Shannon Pearl spent a good five minutes cleaning her glasses and then sat silent for the rest of the ride to school. I understood intuitively that she would not say anything, would in fact generously pretend to have fallen into our seat. I sat there beside her watching the pinched faces of my classmates as they kept looking back toward us. Just the way they stared made me want to start a conversation with Shannon. I imagined us discussing all the enemies we had in common while half the bus craned their necks to try to hear. But I couldn’t bring myself to actually do that, couldn’t even imagine what to say to her. Not till the bus crossed the railroad tracks at the south corner of Greenville Elementary did I manage to force my mouth open enough to say my name and then Reese’s.
She nodded impartially and whispered “Shannon Pearl” before taking off her glasses to begin cleaning them all over again. With her glasses off she half shut her eyes and hunched her shoulders. Much later, I would realize that she cleaned her glasses whenever she needed a quiet moment to regain her composure, or more often, just to put everything around her at a distance. Without glasses, the world became a soft blur, but she also behaved as if the glasses were all that made it possible for her to hear. Commotion or insults made while she was cleaning her glasses never seemed to register at all. It was a valuable trick when you were the object of as much ridicule as Shannon Pearl.
Christian charity, I knew, would have had me smile at Shannon but avoid her like everyone else. It wasn’t Christian charity that made me give her my seat on the bus, trade my third-grade picture for hers, sit at her kitchen table while her mama tried another trick on her wispy hair—“Egg and cornmeal, that’ll do the trick. We gonna put curls in this hair, darling, or my name an’t Roseanne Pearl”—or follow her to the Bushy Creek Highway Store and share the blue Popsicle she bought us. Not Christian charity, my fascination with her felt more like the restlessness that made me worry the scabs on my ankles. As disgusting as it all seemed, I couldn’t put away the need to scratch my ankles, or hang around what Granny called “that strange and ugly child.”
Other people had no such problem. Other than her mother and I, no one could stand Shannon. No amount of Jesus’s grace would make her even marginally acceptable, and people had been known to suddenly lose their lunch from the sight of the clammy sheen of her skin, her skull showing blue-white through the thin, colorless hair and those watery pink eyes flicking back and forth, drifting in and out of focus.
“Lord! But that child is ugly.”
“It’s a trial, Jesus knows, a trial for her poor parents.”
“They should keep her home.”
“Now, honey. That’s not like you. Remember, the Lord loves a charitable heart.”
“I don’t care. The Lord didn’t intend me to get nauseous in the middle of Sunday services. That child is a shock to the digestion.”
Driving from Greenville to Greer on Highway 85 past the Sears, Roebuck warehouse, the airbase, the rolling green-and-red mud hills—a trip we made almost every other day—my stepfather never failed to get us all to sing like some traveling gospel family. WHILE I WAS SLEEPING SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING, OH! SOMEBODY TOUCHED ME . . . MUST’HA BEEN THE HAND OF THE LORD . . .
Full-voice, all-out, late-evening gospel music filled the car and shocked the passing traffic. My stepfather never drove fast, and not a one of us could sing worth a damn. My sisters howled and screeched, my mama’s voice broke like she, too, dreamed of Teresa Brewer, and my stepfather made sounds that would have scared cows. None of them cared, and I tried not to let it bother me. I’d put my head out the window and howl for all I was worth. The wind filled my mouth and the roar obscured the fact that I sang as badly as any of them. Sometimes at the house I’d even go sing into the electric fan. It made my voice buzz and waver like a slide guitar, an effect I particularly liked, though Mama complained it gave her a headache and would give me an earache if I didn’t cut it out.
I took the fan out on the back porch and sang to myself. Maybe I wouldn’t get to be the star on the stage, maybe I’d wind up singing background in a “family”—all of us dressed alike in electric blue fringed blouses with silver embroidery. All I needed was a chance to turn my soulful brown eyes on a tent full of believers, sing out the little break in my mournful voice. I knew I could make them love me. There was a secret to it, but I would find it out. If Shannon Pearl could do it to me, I would find a way to do it to the world.
I had the idea that because she was so ugly on the outside, it was only reasonable that Shannon would turn out to be saintlike when you got to know her. That was the way it would have been in any storybook the local ladies’ society would have let me borrow. I thought of Little Women, The Bobbsey Twins, and all those novels about poor British families at Christmas. Tiny Tim, for Christ’s sake! Shannon, I was sure, would be like that. A patient and gentle soul had to be hidden behind those pale and sweaty features. She would be generous, insightful, understanding, and wise beyond her years. She would be the friend I had always needed.
That she was none of these was something I could never quite accept. Once she relaxed with me, Shannon invariably told horrible stories, most of which were about the gruesome deaths of innocent children. “. . . And then the tractor backed up over him, cutting his body in three pieces, but nobody seen it or heard it, you see, ’cause of the noise the thresher made. So then his mama come out with iced tea for everybody. And she put her foot down right in his little torn-open stomach. And oh Lord! Don’t you know ...”
I couldn’t help myself. I’d sit and listen, open-mouthed and fascinated, while this shining creature went on and on about decapitations. She loved best little children who had fallen in the way of large machines. It was something none of the grown-ups knew a thing about, though once in a while I’d hear a much shorter, much tamer version of one of Shannon’s stories from her mama. At those moments, Shannon would give me a grin of smug pride. Can’t I tell it better? she seemed to be saying. Gradually I admitted to myself what hid behind Shannon’s impassive pink-and-white features. Shannon Pearl simply and completely hated everyone who had ever hurt her, and spent most of her time brooding on punishments either she or God would visit on them. The fire that burned in her eyes was the fire of outrage. Had she been stronger or smarter, Shannon Pearl would have been dangerous. But half-blind, sickly, and ostracized, she was not much of a threat to anyone.
“I like your family,” Shannon sometimes said, though we both knew that was a polite lie. “Your mama’s a fine woman,” Roseanne Pearl would agree, while she eyed my too-tight raggedy dresses. She reminded me of my stepfather’s sisters looking at us out of smug, superior faces, laughing at my mama’s loose teeth and my sister’s curls done up in paper scraps. Whenever the Pearls talked about my people, I’d take off and not go back for weeks. I didn’t want the two parts of my life to come together.
We were living out past Henderson Road, on the other side of White Horse Highway. Up near the highway a revival tent had been erected. Some evenings I would walk up there on my own to sit outside and listen. The preacher was a shouter, something I had never liked. He’d rave and threaten, and it didn’t seem as if he was ever gonna get to the invocation. I sat in the dark, trying not to think about anything, especially not about the whipping I was going to get if I stayed too long. I kept seeing my Uncle Jack in the men who stood near the highway sharing a bottle in a paper sack, black-headed men with blasted rough-hewn faces. Was it hatred or sorrow that made them look like that, their necks so stiff and their eyes so cold?
Did I look like that?
Would I look like that when I grew up? I remembered Aunt Grace putting her big hands over my ears and turning my face to catch the light, saying, “Just as well you smart; you an’t never gonna be a beauty.”
At least I wasn’t as ugly as Shannon Pearl, I told myself, and was immediately ashamed. Shannon hadn’t made herself ugly, but if I kept thinking that way I just might. Mama always said people could see your soul in
your face, could see your hatefulness and lack of charity. With all the hatefulness I was trying to hide, it was a wonder I wasn’t uglier than a toad in mud season.
The singing started. I sat back on my heels and hugged my knees, humming. Revivals are funny. People get pretty enthusiastic, but they sometimes forget just which hymn it is they’re singing. I grinned to myself and watched the men near the road punch each other lightly and curse in a friendly fashion.
You bastard.
You son of a bitch.
The preacher said something I didn’t understand. There was a moment of silence, and then a pure tenor voice rose up into the night sky. The spit soured in my mouth. They had a real singer in there, a real gospel choir.
SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT . . . COMING FOR TO CARRY ME HOME . . . AS I WALKED OUT IN THE STREETS OF LAREDO . . . SWEET JESUS . . . LIFT ME UP, LIFT ME UP IN THE AIR. . . .
The night seemed to wrap all around me like a blanket. My insides felt as if they had melted, and I could just feel the wind in my mouth. The sweet gospel music poured through me and made all my nastiness, all my jealousy and hatred, swell in my heart. I knew. I knew I was the most disgusting person in the world. I didn’t deserve to live another day. I started hiccupping and crying.
“I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m sorry.”
How could I live with myself? How could God stand me? Was this why Jesus wouldn’t speak to my heart? The music washed over me . . . SOFTLY AND TENDERLY. The music was a river trying to wash me clean. I sobbed and dug my heels into the dirt, drunk on grief and that pure, pure voice. It didn’t matter then if it was whiskey backstage or tongue kissing in the dressing room. Whatever it took to make that juice was necessary, was fine. I wiped my eyes and swore out loud. Get those boys another bottle, I said. Find that girl a hard-headed husband. But goddamn, get them to make that music. Make that music! Lord, make me drunk on that music.
The next Sunday I went off with Shannon and the Pearls for another gospel drive.
Driving backcountry with the Pearls meant stopping in at little country churches listening to gospel choirs. Mostly all those choirs had was a little echo of the real stuff. “Pitiful, an’t it?” Shannon sounded like her father’s daughter. “Organ music just can’t stand against a slide guitar.” I nodded, but I wasn’t sure she was right.
Sometimes one pure voice would stand out, one little girl; one set of brothers whose eyes would lift when they sang. Those were the ones who could make you want to scream low against all the darkness in the world. “That one,” Shannon would whisper smugly, but I didn’t need her to tell me. I could always tell which one Mr. Pearl would take aside and invite over to Gaston for revival week.
“Child!” he’d say. “You got a gift from God.”
Uh huh, yeah.
Sometimes I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t go in one more church, hear one more choir. Never mind loving the music, why couldn’t God give me a voice? I hadn’t asked for thick eyelashes. I had asked for, begged for, gospel. Didn’t God give a good goddamn what I wanted? If He’d take bastards into heaven, how come He couldn’t put me in front of those hot lights and all that dispensation? Gospel singers always had money in their pockets, another bottle under their seats. Gospel singers had love and safety and the whole wide world to fall back on—women and church and red clay solid under their feet. All I wanted, I whispered, all I wanted was a piece, a piece, a little piece of it.
Shannon looked at me sympathetically.
She knows, I thought, she knows what it is to want what you are never going to have.
There was a circuit that ran from North Carolina to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. The gospel singers moved back and forth on it, a tide of gilt and fringe jackets that intersected and paralleled the country-western circuit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the difference, and as times got harder certainly Mr. Pearl stopped making distinctions, booking any act that would get him a little cash up front. More and more, I got to go off with the Pearls in their old yellow DeSoto, the trunk stuffed with boxes of religious supplies and Mrs. Pearl’s sewing machine, the backseat crowded with Shannon and me and piles of sewing. Pulling into small towns in the afternoon so Mr. Pearl could do the setup and Mrs. Pearl could repair tears and frayed edges of embroidery, Shannon and I would go off to picnic alone on cold chicken and chow-chow. Mrs. Pearl always brought tea in a mason jar, but Shannon would rub her eyes and complain of a headache until her mama gave in and bought us RC Colas.
Most of the singers arrived late.
It was a wonder to me that the truth never seemed to register with Mr. and Mrs. Pearl. No matter who fell over the boxes backstage, they never caught on that the whole Tuckerton family had to be pointed in the direction of the stage, nor that Little Pammie Gleason—Lord, just thirteen!—had to wear her frilly blouse long-sleeved ’cause she had bruises all up and down her arms from that redheaded boy her daddy wouldn’t let her marry. They never seemed to see all the “boys” passing bourbon in paper cups backstage or their angel daughter, Shannon, begging for “just a sip.” Maybe Jesus shielded their eyes the way he kept old Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego safe in the fiery furnace. Certainly sin didn’t touch them the way it did Shannon and me. Both of us had learned to walk carefully backstage, with all those hands reaching out to stroke our thighs and pinch the nipples we barely had yet.
“Playful boys,” Mrs. Pearl would laugh, stitching the sleeves back on their jackets, the rips in their pants. It was a wonder to me that she couldn’t smell the whiskey breath set deep in her fine embroidery. But she didn’t, and I wasn’t gonna commit the sin of telling her what God surely didn’t intend her to know.
“Sometimes you’d think Mama’s simple,” Shannon told me. It was one of those times I was keeping my head down, not wanting to say anything. It was her mama. I wouldn’t talk about my mama that way even if she was crazy. I wished Shannon would shut up and the music would start. I was still hungry. Mrs. Pearl had packed less food than usual, and Mama had told me I was always to leave something on my plate when I ate with Shannon. I wasn’t supposed to make them think they had to feed me. Not that that particular tactic worked. I’d left half a biscuit, and damned if Shannon hadn’t popped it in her mouth.
“Maybe it’s all that tugging at her throttle.” Shannon started giggling funny, and I knew somebody had finally given her a pull at a paper cup. Now, I thought, now her mama will have to see. But when Shannon fell over her sewing machine, Mrs. Pearl just laid her down with a wet rag on her forehead.
“It’s the weather,” she whispered to me, over Shannon’s sodden head. It was so hot; the heat was wilting the pictures off the paper fans provided by the local funeral home. But if there had been snow up to the hubcaps, Mrs. Pearl would have said it was the chill in the air. An hour later, one of the Tuckerton cousins spilled a paper cup on Mrs. Pearl’s sleeve, and I saw her take a deep, painful breath. Catching my eye, she just said, “Can’t expect that frail soul to cope without a little help.”
I didn’t tell her that it seemed to me that all those “boys” and “girls” were getting a hell of a lot of “help.” I just muttered an almost inaudible “yeah” and cut my sinful eyes at them all.
“We could go sit under the stage,” Shannon suggested. “It’s real nice under there.”
It was nice, close and dark and full of the sound of people stomping on the stage. I put my head back and let the dust drift down on my face enjoying the feeling of being safe and hidden, away from all the people. The music seemed to be vibrating in my bones. TAKING YOUR MEASURE, TAKING YOUR MEASURE, JESUS AND THE HOLY GHOST ARE TAKING YOUR MEASURE . . .
I didn’t like the new music they were singing. It was a little too gimmicky. TWO CUPS, THREE CUPS, A TEASPOON OF RIGHTEOUS. HOW WILL YOU MEASURE WHEN THEY CALL OUT YOUR NAME? Shannon started laughing. She put her hands around me and rocked her head back and forth. The music was too loud and I could smell whiskey all around us. My head hurt terribly; the smell of Shannon’s hair was making me sick.
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“Uh huh uh.” I started to gag. Desperately I pushed Shannon away and crawled for the side of the stage as fast as I could. Air, I had to have air.
“Uh huh uh.” I rolled out from under the stage and hit the side of the tent. Retching now, I jerked up the side of the tarp and wiggled through. Out in the damp evening air, I just let my head hang down and vomited between my widespread hands. Behind me Shannon was gasping and giggling.
“You’re sick, you poor baby.” I felt her hand on the small of my back pushing down comfortingly.
“Lord God!”
I looked up. A very tall man in a purple shirt was standing in front of me. I dropped my head and puked again. He had silver boots with cracked heels. I watched him step back out of range.
“Lord God!”
“It’s all right.” Shannon got to her feet beside me, keeping her hand on my back. “She’s just a little sick.” She paused. “If you got her a Co-Cola, it might settle her stomach.”
I wiped my mouth, and then wiped my hand on the grass. I looked up. Shannon was standing still, sweat running down into her eyes and making her blink. I could see she was hoping for two Cokes. The man was still standing there with his mouth hanging open, a look of horror and shock on his face.
“Lord God,” he said again, and I knew before he spoke what he was gonna say. It wasn’t me who’d surprised him.
“Child, you are the ugliest thing I have ever seen.”
Shannon froze. Her mouth fell open, and as I watched, her whole face seemed to cave in. Her eyes shrank to little dots and her mouth became a cup of sorrow. I pushed myself up.
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