother.