Songbird (4 page)

I scooped it out, bent over some, and shoved it into the lock.

“I’m home!” I yelled, knowing that Mamas shift at the Texas Inn ended around 3:30, but every once in a while Mama arrived home early and so I tried to holler just in case.

No answer.

Oh, well.

I pulled the key out of the lock, scooped my schoolbag up higher on my shoulder, and shut the door behind me.

The bed lay before me, bare, just a pile of mattresses and a brown frame. The linens nowhere in sight, I figured maybe Mama decided to go down to the washateria.

The drawers gaped open in geriatric smiles, dark recesses evident behind their grin.

No clothes?

I ran over and peered in.

Huh?

And then, I saw it. On the white vanity desk an envelope lay, bleeding white sterility into its blanched surroundings. I almost didn't even notice it except for the one word scribbled on the front.

“Myrtle.”

Okay, this seemed odd, but every once in a while Mama could surprise you.

Nevertheless, my hands shook as I tore the envelope with my thumb. The ragged edge sliced into my finger, a deeper than normal paper cut. I quickly pulled my pointer up to my mouth and sucked hard as though each slice of one's skin had a proper allotment of blood bestowed upon it and if I sucked it out quickly the whole thing would be over and done with in a much more efficient manner.

Finishing the task, I noted an orange-red smear on the envelope.

“Oh, no!”

But I pulled out the sheet of notepad paper, watched as four twenty-dollar bills wafted to the floor, then filled my lungs with air that felt needy and hot and deficient. I allowed my eyes to do their job.

“Dear Myrtle Charmaine,” it said. “I’ve gone away for a spell. Nothing you should worry about, though.”

Away? Not worry? What was going on?

“I know you're probably wondering how I can just leave town like this, but Myrtle, I’m so excited! I’m going off to prepare a better life for us. And it won't take long.”

How long was long?

“Just go on up to Mrs. Blackburn's like usual and hand her the rent money here in this envelope. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks.”

I calculated. Sixty dollars for Mrs. Blackburn. Twenty for me, I guessed. I read on.

“The new little fridge is packed full with a half gallon of milk, some butter, and as much lunch meat as I could get inside. There's four boxes of cereal in the closet, two loaves of bread, a jar of peanut butter and … oh … well, you just see for yourself. I even left a couple boxes of Little Debbie treats for after school that I think you'll enjoy. I washed up the bed linens but didn't have time to put them on. They're in the closet as well.”

It was right then that fear pounced upon me. And I’m not talking some cute little kitten pounce. This was a pounce a big load of bricks might make if it possessed the wherewithal.

Two weeks?

“Now just go to school as usual. Study hard and you make sure you still go to church. DON'T TELL ANYBODY ABOUT THIS! I’ll be home soon enough, Myrtle Charmaine.

“Get to bed early. I don't want you staying up all night just because you think you can get away with it.”

Oh, yeah, right. Mama!

“And don't let
anyone
in the door. Not even people you know. And please don't forget to wash your hair once a week and take a bath twice. I left an extra can of my spray deodorant in the desk. I noticed this morning you should probably start using it.”

I shook my head. Deodorant. Now this was just the icing on the cake!

“Be careful. I’ll be home in two weeks. And by then we'll probably be able to move away from this little town to a real house.

“Sincerely, your mama, Isla Jean Whitehead.”

7

I
ve lived inside of days where I’ve only known I was alive because of the toenail clippings I saved in a sandwich Baggie.

Nobody has a right to be happy. We earn it. Plain and simple. We earn it by learning, by being alone. And we learn through experience.

Maybe that's what the whole “pursuit of happiness” means.

Sometimes, even now, especially when polishing my toenails, I remember how God deserted me when I was only eleven years old. Only a month of desertion, but more desperation, more fear, more loneliness and anxiety had been packed into that month than most people experience in a lifetime.

When Mama left and I still lived in our room, I saved all my toenail clippings. I did that for the next six years. Because when I looked at that bag, I knew for sure I was really alive. That Myrtle Charmaine Whitehead still existed and wasn't a figment of my imagination or anyone else's.

8

I
waited out the two weeks as Mama said and as the money was lasting longer than planned I waited another two just to give her some leeway. I figured buying big houses in Maryland or someplace up north took time.

I went to school as usual, guarding my secret not only for Mama but for myself. Everything seemed magnified. The math numbers got bigger on my page. My signature looked all wrong, too loopy and ill-defined. Every day, as I sat doing spelling tests, looking up the definitions to vocabulary words, and swinging on the swings ever so slowly, I just knew that it would be the day Mama returned. I read the note a thousand times, searching for clues, claiming promises.

But time never feels inclined to stop. The cereal was gone, the milk, too. I’d scraped every last smear of peanut butter from the jar until I could see my room clearly through the curves of its sides. The money was gone. I became hungry enough to act.

So I did what any eleven-year-old would do when faced with a dilemma. I called on the one person I trusted to take matters into good hands.

The Christmas lights, though unplugged, still hung from the boxwoods, and I walked up the drive and around the side to the kitchen door.

Mrs. Evans already stood there, shaking out a tea towel. “Myrtle? What a nice surprise!”

“Can I come in? I think I got a problem.”

So she waved her arm, said, “Of course,” and helped me take off my slicker. “Come sit right here in the living room. You want a snack or something?”

“No, ma'am.”

And then my nose started bleeding again. Doggone it! As if things weren't bad enough!

Mrs. Evans, who nursed down at Virginia Baptist Hospital, jumped up and came back with a clean dish towel.

“You sure you want me to bleed all over this?” I asked with my hand cupped under my nostrils, picturing a little white nurse's cap on her dark hair.

“Who wants to bleed into a paper product?”

So I held it on up there.

She took my other hand. “Mama's asleep but she won't be for long. You have that look about you like it's a private matter.”

“It is.” The towel snuffed my tones.

“Why don't you pinch up there on the bridge of your nose? And hold your head back, honey. That should help.”

I obeyed, noticing the cobwebs in the corner, the way the wall near the fireplace lost its hold on the ceiling just a tad, the way the light from the corner windows feathered against the graying paint. I noticed how sickening it is to feel your own blood sliding down the inner surface of your throat.

It worked though. Like a charm. Now why didn't Mama ever tell me to do that?

“So what is it you have to say?” she asked as my sight regained its normal vista.

“It's Mama, Missus Evans. She left.”

“Are you sure she's not down at the restaurant?”

I shook my head and handed her the ragged note.

There are times when life stands still. I know, we all experience those moments. But just then it seemed every little dart of her eyes over Mama's handwriting took minutes. And I heard Mama voicing words, but not the words there on the stationery.

Nobody wants you bleeding all over their corn dogs, Myrtle.

Myrtle, wipe that lipstick off right now, you look like a tramp.

Don't even ask, Myrtle.

Don't even ask, Myrtle.

Don't even ask, Myrtle.

Mrs. Evans looked up and tears filled and spilled over those pansy eyes all in one go. “Oh, sweet pea. Oh, honey. Oh, you poor sweet lamb.”

Sweet lamb.

And her arms spiraled around me and her love filled up the spaces that people like grandmas and sisters and aunts and uncles were supposed to fill.

“My poor little songbird.”

I couldn't cry. I know she expected that, but I couldn't. I stayed right there in the circle of tan woolen knit, though. Finally I muttered, “I didn't know where else to go.”

“You came to the right place. You know a peach like you is welcomed here anytime. And I’m so glad you picked me to come to.”

As if my life overflowed with thoughtful, sweater-girded fairy godmothers who lived on quiet cul-de-sacs in real houses with things like stoves and toilets. Thoughtful women just waiting for me to ask them to take care of me!

“Now, I’ve got a package of butter cookies. You want some Kool-Aid or a milk?”

“Milk, please.”

“All right.”

“Are they the kind of cookies that look like flowers with holes in them?”

“Yep. I’m going to make a couple of phone calls, then we'll go on back to your house and get your things.”

“We don't have a house.”

That didn't phase Mrs. Evans. “Well, we'll go to your home, then.”

Didn't she hear me?

Well, she'd see soon enough that Myrtle Charmaine Whitehead was nothing more than boarding house trash.

9

A
t fourteen years of age I had just begun to menstruate. The nosebleeds cleared up within two months of moving in with the Evanses. My nickname became Peach. In all my life up until that time I never thought I’d have a nickname.

Now I don't know much about much, really, but I say, when people care about you enough to shorten your name, or give another one altogether, well, what a blessing.

One time, after Harlan and I got married I met the sweetest little family at a church in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where the crusade was going full swing. A newborn baby named Stephanie graced their arms. And I said, “Hey, little Stephie-boo.”

“Her name is
Stephanie!
”

Well, that just shocked me. I felt my eyes go all round at the father's tone and do you know I just cried? Like an idiot, I just let ’em flow right there in the vestibule, I felt so hurt. Didn't they realize? Didn't they know? Was their love for their child that taken for granted? Was others’ love for that baby taken for granted, too?

Should love ever be taken for granted?

Some people would say that yes, it should, but they can only say that because they've been loved so thoroughly for a very long time.

While the Evanses failed to fill up the empty place Mama left, they filled up all the others. And wouldn't you know, about a year after I came to live with them I waved my arm like the rest of them?

The cute boy, James, became my brother and moved down to the basement to his own room. So he was thankful for my presence. The eldest daughter, Frances, already twenty and working over at the shoe factory, got James's room. And I went in with Stacy who said, “You're a whole lot easier to live with than Frances, especially after dinner!” Then she held her nose because poor Frances was not blessed with a satisfactory digestive system.

Despite our age difference, Stacy became my best friend and as much of a sister as an only child deserted by her philandering mother could hope to have. Stacy, sophomore cheerleader over at E.C. Glass High School, spent hours with me listening to popular rock ‘n’ roll groups with geographical names: Kansas, Boston, Chicago. Stacy and I sang duets at church, too. We'd practice at home, Mrs. Evans at the Kimball stabbing out the alto part again and again with Stacy.

“Why don't you just let Peach sing the harmony?” Stacy complained every practice. “She gets it right away.”

“Because she needs to sing the higher notes, honey. When you go above a high C you sound like an air hose.” And then she'd turn around on the revolving piano stool, pull Stacy in close and say, “A good alto range is nothing to sneeze at.”

“But I don't
hear
the part, Mama!”

“That's what practice is for.”

And so on and so forth.

Stacy just sighed, shook her head, and rolled her eyes.

And that describes the way life turned out at the Evanses. And you know what? Mrs. Evans never even blinked when, every single day after school (I actually got to skip the seventh grade), I ran down the hill and I hollered, “You hear anything today?” Never once. She'd just shake her head and say, “Sorry, Peach. Maybe tomorrow will be different.”

Mrs. Evans always had something to report after her shifts at the hospital. And we'd come to know the patients that stayed on a little longer than most. I do believe this is when I learned to care for the nameless and the faceless.

When my first menstrual period trickled onto the scene, I felt Mama's absence with a dentist-chair pain. It hit me at that moment there in the bathroom as I stared down at the bloody spot on my underwear that the important firsts had just begun. I held out hope for Mama's return for my various graduations, my wedding day, the birth of my someday children, but I had forgotten about that first passage into womanhood.

The fact that I was the last girl in my class to get “it” didn't help matters any. I carried the same maxipad, taken from communal stash of women's hygiene products in the linen closet, around in my purse for a year, pretending I was just like the rest of them.

I knew I wasn't like the rest of them.

Not even close.

I considered not telling Mrs. Evans about it. No need, though. Mrs. Evans is like one of those wise old Chinese women. She just knew.

“Myrtle, honey?”

I remained in the bathroom. Had already flushed and all. And now I sat on the floor with my back up against the tub, feeling that thick mattress of a thing between my legs. Nobody prepares you for that feeling. That foreignness. That walk through a previously unknown portal where paper products end up in hitherto lonely territory.