Memphis

Miriam drives towards Memphis with her daughters and observes the “blue glory” of the Smoky mountains, hoping they will make it home. She stops at a filling station to check the AC and locks her daughters in the car before going in. She feels anxious being around the white man who works at the station, and in her mind, she plots how to escape in case he attacks her. However, the white man is kind and chats with her while fixing the AC.

Back on the road, Miriam thinks of her and her daughters’ “fatherless journey” and recalls the past few days with her husband, Jax. She recalls the ball they attended, Jax’s promotion to major, and the previous day when she decided to leave, realizing her marriage was over. When the van’s AC breaks again, Miriam stops and fixes it herself.

In this flashback, Miriam has a summer job at a record store. She is reading Brontë’s Wuthering Heights when a customer enters and asks for an Elton John record. Miriam is focused on the novel when the customer comments on its plot to attract her attention. When she looks at him, she “[falls] in utter, marrow-boiling love” (20). He introduces himself as Jax. She notices that he wears a Marine Corps uniform like her father’s. Jax complements the beauty of her eyes and tells her he is stationed in Memphis. They spend the rest of the day talking about records and American writers. Jax tells her about how he left home and joined the military. Memphis impressed him as he saw “[b]lack folk loving every second of their blackness” (22). Miriam also tells him how she helped raise her younger sister August and how her mother was active during the civil rights movement.

The next day they go on a date to the Officer’s Club, where she meets Mazz, Jax’s Italian American friend. Over drinks, Mazz urges Jax to marry Miriam. Later, Miriam and Jax drive to downtown Memphis and Jax asks her to marry him. Miriam thinks that they do not know each other but she is in love. Jax tells her that he is not a good man, but he knows he wants to be with her. He asks who he should ask for her hand. Miriam tells him that her father is dead. His body was found in the Mississippi river. She tells him that the person he must worry about is her mother.

August is playing the piano when someone knocks at the door. She opens it and sees Jax. She is about to close the door in his face when Miriam appears and lets him in. Hazel, their mother, tells August to go outside and play. August unwillingly obeys. She climbs up a tree close to the window to overhear the conversation inside. She hears her mother asking Jax if he wants to take the only daughter of Myron away from her. August wonders why she talks about their family affairs to a stranger.

Hazel tells Jax that he assumes the responsibility and honor to make Miriam happy. He tells her that he is an officer in the Marines and can provide for her. Hazel laughs, saying that “Miriam can provide for Miriam” (33). Hazel is concerned if Jax will love her daughter and treat her right, and Jax declares he loves her.

Seventeen years after that day, August answers the phone and hears Miriam crying. She speaks incomprehensibly, but August perceives the words “fight, black eye, and ashamed” (33). August is furious and tells her sister to come home.

Miriam attends the Marine Corps Ball with Jax. She defies the formal dress code by wearing a gold dress that her grandmother made. Miriam feels tired from her exhaustive daily routine as a mother and from the previous night’s fight with Jax. She told him he could only be a man in the military and not at home, while Jax blamed her for what Derek did to Joan. He told her that she was not a good mother.

They find Mazz next to their table smoking and drinking. Miriam drinks a glass of champagne and goes to the ladies’ room. There she meets the wife of a lieutenant who mentions that Jax was promoted to major. Miriam did not know. She wonders what happened to the man she loved and thinks about their marriage. She knows that Jax is cheating. Her life is lonely as he is often away for training. When Jax retuned after the Gulf war, he became “even more distant,” and they fought constantly (39). Miriam feels she cannot go on being unhappy.

Back in the ballroom, she sits with Mazz and tells him that she is over Jax. Mazz starts talking to her about the military and the Gulf War. He tells her a story of a traumatic experience he and Jax had. Their group of soldiers occupied a building and killed everybody inside. They found a locked room and threw a grenade to open it without realizing that children were hiding inside. The experience shocked Jax.

Miriam understands Jax’s grief, rage, and terror; those emotions aren’t new to her. She thinks again about how Jax called her a bad mother and resolves to leave him. 

Joan recalls her parents’ fight the night before they left their home in Chicago. Joan awakens from the noise in the kitchen while Mya is still asleep. She goes out on the staircase and sees her parents quarreling. She hides with their dog, Wolf, and witnesses their fight. They were arguing about Miriam’s dress when they returned from the ball. For the first time, Joan sees her father hit her mother. She sees Miriam avoid Jax and accidentally throws mustard on his face. When she gets close to him to check if he is ok, Jax strikes her in the eye with a forceful motion of his arm. Miriam falls to the floor, and Jax repeats that she is a bad mother because she let Derek abuse their daughter. Miriam, in pain, reaches for the phone, and Joan comprehends her despair. She hears Miriam cry as she calls her sister August.