Songbird

by Lisa Samson

  “Heavens, Francie, you’ve got your hands full! I’ll bet they’re cute!”

  “Oh, they are!”

  “This is so good talking to you again. How’s everybody doing?”

  “Well, Myrtle, not so good. You have no idea how glad I was to see that photo of you in the paper. We’d been trying to find you for another reason.”

  Her voice drops. Something is very wrong. “What is it, Francie?”

  “Stacy died a month ago.”

  “Oh, no! What happened?”

  “She had ovarian cancer.”

  “Oh, Francie. I wish I had known.”

  That autopilot of calm kicks in.

  “I know. But that isn’t the only reason I’m calling, Myrtle. Stacy had a child.”

  “So she married, too?”

  “No. She went a little bit astray for a while, got pregnant, and you can figure out the rest of the story.”

  “How old’s the child?”

  “Two. A little girl named Hope.”

  “Who is she staying with?”

  “With us.”

  “That must be terribly difficult.”

  “It is. And we’d keep her in a heartbeat, but that wasn’t Stacy’s wish.”

  “No?”

  “No. She wanted you to take Hope if we could find you. It was a shock to us all, I won’t hesitate to say, but there it was right in her will. She didn’t have the nerve to tell us face-to-face.”

  “Well, being so sick and all.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it. I’m not saying I blame her, Myrtle, just saying what happened.”

  “I’ll have to talk this over with my husband.”

  Oh, Stace.

  “I figured that. But the longer Hope stays with us, the harder the transition will be for her.”

  “I’ll call you tomorrow. I’m sure Harlan will be fine with it.”

  “I knew you’d come through, Myrtle. You always did come through. Mama always said if there was anybody in this world that could rise to a challenge, it was you.”

  “She did say that? Mrs. Evans said that?”

  “She thought the world of you, Myrtle.”

  “How’s your dad?”

  “Still living in that apartment. But he stopped traveling a couple of years ago. Opened his own children’s clothing store out in that shopping center in Boonsboro.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. And you know Grandma died not soon after you left Lynchburg.”

  “I know. I went by the home the first time I came back to town and they told me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Her prayers have lived inside of me all these years, Francie.”

  “That sure is the truth. There were times I could almost see that ‘hedge of protection’ she was always talking about.”

  A great wail erupts in the background. “You’d better go put that fire out,” I said.

  “That’s Hope. Gloria just bit her arm. Those two! ‘Bye, Myrtle!”

  And she hangs up the phone.

  I stare out of the filmy glass of the phone booth and I remember Stacy. I assume she’s right there next to her own.

  “Harlan?”

  “Yes, Shug?”

  “Did I ever tell you about the Evanses?”

  “No, I don’t believe you ever have.”

  We lay in the section of the camper van we called “the loft.”

  Harlan is just a real skinny guy and he’s taken to wearing these new thin ties that the Chess King sells and they make him look even skinnier, if you ask me, not to mention straight off the set of My Three Sons. So you can believe me when I say it’s easy for us both to fit on that bed that juts out over the driving area. Now, that, for your information is what makes this a Class C motor home and not a Class A. Class As look like buses; Cs resemble vans with a house piggybacked on it. Believe it or not, Melvin installed a skylight up here and we watch the stars a lot. All I can say is, “Thank You God we’re not in that truck camper anymore.” Talk about cramped.

  Now, Harlan and I have never had much of a problem in the love department, if you know what I mean, which could be a little surprising considering that Richard-in-Vermont escapade. However, that was only one bitter mistake in a lifetime that may have had many. Not only that, Harlan is tender and treats me with such care, not rough and rowdy like Richard. And now that the sweat is cooling and we both feel like cats, I figure I’d best bring it up.

  “Do you want to hear about the Evanses?”

  “If it’s important to you.”

  “They were my set of foster parents after I lost Mama.”

  “Were they good to you?”

  “Oh, yes! Mrs. Evans was the best lady in the whole world.”

  “Was?”

  “She died, too, when I was thirteen.”

  “Oh, Shug!”

  See? This is why he doesn’t know the whole story yet. Harlan feels other people’s pain way too acutely.

  He shakes his head. “I knew I was doing the wrong thing by staying silent. I knew I should have asked you to talk about your pain! Here you’ve been carrying this around and I could have helped lighten your load.”

  “Don’t be silly, Harlan. You did lighten my load.”

  And there it all plays out, just like I knew it would, me comforting him. I hold him to myself as he says, “I’m sorry, Shug. I’m so sorry. I should have known. I should have cared more.”

  “Oh, Harlan, don’t be ridiculous. You do care! Now let’s get off this topic before I explode. I have some things I have to tell you. Hold on for a second.”

  Naked, I jump down from the bed, use the bathroom and stare at myself in the mirror for a while. How could I ask him to just suddenly bring a child into the ministry?

  Aahhh! But the self-punishment he’s doing right now for not having the instincts he feels he should have had will work in my favor. Of course he’ll let me keep Hope now.

  Thank You, Jesus. The timing couldn’t be better.

  I climb back up into the loft and wrap myself beneath the quilt, next to his lean warmth.

  “So why do you want to tell me about the Evanses tonight, Shug?”

  He takes my hand and we continue to stare at the Plexiglas-covered sky. A dim reflection of our faces stares back — Harlan’s long thin aspect with that Fred Astaire chin, me with my Irish smile and Transylvania hair. My ball-bearing breasts. His sunken chest. If any couple looks less glamorous after making love than we do, they must be one sorry pair! I smile despite the sad story ahead, the part where Mrs. Evans dies.

  I cry again, because Harlan is the only person to whom I could ever confess my longing to tell Mrs. Evans of my love.

  “I think she knows, Shug.”

  “I’m hoping Jesus passed along the information.”

  “I’ll bet He did just that.”

  I pull the quilt up—the one Luella made us for our wedding present—around my shoulders.

  “Anyway, my stepsister Francie called the ministry and I called her back.”

  “What did she want?”

  “Stacy, she was the youngest sister, the one I shared a room with, died a month ago.”

  “Oh, no, Charmaine. Are you okay? I was wondering why you were so quiet today.”

  “It gets worse, though. Stacy had a little girl named Hope. Two years old.”

  “Poor thing. At least she’s got her daddy.”

  “There’s no daddy in the picture.”

  “Well, you can sure relate to all of that, then, can’t you, Shug?”

  I am silent.

  “Talk to me, Shug.”

  “Stacy left a will, Harlan, concerning little Hope. She left her in my care.”

  Harlan is silent.

  I don’t know what to say. I want him to ask a question and any question will do because I’m not a choosy type, not after living half a childhood off cold egg sandwiches from the Texas Inn.

  The silence of grief and the night impregnates itself with sleep, for me an
yway. February night rolls over inside a freshly quilted blanket of dew and shuts off the sounds of all that is human.

  A touch awakens me. Harlan’s thin hand is gilded with the morning sun. He flips his fingers over my knuckles as glibly as he flips through the soft onionskin pages of his old Bible. I gaze out over the prickly cornfield beside the church.

  “When do we go pick up Hope?” he whispers. His fingers travel to my chin and he parallels my face with his own.

  “As soon as Forest Hill Church can let us go?”

  “The last meeting is tomorrow night. Why don’t you call Francie and let her know we’ll be down the morning after. We’ll get an early start.”

  I raise my own flittering fingers through the thinning hair atop his head. “You’re really something, Harlan Hopewell.”

  “No, Shug. You are.”

  “What made you want to take her on?”

  “Her name. Can you imagine it? Hope Hopewell? That’s a name that will make anyone smile. Especially you, Charmaine.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You need somebody to belong to, Shug.”

  “But I belong to you.” I nestle against his shoulder. I love this man so much.

  “Not in the same way.”

  He is right. And I find it amazing that a man who truly knows so little about me knows me so well.

  6

  Honest to goodness, I swear if we owned a house, which we don’t, we’d have to take out a second mortgage just for diapers! I make Harlan and the boys stop at rest stops all the time as soon as I change Hope because I refuse to travel all day in the RV with a soiled diaper.

  I wouldn’t trade my Hope for anything in the world, and most every mother I know says the same thing and rightly so. She took to us right away. Harlan loves her, too. “We’ve been sent a gift from God, Shug!”

  And I agree.

  The nicest thing I noticed about Hope right up front is this, she has Mrs. Evans’s pansy eyes. I feel like God is giving me the chance to give back to Mrs. Evans all she did for me. Yep, pansy eyes and feathery, light brown hair that her satin ribbons use as a sliding board.

  And do the people at the crusades love her? Oh, my! Sometimes if Hope is crying, I’ll sing with her there on my hip. Our piano player, Henry Windsor, will even let Hope sit at the piano with him if both she and Leo, Grace’s four-year-old, won’t stay content in the nursery. Grace Underhill is our resident, yet precious, as in “all God’s children are precious” fly in the ointment. She sings with the crusade as well now. So there we’ll be, up on stage singing and playing with the kids all around us and the folks out in the congregation thinking we’re just regular folks after all. Just like them.

  In all truthfulness, I think Henry likes having someone next to him up there. He’s quite short, almost as short as I am. Dresses up in dark suits, shirts stiffer than Mama’s gin, and hangs bright yellow ties around his neck—sunshiney bits of silk that light up a face filled with the joy of music. Henry and I love to perform together. And when I’m with him, I’m glad I’m short.

  Now, I don’t know much about much, but crusade people have much more in common with the circus crowd than they do regular, house-abiding citizens.

  Tonight is a night like that. The Songbirds have been complete once again for several years now. I love them like sisters, well, Ruby anyway. Grace is more like that annoying cousin you feel so sorry for you can’t turn away. But our voices blend like sisters’ voices. However, I do believe the Songbirds are beginning to crumble and it breaks my heart.

  So tonight we start with “Jesus Loves Me,” a wonderful message no doubt. Ruby undergirds us all with her deep, African tones, and Swedish-rooted Grace lifts us up with her sweet high notes. And then there’s me, in the middle as usual, doing the melody. I guess Mrs. Evans really knew what she was talking about all those years ago.

  Ruby wears red like she almost always does and she stands to my left, tall and gorgeous, and smooth. Her butt protrudes beneath her gown, and so do her breasts and her tummy, but Ruby doesn’t care. She always says, “I am woman, hear me roar!” and then she’ll curve her thin, sculpted arms up into a bodybuilder’s pose. The gown falls slim and straight, yet modest with a high neck and tight, long sleeves made of fine chiffon. After all, we sing to a pretty conservative crowd more times than not.

  To my left stands Grace. We wear our autumn lineup of dresses. Grace is swaddled in goldenrod. The dress hangs tea-length, which she loves, and flares outward. Truly it reminds me of something that Rosemary Clooney would have worn in White Christmas. Oh, I love that movie! Matching pumps trace the outlines of her small feet. Grace sings with little hoopla, but her face shines the light of heaven, or at least that’s the look she’s going for. Grace will tell you singing with the crusade is a job and nothing more. “You two can feel called. I’m just a backup singer.”

  And here I stand in the middle, not because I want to be the star, but because if Grace gets Ruby’s notes right in her ear she starts to sing the melody with me. I’m wearing orange. Now let me tell you, standing in between Miss African Sculpture, imposing and ready for the royal ball, and Miss Blond Junior Miss of the Universe 1973, I look like a little flame between two searchlights! However, my dress distinction is that I go shorter, the hemline at midknee. I never did that before the Songbirds met up with Harlan’s crusade all those years ago. But he said to me, “You’ve got pretty legs, Shug. You need to show them off a little.”

  Out came the scissors, let me tell you! I love that man. I haven’t had a nosebleed since I met him.

  After “Jesus Loves Me,” Henry ching-and-lings, and bring-a-dings his fingers up a key or two and ends up going right on into my most favorite of all the old songs, “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.”

  I know He watches me, just like that song says.

  A lot of folks are jealous of a natural gift whether it be singing, drawing or writing, or math and the like. And even though I don’t know much about much, when you realize that God gave it to you through none of your own doings, you feel it in the nerves of your teeth that He can just as easily take it away. And so you try harder. You try your best not to bury it in a napkin like the man in that parable did, and then God blesses even more. Now that’s the joyful part.

  Tonight Harlan and I lie in the little bedroom part of the RV, Hope crying like no tomorrow is in sight, refusing to be calmed, crying for reasons only she knows and I project all sorts of craziness. What if she’s crying because she has something wrong with her brain synapses? And what if those brain synapse malfunctions just get worse and worse and worse? And what if, say when she’s a teenager, she decides to steal a car because her brain synapses rob her conscience? And what if she ends up in a penitentiary, living through all those horrors only to end up in a fight with kitchenware duct-taped to her hand? What if? Times like these, a mother would gladly trade every last lick of talent she possesses for the certainty that her children will come to the Lord, walk in the light, and be a living blessing.

  People think of me as a “singer.” But in truth, I hope that someday, years down the line, God will prove through my children, Hope and the ones He’ll give us someday, that He gave me the grace to be remembered as a whole lot more than that.

  7

  I am sitting in the office of some bigwig music agent in Nashville, Tennessee. And when I say “bigwig,” I mean big wig. This lady’s hair puts mine to such shame it can only be as fake as her breasts, which stick out a mile. This cleavage is the kind that deserves some kind of geological status. The Marianas Trench.

  That’s her name. MaryAnna Trench.

  It’s all I can do to sit here without chuckling. I am afraid I have a look on my face that’s disrespectful and condescending, sort of like what I imagine a famous novelist might wear when some well-meaning grandmother tells him her eight-year-old granddaughter is an author, too, because she wrote a children’s book last week. However, it really is just a simple girl trying not to laugh.

 
; I don’t think, however, that MaryAnna Trench notices my expression because she’s too busy looking through her desk drawer for her pack of smokes, thus giving me an even better view of MaryAnna’s trench.

  I wish Harlan sat with me now, because we’d be laughing ourselves a good one! On second thought, maybe I’m glad he decided to hold down Fort Hope. And Ruby’s there, too. I’ve had the same conversation with her for three days straight.

  “Sign on with me, Ruby. Come on! It’ll be you and me, like always!”

  “No way! I’m with you and Harlan because I believe in you all. But entering Southern gospel music officially? It’s a white world.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “It is true. There’s a huge gap between Southern gospel music and black gospel.”

  I shrugged. What could I say? She was right.

  “And can you imagine a black lady and a white lady paired up together in an official act? You never see that, Char. In gospel music or any other kind.”

  “But we could start a trend!”

  “Un-uh. Not me. I’m not that brave. And you wouldn’t be either if you really thought about it.”

  But she got me thinking. Music is such a segregated world. Whether gospel or not. There are black-girl groups and white-girl groups. Black bands and white bands. And very rarely do the twain meet.

  Except for maybe KC and the Sunshine Band and they’ve been out of style for years.

  MaryAnna pulls me out of my thoughts.

  “I couldn’t believe my fortune when I saw you at that crazy Crusade,” MaryAnna says, her sprayed black up do bobbing with the movements of her hands. “I couldn’t believe I let Daddy drag me out to that thing.” She’s still poking through the drawer with a ruler now, pulling things from the back up to the front. “I thought I had an extra pack in here somewheres. I don’t guess you smoke, do you, Mrs. Hopewell?”

  “No, ma’am. Used to work in a bowling alley and had enough of it for a lifetime. Seems somebody was always lighting up.”

  “Good for you. Bad for me.”

  MaryAnna Trench’s tissue has the gray look of stimulus-based malnourishment. Coffee, cigarettes, and alcohol, I bet, keep her moving, like some sort of diuretic-driven Mrs. Frankenstein. I want to ask her how many times a day she has to pee, but know that isn’t a question for our first meeting, or maybe ever.