Born Blue

by Han Nolan

  Paul didn't say nothin', and I sat burning up inside 'cause of the way the dude could get under my skin so bad. I wanted to get back at him, so I said, "You and Lisa was sure gettin' heavy last night, huh? You two get it on, or what?"

  That got him. He pulled off his glasses and glared at me a full two seconds, at least, before shoving them back on his face and paying attention back at the road. "No, of course not. I just met her yesterday. Not everybody's a skank or ... or a skeezer—is that what you'd call it? You know, I don't get you. You don't fit. Why do you talk the way you do, anyway? Who are you trying to be?"

  "What? I just me."

  "Who is that?"

  "What say? Man, why don't you talk English so I can figure what you sayin'? Cain't get half what you sayin' to me—like I listening to a other language or something."

  Paul wiggled in his seat like he got a butt itch. "I'm speaking English. I don't know what you're speaking—some kind of Afro-white speak you made up yourself, I imagine."

  "Everybody make up what they sayin'. We ain't reading what we gotta say from a book, you know. 'Cept you. You all the time sound like you reading what you sayin' from a book. Your song were like it come from some bad poetry book, all them words nobody could understand."

  Paul nodded. "You were right about that. I was trying too hard. I was showing off."

  "Yeah, you was," I said. I put my feet back up on the dash, let my legs open and close, open and close.

  Paul kept his eyes on the road and said, "What you said, 'Get out of your head and into your heart,' that was good."

  "Yeah, I know music," I said, closing up my legs. "I don't write nothin' down, but I got me some songs I made up, too, and they good."

  Paul give a quick look at me and he cracked a bit of a smile, so I could see his lower teeth and they was kinda crooked. "You—write music." He gave a hah! laugh.

  "I said I don't write nothin', I just sing it the way I hear it in my head."

  Paul were still grinnin', and I wanted to yank his pointy nose off his skinny face. "Go ahead, then, let's hear."

  "I ain't singing for you."

  "Uh-huh."

  "What that mean? What that 'uh-huh' mean? You don't think I got me songs?"

  He shrugged, and he still got that shit-eatin' grin on his face.

  I sung him a song. I sung it quiet 'cause we was in a truck and 'cause most time when I sung my songs, it were to myself. Hadn't never done it for nobody else to hear before. Were a song 'bout Mama Linda gonna come back. Were a song 'bout waiting, and laying in the bed in the dark, hearing footsteps that weren't never there. I don't come out and say in the song were Mama Linda, don't say it were any mama I be waiting for, but that's what I know it be about, anyway.

  When I got through with my song, I looked over to Paul and I seen I done it. I wiped that shit-eatin' grin clear off his face.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  ME AND PAUL stopped off at a Shoney's for lunch. He didn't want to stop there, 'cause he said it would take too long ordering food and sitting down. He wanted something fast he could eat on the road. I bad wanted a ice-cream sundae like I used to get with Doris, so I carried on 'bout how I hadn't never been to a Shoney's since I been little, and Paul give in.

  While we was waitin' for my sundae and his hamburger, Paul pulled out some music-writing paper from his yellow girlie satchel he carried round with him, and started writing.

  "Don't you never do nothin' but work?" I asked him. He held up his hand and shushed me.

  I said, "You got hands like frying pans, you know that? I don't know how you can play guitar..."

  Paul lowered his glasses and gave me a glare. "Would you please be quiet?"

  He kept on writing even when his hamburger come, but I weren't waitin' round till he finished, or my sundae be all melted and the chocolate be cold, so I dug on in.

  Finally, Paul finished writing and he tore the page out from his notebook and handed it to me.

  "What this be?" I said.

  "Your song. The tune, anyway."

  I took the paper and held it up close, looking at all them notes going up and down on the lines. "This really be my song?"

  Paul nodded and didn't say nothin' 'cause his mouth were full of hamburger. When he swallowed, he said, "Here, let me have that a second. What do you want to call it?"

  He held his pencil over the paper, waiting for me to say.

  I shrugged. "'In Her Footsteps,' I guess, 'cause that be in the chorus part."

  "Good." He wrote the title across the top of the page and put my name at the bottom, then handed it back to me.

  I couldn't stop staring at it. I bad wanted to read it my own self, but I didn't say. I kept on with my sundae, still staring at the paper.

  Paul put a finger on the paper and tapped it. "These five lines are called a staff," he said. "There are always five lines. See down the page? And this kind of dollar-sign thing is called the treble clef, and this kind of backward cent sign is called the bass clef. So you have the treble staff here—or the soprano staff—and the bass staff here.

  I said, "Staff, treble cleft, and bass cleft."

  "Clef," Paul said, "c-l-e-f."

  "Treble clef and bass clef," I said.

  He said, "Right."

  "But the notes," I said, and I pointed at the ones he drawn on the paper. "How come you got some smudged in, like here, and these here, they clear, and this note here be just like a circle?"

  "That tells you how long each note is held. See the circle? You hold that for four counts: one-two-three-four." Paul beat out the counts on the tabletop. "You do it."

  "Yeah, okay, that's easy." I beat out four counts just like him.

  "Good," he said, and he cracked a grin and weren't no wiseass grin this time, neither.

  We sat at the table long after we was through eating, and Paul taught me to beat out my whole song just by reading how many counts each note he wrote had. We was beatin' on the table and people was looking at us, but didn't neither of us care none—we was playing out my song.

  When we got going on the road again, I told Paul I had lots of other songs, too, and he told me to sing him another one. I sung it and he said sing it again, so I did that, too. Then he said for me to get out his music paper and his pencil and I could write my own song down, and he would say what to write and what line to put the notes on. It took a lot longer for me to write it out than it did when Paul be writing, but I got it written down and didn't need to bother with no bass clef 'cause Paul said he could figure out the harmony later. I said, "So, you wrote harmony on this other song?"

  He nodded and his bangs fell over his forehead.

  "So, it like we wrote this together? Like we a team?"

  "Well, you really wrote it. It doesn't take much to figure out a simple harmony, but yes, it was a team effort writing down this other one."

  By the time we was just outside Atlanta, it were dark out 'cause we took so long at the Shoney's.

  Paul got into the next lane to make a exit onto 285, then he asked, "Where do you live?"

  "Don't live nowhere."

  "I mean, where should I drop you off?"

  "Don't know. Only time I ever been in Atlanta were last week with Mick at the Ritz-Carlton."

  "Leshaya, where do you come from? Where is your home? Where were you living before Mick took you to the Ritz?"

  Paul had this frustrated kind of tone in his voice like he wanted to bust my head open.

  I said, "I don't got a home or nothin'. I were in Tuscaloosa living with this dude for a while, but we broke up. Cain't go back there."

  "Are you a runaway?" Paul were startin' to sound stressed out. "Where are your parents?"

  Oh man, I had fun with that one. I said, "Which parents you wanna know 'bout? I got Mama Linda, don't know where she be at. I call her up now and then, but she never home. Don't know 'bout my daddy, 'cause she ain't never said who he be. Then there's Mama Shell and Daddy Mitch, who kidnapped me, but I know for sure they in prison
'cause they dealin' drugs and they kidnapped me. Oh yeah, then there's my foster parents, Patsy and Pete, and the stink house in Mobile, and Harmon's parents—but they sure as hell don't wanna see me, 'cause I be way too much trouble for them to handle, and they all the time rattin' on me to the pig-nosed caseworker. Now, which one of them parents you be meanin'?"

  Paid shook his head like he needing to shake something loose out of it, but he didn't say nothin'.

  I said, "I'll just come home with you till I find someone else I can hook up with."

  Paul 'bout shook his head right off his neck. "Oh, no. I'm not your baby-sitter."

  "Say what? Ain't no baby! Damn! I give birth to my own baby already, so don't be callin' me a baby."

  "Right. Look, I don't want you coming home with me. So, where can I drop you off?"

  "Right here, then." I slipped my feet into my shoes and reached round to get my pack.

  "I can't let you off on a highway!" "Where's it matter where you let me off, long as you rid of me?"

  Paul beat his steering wheel with the flat of his hand. "Okay!" he said. "Okay."

  "Okay what? Okay, I can come home with you?" "For tonight," he said. "Only for tonight."

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  PAUL'S APARTMENT WERE like none I ever seen before. At first when I seen the outside of the building so dirty-looking, with bricks crumbling out in places, I figured the inside gonna be run-down, too, but inside were all fresh white paint I could still smell in the hallway, and shiny banisters, and polished-up floors. Then I figured his apartment gonna be way neat, the way Mama Shell kept her house, 'cause of him being such a perfectionist. And it were orderly and clean, all right, but he had too much stuff for the place to really look neat and put away.

  He had two more guitars, and a keyboard and amplifiers, two music stands, and a stereo and CD player, two big file cabinets where he said all his sheet music be stored, and everywhere was record albums, CDs, and books. He got a whole wood shelf high up to the ceiling filled with albums, and lots of more shelves with the books. He even had him a coffee table made out of stacks of books with a piece of wood set on top of 'em. He had a TV and a VCR, and a computer, too. All this were stuffed into one room, plus the furniture, like the couch and a couple of chairs, and then he had his bedroom. The room were dark and narrow with no window. All he could fit there were his thin bed and a built-to-the-wall shelf he put way up high 'cause were the only place to fit it.

  I looked round the place a bit and said, "This all be yours?"

  He said, "What? What's in the apartment? Sure."

  "You read all them books?"

  Paul shrugged. "I've read most of them. There's some I haven't gotten to yet, I guess."

  I pulled a record off his shelf. He had labels marking off different sections on his shelves, like JAZZ and BLUES and RAGTIME and ROCK and CLASSICAL. I pulled one from the jazz section and looked over the cover. "Hey, 'Kind of Blue'!" I said. "This record be called 'Kind of Blue.' That were the name of my band I sung in."

  Paul took the album out of my hand. "Well, this isn't your band. This is Miles Davis. It's probably where they got the name. It's a famous album." He slipped the record out from the cover, sticking his middle finger in the little hole in the record, and his thumb on the edge, and slowly, like he was praying over it first, put it on his stereo.

  The sound were low, fat, and funky, and made me feel sexy in one hot second. I moved and grooved to the music, and Paul left me to it 'cause he were wantin' some thing to eat, but I didn't care. Didn't need nobody else. I could make love to my own self with that sound ridin' the beat.

  Paul told me I could sleep on his couch for the night, but I didn't sleep, and I didn't need no drugs to keep me up, neither. Maybe the drugs from the night before hadn't wore off yet, 'cause I played his music all night long. I played Miles Davis three times. I played John Coltrane, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Charlie Parker, and Herbie Hancock, from his jazz collection. I thought that each day I could listen till I had heard every song in his whole album and CD collection. I never heard such music, 'cept for what I got from the ladies. And he had all the ladies, too, even the old ones I hadn't heard from since I were kidnapped.

  When it got to be in the middle of the night, when I were listening to Miles Davis again, I went to Paul's room and looked in at him sleeping. Couldn't see much 'cept the dark shape and shadow of his head, and I stared at that a long time. I stared and wondered what it be like to be him and know all he know.

  Then this feeling come over me like I wanna bash in his head, so I left quick and looked round the kitchen for some bread. I couldn't find none, so I sat down on his kitchen floor and cried. Musta been the music making me cry, 'cause I hadn't cried like that in a long, long time.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  NEXT MORNING, PAUL come out his room dressed in sweatpants and a undershirt, with his hair stuck up funny from sleeping on it. I were listening to Carla Bley and sucking on a chocolate Popsicle. He squinted a look at me and waved. Then he stumbled his way to the bathroom and I heard the shower turn on. Ten minutes later I were on my third Popsicle and listening to Anita O'Day, and he come back out, wrapped round the waist in a towel, and tiptoed to his room, a trail of steam drifting along after him. The dude had some hunkin' good shoulders and a sunken-in chest, like someone punched him there and left him a fist hole. It looked strange and I wondered how he breathed good.

  When he come out his room again, he were dressed in a dark blue suit.

  I come out from round the counter, which were the only thing keeping the little kitchen from being part of the rest of the apartment, and I laughed to see him all spiffed up.

  "Where you goin' lookin' like that?" I asked.

  "To work"

  "What kind of work you do? You a undertaker?"

  Paul tugged at the shirtsleeve under his jacket so it come down more. "I manage a music store. I don't usually have to dress like this, but I've got a meeting with the owners."

  "Oh. Can I take a shower?"

  "Go ahead."

  I started stripping off my clothes, and Paul said, "Oh, please."

  I threw my shirt at him. "Well, where else I gonna change if I don't got a room. Why you so 'fraid of me, anyway?"

  Paul set my shirt on the counter and walked round to the kitchen cabinets. "You're underage, for one thing. For another, I'm not afraid of you: I'm afraid for you. You throw yourself at every guy you blink at. Someone could really hurt you."

  Paul pulled a box of granola off one of the shelves and turned back round.

  I stood naked with my hands on my hips and grinned big at him.

  He closed his eyes and turned away, fishin' in the cabinet for a bowl. He let slip the bowl out of his hands, and it crash broke on the counter.

  "Would you go on and get your shower," he said, using his hard voice and fumbling to pick up the broke glass.

  "Ain't no one can hurt me," I said. "Ain't nothin' inside me that can feel that kinda pain."

  Au contraire, my dear," he said, turning and looking at me straight on. "Every note you sing is drenched in pain."

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  WHEN I COME OUT the shower, Paul were gone. I found the clothes I thrown off all folded up for me on the couch, and laying next to them were a book. Written in pen at the top right side of the book be my name, Leshaya.

  "Do this be mine?" I asked, like Paul be still in the room.

  The cover said Music Theory and Composition for the Beginner.

  I opened it up, and already I knew everything on the first page, 'cause of what Paul taught me. I set the book down. I went to the only closet in the apartment and fished round and got me out a pair of jeans and a dark blue T-shirt of Paul's and put them on. The jeans was big and long but fit okay if I rolled them up and cinched a belt on. The T-shirt was big, too, and it had red writing on it: INTERLOCHEN CENTER FOR THE ARTS. I hugged myself in the shirt, put on some Albert Collins, from Paul's blues section, and sat on the couch
with my book.

  I fell asleep studying, not 'cause it were boring but 'cause I hadn't been to sleep for most of two nights and two days straight. When I waked up, it were quiet in the room 'cause the record I were playing been long over. I jumped up and put it back on again. Never did like silence, and anyways, I didn't hear much of the album the first time through.

  I looked in the fridge for what to eat. I found me some cheese, so I ate that and went back to studying with my music book.

  Sometimes when I looked up to think 'bout what I just read, I looked round at all the other books in the room and I kept thinking how in just another minute I were gonna have to get up and see what all them other books be about. But I didn't do it, 'cause I were 'fraid. I were 'fraid that them books be just like Paul—full of words I don't know and weren't never gonna understand.

  When Paul come home that night, he come in almost bouncing with his walk. He had a sack of Chinese take-out food in his hands.

  I said, "You actin' like you happy."

  Paul set his sack on the counter. "Meeting went well," he said. "Plus, I got a call from Mick. We should be hearing our song on the radio before the end of the month, and he's looking into getting us a gig in New York City."

  I jumped up and hugged him, and he hugged back real quick, then set me away from him. He caught sight of my clothes and said, "Those are mine," real matter of fact, like he were just taking it in and not accusing me of stealing or nothin'.

  I said, "Yeah. Look how far I got in your book." I held up the music book and showed him the paper I used to write stuff on. "See how I made my musical notes like yours. I remembered how you said you don't make little circles and fill them in, 'cause that were armerturish."

  "You mean amateurish. Yeah, go on."

  "So, see, I just did little smudges. And see, this is F and then A, then C, then E. That's the notes on the spaces, and here's E-G-B-D-F, for the notes on the lines."

  Paul looked over my pages, kinda smiling. Then he said, "Now, why don't you play that over here on the keyboard?"