The Memory Thief (33 page)

“Jonah,” Bethie said, and smiled. “Just like my old Hannah. You still focus only on the achievers, on the ones that score
points and make As. Like patriarchs and prophets. You’ve overlooked some of the best miracles. Jonah’s story isn’t just about
a prophet getting out of a fish. It’s about a doomed city. What about their miracle?”

Hannah shook her head.

“They were handed steadfast love in place of disaster. Remember?
Should I not pity those people… who do not know
their right hand from their left?
” Bethie grabbed Hannah’s hand. “Nineveh wasn’t full of deserving prophets. It was full of people like you. Hannah, you don’t
know your right hand from your left.”

Hannah shook her head gently, her eyes lowered to the ground.

Bethie watched her, and her mind raced with all the ways she had failed to help her sister. “There’s a true bridge,” Bethie
whispered. “And like something only you would dream, sister, redemption began with a newborn baby.”

Static pierced the room and the intercom buzzed. “Visitation time is up. The door will open shortly. Please refrain from further
conversation. This topic clearly violates the agreed boundaries.”

“I was not ruined,” Bethie whispered in Hannah’s ear. “I was empty, I didn’t know my left hand from my right. But I believed
in the bridge. I became a miracle canvas.”

“Silence, please. Bethlehem, you have signed a contract guaranteeing your cooperation.”

The door opened. The nurse stood on the other side and waited for Bethie to join her. Bethie saw the look on Hannah’s face,
the sweet, sad look as she struggled to hope on the miracles that Bethie declared. And though she promised herself she would
not, though she promised Mother she would never, she could not stop herself. In that moment, when she knew she would leave
Hannah in that white cage, when she knew Legion would never allow her to visit Hannah again, Bethie knew she had to do more
than just
back up Hannah
. She had to bring her the waterfall. She had to bring her the miracle on the mountain.

“Visiting time is over,” the nurse said. “Please exit the room.”

Bethie threw her arms around her sister. The crashing, desperate embrace of her dreams.

“Your miracle is happening
right now
, on our mountain,” she gushed as tears, held back so long, suddenly poured down her face. “Look at me, Hannah. Even as we
speak, your miracle is—”

The nurse put her arms around Bethie’s shoulders and pulled her back. As the white door slammed and Hannah’s face disappeared,
Bethie sank to the floor and screamed, “
She’s
your miracle!”

The doctors came running down the hall. Dr. Vaughn helped Bethie to her feet.

“Hannah will need sedation,” one of the doctors said to the nurse. He looked at Bethie. “You have no idea what you’ve done,”
he said angrily. “All the work, everything we’ve done to make her feel safe, to encourage her mind to focus on reality. And
then you come along with your waterfalls and your promise of miracles.” He shook his head with disgust. “There are no miracles
for a woman like Hannah. There’s only reality, with all its pain and sadness. And it’s one she must deal with, whether you
like it or not.”

Dr. Vaughn led Bethie back to the chair where she had waited earlier. Then she walked to the nurses’ counter and asked for
a cup of water. The doctor that yelled at Bethie came and stood by her. “Susan, this was all your idea,” he said to her. “They’ve
had to give her two injections to calm her down. Ten bucks says she won’t speak a word to us tomorrow. You wanted it too much.
You’ve lost all sense of professional boundaries.”

Another doctor joined them. “Let’s calm down. It’s not entirely Susan’s fault. Having to call Hannah ‘Mother’ over the intercom
as she talked to that empty chair. Having to sit across from her for so long without any sign of progress. Of course you want
her well more than any of us. But it’s compromising your decisions. Your desire is becoming risky to the patient, Susan.”
He jerked his head in Bethie’s direction. “And she was a very bad choice.”

Dr. Vaughn returned to Bethie, carrying the cup of water.

“I’m sorry,” Bethie said. “I had to tell her the truth.”

Dr. Vaughn sighed. “It wasn’t
all
terrible. She saw you as real, Bethie. You were able to convince her of that.” She shrugged her shoulders, shook her head.
“If there’s a setback…” Her voice trailed off. She looked away, down the long hall that held Hannah at its end. “Tell me about
this miracle.”

A
NGEL

I found it. After years of searching, after years of fighting the call of Momma’s gun, I finally found sweet peace.

It wasn’t what I thought it would be. There were no singing stars. No bacca or moonlit mountain. There was no light at all.
Only darkness, heavy and thick, like the smoke from an old trailer fire, the kind filled with too many dead things to ever
rise.

Darkness wrapped around me like a first fall breeze. A beautiful coolness swept over my body. Broke the heat that had burned
for so long inside me. I looked around and saw Nothing. Every star had fallen. Every light had turned off. The whole world
had burned down, and all that was left was a giant pile of ash.

Darkness filled my ears. At first, I heard the
shhhh shhhh
noise from my dreams. The ones where I remember the ocean and the sound of waves rushing up to me. The ones where I’m so
little and Janie’s still with me and we’re running down the beach while Momma and Daddy decide whether to kiss or yell.

Darkness grew, and soon I was hearing more than the
shhhh
of Carolina. I was hearing Janie, too. The way she would laugh as we ran down the beach. The way she’d stand, just nine or
ten years old, and yell cusswords into the waves. She’d giggle about how loud she screamed them. She’d giggle about how she
shocked the tourists. I’d stand, baby that I was, in awe. At the way she narrowed her eyes when she yelled them. At the way
even her laughter sounded tough.

But I wasn’t a baby anymore. And in my perfect darkness, Janie suddenly didn’t sound so tough. She didn’t sound like the gook
family taught her anything special. No grit or skill to help her survive all that she must.

Laugh again, Janie
, I thought. And she did. And then she cussed for me, too. I wanted to cry when I heard her. I knew then only a baby would
have mistaken that sound for toughness. Only a baby would have thought Janie was strong. The truth was, Janie knew better
than to care. Janie knew better than to hope. She was just a baby, too, but she’d already given up.

Shut your trap, Janie
, I thought. It was a favorite expression of Daddy’s.

“Angel?” she called.

“Yes.”

“Hot damn! What are you doin’ here?”

“Same as before. Runnin’ as fast as I can. Tryin’ to git away.”

“We’re supposed to go in the water this time, Angel,” she said.

“No.”

I had never been in the ocean. Sure, I’d stuck my toes in. I’d run up to my knees and then run back as the waves tried to
catch me. But I was too young to go out farther when we lived in Carolina. And Momma and Daddy didn’t swim.

“I can’t swim, Janie. You know that.”

“Got to. Listen. Hear that?”

She was right. The darkness had a new sound. I listened close and heard the sound of weeping. The gasps and the sobs and the
begging, “Oh. Please. No.” I heard the sound of prayer. Like at Grandma’s grave. Like from my baby mouth, inside Black Snake trailer. And when I heard
Please
and
Please
and
Amen
and
Amen
, I knew this much. Trouble was close.

“Awright then,” I whispered.

We stepped in the water. And instead of pushing me out of it, like the waves had always done before, I felt the water grab
me. Lift me. Pull me hard and quick, until I was caught inside its grasp. It was colder than I remembered. Soon, darkness
turned to something else entirely. I was freezing. Shaking with cold. Desperately wanting out of that icy water.

“Damn them Swarms,” Janie said. “They’re all the same. They think they can tell people like us what to do. Even here, in our
last darkness.”

I listened again. Someone cried, “Stay.” Someone begged, “Please.” I felt a rope. It slid around my wrists. It wrapped around
my legs. It pulled tight against my skin.

“Gonna have to fight to go now,” Janie said. “Gonna have to fight like I taught you.”

I pulled against the rope, deeper into the icy water.

“But you didn’t teach me, Janie. You weren’t tough. You were just lost, same as me.”

“Shut your trap,” she hissed.

“I got somethin’ else that might work. Treasure.”

I cried out as loud as I could. “Hey! You know those two silver spoons that went missin’? The heavy kind from the china cabinet,
right next to the Great Room archway? I stole ’em. I still have one, too, here in my pocket. I lost the other, but you can
have this one back. Just let me go.”

I threw that silver spoon as hard as I could and listened for any response. But the rope pulled tighter.

“I can’t stay with you, don’t you know? We don’t belong together. I pretended once that we did. That day we were sewin’ aprons,
and you were tellin’ me pretty stories. I closed my eyes and imagined you young. Imagined you were her and we belonged together.
It was a lie, but lies can be a gift sometimes.”

The ocean seemed colder than ever before. My skin was numb. My legs were stiff and could barely move. But through the perfect
black of a whole world burned to ash, I saw it. The tiniest sparkle, through the water, there on the bottom of the ocean floor.

“Look,” I whispered. “The missin’ spoon. Maybe if I sink down low I can git it. Maybe if I sink down low I won’t ever come
back. See them marks across the handle? That’s our name.”

I sank down to my shoulders. The spoon was so close, its light so clear.

“Grandmother,” I whispered. “Where’s my green baby blanket? The one you wrapped me in on the day I was born. I could use it
now. I’m cold. I’m so very, very cold.”

When I opened my eyes, I was surrounded by cinder blocks. The same dull gray as the ones of my childhood. But this time, they
were high above my head on every side. Who would have thought cinder-block towers could rise higher than I’d ever climb?

I didn’t know where I was; there was no window to look out. Just four walls of gray and a black door. My first thought was
to rip the IV out of my arm so I could escape. But then I realized my arms were tied tightly to the bed.

I could see, though, with a quick raise of my head, that I was badly hurt. Bandages wrapped around my arms and legs. Red circles
stained through the white cloth. That’s when I remembered the room at Red Castle. The
click
, like the sound of fingers snapping. The heat and the gagging. The check I signed over to Tabby. The window that lied, just
like everyone else. Promised sweet peace but left me bleeding and hurt, tied down inside a gray cinder-block tower. If I had
only known what to cry for, I would have screamed out the panic that swelled inside me. But I couldn’t cry
Mother
anymore. You were dead. I couldn’t cry
Money
anymore. I had it but gave it away.

The thought occurred to me to cry
Whiskey
. After everything, the blood and bandages that covered my body, that word still sat greedy on my tongue. And it made me sad.
It took away the hope that Janie’s letter once gave. That sweet letter she wrote before she ran away:

Angel,

I’m getting away. Sorry I can’t take you with me. But I’m not your momma and I can’t always be taking care of you. You’ll
figure out how to do it yourself one of these days. I hope to see you again.

Love,

Janie

P.S. I wasn’t pretending when I called you princess at night. I know I’m one of them. But they say you ain’t. You could be
anybody Angel. Even a princess.

The letter gave me hope. But the day I woke up tied down—cut and hurt all over and still craving whiskey—I learned a new lesson.
One Momma and Daddy never taught me. In the end, I was theirs, too. As much as I liked to deny it, as much as they fought
against it, it was true. Maybe we didn’t share any blood in our veins. But as it turned out, blood wasn’t nearly as important
as I’d always believed. Wasn’t nearly as important as Janie believed the day she wrote that letter. The thing we shared, the
thing that flowed in all of our veins, was stronger than a family name. Stronger than any drop of blood. Whiskey flowed through
us. Made us kin, made us family, in a way that nothing else ever would.

I sucked in my breath and wished that my hands weren’t tied down so that I could try again to end the pain. That horrible
pain that twisted inside me. Not from the cuts or the fall. Not from the bits of glass that were surely still stuck to my
skin, but from the truth. That after all the running, all the fighting against it,
I
was the drunk woman passed out sloppy on the couch.
I
was the drunk woman demanding whiskey prizes. I was Momma, and though I hated her, she was all mine.

“You’re awake,” the old woman whispered. “Do you hurt?” She leaned over me with a tissue and gently tapped at the tears that
spilled down my face. “I’ll call the nurse.

“Just a bit to help her relax,” she said to a lady who walked in with a tray of needles. “She’s been asleep so long already,
no need to make her sleep again so soon.”

Something dripped down into my IV and soon I felt things start to slip away. The gray walls, the blood seeping up through
white bandages, the shame of being Momma. I was drunk again. Tied down and drunk.

The old woman reached over me, tried to remove a tiny bit of blue glass still stuck to my skin. Still cutting me.

“This isn’t what I wanted,” she said. “I never dreamed I would end up holding you prisoner. Never dreamed you’d nearly die
in my arms. What I always wanted, what I always prayed for, was something different. I have seen you thousands of times in
my dreams. Where you grew up happy. Where you were gifted in music. Sometimes you were even valedictorian. Sometimes you marry
well and I have great-grandchildren. Each of them with white hair, just like your mother’s. When I fall asleep at night and
fear wakes me up, there are two things I do. I whisper the carving above my door and then I whisper prayers. That you grew
up well. That you grew up safe and happy. Do you know when I carved those words above the doors?”