Screaming Divas (2 page)

“This is it,” her driver announced. His voice had a slightly menacing tone as if she were off to the electric chair. The officer climbed out of the car, opened her door and helped her out by tugging at her elbow. Or maybe he wasn't helping her. Maybe he was afraid she'd run away.

He shoved her down the sidewalk, staring straight ahead. Then he opened the door and yanked her through. A little too rough, Trudy thought. But she kind of liked it.
Trudy Baxter, hardened criminal.
Nobody was going to mess with her in this place.

There were rules at the Pine Hills Juvenile Correctional Center. There were many, many rules. The girls wore green dresses that looked like Girl Scout uniforms. They were not allowed makeup or barrettes (possible weapons) or jewelry. They slept in rows of beds like in the Madeline books Trudy had read as a child. The beds had to be made each day with the covers smoothed out so that not one wrinkle could be seen. They had to polish their shoes. It was like the army, Trudy thought. The rest of the time they studied in locked rooms with barred windows, scribbling equations or capitals of countries on the blackboard. Sometimes they watched nature films.

If the girls got out of line, if they used dirty words or showed bad manners at dinner, they were punished. For milder misdemeanors, a five-page essay might be assigned. Worse infractions could get you thrown into the Quiet Room, a padded cell with a camera in the corner, way up high and out of reach, so they could watch every move you made.

One early summer afternoon the girls were supposed to be picking up trash and pine straw and breathing in the fresh air. Being outside was a great privilege, they were always reminded.

“My sister,” a girl said, “lives over at the Women's Correctional Center. She gets to go out four, five times a week on work release.”

“Oh, yeah? Is that what happens when you graduate from here?” Trudy and another girl, Lydia, were squatting, combing the ground with their hands, pretending to work.

Lydia was kind of fat and the extra flesh gave her a babyish, innocent look. It was hard to picture her doing something bad.

“What did you do?” Trudy asked her.

Lydia shrugged. A blush colored her pasty skin and Trudy thought, here is a girl who needs her makeup. “I was down at Myrtle Beach with my friends and I met this old man who said he'd give me a hundred dollars if I'd, you know, do it with him.”

Trudy raised her eyebrows, impressed. “How old was he?”

Lydia shrugged again. “I don't know. Like, sixty. But I guess he had a rep because some cops'd been watching him. They followed us to the hotel.”

“So you didn't actually do anything?” Trudy was a virgin and she thought she might like to talk to someone who wasn't. Find out what it was like.

“Oh, yes, we did. It only took about five minutes. The cops came in right at the end.”

“Wow.”

“You want to smoke?” Lydia reached into the front of her uniform and pulled out two limp, slightly bent cigarettes.

Trudy took one. “Got a light?”

Lydia extracted a matchbook from her shoe and handed it over.

Trudy had just struck the match, torched the tip of her cigarette, and inhaled deeply when one of the guards stalked up to them.

“Just what do you think you're doing out here, missy? Planning on starting a bonfire?”

Only Trudy was sent to the Quiet Room. She guessed that she had looked guiltier because she was the one with the matches and the lit Marlboro. And Lydia, even if she was a teen prostitute, couldn't help but look innocent with her round, clear face. Lydia didn't make any confessions and Trudy didn't make any accusations. What was the use?

In the Quiet Room there was nothing to do. No TV, no books, no video games. Trudy figured that some girls sat on the floor with their knees hugged to their chests and rocked the hours away. Not her. It would take more than an empty room to break Trudy's spirit. After all she'd been through in her sixteen years—the confusion of step-siblings and foster homes, the constant noise and lack of privacy—the Quiet Room was almost a refuge. Even so, she started to get bored after a while. She decided to sing, remembering how songs had made long trips in the Peace Van seem shorter than they really were.

She started with “Stop! In the Name of Love.” She knew the words to every song by Diana Ross and the Supremes, that great girl group of the 1960s. Sarah had been a big Motown freak. It was the only thing she'd passed on to her daughter.

Once Trudy's mother had married a black man, Alphonse, from Bermuda. (He'd been husband number three.)

“I wish I could be black like you,” she told him.

“Why's that?” He smiled—a string of pearls. He was used to her non sequiturs, her weird musings.

“If I was black, I could be a Supreme.”

Alphonse laughed. “Oh, it's not that much fun. Look at what happened to Flo. Turned into an alcoholic and drank herself to death.”

In Trudy's mind, Florence Ballard was still alive. As long as her voice continued to flow from the stereo speakers and her picture was still on the album cover, she was there.

In the Quiet Room, Trudy took the part of Diana Ross and launched into song. She sang “Baby Love” and “I Hear a Symphony” and “Come See About Me.” Then she sang “Chain Gang,” which had really been Sam Cooke's song, but the Supremes had covered it. She sang this one especially loud since it was a prison song, and wasn't this prison?

The next time she got tossed into the Quiet Room was for cursing at one of the teachers. The lesson had been boring, something about checks and balances, and Trudy was glad to get out of there. This time she just curled up on a corner of the dusty floor and took a nap.

The door opened about an hour later.

“Wake up!” The guard stood there.

Trudy couldn't believe the time had passed so quickly. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and pulled her skirt over her legs. A sour taste was in her mouth. Her stomach rumbled. Suppertime?

“Your father is here to see you,” the woman said.

“My father?” It must be some kind of a joke. Trudy hadn't seen Jack, her biological father, since the divorce. According to Sarah, Jack had slipped some acid into her Kool-Aid during an adult party. Trudy had freaked out and Jack was banished from their lives.

None of her stepfathers had ever been to visit her. Her mother's latest husband didn't even like her. That's why she was living in this hole. She was smart enough to figure that out.

She followed the guard out of the tiny cell into the corridor. In the waiting room, she saw him. He was standing, facing away from her, reading a notice posted to the wall. Something about holiday leave and what kind of presents parents were allowed to bring. The man was slim-hipped, dressed down in faded jeans and a black T-shirt. His black hair rippled over his shoulders like some hairdo in an old Italian painting. When he turned, when she saw that face—the kind dark eyes and the fleshy lips, the too-big nose that hooked like a beak—she recognized him. Her heart hammered.

“Dad, where the hell have you been?”

He regarded her warily, as if he wasn't quite sure he had the right girl. Then he lifted his hands, palms out. “Your mother wouldn't let me near you,” he said. “She took out a court order. You knew that, didn't you?”

Trudy stood stiffly, her chin angled upwards. It's got to be a lie, she thought. She wanted to believe him, but she'd been betrayed so many times in her life that it was next to impossible to have faith in this man. “All I know is that you abandoned me.”

He looked stricken then. His face seemed to sag, and Trudy wondered for a moment if he would cry. Well, good. He deserved to suffer. She wanted a cigarette badly.

“Got a smoke?” she asked.

He shook his head. Stared at the floor. “Trudy, I—I wrote to you. Didn't you get my letters?”

“Nope. Not a one. But I've moved a lot. Maybe they just didn't get to me.” She could see how disappointed he was. What had he expected? She'd fly into his arms—“Oh, Daddy!”—and it would be happily-ever-after from hereon out? Afraid not. Yet, he was here and she had a chance to get something from him, something to make up for twelve years of neglect.

“Can you get me out of here?”

He looked at her then. “Yes. Yes, of course. You don't belong here. I don't know what Sarah was thinking. You'll come home with me.”

Trudy nodded. “Do you have a wife? Kids?”

“No, there's just Ginny, my girlfriend, but she doesn't live with me. And if you get to know her, I think you'll get along fine.”

“You don't know the first thing about me,” Trudy wanted to say. But she didn't. She kept her mouth shut. This man was her ticket out of that hellhole. No more Quiet Room. No more bed-making inspections. If she didn't like her dad's place, she'd leave. She was old enough to get by on her own. She thought of Lydia, chubby Lydia who'd made a hundred dollars just by spreading her legs for five minutes.

Her dad went off to fill out some papers, and Trudy was sent to collect her things. The room was empty. Everyone else was off doing arts and crafts. Trudy opened the footlocker she'd kept beneath her bed and grabbed a handful of underwear, stuffed it in her duffel bag. She didn't bother folding the T-shirts, the jeans, the other Saturday-only clothes, just crammed them into the bag and zipped it shut. Then she carefully unpinned the pictures from her allotted twelve inch by twelve inch corkboard—the magazine pictures of Marilyn on her back, bench-pressing a barbell, the Supremes in matching spangly outfits, the black and white picture of her father with short hair, wearing bell-bottomed pants and with Trudy in his arms. She tucked the pictures into the outer pocket of her duffel bag.

When she left, there'd be no trace of her. The bed with its plain blue coverlet would belong to someone else. Another girl would stow her panties in that latched chest. Trudy wished she had a knife so that she could carve her initials somewhere. Then someone would know that she'd been part of this place, if only for a short time.

Harumi Yokoyama and her mother were not exotic in New York City. So far since arriving, Harumi had seen the following: a raggedy man yelling at God. A six-foot-tall transvestite with cocoa skin, a curly wig, and a feather boa tossed over his/her quarterback shoulders. A movie star flicking her cigarette out the window of a limo. And there were Asians everywhere: Chinese boys ferrying moo goo gai pan through the city on their bicycles. Wrinkled grannies with babies on their backs, just like in the old country. No one treated Harumi's mother like an imbecile when she mixed up her verbs or made mistakes in grammar. No one scrunched their eyebrows together, trying to make out her accent. In certain neighborhoods, Mrs. Yokoyama spoke in Japanese and was understood.

“
Oishii!
” she said, as they sat in the Sakura Garden eating sushi.

The waitress smiled. She wore a kimono and the bun at the back of her head was studded with decorative sticks. “I'm glad you like it.”

“
O-cha o kudasai
,” Mrs. Yokoyama called out the next time she walked by.

The waitress disappeared for a moment, and came back with a pot of tea. She bowed slightly, then with one hand on the lid of the teapot, poured light green liquid into stoneware cups.

“Just like Japan,” Mrs. Yokoyama said to her daughter across the table, her face all aglow.

“
Kincho shite imasu ka?
” she asked.

“No, I'm not tense,” Harumi lied. She got nervous before every performance, no matter how minor. Whether she was soloing or playing along with the rest of the orchestra, she always worried that she would make a mistake. She was afraid that she would suddenly forget how to read the black notes on the page in front of her, or that her fingers would cramp and freeze.

Today there wouldn't be an auditorium full of people. There'd be five or six, maybe. It would be like playing to her mother's Friday lunch group or to the few relatives that gathered during the New Year's holiday. She'd be alone, onstage, and she could look out into the depths of the theater and pretend that she was playing for herself.

She had practiced for this day for months now. Hashimoto-sensei had helped her choose the piece that she would perform for her audition to the most famous music school in America. She had sat and listened to her star pupil play Schubert's “Rondo in A” over and over again. “A little slower there,” she'd say. Or “
Fortissimo!
Louder!” When Harumi had finally gotten it right, Hashimoto-sensei had broken down in tears. “I can't help you anymore,” she said. “You've learned all that I can teach you.” So now it was time for a higher level of instruction. Professionals would guide Harumi to a career as a concert violinist. She would cut records and appear on PBS.

Harumi dreamed in music. She sawed at her violin all night long, her strings sometimes snapping and flying off the instrument. Her fingers formed chords as she slept. “Rondo in A” had been the soundtrack for her life over the past few months.

“This will give you strength,” Mrs. Yokoyama said, scooping a mouthful of rice with her chopsticks.

But Harumi's stomach was in revolt. She could manage only a few bites of sea bream on vinegared rice and a sip or two of miso soup.

“Tonight we will have
shabu-shabu
,” Mrs. Yokoyama said, already thinking about celebrating. “I saw a place for it in my guidebook.”

Is this what life would be like in New York? Being led from Japanese restaurant to Japanese restaurant like a dog on a leash? If she were accepted into the music program, she would have to live in the city with a guardian. Mrs. Yokoyama had already declared that she would be willing to look after her daughter, leaving her architect husband and son to fend for themselves in their home down south. They would see each other on weekends and holidays. They would spend all summer together, maybe at Coney Island. It would be lonely, especially at first, but the sacrifice was worth it. Harumi had been born with a glorious gift and her parents agreed that it was their responsibility to do everything in their power to help their oldest child develop her talents.