Born Blue

by Han Nolan

  "Really? How do I do that? I kinda poked at it a bit today, but no sound come out from it, even when I turned it on."

  Paul went to the keyboard set up beneath a couple of windows and showed me how to hook the keyboard up to the amplifier. Then he showed me where to find middle C and how playing notes on a piano be just like saying the alphabet, only there be only seven notes that just play over and over, A-B-C-D-E-F-G and A-B-C-D-E-F-G.

  He helped me curve my fingers just right when I pushed them down on the keys and showed me how I should hold my wrist up off the board the way a professional do. He said, "Might as well learn it right the first time." Then when I done it a couple of times, he said I were just a natural at music.

  I played it again, then skipped every other note like he said to do. Then I played notes C-E-G all together, which be a chord, and it sounded so pretty, didn't wanna never stop and eat no Chinese food. My stomach were upset from all the cheese I ate, anyway.

  That keyboard were wild. I could make it sound like a whole band be in the room playing A-B-C-D-E-F-G with me, just by pressing a button on the side.

  Paul let me play at the keyboard while he heated back up the Chinese dinner. Then he said I had to come eat so I would have energy to learn more things the next day, and he said I needed to get good sleep, too, so my brain would work right. "You can't learn well if your body isn't fed right and you don't get enough sleep," he said. And he didn't say nothin' all night 'bout me leaving and living somewheres else.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I DIDN'T EAT MUCH of my food. First I didn't want to 'cause I wanted bad to get back to playing the keyboard. Then I knew that I were gonna be sick, so I left the table and hung out in the bathroom half the night Getting sick tired me out so bad I fell asleep till I got sick again.

  Paul got up with me and wrung out a washrag for me to wash my face with, and he said it were probably all the drugs I been taking going through my system.

  I said if that be true, then he better get me something to sniff fast 'cause I didn't want to be sick no more. Were worse than when I were pregnant.

  Paul got scared I were gonna sniff on his shaving cream or something, so he come with me back to the couch and waited in the dark with me till I fell off asleep.

  Next time I waked up, I saw Paul come out die bathroom with the towel round his waist and that fist hole in his chest. I watched him go to his closet to get out clothes from it, and I got up from the couch and snuck over behind him. When he turned round I touched his chest.

  Paul sprang back from me like I touched him with a hot fire poker. "What are you doing?" he said, and his voice had a real angry sound to it.

  "What that hole be? How you breathe with that deep ditch in your chest?"

  "I breathe fine. I was born this way. There's nothing wrong with me."

  "'Cept that be ugly."

  "Thank you very much." Paul turned away from me and went for his bedroom.

  "Rest of you be okay, though," I said to his back.

  He turned back round at me. "Every body has its flaws."

  "Mine don't," I said. I lifted my arms up like I wearing some fine evening gown, but I were still wearing his big Interlochen T-shirt.

  He couldn't see nothin' of my body, but still he said, "Hah! I beg to differ!"

  "What's so wrong with the way I look?"

  "For one thing, you have that drug addict's pallor."

  "Ain't no addict. I'm just kinda sick Haven't had nothin' since the party."

  "Well, your skin's yellow."

  "That be 'cause I part African American."

  "Impossible." Paul turned away and laughed on into his bedroom and shut the door.

  I stomped over to the door and pounded it. "Ain't impossible if it true, asshole!"

  He called out. "You have hair so blond it's almost white, and it's baby fine, and your eyes are blue. And your skin, when its color is not drug induced, is most likely so fair as to be translucent. You haven't a single African American feature."

  "I got full lips and a great ass!" I shouted at the door.

  "My lips are fuller than yours, and your ass isn't so great"

  "Didn't think you was lookin', anyway, Boy Scout" I went from the door and sat down at the keyboard. I turned that sucker way up, flicked on the band sound button, and played my chord.

  Never in my life did I see a body shoot outta his room as fast as Paul come flying outta his. He grabbed my hand off the keyboard and shook my wrist so hard, I expected to see my hand dropped off at my feet.

  "This is not a toy!" he said. "You treat my belongings with respect or you get out of here. Everything in here I worked hard to get It's my whole life in here—my whole life—and I take my life very seriously. You understand?"

  I blinked up at him. His hand were still gripping my wrist. I said, "Yeah, I understand good. Never met nobody else before who know what I been feelin' all my fife 'bout singin'. Never met nobody loved music way I do, 'cept you."

  He let go my hand.

  I looked down at the keyboard. "Sorry what I done. Won't do it again. It give me a headache, anyways." Were the first time I ever felt sorry 'bout anything.

  Chapter Forty

  I WERE GOOD and sick all of that first week I stayed with Paul. I knew if I had me some heroin or something, I'd be fine for a time, but didn't feel like leaving the apartment and goin' on the hunt for it. Paul said if I got into drinkin' or drugs at his place, I were outta there fast. I told him threats didn't work on me, so if he wanted me gone, he had to just go ahead and say so.

  One night, when I come awake and seen him staring down at me, I rolled onto my back and asked, "How come you lettin' me stay here, anyways?"

  He went over to his keyboard and poked at it. Then he said, shrugging his shoulders, "I like teaching you music. You catch on fast, and you're so into it. I like that." He turned and looked back at me. "You're such an enigma to me. I can't quite figure you out."

  I thought enigma be a bad insult, but he said it meant I were like a puzzle to him. All I could think of when he said that were them puzzles little Samson James had in his playroom. I liked to sneak them things up to my room at Harmon's and play with them, so I guess Paul were kinda playing with me. He were playing at being a music teacher, but I didn't mind 'cause I were learning good stuff, so I didn't take no drugs or nothin'. I didn't want to get kicked out.

  Anyways, for a long time, I were just too tired and too sick in my stomach to do nothin' but hang over the toilet, then go sleep on the couch. The second week, though, I got to feeling lots better, but I still never left the apartment, and I still went asleep a whole lot, too. Paul said my sleeping rhythm were off 'cause I were sleeping in the day and up prowling like a burglar all night long and that I needed to force myself to stay awake more in the day till I got a good rhythm going again. Didn't tell him how I never had a good sleep rhythm in the first place, and I didn't say how it weren't just old drugs running through me making me sleep so much, neither. I were sleeping all the time 'cause for once I didn't feel like I had to keep lookin' left and right to see what shit be coming at me next. Ain't never known what safe felt like 'cept when I been close to Harmon or smokin' heroin. Heroin were the only thing wrapped me up close and safe, till I come to Paul's.

  Safe at Paul's felt warm and snuggly, laying on the couch under the sun yellow blanket Paul give me, and good music playing, and Paul coming home with hot food to eat And even though Paul were real picky about everything, including something called MSG that he didn't want sitting in his food even when it be invisible, Paul felt safe, too. He were always thinkin' 'bout me, wanting to teach me music stuff, and giving me vitamins to take every morning. He let me wear his clothes, and he made sure I be comfortable sleeping on the couch, and especially, he let me play all his music.

  After I got over being sick, all I wanted to do were sleep nice and warm and deep, then wake and play music on the keyboard, or study my theory book and listen to records. Paul give me more and more musi
c books to learn. Seemed there weren't no end of learning, when it come to music. Of course I couldn't keep all his books he give me—they was just for borrowing, he said—but I liked how he trusted me. He trusted me with all his stuff and never checked to see what were missing from his apartment, neither.

  For the next couple of weeks, I worked on learning music, and when Paxil come home from work, we first ate whatever dinner he brung home, then he checked over what I learned in my theory book and what I worked on in the piano books he had got out for me to play. Sometimes after that, we went to a friend of Paul's place to practice with his band, 'cause on weekends Paul and them played at coffeehouses and clubs. And Paul kept reminding me, like I was mental, that if I was gonna sing with his band, I had to stay straight and not mess with any drugs or alcohol.

  I weren't planning on messing with nothin', but I got tired of him always saying I might, like any minute I gonna get high, so I said, "You cain't be bossing me round. Without me, you ain't got a band. Mick ain't gonna do no New York City without me. Anyways, a band ain't no good without they bein' high. Ain't never heard of a one that weren't playin' high."

  Paul said, with his face getting hot red, "You want to sing in the band, you stay clean, period! Don't think you can't be replaced, because you can."

  I stayed clean for a while, but then three things happened kinda all at once.

  First, Paul told me to keep my eyes and my hands off Jed, the drummer, 'cause he were trouble.

  Well, if someone tell me don't look, all I can do is look. I never woulda even noticed Jed in the back with all his drums round him if Paul hadn't said don't, 'cause he were a white dude and I ain't usually interested in white.

  Turned out Jed were a binger. He went on binges of drinkin' and druggin' and gettin' it so bad, he couldn't even perform, and they had to cancel gigs 'cause of it. That's why Lisa did drums when we recorded up at the Shoals: Jed were on a binge.

  I told Paul to lose the guy if he couldn't perform. They was plenty of other drummers in the world. But Paul said Jed were his old, old friend from home, and they go way back. He said that like going way back meant something important, but way I was lookin' at it, were just a lot of bad history between them and they was both better off without each other.

  Anyways, when Paul weren't looking, I were checking out Jed. The dude kinda had a big head, made me think of a horse's head 'cause of his chestnut hair and chestnut eyes and the way his teeth looked all the same size—big. He wore his hair real long and were like girl's hair, the way it shined. He looked real tall sittin' at his drums, but when he stood up he were just average, so most of his height musta been in his body. I gave the dude the sexy shoulder, and he winked back at me. That's all it were, at first, just flirting stuff.

  Then come the second thing that happened. Paul got a call from Lisa, and he invited her to come stay for the weekend.

  I heard what he were saying on the phone and when he hung up I said, "Where's that bitch gonna stay? Ain't no room for her here. Ain't barely room for me."

  Paul weren't half paying attention to me 'cause his mind still were on his phone call. It took him a couple of seconds to hear me.

  "Oh," he said. "That's no problem. The couch pulls out into a bed. You two can sleep together."

  "No way! And how come I been sleeping on it like it just a couch if it be a bed, too?"

  Paul flopped down in one of his chairs like he just too exhausted for words. He let his head fall back against the chair and said to me, "It's more comfortable as a couch. There's a bar that runs under the mattress that's really uncomfortable." He lifted his head. "If you want, you two can pull out the mattress and set it on the floor."

  "Ain't no way I gonna sleep with her. She got bad breath and BO, too."

  Paul laughed. "She does not. Okay, we'll sleep out here, and you can have my bed."

  I jumped up from the keyboard, where I been sitting, and said, "I'll sleep with her, then, 'cause that girl be afraid of men."

  Paul shook his head. "Liar," he said.

  Third thing that happened, our song come out on the radio, so real soon we was gonna go on tour!

  It happened when Lisa come to town, so she were there to celebrate, and her and Paul was acting like they drunk when they ain't had nothin' but Cokes. Everybody were acting silly, and they was laughing and cheering and listening on the radio for it to come on again. The only two people who wasn't flying round drunk-happy was me and Jed. All that day I been listening to Paul and Lisa talk, and they didn't hardly say nothin' that I could join in on, 'cause it were about college stuff and books they both read and stuff going on in the Middle East. Paul kept saying the word resonates to her all the time, too, which were gettin' on my one nerve, 'cause what the hell were the meaning of that word? He pulled a book off his shelf and handed it to Lisa. He said the book really res onates with him. Later, he played her a song he said really resonates, especially the chorus. Then when we was walking in this dingy city park that had more garbage than flowers, he said how he missed the mountains, and he says this long poem about the mountains to her and tells her it really resonates.

  I said, "You know what, Paul, your ass really resonates," and him and Lisa looked at one another and burst out laughing, like what I said be their own private joke, and like I were the joke! I wanted to rip both their fool heads off for laughing at me, and I didn't say nothin' more to them till we got out of the garbage garden and Luckie from the band come up and said we was just on the radio on the classical music station that sometimes plays jazz and blues.

  Then Jed were in a sulk 'cause it weren't him on the drums playing on the radio, and nobody could say yet if he was gonna go to New York City with us or not, and maybe just Lisa be the one going. So him and me didn't neither of us like Lisa, and weren't neither of us celebrating, even when the pizzas and beer and Cokes come.

  We was all over at Luckie's place, which was a apartment over a bunch of offices. He called it a loft 'cause it were one big room he had to divide up with hanging sheets and tall bookcases. Well, that loft were real big, so I knew Paul wouldn't see when I gone up to Jed and asked him if he got anything stronger than Co-Cola and beer laying round we could dip into.

  Jed grinned a big horse-faced grin at me when I asked him. Then he pulled on my arm, and we run outta there.

  We started out at Jed's place, which weren't nothin' but a dirt pit, far as I could tell. I sat down on a brown-and-tan couch that coulda come straight outta Patsy and Pete's stink house, it smelled so bad. Jed run off to his bathroom, then come out again with a bottle in his hand. He shook it in my face, and I leaned away.

  "What they be?" I asked him.

  He said, "I stole these from the drugstore where I work They're tranquilizers." He laughed and shook the bottle again.

  "You want?" he asked.

  I stood up, shovin' him and his stupid pills away. "I don't want no sleep medicine," I said. "I wanna get happy. Now what you got that can get me singin' and dancin' round here?"

  Jed flicked the lid off the pill bottle with his thumb and popped some of them pills into his mouth. He swallowed and said, "Don't have much here, just vodka. The rest we'll have to dig up someplace else."

  "Well, vodka be fine to start with," I said, "but it ain't great. Why you bring me here when you got nothin' but nothin', anyways?"

  Jed winked at me, then got the vodka bottle out from under his couch, gettin' down on his belly right near my feet to do it. Didn't know what that fool were doing till he brought out the juice, so I were trying to step outta his way and fell over on top of him. He liked that real good. He rolled over and grabbed on to me and brung his legs round me so I couldn't stand back up again. We sat face to face like that and drank that juice hard and straight, and I could feel myself going soft and fuzzy inside. Jed tried to put the moves on me, seeing how I was woozy, but I weren't doin' nothin' with my clothes off in that stink hole, so we set out for a place near where me and Paul was living, and scored us some good junk.


  Then we took it on over to Paul's clean white apartment, and I put on some frisky music and got dancing and glancing Jed's way. He were already too stoned to give me much notice, though. I could see sweat runnin' down his face. His face were real pale, too, and I said maybe he better lie down awhile 'cause he didn't look so good. He tore at his shirt like it chokin' him round the neck and said to never mind him, 'cause he be fine. Then he went to the bathroom, and I sat on the couch, feeling kind of funny myself. I looked up at the bookshelves and saw a sunrise on all them books of Paul's. There were such a beautiful sunrise come suddenly, with all the colors of the rainbow spreading out like fingers on all them books, I lay back and sung a song to the sunrise.

  Later, when Paul and Lisa come in, I were laying on the counter between the kitchen and the living room, with my feet up in the air. Cain't remember what I said to them when I seen them, but whatever, it made Paul so mad, he pulled me off the counter hard, and I fell to the floor and my legs was bruised for weeks.

  I remember Paul asked where Jed be at, though, and I said in the bathroom, but Jed weren't there after all. He were layin' in Paul's bed. He were laying in there, dead.

  Chapter Forty-One

  TOO BAD IT WEREN'T me that was dead,'cause I were the one that got in all the trouble. Were like I be the one killed him.

  The ambulance took me and Jed to the hospital, and first the doctors pumped out my stomach, which were the worst kind of torture. A lady doctor then come up to me and said that Jed got hold of some bad stuff and I were probably a very lucky young lady to still be alive. Then the police come along and want to know where we got ahold of the junk and all kinds of questions about Jed I didn't know the answers to, but they kept at me like I just be lyin' to them.

  Now and then I saw Paul outside the room I got put in, but he never come in or talked to me till it were at long last time to go home.

  I said I were sorry, when we was in the car going home, and that it weren't my fault, and Paul said, "Shut up!" real loud and hard, so I shut up. We got to his apartment and Lisa were there waiting for us in her pink bathrobe and slippers, like a worried little housewife.