hug, but somehow I knew … I wasn’t supposed to see.
I left you there with your tears.
14
Magic,
I believed in you, but sometimes your ink was dry when I needed you most.
15
Momma,
I walk back home in the dark and hear the rumbling of a thunderstorm in the distance. I am not afraid of it. I stand at the bottom of the steps to our home. Our porch greets me, solid and tired. I put my hand on the railing. The memories are coming easier now. They know I will keep my eyes open. They know I won’t look away.
* * *
I remember another day on this porch. You were sitting watching the sky and I sat on the steps on the other side of the screen door watching you. You had a cigarette in one hand and your head rested on the other. I hated the smell of the smoke. You had always smelled of honeysuckles from our adventures when I was little, and burnt sugar from your delicious southern baking.
But we didn’t have adventures anymore, or sweets in the oven. The smell of Father invaded everything, until finally you started to smell the same. The screen was tattered at one edge and the mosquitos flew in along with the thick, humid air. Father wasn’t home yet, but another storm was blowing in. One of rain and thunder and not rage and fists. And you sat there watching the sky get darker and pull closer. I leaned forward to get a better view of the black clouds and the step creaked.
You didn’t turn your head. “Hey, my little dove.” You took another drag from your cigarette. “Come sit by your momma.”
I stepped down the creaking steps and opened the creaking door and sat down on the steps beside you. I breathed in the electricity in the air and tried to exhale all the smoke and himness stuck to your skin. “Shouldn’t we go inside, Momma? The storm is coming.”
“Oh, that little thing can’t chase us inside, dove.”
I looked out over the horizon past the rowhomes and trees. A spike of lightning. A gray-and-black sky swallowing up the blue. It looked like just the storm to chase me off the porch, but I sat there anyway.
I loved our porch, even if we only looked out over cracked asphalt and boarded-up windows. It was a little space that was ours. We’d sit out there for hours when Father worked late. It was just outside the door, but we could breathe. We didn’t feel trapped or suffocated; we drank in the air and tilted our heads back and drank up the sun too.
“We had a porch like this in Louisiana,” you said, head tilted back, eyes closed.
“Did you like it in Louisiana?” You never talked much about your past, but I wanted to know.
You tucked your chin and slowly opened your eyes. “Our house was small, smaller than this one.” That was hard to believe, because even though we had ample space (something I knew not everyone had), it always felt like the walls were closing in. “But it had a porch just like this one. We’d board it up when hurricanes were brewing. We’d sit in the dark as the wind rattled the shudders and the rain pounded the tin roof.” And then you smiled and smooshed the edge of your cigarette into the side of the doorframe to snuff it out. It seemed strange to smile while recalling a natural disaster.
“But … did you like it?”
You turned your gaze to me. “I loved it.”
You pulled up your knees under your chin. “On those days with hurricanes, when we were all huddled in the living room, we’d sing. We’d sing loud and then louder. We’d sing until the wind and rain no longer scared us, because when our voices seemed to win against the howling outside, we felt stronger than it.”
I smiled at you, but as I did you blinked fast and looked away. The smile settled back into your usual set of lines, your usual far-off gaze that felt just out of my reach. I didn’t want to say anything just in case your smile came back, just in case it was a fragile scared thing and I could coax it to return if I was quiet.
It was then that I tried to remember your singing and couldn’t. A sliver of a song caught in the wind from the car’s open window, a soft melodic hum as we held hands and walked