Behind the Song

by K. M. Walton

  By twelve, I was enamored by the leaves on trees, how they surrendered to fall time with orchestrated brilliance. The change of season. Back to school and back in stride. No more summer. October was when the East Coast chill came in like clockwork. The cool air threatened. I was a breath of a girl who could never quite reconcile red, orange, yellow, and chocolate leaves falling to their end, all that dying in magnificent color. Green was how they should’ve left, uniform, monotone. If they were going to look richly colored and variant, they should stay forever. I’ve grappled with that idea from that time to this.

  My birthday is in October. It’s my mother Elodie Lewis’s birthday and her father Daddy-Bob’s. It’s my first cousin Tracey’s birthday and my second cousin Jamie’s. When October arrived, it was like a gong sounded. Celebrations abounded. Yet what occurred at Halloween eclipsed every one. Indeed, when I was a kid, October meant Halloween; I believed they were synonymous. So, as my twelfth birthday passed early in the month that year, like every other October prior, I felt myself become giddy. My costume, my mother’s creation, had in previous years (well, four years running) been the expressed envy of the second through sixth grade classes at the Samuel B. Huey School in West Philadelphia.

  Dressed in African princess garb complete with a mile-high headwrap that covered my afroed mane, the height of which seemed to eclipse my slight frame, I was elementary elegance. As icing, my mother would add a hint of blush to my cheeks, add a dusting to my lips, strap a brown baby doll to my back and place more bangles on my arms than they could hold. I was ready for a walk beside the Nile—or at the very least a stroll through the school auditorium for the Halloween promenade. My primary school costume had been prize-worthy, but this was not primary school—it was my seventh-grade year at Henry C. Lea Middle School. I was looking forward to surprising my new school and a tougher crowd with the upgraded version of what was a winning formula.

  So, the countdown began. First came October 4, my birthday, then Daddy-Bob’s on the fifth, the very next day. My mother Elodie’s would arrive on the eighteenth, and then costume preparation and reveal at month’s end. Except, Halloween came and went that year. I don’t quite remember it or Thanksgiving that year, or Christmas in the month to follow, or any holiday for several years after that October. That October, on my mother’s birthday, her mother, Mother Laura, my grandmother, died. Breast cancer.

  My family braved the fall and East Coast winter that year like a military troop, pushing through ’til spring. We burrowed through enemy territory with no rations and lost weapons, it felt. We pushed in head and shoulders first, through what felt like ice. We pulled ourselves over barbed wire barehanded. We bled. We survived on shallow breaths.

  Laura was everybody’s mother and my own father Edward’s buddy. My personal cheerleader for the start of middle school: “Now, if the kids say anything bad about you or tease you in any way, you tell them I’ve been where you’re going!” I had no idea what that meant at twelve. But it sounded big. So, first month in, I did that. It worked like a charm. I was too eccentric, too bright, too pint-size-revolutionary not to be teased. It was coming. I didn’t fit, I never would. I would need wit. Thank God for Mother Laura; we were on a roll, one quick retort down, dozens more to learn and echo.

  It was my second month of middle school when she’d returned to her home in California and died. My ace, my friend was gone. It was just October—what would I do now? I would surely never be able to come up with sayings that could thwart the attacks of wily seventh graders on my own. Mother Laura was my first encounter with loss. I remember I was in my head a lot, ’cause my heart was a dangerous place to be. There was a note that rang out that day, a howl that filled my mother’s lungs released and filled the room. Like a high C of a diva to shattered glass was her scream to my heart. Grown-ups in a circle, me looking on. I was rattled. I was awake.

  I’ve never stopped hearing that note.

  This was someone else’s seventeen. Another person’s twenty-three. This was my twelfth year and October.

  We held together until deep summer, and what felt like not enough heat to thaw the rock-hard grief the previous fall had served up, when it came again. October.

  I felt guilty for wanting to celebrate without sadness. It had been a big year, one that included my having transitioned into being a young woman, blossoming, getting my period. I was thirteen. I wanted to run ahead, but my family’s corporate sadness and the anniversary of my grandmother’s passing pulled me to slow. My mother was sad, grieving. Whatever joy she’d experience in the months earlier bottomed to black when October returned.

  She was sad for herself, sad for her dad, my Daddy-Bob. This would be his first birthday without the wife he loved. As granddad and granddaughter, Daddy-Bob and I were a refined pair. We were polite. Our birthday phone calls always included, “How’s the weather?” and other meteorological and geological observations.

  “Daddy-Bob, the largest ever recorded earthquake happened where?” I’d challenge.

  “Uh, Chile 1960.” he’d replied. He knew everything.

  We were close; I was his little buddy. My frequent visits to California to see my grandparents would feature him announcing his nap time. It was his cue to me and other of his grandchildren to feel free to embark on a treasure hunt through the top drawer of his bureau, to find loose M&M’s in his sock drawer while he slept or pretended to sleep.

  At least I’d like to believe he was leaving a treasure to find. I never got to ask him. I don’t remember a birthday call that year. He wasn’t feeling well. Days later, right before the anniversary of his wife’s passing, he left us. It was just too hard for Daddy-Bob to stay without his great love. A phone call from California came again that year. Three hundred sixty-one days had not passed; it felt back to back. The reverberation of my mother’s murmuring, “No! I have nobody now!” when she received the news, was something it would take me many years to understand. Ten days after my birthday that year, I was aroused from the sound sleep of childhood with a jolt. This was someone else’s eighteen. Another person’s twenty-five. This was my thirteenth year, and October.

  A year later in October, Robert Jr., my mom’s oldest brother, died, just before my mom’s birthday, like their mom and dad. There was a call from California, but no grownups gathering. No screams. Quiet. There simply was no more grief available. There was numb and still.

  The human psyche is wondrous, the determination for perseverance powerful. At the end of emotion, the air is rather peaceful. It was only God that moved my mother, us, forward, ’cause we were planted in a place, content to be in the still forever. Life shifted beneath our feet. Was this walking or standing still? What is it that holds the heart together, what is it that tears it apart? I understood something I didn’t have language for that fall, I was clear.

  At fourteen, my world felt like I was wearing too-strong prescription glasses. This was someone else’s twenty-one. Another person’s thirty. This was my fourteenth year and October.

  It would take years before October’s note quieted to a whisper, before memories of fall became gentle nudges and could be met with soft smiles and warm sighs and an “Okay now, hush.” There would come a day when innocent ponderings about autumn leaves changing color returned to me and when “Happy Birthday, Mommy” and “Happy Birthday, Kingston” would not betray but instead usher in a full-on celebration that might last the entire month of October. In time something immeasurable did come. A gift. The kind of gift that a friend wraps too quickly, the one where the unkempt package and badly timed delivery defy the beauty it contains. The gift for my mother lay in the road that led her to those Octobers.

  The way forward was back.

  She would need to revisit an experience in the past to usher in the strength and resilience to end the loud noise created. It would be the only way to heal herself and heal her family. It would be hard to tap on the shoulder and stare down the night th
at happened twenty years prior to the year that took her mother. She would have to go back before me and my brother, before my dad, to the time when it was just Elodie and her best friend Ava.

  • • •

  It was impossible to believe that trash had purchased it. Garbage had built it, from the ground up. Old cans, broken toys, empty milk cartons (long before recycling would appear), crumpled candy wrappers, the smell of rotten eggs and too-aged cheese would lay the framework. Rubbish had purchased the Hill District mansion in the steel town of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

  The Lewises’ estate stood like a great blue heron poised and stately high above the other homes in the neighborhood. Every brick and tile, every nail and floor joist, ceilings, floors and hallways every inch, and the land it stood upon, was secured outright by a brilliant and highly educated, utterly charming, and undeniably shrewd Robert Lewis, whose business happened to be garbage collection. Yes, he was a trashman by day, who seemed to wear his gray jumpsuit like superheroes in disguise do, in that Clark-Kent-into-Superman kind of way. He cleaned up well, and when he did, no sign of his workday was evident.

  His elegant wife Laura was a force of nature, his Lois Lane, his every woman who brought home a hefty entrepreneurial salary as a cleaning woman to a wealthy Jewish family who lived in the Squirrel Hill section of the city. They were industrious; there was no shame. Bob and Elle (the name he liked to call her) were defiant. They knew something and maybe they’d tell it or maybe they wouldn’t, an unusual pair.

  Their road to wealth had sharp corners, was without guardrails, and lacked signage, but was sure all the same. They were an eccentric couple who lived to flaunt the story of how they came to wealth at the galas they attended, smiling inwardly when the story of their pathway to bounty was met with blank stares and bewilderment. They never bothered to answer the whys. “Oh, you work in sanitation? Why?” “You’re a maid, really? Why?”

  For them the answer to the myriad of questions was simply, “Why not!” It was the fifties, and for the times, they were rich. Their home was grand, six bedrooms, four baths. They were as accessible as they were elite.

  The Lewises were politically connected, friends with the mayor, friends with the owner of the local speakeasy and numbers runner. They changed the landscape. Meetings happened in basements and councilmen were elected. They were the type of family who made announcements in the local newspaper. The Lewises announced graduations and weddings, their children attended cotillions and were members of Jack and Jill of America, an organization whose focus was to provide Black American youth with civic, cultural, and educational opportunities. It was the time of the 400s, the secret society of elite and well-positioned black families. Yet, of the Lewises’ four children, Elodie, Naomi, Birdie, and Robert Jr., the appeal of being considered a 400 was lost on them all. All except Elodie. She wore the badge with honor.

  At nineteen, Elodie stood swan-like and beautiful at five foot eleven: long legs, slender shoulders with proper curves. Her face exotic in the way that high cheekbones and doe-shaped brown eyes can be. In a word, Elodie was stunning.

  At graduation from Schenley High almost two years earlier, she towered over most of her graduating class. She was unapologetic. Achieving the high honor roll and straight As happened for her with moderate study, and she seemed to excel at any discipline that required grace. Ballet and tap were her favorite, but she was merciless on a dance floor. Elodie loved to dance. If she wasn’t so warm, so genuine, boys would have found her intimidating. But she was never at a loss for dance partners or friends. She could start the dance floor or clear it, and most boys wanted to dance with her just to see if they could hold their own. A tall feat: they could not. Who could?

  Elodie had skills. She was the girl all the girls wanted to be, demure in an unassuming way, yet kind. Her stare and smile were captivating, her laugh bellowed. She took up space. She was an undeniable beauty, and just as school ended she’d been awarded her first modeling campaign, a billboard advertisement to be the face of VICTORY BRAND Beer Bologna. A year later, the first billboard hung high above the meat packing company’s exterior. Then within weeks, the ads were all over the state. Her smiling face loomed larger than life. She imagined what people thought as they drove by en route to everywhere. She dreamed of fame and thought, “I’m going to be someone, someday.”

  The world seemed to open up to Elodie in the two years following graduation. She’d been approached by the Tommy Dorsey Jazz Orchestra and the Four Step Brothers to tap dance as part of their ensemble. The opportunities each felt grand and surreal. Still, the billboard ad was the highlight. The first time she saw one she was with her parents on the North side of Pittsburgh. They’d piled into the family’s 1956 diamond-white Lincoln Continental Mark II to go sightseeing and to get ice cream. It was just after Sunday service at the St. Benedict Catholic Church.

  They drove through neighborhood after neighborhood when her father Robert Sr. spotted it in the distance. “Oh my God, Elodie!” But she could see it too. She sat between her parents in the front seat, and as they approached she and her mother began jumping and squealing in their seats. The north side of Pittsburgh was an exclusively white neighborhood at that time, but that eighty-foot billboard starring Elodie Lewis, as she stared back with her bright eyes and flawless smile, drowned out all the background noise.

  It affirmed Elodie was queen.

  They all got out of the car and ran around it in different directions with excitement. When they settled down, they stood quietly looking up at the billboard there on the side of the road. It was huge, she was huge, larger than life, hanging there in midair.

  The modeling jobs started to pour in, soon after her billboards appeared across the state. Life was thrilling. It was a sweltering late August afternoon by the time they returned home. She hardly remembered the ride or anything beyond the billboard as she slowly stepped across the threshold of the door.

  When her middle sister Naomi greeted her and handed her the phone, the room began spinning. “Hello!” she said. It was Elodie’s best friend Frieda. The legendary Sam Cooke was coming to town and Elodie was invited to be Frieda’s guest. Belle, the other member of their lifelong trio, would come too. Elodie could barely contain herself. It didn’t matter that it would be another two months until the show. She imagined it would be the best birthday present ever. October 17, the day before her twentieth birthday, could not come soon enough.

  A buzz was in the air in the days that approached Elodie’s birthday, and now it was the morning before. Elodie met the day with her usual enthusiasm. She reminded her dad that he would be her ride to Frieda’s later that day as she sped through the kitchen en route to her ballet class. She looked forward to spending time with her dad, the man the rest of the family found introspective and reclusive behind closed doors. He was such a complicated man, layered, but not to Elodie. She got him, and he adored her. It would be them alone on the drive to Frieda’s, catching up for two hours.

  The three hours of classes seemed to whiz by. The head of the company, Mrs. Kooperschmidt, corrected her posture more than a few times. It was hard to concentrate. “Elodie, more!” she said. “Elodie, arabesque, plié, grand battement. This is quite an easy combination, my child!” she quipped.

  Mrs. Anna Kooperschmidt was a petite German woman and the owner of the Ballet Conservatory, which Elodie had attended since she was a small child of seven. It was a bit of grace in the center of downtown Pittsburgh. Amid the skyscrapers and hustle and bustle of town, car horns honking and trolley cars rolling back and forth, the Ballet Conservatory sat tucked in on the second floor of a storefront. Its classical music streamed down into the street, adding elegance as a backdrop. Both the Ballet Conservatory and Fleisher’s Bakery, two doors down, made a walk down Liberty Avenue a happy assault to the senses.

  Yet it would’ve taken a lot more than the lure of cake and classical music to pacify a seven-year-old Elodie on her
first day; it had been a disaster. She and most of the other girls cried through the class and the directions to run, leap, and spin. Eating graham cracker snacks and milk and squeezing her mother tightly when she arrived for pickup were the only things she enjoyed about that first class. Even so, for her mother Laura, hours-long dance classes were decidedly a more highbrow child-care experience than leaving Elodie with a sitter. Besides, there was something in Elodie that she’d hoped Mrs. Kooperschmidt could bring out.

  That she did. Within weeks, Elodie was a prized student hanging on her teacher’s every word. Elodie had grown from favored student to protégé in a few short years. For her teacher it was now personal, and through the years, commitment to her student Elodie grew into love, like the love for a grandchild.

  Maybe it was more, given the fact that Mrs. Kooperschmidt never had children of her own. It seemed the relationships she developed with a few of the girls over the years quieted the longing in a way she could bear. Any strictness she displayed was simply a disguise for caring. They never saw her smile, but they had no doubt of her dedication to them. Her students were everything to her. It was no wonder that Elodie now taught younger students dance at the conservatory. She had a gift and patience. However, today she was neither patient nor attentive. She could feel herself going through the motions in class, catching up with herself, daydreaming. Mrs. Kooperschmidt could feel she was not there. Elodie couldn’t wait for the concert.

  After class Elodie grabbed her things from the changing room and hurriedly made her way downstairs and onto the street. It was sunny. It was a brisk day, unseasonably so. She whizzed past the bakery—the aroma made her smile—then came to the corner and ducked into Harrison’s Pet Store. She came through the door winded. “Hi, Mr. Harrison!” she smiled, walking swiftly with purpose, her greeting polite but clearly a formality. The elderly gentleman behind the counter Mr. Harrison answered her unspoken question flatly from behind his newspaper, “She’s in the back with Ava.”