Supergirl Mixtapes

by Meagan Brothers

  “SSKs,” he grunted. “You sure it’s not some racist deal?”

  “No, it’s a potluck.” I shoved the card back into my pocket. “At least, I don’t think it’s racist. Just because it’s Southern doesn’t mean—”

  “And he’s way too old for you,” Travis interrupted, lighting his cigarette.

  “Look who’s talking.”

  “That’s different.” He exhaled smoke. “Stay away from that guy.”

  “Okay, Dad.” I gave a fake army salute.

  “Whatever.” We stopped at the corner for the Don’t Walk sign.

  “One of these days. To the moon!” I put on my gruff businessman voice again and nudged him with my elbow. He didn’t laugh, but I could see, as he turned to watch the traffic, the edges of his lips lifting into a smile.

  I was running in a dream. Running through the streets, dodging cabs, trying to get to school on time. I could hear my mother, but I couldn’t see her. Her words turned into yelps and moans, something that sounded like “Move! Move!” I ran as hard as I could, but the blocks were endless. The harder I ran, the slower I moved. Finally I woke up, sweating, tangled in the sheets. My mom was on the floor at the foot of the bed. In the fuzzy dark, I could see her sitting cross-legged by the faint orange glow of the stereo light. The music played quietly, the same woman’s voice I’d heard in my dream.

  “I was afraid I might wake you up,” Mom said.

  “It’s all right. I was having a dream. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. I couldn’t sleep. I kinda needed to hear this.” She held up a record cover I couldn’t quite see. I moved to sit at the end of the bed. She lit a cigarette.

  “Radio Ethiopia. Maybe my favorite record of all time. I think it’s even better than Raw Power or Let It Bleed or Highway 61 or even the first Ramones record.” She handed the cover to me. It was silver and black. Patti Smith. The same woman from the other record, the one she’d wanted me to listen to that first night I moved in.

  “The first time I heard this, I knew I had to get out of New Jersey. This is where it was all happening. Andy Warhol, the whole scene. New York was where the artists lived, and that’s all I ever wanted to be.” She leaned her head back against the foot of my bed. “The first night I lived here, it was the night of the blackout. Summer of ’77. You know about the blackout?”

  “No.”

  “God, the whole city lost its freakin’ mind. It was, like, a hundred degrees. Power went out everywhere. My friend Jaina and I went out to celebrate my arrival. We were walking over to Lee’s place, and all of a sudden the streetlamps went out. It was pitch-black—no lights in the windows, nothing. That was the night I met your father. He pulled us into this club where he was working and made us stay there until he could take us home. We should’ve been scared, but we didn’t know until the next morning about the looting and the fires, how bad it was. There were all these candles, and somebody had a battery-operated tape player or eight-track or something. I just remember we kept listening to this one guy’s tape of, like, the soundtrack to Superfly. We were all drinking wine and dancing our asses off. Your dad and I didn’t start going out till later, but we became friends that night. It’s so hard to believe—” Her voice broke. She took a drag on her cigarette. I watched the orange tip glow brighter for a moment, then fade.

  “I mean, back then it was like I was trying to see everything. I went to museums; I studied every brushstroke of every painting until I knew it by heart. I knew it was important, but it felt like school, you know? Music—rock and roll—that was lifeblood. Pure energy. I heard these records—I heard Patti—and I felt … electrified or something. Like I could paint for days. I realized it’s all one thing: music, painting—it’s all art. It’s all—” She stopped. “I never made it happen, though, did I? I just didn’t have enough time. There’s so much more I wanted to do. So much work. I’ll never finish it all.”

  “I’ll help you,” I said. “We both will. Me and Travis. We’ve almost got everything packed up, anyway.”

  “Geez, kid.” Her voice broke again. Was she crying? “I didn’t mean—” She stopped and kind of laughed. She exhaled. “Sorry. It’s just too much.”

  “It’s okay. Maybe it’ll be nice over there. In Brooklyn.”

  “Yeah. I bet Brooklyn’s great.”

  She laughed and sniffled, and then she was quiet. My head was still hazy with sleep. I didn’t know what to say to fix things, to make her feel better. To let her know that I really could help. So we both just sat there, listening to the record play. It sounded like two women’s voices now, braiding and intertwining with a spiky-sounding guitar and a spacy-sounding piano. I want to feel you in my radio.

  “You know what’s weird?” Mom cleared her throat. “Horses is the really great one, if you listen to the critics. But this is the one that really blew my mind. I learned everything from Patti. From these records. From what she wrote. I learned about all the great artists and writers, just from reading her interviews in Creem magazine when I was a kid. I learned about Brancusi and Modigliani and Jackson Pollock. She’d talk about poets like Baudelaire and Rimbaud the same as Bob Dylan or the Stones, and I realized, you know, art wasn’t just this old, done thing. It was new and alive and possible. But mostly it was just her. Patti. She was from New Jersey, like me. And whenever my stepmother would say, ‘You gotta stop pissing your life away painting pictures, you’re never gonna amount to shit, you gotta learn a trade, go to beauty school or be a secretary,’ I’d just think about Patti, and I knew she was wrong.

  “I wish you could’ve been here back then. It was so exciting. It was like, every day there was something new going on. Some new band, some amazing new thing. Every single day. And I felt so open, like …” She stopped again. “I don’t know. I had all the energy in the world. I was ready for it. But it got so fucking hard—”

  I heard her inhale, the end of her cigarette glowing brighter again.

  “Hard to paint?”

  “No. Not hard to paint. Just hard to …” Her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. “Hard to create so much and realize that nobody gave a damn.”

  The song was slowing down, the voices untwining, whispering back to one. My mother laughed. One of those laughs where you know nothing’s really funny.

  “Ahh, fuck it,” she said. “I should’ve just started a rock and roll band.”

  I wanted to tell her that it didn’t matter, that I knew she was an artist, that just because she wasn’t rich and famous didn’t mean she wasn’t good. But she sat up suddenly and took the needle off the record. I could hear the tapping of the hot water pipes, and Travis snoring quietly in the other room.

  “Sorry,” she apologized again. “I can’t hear ‘Pissing in a River’ right now. Way too much.” She stubbed out her cigarette and stood up. “And I’m keeping you awake.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “I like talking about music and books and everything.”

  “Then we’ll talk more later on.” She ruffled my hair and turned the stereo off. The orange glow went away. It was completely dark.

  “Can you see?” I asked, climbing back into bed.

  “Yeah. I know this place by heart.”

  The next morning, when I woke up, I remembered my mom playing her records in the dark. I wondered if I’d dreamed it all. But then, when I went to grab my backpack on the way out the door, I noticed a stack of books balanced on Travis’s amp, tied with a burgundy ribbon. On top was one of Mom’s notes, written in silver ink on a black note card.

  Maria,

  Here’s your real New York education!

  Start with Cowboy Mouth and work your

  way down. Side two of Radio Ethiopia

  coming soon …

  V.

  I untied the ribbon and looked at them all. The creased covers, the edges of the pages worn soft from my mother’s hands turning them over and over again. I ran my finger along the titles, the names. Sam Shepard. Patti Smith. Babel. Faithfull. Edie. Jim
Carroll. Arthur Rimbaud. Charles Baudelaire. The True Adventures of the Rolling Stones.

  I tucked the first three into my already-stuffed backpack and ran out the door.

  I was sitting there in chemistry class, thinking about everything but chemistry. I was thinking about my mom in the blackout in 1977. I was thinking about Patti Smith. I was thinking about Gram, the kid from the record store, who I had decided was not annoying at all but was pretty nice. I was wishing he went to Prince Academy, or that I went to NYU.

  “Hey, Beverly. Bev-er-leee …” The guy behind me was chanting. I had my nose in my book, trying to speed-read the last of the chapter that I was supposed to have read on the subway that morning, when I was reading Cowboy Mouth instead.

  “Beverly!” The guy yanked my hair. I turned around. What was his name? Tyler. He was in my homeroom, too. And he was a smartass.

  “Are you talking to me?”

  “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Bev!”

  “My name’s not Beverly,” I told him. “It’s Maria.”

  “Right. Listen, Beverly,” the kid went on. “I was wondering if you could possibly go sit somewhere else or at least move your big head over so us normal-sized people back here can maybe see a little of the chalkboard?” The kids next to him laughed. “I mean, if it’s not too much to ask, Beverly.”

  “I told you, my name’s Maria.” I gritted my teeth.

  “Beverly, it’s very simple.” He folded his arms. “But I’ll explain it slowly so that even you can understand. We call you Beverly, Beverly, because you’re a hillbilly. Get it now? Beverly Hillbilly.”

  Half the class was cracking up. I could feel my face getting hot. One kid made twangy banjo noises, like the song from that movie Deliverance.

  “Is that how you got so freakishly tall, Beverly?” Tyler asked. “Your mom sleep with her cousin or something?”

  I was afraid I was about to cry. But I didn’t. I took a deep breath and flipped him the bird instead.

  “How d’you like this view, Tyler?” I asked. The kids at his table went “Oooh,” but I grabbed my books and got up before he could say anything else. My eyes were so full of tears, I almost smacked right into Mr. Lehrman, our teacher, as I was walking out the door.

  “Everything all right, uh—” He paused. Trying to remember my name.

  “I feel sick,” I muttered, and walked out the door, down the hall, to my locker, to the front door, and out of there, out into the street.

  We said good-bye to the apartment on Rivington Street early that Saturday morning and drove over the river, to Brooklyn. Travis and his friend Slade, the bass player, took turns carrying boxes up from the truck while Mom and I stayed in the apartment, cleaning it up and unpacking boxes. The new apartment had a bigger kitchen, but otherwise it was pretty much the same as the last one. One bedroom, so I ended up on the futon in the living room again. And no more claw-foot tub. At least it was only one flight up.

  “I can’t believe we’re going to have to hear that music all night long,” she said above the rough thump of techno coming from the strip club downstairs. “I don’t want to see you anywhere near that place, you understand?” She waggled a bunch of hangers at me.

  “Yes, ma’am.” I handed her some clothes. “Why would I go into a strip club, anyway?”

  “I don’t know. Just don’t. And don’t call me ma’am, either. I’m not that old.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She threw a sweater at me. I threw it back.

  “Everybody’s a comedian.” She hung up the sweater. “Oh, no.”

  “What?”

  “There’s a tear in my jacket.” She held up a black blazer. “A rip in the sleeve. Right there.”

  “It’s right on the seam. No big deal.” I looked at it. “I can sew it up for you. I fix Dad’s clothes all the time.”

  “You do?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, aren’t you helpful.” She handed me the blazer. “This isn’t just any jacket, though. Wait right there—I’ll show you.” She wound her way through the maze of boxes to the living room, where she dug through the records she’d already unpacked. The stereo was the first thing we set up, so we’d have something to listen to while we worked.

  “Here it is. Look.” She came back to the bedroom holding the same Patti Smith record she’d given me the first night I’d come to New York. The one with the black-and-white cover.

  “It’s the same one,” she said, pointing to the jacket Patti had slung over her shoulder.

  “The jacket?”

  “The jacket. This is Patti’s.” She took the ripped blazer out of my hands and held it up. “You wanna try it on?”

  “Okay.” I shrugged and slid my arms into the sleeves.

  “Oh my gosh.” My mom sort of gasped. “It fits you perfectly.”

  “It’s nice.” It was a better fit than my school blazer. Almost like it had been tailored for me.

  “I knew this painter named Ellen, and she lived at the Chelsea Hotel the same time that Patti did,” Mom explained. “She went into her place after she moved out—Patti’s place, I mean—and she found this hanging in the back of the closet. It was right after Horses came out, and the cover was so famous. Ellen couldn’t believe she left it. But she gave it to me because she knew how much I totally love Patti. Didn’t you just love this record?”

  “Um, it was okay.”

  “Okay? Maria! Nobody thinks Horses is okay. You either freak out and love it or you don’t.”

  “I guess I—I didn’t really listen to it. All the way through.” I busied myself studying the record cover. I wasn’t so sure the jacket I had on was the one from the picture. And I wasn’t so sure I wanted to hear more of this music. I thought about the night I woke up to my mom listening to that Patti Smith album in the dark. It seemed to make her so sad.

  “I knew you didn’t listen to this record! Because you’d totally flip out if you heard it. Come on, let’s go put it on right now.”

  I took Mom’s jacket off as carefully as I could, trying not to rip the sleeve any more. Maybe my mom had already forgotten that night. Or maybe this record didn’t make her as sad. She climbed through the boxes again, back to the living room, where the turntable sat on the bare floor. She took off the Talking Heads and put the Patti Smith record on. That line was playing right when I walked in. Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.

  “Oh my God, we should totally smoke a joint right now,” my mom said. “This record is even more amazing when you’re—” She stopped and put a finger to her lips. “I shouldn’t have said that, should I?”

  “It’s okay,” I said. I didn’t care if my mom smoked pot. Even though I knew it was bad for me, and I could’ve gotten into major trouble, I smoked pot sometimes when my dad was gone and I was home alone and scared. I guess I figured I could be doing a lot worse.

  “No, it’s so not okay!” She covered her eyes with her hands. “I’m trying to be a good mom, I really am.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “I completely suck at it.”

  “You don’t suck. Come on,” I told her. “You’re, like, the coolest mom ever.”

  “But I don’t know where to draw the line, you know? I feel like I should be looking after you more, going to your school and meeting your teachers and all that PTA-mom stuff. But then I think back to when I was your age, and I hated how my stepmother tried to run my life. It sucked. And you’re so, like, Super Kid anyway—”

  “I’m definitely not super.” I laughed.

  “But you totally are! I was such a basket case when I was your age. And I look at you, at how grown-up you are and how you just—I mean, look at how you moved up here and started this school, getting up early, studying so hard. I’m so incredibly proud of you right now and I know that I—” She cleared her throat. She sounded almost like she was going to cry. “I know it doesn’t have anything to do with me. I mean, I feel bad that I wasn’t there when you were growing up, but if I had been, then maybe you’d be a ba
sket case like I was.”

  She got up and went to the kitchen counter, where a pack of cigarettes and a lighter sat next to a stack of dishes wrapped in newspaper. She shook one of the cigarettes out of the pack and lit it.

  “How awesome is this song, right?” She waved her cigarette in the air, smiling. “Didn’t I tell you Patti’s the greatest?”

  “Yeah. This is pretty great,” I said quietly.

  “I wish I could’ve seen you more. When you were growing up. I know I should’ve—I don’t know, I should’ve tried harder. It seemed like I never had enough money to get down there, and your dad was always working.” She took a long drag on the cigarette. “I still feel guilty that I left in the first place. But I wouldn’t have—I just couldn’t deal with the—” She shook her head. “I couldn’t deal with South Carolina. It was like Jersey but worse. Like, dead. Just a totally dead place, dead people. Nobody had any ideas. Any life. Just nothing happening at all. You know what I mean?”

  “Yeah.” I knew exactly what she meant. But she was kind of freaking me out. There was a strange, serious look in her eyes, and she seemed nervous.

  “Okay, where do you want this?” Travis stood in the doorway with Slade, each of them holding opposite ends of a huge canvas marked with broad, curving brushstrokes of purple and black.

  “In the bedroom. Wait, who’s watching the truck?” Mom asked.

  “Some kid we gave a dollar to.”

  “Oh my gosh, Travis, please tell me you didn’t.”

  “Vic, he’s, like, ten.”

  “Yeah, so he’s probably taken everything but the rearview mirror!” Mom went running off down the stairs, her cigarette trailing smoke and ash, while Travis and Slade moved the painting into the bedroom, grunting and laughing at the whole thing.

  I was in the middle of leaving my dad a message when he picked up the phone.

  “Maria? What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”