The Buried Comb Symbol in Memphis: Analysis & Meaning

What the Comb Is and Where It Appears

The buried comb is a small, concrete object with outsized weight in Memphis: a black comb with a wooden handle that belongs to Derek, Joan's older cousin and the boy who raped her when she was a child. Joan steals it from the shared bathroom of her grandfather's house shortly after the family arrives in Memphis in 1995, and buries it at midnight in the backyard under the magnolia tree on the instruction of Miss Dawn, the neighborhood elder and folk practitioner. The comb recurs across the novel's timeline—in Joan's 1995 arrival, her 1997 reflections, her 2002 preparations for art school, and her 2003 confrontation with Derek in prison—and each appearance shifts its meaning from instrument of folk revenge to a token Joan must reclaim in order to move forward.

The comb first appears in Chapter 11 (Joan, 1995), when Miss Dawn, after a long stare, tells Joan: “Bury something of that boy's. Hair works best. A comb. Bury it deep in red earth. Do this at midnight. Tell no one.” Joan follows the instruction, stealing Derek's comb and burying it while her younger sister Mya holds a flashlight and chants Hail Marys. The novel returns to this scene in Chapter 23 (Joan, 2003), where Joan recalls the physical ordeal of the burial in detail: digging with her bare hands, breaking a nail, blood mixing with the fertile Memphis soil, and ignoring Mya's questions about what Derek had done.

The Burial: Folk Magic and the Red Earth

Miss Dawn's instruction places the comb within a tradition of Southern Black folk magic—rootwork, conjure, and sympathetic magic, in which an object associated with a person can be used to act upon them. The specific requirements—midnight, red earth, secrecy—are the grammar of that tradition. Joan's compliance is immediate and visceral: she digs with her hands because no tool is available, pushes Mya away when her sister tries to pull her from the earth, and continues even after a nail breaks and blood seeps into the soil. The physicality of the scene matters. The burial is not a casual gesture but a desperate, embodied act by a child who has no other language for what has been done to her.

The novel does not confirm that the burial caused Derek's imprisonment. Joan herself is uncertain: “I wasn't sure if my burying that comb was what landed my cousin in prison, but I thanked God—and Miss Dawn—for the magic of it.” That uncertainty is part of the symbol's power. The comb operates in a register where cause and effect are not fully legible, where a child's ritual and a boy's arrest coincide without a clear mechanism. The text leaves room for both readings—the magic worked, or the magic gave Joan a way to survive the waiting.

The Comb as Revenge: Agency in a System That Fails Joan

Joan's rape is never prosecuted. Derek is arrested years later for murdering other women, not for what he did to Joan. The comb, then, is Joan's only instrument of justice—a private, extra-legal response to a harm the legal system never addresses. By burying Derek's comb, Joan converts her powerlessness into action. She cannot make the adults around her see what happened, but she can perform a ritual that gives her a sense of control over Derek's fate.

The revenge dimension is explicit in Joan's later reflections. In Chapter 22 (Joan, 2002), she thinks about Derek constantly and pushes the thoughts away, and she thanks God and Miss Dawn for the magic of the comb. In Chapter 32 (Joan, 2003), visiting Derek in prison, she feels “ashamed for having gotten revenge on Derek”—a line that acknowledges the comb's function as an instrument of retaliation. The shame is complex: Joan is not ashamed of wanting justice, but of having needed a buried comb to get it, and of the fact that her revenge was the only justice available.

Digging It Up: Reclaiming the Symbol

The comb's meaning shifts decisively in Chapter 22, when Miss Dawn tells Joan she must dig it up or she “won't be going anywhere”—that is, she will not be able to leave Memphis for the Royal College of Art in London. The instruction reframes the comb from a weapon against Derek to a burden Joan must release. As long as the comb stays buried, Joan remains tethered to the trauma it encodes. Digging it up is the condition of her future.

Joan performs the exhumation on Christmas night, 2002, after a family meal. She takes a shovel this time, finds the comb, and stands over it, panting. Then she spits on it “again and again and again.” The spitting is ambiguous—it could be contempt for Derek, contempt for the comb's power over her, or both. What is clear is that the act is a deliberate, conscious reclaiming. The comb is no longer something she hides in the earth; it is something she holds in her hand and defiles. She has taken possession of her own symbol.

The digging up also prepares Joan for the confrontation that follows. In Chapter 23 (Joan, 2003), when Derek calls collect from Riverbend, Joan thinks: “I knew what he meant. After all, I had dug up that comb. And now this phone call. Part of me wanted to listen to him. To see if Miss Dawn's magic was real.” The comb's magic, in this reading, is not about making Derek suffer but about giving Joan the strength to face him. The burial was a child's desperate act; the exhumation is a young woman's choice.

The Comb and Joan's Confrontation with Trauma

The comb's final arc connects to Joan's prison visit in Chapter 32 (Joan, 2003). Joan drives to Riverbend with Mya, meets Derek in the visiting room, and is confronted by the reality of his imprisonment—the chains, the guards, the massive inmate who blows Derek a kiss in a gesture of domination. Joan tells Mya about the rape on the drive back, the first time she has spoken it aloud. The comb is not mentioned in this chapter, but its work is done: Joan has moved from burying a token of her trauma to naming the trauma itself.

The comb's trajectory, then, mirrors Joan's own. It begins as a child's secret, buried in the dark; it becomes a source of ambiguous power; it is exhumed and defiled; and it is finally left behind as Joan speaks the truth to her sister and receives her acceptance letter to art school. The comb is not a solution to Joan's trauma—the novel does not offer easy resolutions—but it is a record of her movement through it.

Character and Theme Connections

The comb connects several of the novel's central themes. It is an act of sisterhood and community as sanctuary: Mya stands guard with the flashlight, chanting Hail Marys, and later keeps Joan's secret. It is an expression of resilience and self-invention: a child who cannot speak her harm finds a way to act. It is tied to art as healing and legacy: the comb's burial and exhumation bracket Joan's development as an artist, and Miss Dawn, who instructs Joan to bury and then dig up the comb, is also one of Joan's portrait subjects. It is rooted in the South as homeplace: the red earth of Memphis, the magnolia tree, and Miss Dawn's porch are the landscape of the ritual. And it participates in intergenerational trauma and healing: Joan's silence about the rape echoes the silences of the women around her—Miriam's abuse by Jax, August's grief—and her eventual speech breaks that pattern.

Miss Dawn is the key figure here. She is the one who sees what Joan cannot say, who gives the instruction, and who later insists on the exhumation. Her magic is not showy; it is practical, tied to the earth and to the needs of the women around her. The comb is her gift to Joan—a way of acting when action seems impossible.

Study Questions with Answers

1. Why does Miss Dawn specify that Joan bury a comb, and what does the object itself signify?

Miss Dawn tells Joan that “hair works best” and that a comb will do. The comb is an object intimately associated with Derek—it touches his hair, it is his personal possession—and in sympathetic magic, an object that has been in contact with a person can stand for that person. The comb also carries domestic and intimate connotations: it is a grooming tool, an object of daily care, which makes its use in a revenge ritual particularly pointed. Joan's theft of it from the shared bathroom is itself an act of transgression, a small violation that mirrors the larger violation done to her.

2. How does the comb's meaning change between the burial in 1995 and the exhumation in 2002?

In 1995, the comb is an instrument of folk revenge: Joan buries it to act against Derek, and two years later he is in jail. In 2002, Miss Dawn reframes it as an obstacle: Joan must dig it up or she will not be able to leave for art school. The buried comb has become a repository of Joan's unprocessed trauma, and leaving it in the earth means leaving that trauma unexamined. The exhumation—and Joan's spitting on the comb—is an act of reclaiming and defiling the symbol, taking possession of it rather than hiding it.

3. What role does Mya play in the comb's story, and what does that reveal about sisterhood in the novel?

Mya holds the flashlight and chants Hail Marys during the burial, and she later invents a cover story after the prison visit. She is Joan's witness and accomplice, even though she does not know what Derek did until Joan tells her in 2003. Mya's presence transforms the burial from a solitary act into a shared one, and her later protection of Joan's secret—and her willingness to hear the truth—shows that sisterhood in the novel is a form of sanctuary, a space where trauma can be held and eventually spoken.

4. Why does Joan feel ashamed of having gotten revenge on Derek, and what does that shame reveal about the novel's view of justice?

In Chapter 32, Joan reflects that she feels ashamed for having gotten revenge on Derek. The shame is not about the revenge itself but about what it required: a child's secret ritual, performed in the dark, because no other justice was available. Derek was convicted for murders, not for raping Joan, and the legal system never addressed her harm. The comb is a reminder that Joan's only recourse was magic, and that the justice she got was indirect and private. The novel does not condemn the comb—Joan thanks God and Miss Dawn for it—but it registers the cost of a world in which a buried comb is the best a girl can do.