To Be Someone (9 page)

Carole King
HOME AGAIN

T
HE NEXT YEAR WAS MUCH HAPPIER THAN I HAD IMAGINED IT
would be, despite missing Sam terribly.

“Jesus has buttered your paws,” said Margie wisely, a couple of months after I’d joined the church.

“I beg your pardon?” I said. I’d also discovered that the more English I sounded, the more popular I became.

“You’re like a kitty with a new owner. The Lord has taken you from the pet store of your old existence, brought you to a new home, and buttered your paws. That’s what you do with cats to help them settle into a new place. Licking off all the butter helps them relax, so by the time they’re done, they feel like they belong there.”

“Oh, er, right,” I said.

But in a way, it was true. The church had given me a sense of belonging. Although I didn’t exactly gel with most of the other God-struck teenagers, having a routine of my own did help ease the sting of reading Sam’s letters about boyfriends and parties and rumors of Melanie Welling’s famous friends.

I went to church every Sunday, and Bible class each Wednesday. Within weeks I had joined the choir, so choir practice on Thursdays occupied another of my previously empty evenings.

I loved being in the choir. I had a deepish, clear voice and could easily pick up harmonies on the hymns and spirituals, even without the music in front of me. I also loved being in front of the congregation, dressed in an all-encompassing red cassock. It was my first experience of public performance, and I was hooked. It wasn’t just the cassock that surrounded me, either. My new faith swirled and eddied about me constantly like an aura; I felt protected by it, elevated, and really, really loved.

At first my fourteen-year-old self wanted to keep it private for fear of ridicule, but as time went on my confidence grew, and I was no longer ashamed of doing lunchtime Bible study with my churchy cronies. I sometimes felt as though I could swing from the rafters proclaiming that Jesus was Lord.

My parents were greatly relieved at the change in me. Their previously homesick and withdrawn daughter had transformed into something approximating a ray of sunshine. In fact, had I not been so happy, I think that they would have found it rather disturbing.

One Sunday I dragged them along to church with me, but they did not enjoy it. When we got home again, I overheard Mum mutter to Dad, “Rather vulgar, don’t you think, George?”

I was furious. I burst into the living room, making my mother spill her sherry on the leatherette pouffe. “You’re such hypocrites!” I yelled. “You say you believe in God, you drag me to Sunday school all those years, and now when I finally have a faith of my own, you sneer at it! How dare you!”

My father pulled out his handkerchief and tried to mop up the spilled sherry, looking anxious. “Now calm down, Helena, nobody’s sneering. Don’t shout at your mother.”

Mum had the grace to look ashamed. She put her hand on my arm. “Oh, Helena, I’m sorry. I wasn’t sneering at you or your faith, really. We’re both so pleased that you are so much happier and more settled—we’ve been so worried about you. It’s just, well, you know, your father and I aren’t used to people being so … vocal in their beliefs. It certainly wasn’t like that at St. Thomas’s.”

I couldn’t help grinning. It was true, they had both looked mortified when the congregation’s hands started waving in the air during the first hymn. My father hadn’t known where to put himself. And in truth I was rather relieved that they had not taken to my church. If there was such a thing as a spiritual style, I felt that my parents would definitely have cramped mine.

“Okay, Mum. Sorry I shouted at you.”

Dad, looking relieved that the crisis was over, went out into the garden to practice his golf swing. Mum poured herself another sherry and put her feet up to read a gardening magazine. I went upstairs to listen to my newest favorite record—Carole King’s
Tapestry
, ever since that first Bible study meeting—and to try to write to Sam. Normality had resumed.

Although we still corresponded regularly, I’d recently been having trouble finding things to write about. After I first got converted, I wrote her screeds and screeds of babble about how wonderful my life was now, and how she must try Jesus, as though He were a new and desirable brand of lipstick. My enthusiasm for my new religion was so overwhelming that I was genuinely surprised when Sam didn’t immediately follow suit and get converted, too.

Even from across the Atlantic, I thought I’d managed to suffuse her with the same joy that it gave me. I really wanted her to be as happy as I was. Her replies ignored my pleas entirely, which just made me more insistent, until one day I got a brief note from her, unlike her usual chatty missives.

Dear Helena,

Thanks for your letter. I’m writing this in Home Economics before Miss Parry notices—my cheese and onion pie is in the oven and I’m supposed to be cleaning up. Sorry if this letter’s got flour all over it. Have you heard of Hazel O’Connor? She’s had a couple of hits here (including a fantastic song called “Will You?”) and we went to see her at the City Hall—can you believe it, a proper pop concert in Salisbury! It was absolutely brilliant. Melanie said she read in
Smash Hits
that the saxophone player was blind, but he was wearing a wristwatch onstage, so now we aren’t sure.

Uh-oh, Miss P’s on the warpath.…

(Later. Breaktime.)

It was really funny in PE today, we were playing netball and Marie-Thérèse Higgins got a teeny fly or something on her arm. She flicked it off and said, “Get off me, you nasty little orgasm!” (She meant “organism.”) Melanie and Bridget and me all cracked up laughing.

Anyway, this was only meant to be a quick note. Write soon and tell me what you’re up to at school. Any nice boys yet? I don’t mean to be nasty or anything, but please stop going on about God, it’s driving me mad. I’m really happy for you, honest, but horses for courses—I just can’t see me getting into all that church stuff.

Lots of love and sloppy kisses,

   Sam xxx

After receiving that note, I didn’t go to church for two weeks. I was overcome with a huge, bitter, impotent rage that, because my stupid parents made me move to this stupid country, I now had to derive any enjoyment from life out of a bunch of geeky, earnest people whose idea of a good time was going for a cookout on the New Jersey Shore and singing hymns lustily round a campfire.

Why couldn’t I be normal, like Sam, going to pop concerts and reading
Smash Hits
and discussing orgasms with Melanie Welling? I didn’t even know what an orgasm was. I inquired, that night at Bible study, only
nobody else knew either
, and some of them were at least sixteen! It wasn’t until I asked Mum later, and she went red and told me off, that I realized it was something rude.

But my period of doubting didn’t last long. I decided that it was a test from God, and that I should just ignore Sam’s reluctance to think about her soul, until such time as I could personally convince her, face-to-face. I certainly didn’t want it to spoil our friendship.

So I continued to write to Sam, without the proselytizing, but it wasn’t easy. One day, after listening to the whole of side A of
Tapestry
, I sat chewing my pen in the post-LP silence, trying to think of something interesting and non–church related to put in a letter. The remnants of the track “Home Again” chased themselves around my head, and I thought how simple Carole made it sound, just a few chords on a piano, a gentle background guitar, and a clear voice.

I could do that, I thought.

Magically, the melody of “Home Again” faded out and a line from an unwritten song popped into my mind instead. This was followed by another one, so I put the letter aside and wrote them down before I forgot them.

Jesus, you talk to me every day;

Jesus, you hear what I have to say
.

I contemplated the crucifix on my desk for a few minutes, Jesus’ furled fingers and skewered brass feet.

Thank you, Jesus, for being there for me
,

Thank you, Jesus, for setting me free
.

I thought this was marvelous. I had an instant fantasy of debuting the finished song, solo, in front of an adoring and appreciative congregation who rose to their feet, cheering when it was over. But I wasn’t quite happy with the tune; there seemed to be something missing. I could hear how I wanted it to sound in my head, but singing it wasn’t good enough. I decided that it needed accompaniment to do it more justice.

I crept downstairs past my mother, who had nodded off over her magazine, reading glasses askew at the tip of her nose, and into the dining room, where our old piano lived. Closing the door behind me, I slid onto the piano’s tapestry stool and lifted up the heavy wooden lid. The old familiar smell of musty ivory and furniture polish filled my nostrils, reminding me of my brief spell as a childhood piano prodigy. I’d lasted less than a year before getting bored at having to do scales all the time.

None of us ever played this piano anymore. I didn’t know why my parents had bothered to bring it all the way across the Atlantic. There were faded circles on the little wood squares at either end of the keyboard, where drunken party guests had left their icy glasses of whiskey while hammering out painfully inaccurate renditions of the “Maple Leaf Rag,” battle scars that could not be polished off with Pledge.

I played a soft experimental scale. The F key stuck, rendering only a dull
thunk
when pressed. I remembered being responsible for that—actually, that was the day I stopped playing the piano. I was about seven years old, and I’d gotten so frustrated with my pudgy fingers tripping over the notes that I’d banged my finger down hard on each one, as if I was trying to drum the sequence into the piano’s stupid brain. It had beaten me at my own game, stubbornly and permanently sticking down a vital note. So to avoid being held responsible for my vandalism, I insisted to my parents that I did not wish to continue with piano lessons, in the hope that they might not notice the damage. And indeed it was probably several years before they did, by which time I was well off the hook.

Using a higher octave to avoid the errant key, I plinked out my tune again, making a few subtle alterations as I went along. Bingo. All the notes fell perfectly into place, and I’d created a catchy and sweet backing track to the melody. I played it over and over again, to make sure I did not forget it, and then went back up to my bedroom to write the rest of the verses. I was thrilled at what I believed to be my creative genius.

That night as I was saying my prayers, I concluded that my song really did need a guitar as well, some cool strumming over the vocals, nothing wishy-washy. I wanted to be a New Wave Christian.

The more I thought about it, the more fixated I became. I had to have a guitar. But how? It was early summer, ages before my birthday. I turned it over to the Lord, trying not to plead too much, but unable to resist bargaining with Him.

“If I had a guitar I would be able to praise Thy glory much better. Not in a hippie-drippy ‘Kumbaya’ sort of way, but a proper, modern way. The eighties way.” I stopped, then added, “Only if it is Thy will.”

I went to sleep content that if it was meant to be, it would be. After all, I could see no reason why I should be denied an instrument of praise. I saw myself bringing the entire youth population of Freehold to Jesus’ arms, by way of my radical and totally
cool
approach to worship.

The following weekend I went over to Mary Ellen’s house to help her with some schoolwork. She and I had become quite friendly of late. She was a genuine person, not a borderline religious nut, as I couldn’t help considering the likes of Margie and some of her friends to be. Mary Ellen was doing a geography project on Scotland and had asked for my assistance—not that I had ever been there, or knew anything about it, but I thought that at least I could tell her how to pronounce Edinburgh and Glasgow correctly.