Songbird (17 page)
To my left stands Grace. We wear our autumn lineup of dresses. Grace is swaddled in goldenrod. The dress hangs tea-length, which she loves, and flares outward. Truly it reminds me of something that Rosemary Clooney would have worn in
White Christmas.
Oh, I love that movie! Matching pumps trace the outlines of her small feet. Grace sings with little hoopla, but her face shines the light of heaven, or at least that's the look she's going for. Grace will tell you singing with the crusade is a job and nothing more. “You two can feel called. I’m just a backup singer.”
And here I stand in the middle, not because I want to be the star, but because if Grace gets Ruby's notes right in her ear she starts to sing the melody with me. I’m wearing orange. Now let me tell you, standing in between Miss African Sculpture, imposing and ready for the royal ball, and Miss Blond Junior Miss of the Universe 1973, I look like a little flame between two searchlights! However, my dress distinction is that I go shorter, the hemline at midknee. I never did that before the Songbirds met up with Harlan's crusade all those years ago. But he said to me, “You've got pretty legs, Shug. You need to show them off a little.”
Out came the scissors, let me tell you! I love that man. I haven't had a nosebleed since I met him.
After “Jesus Loves Me,” Henry ching-and-lings, and bring-a-dings his fingers up a key or two and ends up going right on into my most favorite of all the old songs, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”
I know He watches me, just like that song says.
A lot of folks are jealous of a natural gift whether it be singing, drawing or writing, or math and the like. And even though I don't know much about much, when you realize that God gave it to you through none of your own doings, you feel it in the nerves of your teeth that He can just as easily take it away. And so you try harder. You try your best not to bury it in a napkin like the man in that parable did, and then God blesses even more. Now that's the joyful part.
Tonight Harlan and I lie in the little bedroom part of the RV, Hope crying like no tomorrow is in sight, refusing to be calmed, crying for reasons only she knows and I project all sorts of craziness. What if she's crying because she has something wrong with her brain synapses? And what if those brain synapse malfunctions just get worse and worse and worse? And what if, say when she's a teenager, she decides to steal a car because her brain synapses rob her conscience? And what if she ends up in a penitentiary, living through all those horrors only to end up in a fight with kitchenware duct-taped to her hand? What if? Times like these, a mother would gladly trade every last lick of talent she possesses for the certainty that her children will come to the Lord, walk in the light, and be a living blessing.
People think of me as a “singer.” But in truth, I hope that someday, years down the line, God will prove through my children, Hope and the ones He'll give us someday, that He gave me the grace to be remembered as a whole lot more than that.
I
am sitting in the office of some bigwig music agent in Nashville, Tennessee. And when I say “bigwig,” I mean
big
wig. This lady's hair puts mine to such shame it can only be as fake as her breasts, which stick out a mile. This cleavage is the kind that deserves some kind of geological status. The Marianas Trench.
That's her name. MaryAnna Trench.
It's all I can do to sit here without chuckling. I am afraid I have a look on my face that's disrespectful and condescending, sort of like what I imagine a famous novelist might wear when some well-meaning grandmother tells him her eight-year-old granddaughter is an author, too, because she wrote a children's book last week. However, it really is just a simple girl trying not to laugh.
I don't think, however, that MaryAnna Trench notices my expression because she's too busy looking through her desk drawer for her pack of smokes, thus giving me an even better view of MaryAnna's trench.
I wish Harlan sat with me now, because we'd be laughing ourselves a good one! On second thought, maybe I’m glad he decided to hold down Fort Hope. And Ruby's there, too. I’ve had the same conversation with her for three days straight.
“Sign on with me, Ruby. Come on! It'll be you and me, like always!”
“No way! I’m with you and Harlan because I believe in you all. But entering Southern gospel music officially? It's a white world.”
“That's not true.”
“It is true. There's a huge gap between Southern gospel music and black gospel.”
I shrugged. What could I say? She was right.
“And can you imagine a black lady and a white lady paired up together in an official act? You never see that, Char. In gospel music or any other kind.”
“But we could start a trend!”
“Un-uh. Not me. I’m not that brave. And you wouldn't be either if you really thought about it.”
But she got me thinking. Music is such a segregated world. Whether gospel or not. There are black-girl groups and white-girl groups. Black bands and white bands. And very rarely do the twain meet.
Except for maybe KC and the Sunshine Band and they've been out of style for years.
MaryAnna pulls me out of my thoughts.
“I couldn't believe my fortune when I saw you at that crazy Crusade,” MaryAnna says, her sprayed black up do bobbing with the movements of her hands. “I couldn't believe I let Daddy drag me out to that thing.” She's still poking through the drawer with a ruler now, pulling things from the back up to the front. “I thought I had an extra pack in here somewheres. I don't guess you smoke, do you, Mrs. Hopewell?”
“No, ma'am. Used to work in a bowling alley and had enough of it for a lifetime. Seems somebody was always lighting up.”
“Good for you. Bad for me.”
MaryAnna Trench's tissue has the gray look of stimulus-based malnourishment. Coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol, I bet, keep her moving, like some sort of diuretic-driven Mrs. Frankenstein. I want to ask her how many times a day she has to pee, but know that isn't a question for our first meeting, or maybe ever.
She slams the drawer shut and bites on her bare thumbnail, and I wonder if she'll call what she ingests “lunch.”
MaryAnna blows out an exasperated sigh. “Okay, well, I guess I’ll have to get through this without one.”
Wonderful. My first shot at an agent and all she can think about is a cigarette. One thing good about growing up the way I did is that it breeds resourcefulness. “I’ve got an idea. Let's walk down to that Eckerd store there on the corner and we can talk on the way.”
MaryAnna jumps to her feet, breasts jiggling like two molded aspic salads. She is very thin otherwise, which makes the breasts suspect. No butt. Celery stalk legs and a neck with napa cabbage veins and tendons. “Good thinking! Let's go.” She grabs a handbag from underneath her desk. Not a purse. A handbag. Any woman will tell you there's a clear difference between the two.
“Do you sleep well at nights, Ms. Trench?”
“Hardly a wink. Why?”
“Just wondering.”
She checks her face in the mirror by the door, a face grounded by a black V-neck shirt she probably bought in the toddler section to ensure that kind of fit. “Let me tell you this, Ms. Hopewell … hey, can I call you Charmaine?”
“Of course you can.”
“Just thought I’d ask. Some of these singer types can be so uppity.”
She shuts the door to her office, waves to the nice receptionist in one of those Michael Jackson red leather jackets, who showed me in and made me a cup of tea while I waited an hour past my appointment time.
“Well, I’m sure not uppity. I come from nothing, and I’m still nothing, Ms. Trench.”
“Well let me just tell you, Charmaine, if you hire on MaryAnna Trench, you got an agent that works almost twenty-four hours a day for you.”
Well, I’ll be. Suddenly I wonder if Mr. Haney on Green Acres has taken over the emaciated, augmented body of MaryAnna Trench.
While walking to the drugstore, we talk about all the dead country music stars because, believe it or not, Ms. Trench keeps pictures of their graves in an album. If that isn't the weirdest thing I’ve ever heard I don't know what is!
The bell clanks against the glass door of the drugstore as we enter. MaryAnna is still talking. “The latest ones in my collection are Judy Canova and Junior Samples.
“Junior Samples died?”
“Yes. And not long ago.”
“Always wondered how he came across that name. Must be a story there.”
“Oh, the country stars have their stories.”
“Don't we all?” I say.
MaryAnna, eyes bright with excitement, lays a hand on my arm. “Hard luck story?”
“You wouldn't believe it if I told you.”
And MaryAnna grins. “Honey-pie, the buying public loves nothing more than a hard-luck story.”
At that moment, I realize that the niggling little tickle inside of me, the one that said “You will be famous one day, Myrtle Whitehead,” is whispering again.
I picture my Mama. I remember her prophecy of fame for me, her ill-conceived daughter. I remember a lot in this moment, reminded by MaryAnna Trench of my hard-luck story.
Hard-Luck Story.
Myrtle Charmaine Whitehead Hopewell's
Hard-Luck Story.
Oh, my lands!
Maybe I should skip the singing profession and go straight to the biography.
“Would you mind if I made a quick call from that pay phone outside while you buy your smokes?”
“Not one bit.”
I push my way back outside, my spiked heels clicking against the concrete. Hairdos mill above me, fringes and studs vie for attention and a few rhinestones sparkle at eye level. And cowboy boots and hats bob everywhere. As if any of these people wear these items of clothing for their intended purposes! However, the big hair makes me feel right at home, and smugness envelops me because mine is natural.
A man with boots pointier than Vicki Miller's head hangs up the phone, gives me a little salute off the brim of his seventy-five gallon hat, and I smile.
Harlan, who's waiting for me at his sister Bee's house, picks up on the first ring. “Shug?”
“It's me. Listen I don't have but a minute.” I tell him the entire hard-luck story angle. “Do you think it can hurt to approach it like that?”
“Well, I don't know, Char. I’ve never thought about stuff like that before. I can tell you it would be a great way to share the way God has turned your life around with His blessings.”
“The best among them being you, Harlan.”
Sometimes I even make
myself
sick.
“Well, I don't know about that, Shug. I think I’m the lucky one in the whole deal.”
My goodness, I just love this fellow.
“I’m not going to sign anything today, Harlan. Just so you know.”
“Whatever you do is fine with me, Charmaine.”
MaryAnna Trench emerges, stepping onto Music Row and lighting up a Pall Mall right away. She French inhales, something I think I would learn to do if I ever became a smoker. But that would be death to my vocal chords, unless I want to sing like Kim Carnes or Rod Stewart.
She exhales. “Now what I need to know is if you want to take your career mainstream or Southern gospel?”
I try to keep up with her long legs. It is not easy. “I don't know. I never really thought about it.”
“Think about it. It's important.”
“Will I get on with the Gaithers if I go strictly Southern gospel?”
MaryAnna laughs and laughs and it reminds me of somebody starting an engine after it's already running.
The truth is, I love gospel music. It's in my blood, although I never once really heard Mama do more than hum. The thing about gospel, I guess, is if they find out the real truth about my life, that I’ve been lying all these years about Mama being dead and all, they'll forgive me. Right? I mean, isn't that what Christians do?
I guess it's just the changes that have occurred in my life lately, getting Hope, taking my singing career a step further, dealing with Grace who missed two nights at last week's crusade and came home smelling like a still, but I’m feeling extra weary, and a little blue.
It takes even more effort than usual to do even the most simple of things these days.
Better stick with Jesus.
“I’ll go Southern gospel.”
I need all the help I can get.
S
ome women remember the year events happen by their hairstyle, where they lived, or what job they held. I remember by my clothing. Even now I still sit at the machine for a couple of hours a day as we drive in the motor home or park somewhere in a church lot or a campground. I still make all the costumes for the Songbirds. I can remember what year we sang at which church because I remember our dresses.
I’m still the same. Right now, I’m looking at MaryAnna Trench and thinking, “I am signing with my first agent and I am wearing a pair of purple designer jeans—50 percent off at Hecht's—and a white, frilly cotton blouse I made a few months ago.
Of course, MaryAnna's outfit tops mine completely. Her skeletal form is swathed in a caftan this afternoon. A caftan! I’m thinking I may just travel around the world via Ms. Trench's choice of outfit. Paris and all black the first visit. A caftan now. I won't be at all surprised if next time I greet her she's wrapped up like a caterpillar in a sari or wearing khaki and a pith helmet.
I can't quite imagine someone in a sari smoking Pall Malls, however.
“Just sign by all the ‘X’s, Charmaine. I assure you it's a standard contract.”
And so I do as she says and the funniest feeling comes over me, like I am a candy bar at the movie theater, but I’m paying the customer to buy me and eat me, throw away my wrapper and forget about me by the time the last flicker of light has faded from the giant screen of silver.
I really wish I could afford a lawyer. But isn't that what agents are supposed to do anyway? Protect their clients from the record companies and whatnot?
“You do have a lawyer in-house?” I ask.
“Not in-house. But one who we use all the time.”
“What's his name?”
“William Williams.”
“William Williams?”
“Well, he goes by Billy.”