The Memory Thief (8 page)

He knew what the inside of that station would be like. There’d be kids with earphones blasting rock music. Maybe swaying their
hips from side to side as they listened. They were smart kids, so they’d talk about scholarships and classes. But they’d also
talk about dances and dates and new blue jeans. And Hannah would stand by herself, maybe even on the other side of the room.
He’d be proud, too, that she didn’t blend in. Even as he hurt for her.

There was a memory he hid. Of being sixteen years old and smarter than anybody in school. A favorite of the teachers, like
Hannah, but cool, too. With his own prom stories. There was a girl at his school with hair swishing down around her knees
and a straight skirt turned gray at the hem from floor dust. She ate lunch alone. Talked to no one in class. And when she
passed him in the hall and his buddies yelled out a new
Holy Roller
joke, he laughed.

It was college that changed him forever. For most kids, college was an escape from rules and curfews. For him it was escape
from his mother’s crying fits and his father’s drunken months. He realized, for the first time, that he could build his own
life. That it was
up to him
to build his own life. And without the benefit of having a worthy example, he was unsure how.

One late night he took a sheet of blueprint paper and drew overlapping layers. He labeled them.
Degrees, a job, a family.
Each one supported the other, like sections in a bridge. But something bothered the engineer in him. He lacked a formula.
There was no fundamental code upon which all things could stand.

He called his grandmother. The one his parents made fun of, with her prairie skirt and head covering, like she was straight
out of a Little House book. But despite the way she looked, he had never seen her weep. He had never seen her drunk and broken.
When she said, “Hello,” he asked her
How? How can I be strong? How do I become something a storm can’t bend?

Grandmother’s code served him well for many years. Mother eventually framed that late-night blueprint, his plan for a safe
and protected life, and placed it in the family room. And later, as he designed real bridges, it didn’t matter to him what
his wife wore. But then there was the surprise of Hannah. His pretty baby girl. Set apart for ridicule.

The father in him could not ignore the suffering she would surely face. And so he bought her Bethie. He bought her a green
bike. He bought her a bus ticket straight to Carolina.

The ticket was round trip and scheduled to return in one week. The bus was only half full, with just a small seniors group
on their way for a tour of the southeastern seacoast. Hannah sat alone in the third row, staring out the window at miles and
miles of interstate landscaping.

They stopped the next morning for rest and food. Hannah stood in a corner, drinking a vanilla milkshake.

“Hi, young lady,” a man from the seniors group said as he passed by.

“Good morning.”

He looked her up and down, nodding his head with approval.

“You seen the pictures of other girls nowadays?” He motioned to a rack of tabloid magazines as he walked away. “Filth.”

Everybody else from the bus mingled around, stretching their legs and chatting. A group of women wandered near her, chatting
about hairstyles and colors.

“I just want something easier,” one of them said. “I hate having to blow it dry every day and then curl it, too.”

“My heavens, look at her hair, Barbara,” one of them said, and pointed to Hannah.

Her hair had been braided and pinned up when she boarded the bus. But it hurt to rest her head against that thick rope for
so long. So during the night she had unwrapped it and let her hair ripple down to her knees.

The women circled her.

“She’s like Rapunzel.”

“Or an angel.”

“How long does it take you to wash it?”

“Does it feel heavy? You ever get headaches?”

Beyond them, Hannah saw a boy about Sam’s age. He was with a girl that wore jeans and a high school T-shirt. Her hair was
bobbed and swingy. And it made her look young, fun, and happy. Hannah wondered for a moment if she ever looked that way. Even when she was with Sam.

“Sometimes it hurts,” she answered.

“Your mother likes it long, doesn’t she? I was that way with my girl. I still have the braid we cut off when she was twelve.
I cried worse over that than I did her going off to college. Well, one day when you’re on your own, you can do whatever you
want with your hair.”

“She’s got a few years before that, though,” another woman said. “Can you imagine how long it will be by then?”

“No,” Hannah said, savoring her first bold lie. “I’m nineteen. On my way to meet my fiancé.” She held her hands up around
her collar and smiled. “Mother made the dress. There’s light pearl beading around here. Four inches of lace on the hem. Mother’s
an excellent seamstress.”

The women smiled, and they talked of flowers, reception food, and honeymoon trips. At the bus station in Columbia, Hannah
found a pay phone and looked up Sam’s number. His father answered and told her Sam was getting ready for a game that night.
She went to the women’s restroom and dressed for him. Her skin tingling with joy, as it felt the smooth cool cotton of her
black CSM shirt once again. She washed her face and smoothed her hair. And when she noticed how her hands trembled, how unsteady
her feet seemed, she found a vending machine and bought a bag of shortbread cookies.

She returned to the pay phone and called a cab. When the cab arrived, her voice shook as she told the driver to take her to
Columbia High. And when she saw the word
HOMECOMING
painted on the entrance sign, her fist opened. Spilling her cab money across the floor.

In all her years of school, she had never been to a football game. Never heard the drums of the marching band thumping and
clicking wildly. Never pushed her way through a revolving gate, or handed her ticket to a man wearing maroon face paint. She
was smart enough to know that none of the commotion was about her. Yet she still couldn’t shake the fear that someone would
ask her to leave. That everyone knew she did not belong. That she was not from Carolina. Did not go to Columbia High. And
wasn’t really about to get married to Sam, their star football player.

She didn’t know where to sit. There were numbers and a letter on her ticket. But as she stared up into packed bleachers that
stretched toward the stars, she had no idea where L42 was. So she stood apart, her shoulder leaning against the gate, her
arms crossed in front of her.

She didn’t know Sam’s jersey number. And as boys with helmets and shoulder pads poured on and off the field, she could not
find him. Soon the crowd was on its feet and the boys were running wildly and everybody was screaming and clapping. In the
middle of all that noise, with the drums and the screams and the cheers, Hannah heard one thing: “Yay, Sam!”

She looked at the far end of the field and there was a boy holding a football. He was jumping and slapping high fives with
his teammates. The cheer came again, from one of the girls down front: “Woo-hoo, Sammy!”

Number forty-seven. Now, with his number, the game had meaning. Hannah watched him run. Watched him catch the ball. She found
herself whispering prayers for him. That he would score. That he would win. That somehow he would know that she was watching.

At halftime Sam marched out on the field, still in uniform but with his helmet off. His arm was around a girl in red. She won queen and he won king. And with their crowns teetering on their heads, they kissed quickly while the crowd went
Awwwww
.

Hannah turned away. Not because of the kiss. Or the crown. But because with his helmet off, she could see his face. And he
was
happy
. He was satisfied. He was a teenage boy having the time of his life. She didn’t look in a mirror often, but she knew her
face never looked like that.

After the game, she waited for him to leave the locker room. Most everyone else had already left. Only Hannah and a few cheerleaders
remained. She heard them talking about a homecoming dance that was starting.

As the players came out, a few of them looked at her and nudged each other. Hannah wished that she had worn her hair smoothed
and braided. She could feel it tangling and fuzzing from the night air.

“I’ll be darned, but would you look at the size of that bug,” one of them said.

“Where?”

“Over there.” He pointed at Hannah. “That bug caught in that big web of hair.”

“Awww. Let’s cut it free. ’Fore some spider gets it.”

“Stop it,” Sam said, stepping out from behind them.

“You seen anything like that before?” one of the boys asked.

“No,” he said, not looking at her. “But the dance has started. We’re already late.” He turned to one of the cheerleaders.
Hannah recognized her as the girl with the red dress. “I forgot somethin’ back in the locker room. Catch a ride with Bo and
I’ll see you there.”

“Awright,” she cooed. “Don’t be long, though. I don’t wanna dance with nobody but the King.”

He laughed and returned to the locker room while Hannah waited. When he was sure they were gone, he came back.

“What in the world?” he said, smiling. “What are you doin’ down here, Yank? I didn’t think your daddy would be bridgin’ again
till next summer.”

“Thought I’d surprise you. Saw you play tonight. You were amazing.”

He hugged her. “Gosh, I missed you.”

She stayed there in his arms, her head against his shoulder, until he pulled away.

“Your folks know the game’s over? You need to call ’em or somethin’?”

She shook her head. “I was hoping we could go somewhere.”

“Wish I could. But I’ve gotta go to the homecomin’ dance. Wouldn’t be right for the King not to show up.”

“I could come with you.”

He laughed softly. “This ain’t your type of thing.”

“It might be.”

“Nah. You’re a boatin’ girl. A deep water Yank. You ain’t meant for silly high school dances.”

“You’re worried what those boys will think. The ones that were laughing at me.”

He held his palms out in surrender. “We ain’t on the island anymore, Hannah. This is high school we’re dealin’ with here.
My senior year. My last homecomin’ dance, and I’m King. And I’m supposed to go with the Queen, that’s practically in all the
rule books. I’ll hang out with you a bunch next summer. But if I show up with you instead of the Queen, they’ll eat us alive.”

Hannah backed away, shaking her head. She tried to take a deep breath, and when she couldn’t she closed her eyes so that she
wouldn’t see him, standing there but wanting to leave. She remembered kneeling before him on the boat, working on the nets
and believing that he was right. Believing that she was pretty. She tried desperately to feel that way again. To be his pretty
Yank just once more. She grabbed fistfuls of hair and spread it across her shoulders. She prayed the moon would shine upon
her and make her glow. “Like sweet corn,” she whispered.

She looked at him then, and remembered the feel of the old cotton field beneath her. The live oak twisting above her. She
remembered Sam, like the ocean. Freeing her from polyester. Freeing her from everything she thought she was, everything she
was supposed to be. “I’ll change for you,” she begged. “I’ll be a queen for you.” She blinked her eyes and saw the picture
of Leah. So pretty and curvy in her black pants and red turtleneck. So very queenlike with her red apple lipstick.

He shook his head. “We’re different. No point pretendin’ we ain’t. We never went anywhere public together, even on the island.
We went to the deep water. To the plantation. We went under them live oaks.”

“But I gave you everything.”

He nodded his head slowly. “It was a big deal for you. I should’ve thought ’bout that, before… But it ain’t such a big thing
to the folks that I know. I’m sorry, I just got caught up in that night. With that house. Them oak trees. And you, lookin’
like some golden antique yourself, with your hair and your long skirt. Like you was somethin’ the Yanks left behind, too.”

“I gave you my whole life that night.”

Somewhere behind the stadium a car honked its horn.

“I ain’t growed up enough to give my life away.”

The car honked again.

“Look, I’ll write you,” he said. “I’m so late, I gotta go. Call your folks to pick you up. There’s a pay phone down by the
bleachers. I’m glad you got to see me play. Always wanted you to.”

“I know I can,” she cried, as he kissed her on the cheek. “Let me show you. I can be a queen.”

He ran off toward the parking lot. Before he was out of sight, he turned around and waved with a friendly smile. He called
out something that she couldn’t quite hear. It sounded a bit like
I’m sorry
. But by the way he shrugged his shoulders and smiled as he ran from her, it looked more like an easy
Good-bye
.

She paid a cabdriver one hundred dollars to take her to Folly Beach. It was after midnight by the time she arrived. But she
remembered the path from before. That sandy public-access trail, with the sea oats nearly blocking the way. It was cold. The
wind wrapped around her until she shivered. And it was dark. The moon was bright enough to show her the caps of waves, but
not the crabs that were scooting around on the sand. She dragged her suitcase to a dune and sat on top of it.

It was the first time she’d ever heard the ocean. Before, she’d always been distracted by looking at all the colors and counting
off the patterns of the waves. But staring into that black wall, she heard power. What had always seemed like a
shhhh shhhh
lullaby was really a war cry. Water delivered blow after blow to the shore. She sat there all night, until the war cry echoed
inside her heart.

When the sun rose, she went to Cora’s Steampot Motel and rented a room for the price of daily labor. Cora thought it was strange. Sissy told her as much. But both of them pretended to accept her lie about Father returning to finish up loose ends and out-of-town company showing up for a visit.