Twang (33 page)

“Me too.” I was hoping with all my might against the weather forecaster’s words. I knew April was all about rain, but tomorrow was May first, and I needed my infusion of peace at the Cumberland. It wasn’t fair for it to rain on a Saturday!

We took the exit for Demonbreun, turned left, then circled the Musica statue in the roundabout at the top of the hill. “Here
we are, hon,” Tonilynn said in an excited voice as we turned onto Division Street. I saw the familiar gold letters and the red crown that formed the Best Western logo, and I got that warm glow inside when something’s deeply familiar in a good way. We slowed to ‘cruise speed’ and I soaked it in, picturing Roy behind the counter, dancing in his seersucker suit, the joyous anticipation of a gourmet feast on its way to him.

“Little bit smaller than Harmony Hill, hm?” Tonilynn teased.

“Yeah.” I laughed, and feeling a rush of boldness, I said, “One day you ought to bring Aunt Gomer and Bobby Lee to Harmony Hill for a visit.”

“It’d be like the Beverly Hillbillies!” Tonilynn laughed. “That reminds me, Bobby Lee said the fishing trip he took with you was wonderful.”

“We didn’t catch anything.”

“Don’t gotta catch nothing to have fun, now do you?” she said in a singsong way, and I wondered if Bobby Lee had revealed any intentions to her. But I didn’t want to ask, for fear he hadn’t, and I didn’t want to ruin the mood.

We made a U-turn and drove over to Broadway, watching people streaming by in happy groups on the sidewalks, admiring the lights of nightclubs and restaurants. Being in the thick of the glittering city after sunset made excitement bubble in my bones like ginger ale. I thought how nice it was to be in the heart of Music City, where the beautiful Cumberland wove her way through the earth like a thread. I smiled, thinking of my trip to see her tomorrow.

I was in a truly blissful place mentally, until all of a sudden something sucked the breath right out of me. I hadn’t been paying close attention, and Tonilynn had wound her way back over to Demonbreun where some neon words on the storefront
of the Déjà Vu branded themselves on my retinas.
Showgirls! Full nude dancers!

I’d been by the club a hundred times, walking from the Best Western to the Cumberland or getting off the interstate to head for Music Row, but generally, I averted my eyes quickly, keeping old memories locked up safe. Occasionally, I’d feel sorry for the girls inside, nothing more. Now . . . maybe I’d been away too long . . . maybe I’d been too open, thinking about possibilities with Bobby Lee, or maybe, as Tonilynn so often said, “It’s all in the timing.”

I’ll never know why, but in that moment, the neon glare hit me as it never had in all my years in Nashville. Chills raced up my spine, shame radiated out from my center, a nerve-racking clench of fear prevented me from swallowing, and my heart pounded like a jackhammer as a skeleton from my closet began clawing it’s way up out of that red Georgia clay, its bony finger twanging a string I never wanted played.

I didn’t even have to close my eyes and I saw that scene—a little story playing out all those years ago in that falling-down house in Blue Ridge. What startled me most, as I am generally an auditory rememberer, was that it was so
colorful
. Everything was hypervibrant with color. I was sitting cross-legged on the green Naugahyde sofa that mother had bought at a yard sale for ten dollars, a slit in the middle cushion had cream-colored stuffing oozing out. I saw Mother’s feet in dingy pink slippers on the warped kitchen floor, and the yellow counters with a set of copper-colored canisters reading Flour, Sugar, Tea, and Coffee. My father was home on one of his rare Friday evenings. It was early yet, eightish, and he was pacing around in his navy sock feet, his brown arms sticking out of a light blue short-sleeve shirt with Foster’s Garage and
Omer
embroidered on the pocket in red. A vanilla-colored dial phone that hung on the wall above the breadbox rang.

I broke out in a cold sweat at what I knew was coming. “No!” I slumped down in the Pontiac’s front seat and held myself stone still, staring at the latch on the glove box, trying to will it away.

Tonilynn hit the brake so hard I slung forward. “You okay?”

My teeth chattered. I shook my head.

“What’s wrong?”

I couldn’t speak.

“Talk to Tonilynn, Jennifer. Please.” She pulled into a parking lot and cut the engine.

I sat frozen, the scene in living color playing inside my head. “I was just . . . I swear I didn’t invite it.”

Tonilynn’s eyes bathed me in love, her hand gave mine a squeeze. “Tell me.”

I swallowed the knot in my throat. “It was a Friday night, stormy out, and we’d just finished supper. Mother was in the kitchen cleaning up; I was sitting in the den, and the phone rang. It was O’dell, one of my father’s poker buddies, calling to say they were all coming over around nine. I knew Mother wasn’t happy, but she didn’t say anything. They always got really drunk and loud, you know, tore stuff up. I didn’t like it because I could never get in my pallet when they played poker at our house because they dragged a card table out on the screen porch.”

“That was hard, hm?” Tonilynn raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah. I wanted to run outside and hide in the woods, but like I said, it was storming, and plus, they usually stayed until the wee hours. That night my father got into the whiskey before the rest got there. Mother said to him to take it easy and he said for her to keep her trap shut.

“I went in the front room, out of sight, to read a book, well, not really reading but just looking at the words and trying
to act casual even though I was shaking, and . . .” I felt tears, warm on my cheeks.

“And?” Tonilynn blotted my face tenderly with a McDonald’s napkin.

“Later, after they’d been there awhile I was still curled up in the chair underneath an afghan, listening to them getting drunk, laughing, and playing cards. I guess I fell in and out of sleep, because I heard my name, and I was groggy, and then my father said, ‘Jennifer can be our dancing girl.’ ”

I closed my eyes, felt Tonilynn’s hands grasping mine.

“He walked into the front room, yanked the afghan away and said, ‘Get your top off and come dance for us, girl.’ My brain wouldn’t work, my legs wouldn’t go. I thought I must be dreaming. Then he said it again, and I guess it sunk in that this was real. I was so scared, so embarrassed. I was only fifteen, and I thought I better do what he said because he was so drunk and full of himself. He was a mean, violent drunk, and I didn’t know all that much about men or sex or any of that stuff.”

My neck felt hot, but I looked straight into Tonilynn’s eyes. “Next thing I knew I was standing there on the screen porch, bare from the waist up. So I guess I did get up and undress even though I don’t remember it. I moved, but it felt awkward, just kind of letting my hips swing. I figured out pretty quick I had to close my eyes and imagine I was alone, dancing for the trees. The men really liked it, they were all whooping and grunting and saying stuff like, ‘Yeah baby, dance!’ and ‘Shake them thangs!’ ”

“You were just a child,” Tonilynn whispered.

“I was fully developed.”

“Did anybody
touch
you?” Tonilynn cupped my face in her warm palms, her question reverberating in my shocked brain. “Did any of them touch you? Tell me they didn’t touch you.”
She sounded angry, and I liked that. I shook my head. This was something I’d marveled at all these many years, that none of them had “taken advantage” of me that night. It was one of those things in life that makes a person incredulous—them grabbing their crotches, out of their minds and me in my vulnerability—that no sexual intercourse had happened.

Tonilynn stroked my cheek. “But your innocence was shattered. He robbed you of your dignity.”

I nodded, feeling my face crumple.

“He made you feel dirty.” Tonilynn squeezed my hand. “And you bottled it up all these years.”

My finger was twirling my hair so fast and furious, I felt it ripping out strands, but I liked the pain. I needed the pain. After a bit, Tonilynn reached up and stilled my hand. She pulled the hairs from between my fingers and let them drift to the floorboard. “Where was your mother? She didn’t stop them?”

“No.” The word gagged me. After a spell, I was able to speak again. “She never would say one word to me about it. I remember she came out of her bedroom when the men started getting rowdy because they liked my dancing, and she looked out on the porch while I was dancing, but she just put her hand over her mouth and ran back into her room. But the next day, when I finally gathered up the nerve to confront her about it, she denied it had even happened.” I slid off the seat, onto the floorboard, my hands over my face.

Tonilynn draped herself over me. “That’s right,” she murmured. “Cry it out. It’s good for you. You’ve done a brave thing, Jennifer. That’s been bottled up inside you all these years, and this is the first step on your way to healing.”

Hours later, up on Cagle Mountain, I lay on the featherbed, my heart raw from the memory I’d dreaded with every cell in my body for the past thirteen years. That memory I’d spent my energy running from like a mouse aware of a hungry cat. Tonilynn had said to cry it all out and I did. I cried about how Tonilynn and I had been in one of those gilded moments of life, cruising along in perfect harmony, our spirits soaring, until a dark cloud from the past moved in and destroyed it. I cried about how she said my father had stolen my innocence. I cried about how my mother had sided with denial instead of her daughter. How she might never know the real me or celebrate my success, or hold me close and say “I’m sorry. I know that hurt, and I should’ve done a better job of protecting you. Please forgive me.” I cried about Tonilynn’s concern, how when she got me back up into my seat, she’d fastened the seatbelt and kept her right hand on my shoulder the whole time she sped home to Cagle Mountain, saying, “You don’t need to be alone right now. You need to be with people who love you,” continuing her sympathetic words as she half-carried me into the guestroom, removed my shoes and oh-so-gently helped me into bed.

I cried over the fact that it was Saturday, and I might miss my trip to the Cumberland, miss her calm waters, that dose of peace, and then I cried because longing for that made me feel selfish when I had people here who loved me. Speaking of feeling selfish, I also cried over the lifeblood that Mike Flint spent on me, the very fact that he’d believed in me from the start and had no idea what I was hiding. I cried for those young dancers behind the walls of Déjà Vu.

Finally and most of all, I cried about the years I’d spent running, so messed up and pathetic, and the fact that life had dealt me a pathetic hand, had cursed me with such a depraved
and filthy-minded father who was the root cause of
all
my travail.

That was when the hatred rose up within me like a tidal wave. The fury dried my tears, and I rolled over, my swollen face cool in the dark room. What amazed me was that despite bawling for hours and no sleep (by the glowing digital clock on the bedside table, it was three a.m.) I felt like I could run a marathon. I wanted to go to Déjà Vu and hit somebody, fight for all those young girls with dreams of being a country music diva like me who were having to pay the bills by dancing at that so-called gentlemen’s club. None of those places downtown or along the highway were for
real
gentlemen! Mr. Anglin was a true gentleman, and I had sent him to an early grave. Because of my father!

I sat up, swung my legs off the bed and marched to the kitchen where I found Tonilynn at the table, working a jigsaw puzzle and drinking a Diet Coke. I sat down opposite her. “Flowers?” I pointed at some pieces with red shapes like petals.

“Eiffel Tower in springtime.” She fitted the piece in her hand along the bottom, leaned back in her chair and considered me. “Feeling better, hon?”

“Feeling mad.”

“I hear the Hair Chair calling our names big time.”

I shook my head, but smiled at Tonilynn, thankful for her attempt to lighten the mood. Behind her, out the window, I noticed it was raining hard.

“ ’Bout time to build an ark, hm?” Tonilynn pressed another piece into place. “Speaking of the ark, Old Noah was a man of great faith.”

One thing I did not need was a conversation about faith. We sat quietly for a while, Tonilynn sorting puzzle pieces by color and me waiting for the right moment to ask her to drive me back to Harmony Hill. Riverfront Park opened daily at six,
and I’d never been that early, but something in me thrilled to think about visiting the Cumberland in darkness. Surely the rain would let up shortly. Thinking about Riverfront Park led to thoughts about the upcoming CMA Festival. My chest tightened at the thought of singing, though I reminded myself that having the river beside me would help me get through it, and that I’d quit the music scene totally after my festival performances were done.

“People of faith can change this world.” Tonilynn reached for her Diet Coke. “Jesus said faith is strong enough to move mountains.” Her eyebrows were raised up high over eyes soft with concern. “Faith can change the way we see our world now, Jennifer. Also the way we look at things tomorrow, and also, maybe most important for
you
, the way the past has shaped us.”