Songbird (9 page)

“I’m Lady Andrea Gault.”

“Oh,
please,
Ands,” said Richard, who decided just then to help me off with my pea coat and expose to the world the fact that he'd brought nothing more to the party than a spindly teenager. “Cut the nobility garbage. You're not in London. And believe me, Charmaine's the last person you need to impress.”

Well, how about that? What did
that
mean? And an English lady? I mean, if I was Lady Something, I don't know what would be so exciting about a cabin in Vermont with three sloppily dressed college guys and an underage red-haired foster child from Lynchburg, Virginia. But then I remembered the truth and said to myself, “You don't know nothin’, Myrtle Charmaine. You don't know nothin’ about nothin’. So just keep your big mouth shut and your big eyes open and try not to let anyone surprise you or you'll wind up hurt.”

You see, Mama gifted me with suspicion. That day when I realized she wasn't coming back, a bare lightbulb turned on in my head. Wanting to see the world in a romantic light wasn't enough anymore. The rosy hues of trust and that perennial hope-for-the-best we humans are born with, dissipated a little more with each day Mama failed to return.

I wasn't bowled over by these people the way most young teens would've been. Because if a mama could leave her child forever, a
mama,
then this collection of oddballs was capable of just about anything.

Dinner consisted of wine, beer, and cocktails, accompanied by bar snacks. Pretzels, peanuts, little sour onions, pickles, and olives. I found a bottle of Yoo-Hoo in the back of the fridge. I hate Yoo-Hoo, but it sure beat the stuff they were drinking. Although I knew all about developing palates for alcohol due to the burp-laden explanations of drunk middle-schoolers beneath the bleachers (“You gotta give it more than one sip, Myrtle!”), this was neither the place nor the time. Around nine I said, “Y’all got any real food in the house?”

“Nope,” said Lou, and downed the last of his beer. “There's a little store a quarter mile down the main road if you want something.”

Nobody said another word, so I pulled my coat on and took a solitary walk in the brilliant light of stars and moon on snow. The wind chilled me, but being out of the smoky air, feeling my lungs freshly painted with secondhand tar and nicotine, I smiled like a widemouth bass, breathed in through my nose and hurried forward. With just a few dollars in my pocket I only bought a premade chicken salad sandwich, a Coke, and a small bag of barbecue potato chips. I sat right there with the old lady, a Guinea-pig-type woman with skitterish, yet kind eyes and a snub nose, who ran the register with squat little fingers and we talked us a good one. She told me about her four grandchildren and I said I did well in school, but was here on a little family vacation for Christmas break. I lied. I know I did. And I’ve no excuse other than at this time, I was so disappointed in my own stupid self, I didn't see any reason to make it worse. I’d fallen into a second-rate den of iniquity and I did it all on my own!

But sitting there with that lady whose name I’ll never know now, well, it was the first time I felt like myself in three days.

“You take care now.” I threw out my trash, feeling a lot better having eaten real food, and buttoned my coat back up.

“You too, honey. Bring your family on by if you get a chance.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And make sure you keep that hood on tight. Temperature's already dropping.”

Dropping? How cold can it go? “All right. ‘Bye, now.”

I thought about that as I walked home. How cold can it really be? I mean, it's easy to think of time as going on and on, never ending, on and on and on. But what about temperatures? Are they infinite? Does cold get so cold it turns into something else? Does hot get so hot it cannot burn one degree higher? Or do they go on, intensifying, clarifying, and insisting on that one step further? Was that what had happened to Mama?

I let myself into the cabin to find Johnny Dangerous and the gang all sitting around the fireplace smoking marijuana and did I want a hit? No, not really. Not if it makes me look all droopy and stupid like you all. They began to annoy me.

“Sing us something, then, Charmaine,” Richard said after he tied on a couple of shots of whiskey.

“She sings?” said running shorts man, who I found out was named Jonesy, short for Bartholomew Jones which sounded to me like some sea-faring type of name. “I’ll get my guitar.”

Guitar? Oh, my lands!

“What do you want to sing, honey?” he asked me.

“You know the old tunes?”

“Lay it on me, baby. My parents were singers.”

“Really?”

“I grew up all over the country at folk festivals and all. Anyway, what do you want to sing?”

I loved the way he fingered the strings with hands so much prettier than Richard's. Richard suddenly got up, announcing his need to use the bathroom, only he didn't say it half so nice. I caught Jonesy's eyes and he rolled them. “I’ll bet he acted real gentlemanly before he got here, didn't he?”

I nodded with an apologetic smile, apologizing for being found up here with this whole sorry group of humans. That's the thing that got me about this gaggle. They sat around and talked about society and humanity and the horrible machine of the free enterprise system and capitalism, but what was their reaction when all I wanted was some supper? All these lofty ideals obviously had no practical, one-on-one application. I guess it was right then that I realized if these people were what you found at universities, I’d gladly remain in ignorance with the ignorant.

He shrugged. “Too bad I’m already in love with Andrea.”

I felt my smile go sideways and sad. Boy, did men just assume things when the girl was young.

“Not that that really matters,” he said. “I mean, the others will fall asleep sometime, right?”

What a jerk!

So I sang to Jonesy's guitar, our first number being “Turn, Turn, Turn.” He thought he was being “retro” (a term I had to ask Richard to explain later), but I suddenly remembered Mrs. Evans and I hoped she couldn't see down from heaven. Especially later that night when Richard took me into the back room and laid me down on his cot.

Drunk and high, he pawed and nuzzled and slobbered, oblivious to my sobs of fear and embarrassment. We had rounded all of third base and home plate was coming soon, and darn it all, only a man would come up with the analogy of a baseball game! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Myrtle Charmaine Whitehead, the tramp with her mama's lipstick. The tramp.

And the night got colder still.

Oh, Lord, please! I prayed. Make him stop. Make him stop. And tears overflowed and I sang to myself, whimpering, “Good morning merry sunshine, why did you wake so soon?”

The words puttered out of me in a vibrating whisper a note puffing out every third word. My eyes closed against his form and then I remembered Grandma Sara back in Lynchburg, maybe even praying for me that very moment and I pushed at him hard, his naked body a wall above me that suddenly came crashing down.

Oh, Grandma Sara! I cried as I rolled him off me to slink down the side of the bed and onto the floor. Oh, Grandma! I cried as I shivered back into my clothing, covered Richard with the blanket and stepped out into the main room of the cabin.

I felt her prayers about a hedge of protection being answered. I almost saw the words themselves in the glimmer of the coals in the fireplace.

I sat on the couch alone.

Enough to put the fear of God right where it should have been, back in Lynchburg. That weird bunch at the cabin had me shaking like an unbalanced washing machine by five o'clock the next morning. There they all were, lying around with messy clothes and breath so bad it soured the general atmosphere of the interior.

Stale and stewy, like people cooking away in a ragout of irresponsibility, of thinking we're just so wonderful, and in-the-know, so on-the-edge, so lah-dee-dah when all we're doing is exchanging the same juices and flavors, back and forth, trading the same old ideas and expressions, over and over and over. The night before told me everything I needed to know, because surely Richard wouldn't always be drunk and Jonesy might find he could get away from Lady Andrea and then where would I be?

Torn between two jerks. Feelin’ like a fool.

I zipped up the fur-lined boots Richard bought for me somewhere in Pennsylvania, put on as many of my clothes as possible to lighten my bag.

And then I did something I’m still ashamed of to this day. I dipped into everyone's wallet and took out ten dollars from each. Forty dollars plus one of my own. Would that get me back home? But then again, where was home? Really? Where was home? Where had home ever been?

I stuffed my pockets with cocktail snacks and thanked God I was leaving with my virginity intact. Barely. But still hanging there like a possum by the tip of its tail.

Slipping into the purple chill, I secured my hood tightly, wrapped my scarf so that only my eyes showed, and started off in the direction of the little store.

I imagined the conversation that would ensue when consciousness tickled them awake like a feather down a throat.

“Where's Charmaine?” Andrea would say.

“Gone. Stuff's gone.” That would be Richard.

“Pity,” Lou would say as he rebuttoned his flannel shirt after his turn, I presumed, with Andrea.

“How was she?” Jonesy would ask, looking cute I would have to admit, though he was not just garden variety immoral, but well, slimy and gross.

“Young. You know how that goes.”

“Pity,” Lou would say again.

“You think she'll be all right?” Andrea might say, but more than likely it would be Jonesy because he didn't seem quite as self-centered.

“She'll have to be,” Richard would say. “There's no way I’m going after her.”

“You never do.”

“You've got that straight.”

“Besides,” Richard again, “she's just a foster kid. Mother ran out on her when she was only eleven. Never saw her again.”

There'd be no pity. There'd just be talk and thoughts that they could see why the woman bolted. And wasn't Charmaine just like her? Running away. Just running away. And they would say it like the supposedly compassionate enlightened ones they were, the people with all the good ideas and impeccably clean hands.

The farthest south I could travel on thirty dollars (I figured I’d better keep the other eleven for any unforeseen expenditures that might pop up) was Baltimore, Maryland. The bus stopped right at that nice lady's store next to the post office and I hopped on. I parked myself by the heater and tried to remember the songs Mrs. Evans taught me all those years ago when I was just a girl.

I felt old and jaded. Not prostitute, drug addict jaded like most folk think of the expression. But the world lost yet more of its wonder.

I began to doubt I’d ever feel at home anywhere. But I could make it on my own somewhere. Get a job, maybe waiting tables at the Texas Inn. Rent our old room from Mrs. Blackburn.

Nobody wants you to bleed all over their corn dog, Myrtle.

And I wondered how four years could be fast and slow all at the same time. I wondered if I’d ever get back to Lynchburg and realized no good reason for doing so popped up like some benevolent candle flame lighting the way. Lynchburg was dark and lonely, just like everywhere else.

So I hopped on the bus to Baltimore, my pockets filled with cocktail peanuts and pretzels and I hoped the YWCA wasn't too far from the Greyhound station. I didn't want to waste the money on a cab. Fifteen years old now, for I’d turned that age on the bus, completely on my own, I was wiser than I should have been.

10

I
started watching skies when I began working at Suds ‘N’ Strikes Forever, a combination bowling alley/washateria in Dundalk, a Baltimore neighborhood. The day after I got off the bus, highly patriotic Frank Reasin and his wife Anita gave me a job at their bowling alley snack bar after I told them my story in selective bits and pieces.

Anita patted my hand. “I’ve heard how rough those foster homes can be. You can even stay upstairs at our house. All our kids are gone. Give me the number for your social worker and I’ll make all the arrangements.”

“Don't call, please. They'll just put me back into the system. Please, let me just work here … under the table. I promise I won't be any trouble.”

Frank put his arm on Anita's shoulders. “I don't know. I’m not sure about this.”

I turned to run away but Anita hollered. “Wait!”

I turned back around.

“You can stay. We can't have you running off to who knows where.”

Frank nodded. “But only if you stay in our spare room upstairs so we can make sure you're all right.”

“I won't be much trouble,” I said.

He nodded. “I can tell that right up front.” Anita patted my shoulder. “You need anything, hon, you just ask.”

I served up cardboard pizza and hot pretzels and heated up those Stewart sandwiches sealed in heatupable, crackly cellophane wrappers that steamed up inside as their innards — which might be grilled cheese, a hamburger (or “hamburg” as Frank would say), a cheeseburger, or a hot dog—came to life leaving a greenhousey layer of condensation I’d try not to dislodge as I opened the wrapper.

Nobody likes soggy sandwiches, Myrtle.

I told them I went by Charmaine, my middle name.

After the bowling alley closed at eleven, weather permitting, Frank and I sat in green-and-white webbed lawn chairs on the upper porch of their small green bungalow. He didn't know much about the stars, he just liked them.

Frank's girth resembled a farmhouse.

After about an hour he'd say, “You tired yet, hon?”

And I’d say, “Yeah.”

“Well, I’ll go on home now. Anita likes me to make sure you're okay before we nod off.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Kitchen's yours. You just fix anything you want if you get hungry. Just make sure you turned off whatever it was you turned on.”

“Okay, Mr. Reasin.”

He hefted off the lawnchair, comfy blubber rolling like sea billows and left with a hearty wave. Like Mrs. Evans.

And so I sat, alone and empty under the stars.