The Memory Thief (6 page)

The moment she gave herself to him was long before they ever touched. It was Friday night, and she was inside the kitchen
rinsing buckets for Cora. She heard the truck pull up.

“I’ll git it,” Cora told her.

Hannah nodded, but listened to see who was delivering.

She heard Cora say, “Hand it out, Sam.”

Then she heard him answer, “Where’s my pretty Yank tonight?”

The bucket she was rinsing dropped straight into the sink.
Pretty
was the ocean.
Pretty
was the first November snowfall. Or a porcelain tea set. Perfect as God made her, she should’ve had no use for
pretty
.

And yet, no matter how carelessly he threw that word around, there was a place reserved inside her heart. Waiting for someone,
anyone
, to claim it with that seductive word.

After that day, Hannah worked for his attention. If she saw him sitting out front finishing up a bucket, she’d step outside
to take it from him instead of letting him toss it in the sink.

“Workin’ you hard, ain’t they? Makin’ you rinse buckets nonstop.”

“We’ve been real busy,” she said, aware that her words were suddenly less Yankee.

“I’ll rinse this out for you then.”

She followed him inside and watched as he emptied the shells from his bucket, then soaped and rinsed it. She showed him where to stack it so the hot air could dry it.

Sissy came in and started talking to him about repairs the boat needed. When Sissy stepped out into the yard, Sam started
to follow her. Then he turned around and reached toward Hannah.

His fingers twirled through her hair. “Ever pull the husks back from an ear of sweet corn?” He winked at her and left.

If Mother’s rules had worked, if Hannah had managed to swallow them whole until they were the very bones that held her up,
then she would have run. She would have smelled the flames of hell all around that boy. With his assumption, his
arrogant
assumption, that it was okay to twirl his fingers through her hair. That it was okay to comment on a part of her body. But
she didn’t run. She didn’t even acknowledge the alarm that was going off inside her. Instead, she whispered the words
pretty Yank
to herself. And lingered over the sweet corn at the fruit market.

She invented reasons to be near him. Whether collecting buckets or dodging outside to unload when the truck pulled up. Sometimes,
especially if she was going outside, she would slip off her apron. Let him see her in that extra-small T-shirt.

One Saturday the boys didn’t show up with their cooler run. Cora told Hannah to bike down to the dock and see what the problem
was. When Hannah got there the boat had just pulled in.

“We’re goin’ fast as we can,” one of Cora’s boys yelled when he saw her. “I’m runnin’ this load back to her. You stay and
rinse the coolers, then fill ’em with ice. Sam’ll do the rest. I’ll be back in twenty.”

Sam sat on an overturned cooler, working a net filled with fish.

“Hey,Yank.”

Hannah picked up a hose and started rinsing out coolers. Water splashed back, soaking her. She stepped away and slipped off
her shoes and socks. There was nothing she could do about her skirt dragging in the water.

“You’d be cooler in shorts,” he said.

“Yeah.”

“Don’t got any?”

She shook her head.

“How come?”

It was the moment she was trained for. When people noticed her separateness she was supposed to become a lighthouse, a ray
of hope in a dark world. She was supposed to consider their questions an invitation to open up her heart and tell
why
she followed the rules that she did. It was the whole reason her family lived the way they did.

But Hannah shrugged her shoulders and loosened her Yankee tongue. “Just ’cause.”

“It’s a church thing, ain’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Well good thing for ya’ll heaven’s got air-conditionin’,” he said, smiling. “I go to church, too. With my grandma sometimes.
Ladies there don’t dress like you, though. Ain’t so pretty, neither.”

There was that word again. That sweet, sweet word, handed to her like a surprise gift. She wanted to respond in kind. To show
him how much she liked his gift. Not knowing what else to do, she thought of her mother when she was eighteen, only two years
older than Hannah was now. She kneeled before him, her shoulders next to his knees. Her skirt was tucked beneath her, hiding
the long layers of polyester. Her T-shirt showed the milk of her arms and her hourglass shape. And then there was her hair. Unbraided and spilling across her shoulders, down her back until its tips brushed across the water on the boat deck.

He looked down at her, and Hannah believed him. She knew for the first time in her life,
yes.
She
was
pretty. Like an Easter ballerina. Like a porcelain tea set. She reached her hands into the net and began to pull out the
treasure inside.

From that day on, Hannah gave up wearing the canvas apron altogether. And she could never be sure when he might appear beside
her. Sometimes he snuck into the motel rooms she’d be cleaning. Sometimes he’d pull her to the bed. She’d let him kiss her
quickly before running away.

It was easier for Hannah than it should’ve been. Partly because her polyester life was so unconnected to the Steam pot Motel.
Her family didn’t know about the T-shirt, about bleaching the toilets or sneaking childlike kisses in between her work. And
as long as she could do both well, live by the polyester rules at home and enjoy life at the motel, she didn’t think she was
hurting anyone.

One slow day, after Cora dismissed her from the Steampot, Hannah biked down to where the boat docked.

“Cora need somethin’?” Sam asked.

“No, she’s not busy.”

He sighed. “Good, cause I don’t have any fish to send her.”

“She didn’t need my help, either. You have some coolers that need washin’ or somethin’?”

He shook his head. “We git Mondays off. She uses whatever we caught over the weekend on Mondays. I’m fixin’ to head out, though,
if you wanna come.”

“On the boat?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Will Cora mind?”

“Ain’t her boat,” he said proudly. “She rents it from my granddaddy during the summers. When school’s in, I live back in Columbia.
You might even call me a city boy. But I live with my grandparents from middle of May till almost September. Now I’m old enough,
Granddaddy lets me drive it while Cora’s boys do the fishin’.” He held his hand out to her and smiled. “Ever seen the deep
water?”

“No,” Hannah said, as she took his hand and climbed in. She held her breath and looked away from him as the boat sped away
from the land. She had been close to him before, but never so alone with him. She tried to focus on the water, watching it
change from murky brown to something cleaner. And as the land slowly disappeared, Hannah discovered the ocean was blue after
all. Not a sparkling gentle blue like she had seen in postcards. But something darker. Something that teased of black.

He cut the motors back and the boat became quiet.

“Let’s jump.”

Hannah smiled but shook her head.

“Keep your clothes on. The sun and wind’ll dry ’em before we get back.”

“I can’t swim.”

He laughed. “We ain’t tryin’ to git anywhere. All you have to do is float.”

“I’ve never been in the water. Never floated.”

“Well you can’t come to James Island and not jump in the water. Least once.”

He tossed a life ring into the water and jumped. His whole body submerged for several seconds before he rose again. “Jump,”
he yelled. “I got you.”

There was a quick pulse of pain as Hannah’s body tensed with fear and cool water swallowed her whole. But it was followed
by a rejoicing, as Hannah became numb to polyester and let the ocean pull her long skirt away from her skin.

Hannah started spending every Steampot slow day with Sam. Her parents never knew she wasn’t working, but instead, was headed
on a boat out to the deep water. It was there that Hannah liked to pretend there was nothing else. Only black ocean water,
her, and Sam.

They talked about things she was used to hiding from everyone but Father. Like
The Grapes of Wrath
. She was surprised when he said his favorite parts were the hungry ones. The ones that described what is was like to go days
without a meal. Those were the parts that she hurried through, preferring even the dull turtle chapter to that pain.

“They’ll either live, or not,” Sam explained. “I like that such a big problem, such a big journey, can boil down to something
simple. They’ll survive it. Or not.”

She let him kiss her finally. Really kiss her, without her pulling away. It scared her, though she wouldn’t show it. Not just
the sin of it. But that sin could be pleasure, too. That sweet tremble that filled her body and made her mind flash with thoughts
of the Lowtide church. She wanted to raise her hands high and shout out a whole new mystery language of love.

“Come back tonight,” Sam said to her. “Meet me at the boat, around seven thirty.”

She ate supper slowly. Knife and fork methodically cutting through cube steak patties and scalloped potatoes. Once, when no one was looking, she held the back of her hand up to her mouth and licked the salt from her earlier swim. For weeks
she had done all of the household laundry. Telling Mother that she wanted to help her accomplish the goals for the shelter.
When really, she just needed a way to hide the salt and sand that clung to her dirty clothes.

“Hannah,” Father said. “Have you given any more thought to what you might major in at college?”

“No. To be honest, I think I should pursue something else.”

He laid his fork down. “What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure it’s the best thing for me to have more school. I don’t see the point.”

“You were so excited. What’s changed?”

“Let’s not pressure her,” Mother interrupted. “There’s still plenty of time to talk all this out.”

Father nodded glumly and started talking about bridge work. Mother rose to serve dessert, but she let her eyes hold Hannah’s
for a few firm seconds.
Good girl
, she told her.

Later, as Hannah helped wash dishes, she asked if she could return to work for a few hours. “I know it’s late. And I probably
won’t be home till after dark. But I need to go back, just for a little while.”

Her mother smiled sweetly as she gently stroked Hannah’s shoulder.

“Who am I to say no to another woman? Especially a woman that will soon be running her very own household. Be home by bedtime.”

Hannah had expected to go boating. Perhaps watch the sunset from the deep water. But Sam was in a car with a backpack. In
the side pocket, she could see a flashlight sticking out.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her hand and kissing her palm. “I’m gonna show you somethin’ amazin’.”

He offered her a cigarette.

She shook her head.

“Never known nobody half as good as you. Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t cuss. Don’t wear bikinis. I don’t want kids, but
if I ever did, you’d be the kind of girl I’d want to be their momma.”

Hannah laughed.

“I ain’t kiddin’. That’s how men get messed up. They marry the prettiest little bikini body they can find. Daddy scooped one
up just out of high school, yellow hair like yours. Had me two years later. Then she was gone.”

“Something happen to her?”

“She just missed the party is all. Hard to party with a little baby, I reckon.”

“You’ve never met her?”

“Can’t know. She could be anybody. Sometimes when I’m out and I see a lady ’bout Daddy’s age with yellow hair I’ll let her
get a good look at me. See if I see anything, a sign of some sort stirrin’ in her eyes.”

“She might come back.”

“What’d be the point?”

Hannah noticed they weren’t on Folly Road anymore. Or the James Island Expressway. They were heading through Daniel Island,
on an isolated back road, dotted with trailers.

“Where we headin’? Your house?”

“Sort of.” He laughed. “You know, you sound different. Keep it up and you’ll never fit back in with the Yanks.” He pressed
the gas pedal and the car surged forward. “We need to hurry. I wanna get there ’fore all the light is gone.”

He turned down a road that wasn’t a road but a path mowed down by tractors. He pulled over near a ditch and parked by a barbwire
fence. From the looks of things, they weren’t anywhere. Just a big untended field, with weeds growing up all along the fence
rows.

“Climb under,” he said, motioning toward the fence. He threw the backpack over and slid under the fence. He held the wire
up as high as he could for her, but her hair still got tangled in the barbs.

“You said we were going to your house, right?”

He laughed. “You’re scared. Nobody’s here but us and a haint or two. And they’ll be glad we came. They bound to be lonely.”

“What’s a haint?” Hannah whispered. But Sam was already running through the field, yelling for her to hurry before the sun
set. She tried to follow him, but her ankle-length skirt wasn’t made for running. She ran and fell, ran and fell, through
a field that was once ripe with cotton. By the time she reached Sam, her palms were stuck with briars, her hair was tangled,
and weed fuzz clung to her skirt.

They stood at the top of the hill and looked down. There it was, on fire with the blaze of a Carolina sunset. A mansion. Spreading
tall and wide, with gables jutting out of the roof and columns framing the front. It was rotting, but it hid this well. Gray
wood glowed orange with light. And live oak trees, centuries old, writhed all around it.

“It’s one good thing the Yanks let us keep,” he said. “Burned so many others, don’t know why they left this one.”

“It’s that old?”

“Oh yeah. Least a century and a half. Been kept up for years. Was still tended when my granddaddy was a boy. Been abandoned
for decades, though.”

He grabbed her hand, and they ran down the hill until they were just feet from the front porch.

“What do you think?” he whispered.