The home I built in Memphis was nothing special. The house had a wide concrete porch hugging the rusty red brick exterior. I could safely listen to storms roll by from my porch and watch the world. Muted, beige-white columns shot up from the porch curling to meet a gable roof where piled up branches from a champion white ash sat. Whether the branches fell from the tree planted in my yard or from one of my neighbors’ trees here or there did not matter.
The trees, though planted in one place, danced in the sky across property boundaries drawn by some man long ago. They draped themselves over the city and dictated where the rain fell, where the sun shined, and, at times, who could have electricity. I could hide among the trees in the abyss of Overton Park and still hear the rough driving and sputtering cars lacking catalytic convertors around me.
The home I built in Memphis sat among zigzagging neighborhoods lined with trees. Leaves layered the ground in the fall mimicking the summer sky against a cotton grey sky. Though, alone in my house, the baristas at Otherlands, oak trees, sweet gums, and white ash trees scattered in Overton Park, a friend down on Graham Street, and the vibrancy of Cooper Young embraced me when I stepped through the house’s protective door frame.
The home I built in Memphis centered me among a city that could be me without my even asking. Memphis music, art, sports, and culture, sometimes borrowed, or even shared depending on who you ask, with the City of New Orleans, cultivated an identity for those who had nothing else to grip.
Memories of Elvis Presley, Otis Redding, and Isaac Hayes mark the city appearing throughout the air and on walls between here and there. Memphis music drew people in, yes through tours of Graceland, Stax’s, and Sun Records, but the sounds of Memphis distinguish the city and those who chose to stay. The sounds have changed, but GloRilla, Sexxy Red, and Project Pat among many others, keep the city’s music identity alive and follow me when I leave the home I built in Memphis.
Red or beige bricks, broken windows, and antiquated buildings leftover from one of the many exoduses from the city over time physically form Memphis. Lamar Sorrento’s art connect the city’s restaurants, coffee shops, bars, and bookstores. Signs supporting local SEC teams screaming “Go Vols” or “Hotty Toddy” along with small plaques donning “Be Nice or Leave” from Dr. Bob down in New Orleans dance around the Bluff City reminding the city’s inhabitants of its southern location.
The home I built in Memphis warmed my heart when I wanted to slip away. Southern food, Memphis food, that I believed could be found no place else ignited my soul. This was special to the Bluff City, and I included it in the infrastructure of my home.
Sweet, sticky banana bread, a dollop of whipped cream, as suggested by the Otherlands barista who softly said, “your eyes looked like you need[ed] it,” and jalapeño bagels filled my soul on mornings where depression gripped my body. The lunches where I thought my body did not deserve to feel nourished occupied with friends, cheese fries, and sweet tea. When darkness covered the city, and I could no longer withstand hunger pangs punching my stomach, brain, and heart, barbeque chicken salads, tacos, tacos, and more tacos, and smorgasbord salads from Cheffie’s, and the friend on Graham Street quietly comforted me.
I was received by Memphis music, football, food, and art. I could be a Memphian and not think twice about who I was. The home I built in Memphis allowed me to borrow the city’s sense of self and avoid painful questions about who I really was.
The home I built in Memphis mimicked the interior of those along the same street. The oak floors, built years ago, kissed my back through my sweatshirt and provided solace as I spread across the discolored slabs while the floor’s natural cuts grabbed my back. My fingers grasped back only to grab air as the floor scraped my knuckles. I could hear the pipes running in the old house and be there.
The home I built in Memphis withstood the violent, but quick, angry storms which traveled across the Mississippi River and unleashed their terror upon the city. Though rain often invited itself inside through the window’s painted seals or slowly spilled in through cracks in the roof. Cold winds rattled the double-pane windows in the fall. Still, I sat in my home I built in Memphis.
One day blues quickly darkened to a vengeful pitch-black gray. An afternoon summer rain shower does not surprise the well-accustomed Memphian. The wet, southern summer heat replaced by a sharp cold wind. The muggy afternoon came to a standstill. Then came a large crack of thunder and buckets of rain fell to the Bluff City.
There I laid in my home that I built in Memphis thinking this shower, too, would quickly leave once finished. Suddenly, the “pit-pat” turned into thick “thuds.” The rain violently punched the house’s rooftop until plump drops finally fell to the oak floor where I laid and listened. I gasped for air while the rain bathed my face until I could no longer breathe.
Floods washed over the home I built in Memphis. Rain fell hard washing everything I had built in Memphis away. Pieces of the roof rested inside the home where I once laid. I could still hear the sounds of Elvis, see the smile of my friend on Graham Street, but I no longer had a home in Memphis. Banana bread and barbeque salads be damned, nothing in the city could save me from the rain. The rain washed me and the home I built in Memphis away.
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