In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  The widening of her eyes was visible in the glow of her cigarette.

  “Oops! Guess we failed to cover that base. It’ll be September, won’t it? We can say I’ve come back for the start of senior year.”

  I took hold of a handful of her long hair. “Here’s another base we failed to cover. Your hair. We’ll have to cut it ourselves. Word would get all over town if you went to Opal, my beauty parlor lady, and asked her to cut your hair like mine.”

  “Nobody’s cutting my hair,” Carmen said, folding her arms across her chest.

  “Mama, get the scissors and come here,” I called.

  —||—

  Dressed in my blue and white suit-dress for travel, I took a long last look around my room, which already bore signs of Carmen’s invasion—like pinups of Paul Newman on the wall and forty-five records by rock ’n’ roll singers other than Elvis. In the mail the day before, a note had come from him about his new purchase.

  March 26, 1957

  Dear Juliet,

  I have the most out-of-sight news! I bought a house in Memphis! It’s a mansion called Graceland after a girl named Grace who lived back during the Civil War. It used to be a farm where they raised Hereford cattle, but I won’t be keeping cows. The house was built in 1939 and sits on 13.8 acres. It has 10,266 square feet inside, and my mama and daddy and my grandma are going to live with me. I always did want to get Mama a big, fine house. Hopefully, I can move in by June. I’m going to have a pool installed too, and maybe someday you will be in Memphis and can come swimming.

  I’m off to Canada to perform in April, and in May I start shooting my third movie, Jailhouse Rock. I can’t believe all this is happening to me.

  Hope everything is going great for you, my good luck charm, and that you bring yourself as much luck as you have brought me.

  As ever,

  Elvis

  I scratched out a hasty note, and Mama dropped it in the drive-by box at the post office. It didn’t say much.

  Dear Elvis,

  That’s great news about your house. I will do everything in my power to come visit you and swim in the pool someday.

  Sorry I have to make it short and sweet this time. There isn’t much news anyway—that I can tell—except I got a new dress. Maybe someday I’ll get to wear it to one of your concerts. Meanwhile, I will always be thinking about you and sending all the luck I can imagine your way.

  Juliet

  —||—

  Before dawn on Saturday, Mama and I sneaked our bags out of the house—both small, for I would get hand-me-down maternity clothes at the home, and Mama and Carmen would only be gone until Sunday night. Carmen put her stuff in a paper sack.

  With me on the floor of the backseat and covered with a blanket, we dropped Carmen off at our father’s house on the way out of town. I regretted not getting to visit him and my grandparents before leaving, but it couldn’t be helped what with the last-minute scramble to bring Carmen up to speed on the technicalities of becoming me. We were nervous about whether they would buy into our deception, especially our father, but time had run out. There was nothing to do but go forward with the plan.

  The road to Dallas was long and flat. To keep our spirits up, I read aloud the Burma Shave signs spaced along the highway.

  “Dinah doesn’t . . . Treat him right . . . But if he’d shave . . . Dyna-mite! . . . Burma Shave.”

  “Your voice is trembling,” Mama said. “Get a hold of yourself.”

  “I’ll try. Substitutes can let you down . . . Quicker than a strapless gown . . . Burma Shave. Oh, Mama, I’m so scared.”

  “Don’t be. We can prolong it a bit if I take you to the motel with me to register, and after that I have a surprise. We’re going to The Golden Pheasant for dinner. It’s a special treat I’ve saved up for. Maybe you’ll think back on it and not feel so lonely when I have to leave you.”

  I tried to crack a joke, but it fell flat. “Like a last meal?”

  “Don’t even think such a thing,” she said.

  —||—

  Nowhere in El Dorado was there a restaurant as lush and highfalutin’ as this one. The front doors, under bright-yellow awnings, had a sign over them advertising a new cooling system and were inlaid with stained glass pheasants. Two stuffed pheasants sat on top of big pillars in the foyer.

  On tables covered with starched white cloths, silverware for every possible course had been laid. Although Mama had taught me what all the spoons and forks were for, I hadn’t planned on getting to use them until I grew up. But maybe being pregnant made me already grown up. I did okay, except for giving my order to the waiter.

  “A hamburger, please,” I said.

  He smiled. “Maybe the young miss would enjoy trying another version of our Texas beef.”

  I agreed, and the result was my first filet mignon, cooked to a perfect pink tint inside. Mama had wine with the meal, and we shared an order of cherries jubilee for dessert. She doled out her hard-earned cash, and we left the beautiful restaurant through the elegant doors into the evening and the hour of my exile.

  PART TWO

  I, CARMEN

  Chapter 11

  DEVIL IN DISGUISE

  With my finger bound in a phony splint, I got out of Elizabeth’s car at Dad’s the Saturday morning she and Julie left for Texas.

  “You look a hundred percent better with your hair like Julie’s,” Elizabeth said through the open window.

  “Great, ’cause with it hacked off I feel like a criminal who’s been prepped for jail.”

  “Good luck,” came Julie’s voice from where she was hiding under a coat on the backseat floor.

  “Same to you,” I said and watched until they drove out of sight.

  Right away, when Dad opened the door, he seemed taken in by our ruse. I never saw such spaced-out happiness as the look on his face when he thought it was Julie standing there holding a paper sack. Made me feel like dirt. I had always been worried that he loved Julie more than me.

  “Hi, Chicken Little,” he said.

  “Julie! Come in this house!”

  Grandma came rushing to the door, her bulk wobbling with each step, her arms open wide.

  “What possessed Elizabeth to let you come? And for the whole weekend?” Dad asked as I moved into the warmth of Grandma’s hug.

  “A fit of wild abandon, I guess,” I said to him over her shoulder.

  His eyes widened. Too late the thought came to me that Julie wouldn’t use that expression.

  “Sit down, sit down,” Grandma said. “Scott, put her sack in your room. What happened to your finger, honey?”

  “Slipped and fell at the Sadie Hawkins dance.”

  Julie or no Julie, I wouldn’t say I fainted. I had no patience with dames who fainted.

  “That’s a pretty pathetic cast,” she said, taking my finger and examining it through her bifocals. “What’s the medical world coming to?”

  Grandpa—a long-legged, skinny geezer—wandered in and squatted into the droopy-bottomed easy chair.

  “My springs are about to fall out,” he said with a chuckle. “And so are the chair’s.”

  Reaching over, he picked up a small pouch from the side table. Holding a piece of paper about three inches square between the fingers of one hand and using the forefinger of his other hand, he patted the pouch just enough to sprinkle tobacco onto the paper. Not a flake went astray. He rolled it up, licked along the side to seal it, and struck a match to light up.

  “Smoke?” he said, looking straight at me.

  Grandma swatted him on the head with a crocheted pillow.

  “Don’t put ideas into her head, you old buzzard. I’m fixing biscuits for breakfast,” she went on. “You like biscuits, Julie?”

  “Love ’em.”

  “Wanna go fishing this afternoon?” Dad asked.

  “I’ve never been.”

  “I took you when you were about eight? Don’t you remember? Your papaw went with us.”

  My brain went blank.
“Papaw?”

  He pointed his thumb at Grandpa. “Papaw!”

  In a flash, I realized Julie must call him that. And was Grandma called Mamaw? I did a two-second racking of the brain and came up with nothing. Of all the trivia Julie had tried to instill in me, she’d forgotten one of the most important details.

  “Right,” I said, slapping on a fake smile. “I’m not awake yet.”

  “You could have slept in and come later. Why’d you have Elizabeth drop you off so early if you hadn’t gotten your nap out?”

  “She had to do it on her way out of town.”

  Oops. I wasn’t supposed to say that. I could feel my eyes widen in shock at my slip of the tongue.

  “So that’s why she let you come for the weekend,” Dad said. “She needed to leave you somewhere.”

  “No, that’s not it at all. She’d have let me stay home by myself.” A total lie.

  “Where’s she off to, Little Rock?” Papaw asked. “She still go up there every time the wind blows?”

  I blanked again. Nobody had ever mentioned Elizabeth going to Little Rock, except on an occasional shopping spree.

  “Uh . . . not much anymore,” I stammered. “No money to spare these days.”

  “Why didn’t she take you with her?” Dad pressed.

  I thought quick. “I didn’t want to go. I’d rather spend some time with you.”

  That seemed to satisfy them because Grandma got up and started for the kitchen.

  “I smell my biscuits. They must be might near ready. Y’all, come on. By the time you get to the table, I’ll have the eggs fried. The sausage and bacon’s done.”

  “Can I help you?” I asked, not daring to risk calling her anything.

  She turned a glad face to me. “Your old Mamaw welcomes all the help she can get, sweetheart.”

  I did have a guardian angel after all. Pure joy made me dance into the kitchen behind “Mamaw.”

  When we were all seated around the table, she asked Papaw to say grace.

  His eyes glinted. “Bless the meat, and damn the skin. Open your mouth, and poke it in!”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Odell!” Mamaw yelped. “Julie’ll think you’re a heathen.”

  “It was pretty funny,” I said. “Eliz . . . uh . . . Mama wouldn’t like it, but she’s not here, is she?”

  —||—

  After breakfast, Dad, Papaw, and I tied the rowboat on the roof of Dad’s old jalopy, loaded up with tackle boxes and beer, and headed north of town to Calion Lake. Harsh sunlight danced in ripples on the green water. Lily pads and scum fringed the edges of the narrow inlet where Dad pulled up and stopped for us to unload.

  Once in the boat, Dad grabbed a bottle of beer and downed half of it in one long glug. Papaw sneaked glances at him while fiddling with his fishing pole. Reaching for the can of worms, Dad let out a huge belch that echoed across the lake.

  “Bring it up again, and we’ll vote on it!” Papaw said.

  I cracked up. Dad scowled and tossed back what turned out to be his first of many beers that afternoon.

  “Calion Lake was man-made, long about thirty-eight,” Papaw said. “In school, did they teach you that old Hernando de Soto wintered in this region, Julie?”

  “The only de Soto I know anything about is the car,” I said and bit my tongue. I’d almost told them my stepdad drives one.

  When Dad shook out some worms next to me on the plank seat, I flipped, once more betraying that I’d never been fishing in my life.

  “Get those things away from me!”

  Dad laughed. “You can’t catch a fish without a worm on your hook.”

  “I can’t bait it with a broken finger.”

  He sighed but threaded a worm onto the hook and jumped up, holding the pole out to me.

  “You’re rocking the boat!” I said. “We don’t want to go tail over teakettle into the drink.”

  Papaw pushed up the brim of his hat and studied me.

  “Well, now you sound like regular folks,” Dad said. “Elizabeth had you talking like a Harvard graduate before you were five years old.”

  His comment set off a warning bell in my head. I’d better polish up my routine if I planned to be convincing.

  As the day wore on, I grew more and more uneasy about the situation. I was living a lie. I longed to drop the pretense and just be myself this weekend with the family. I could turn into Julie again on Monday at school. But how could I put the brakes on now? Besides, I’d given Julie and both our moms my word I would never reveal to a soul I was Carmen, and I intended to keep my promise. Julie’s future depended on it.

  But after three miserable hours in that ancient boat, with Dad tossing down one beer after another and Papaw growing silent and remote, I slipped again.

  “I’m sweating like a pig.”

  “Elizabeth always said Southern ladies glow, not sweat,” Dad said, his words slurred. “Take a dip and cool off.”

  That instant the cork on my line took a deep dive. Dad waved his arms.

  “You’ve got a bite!”

  One side of the boat tipped clear down to the water.

  “Watch it, Scott!” yelled Papaw.

  It didn’t take much effort to plop the forlorn little fish into the boat. It flopped across my bare feet, and I squealed again. When it finally lay still on the boat floor, I took a deep breath.

  “I actually caught one. I can’t believe it. I caught a fish!”

  “Big enough to keep, but barely,” Papaw said. “Put him on your string.”

  “No way am I touching that thing.”

  “Think you can manage to eat him?” Papaw said and chuckled.

  Even in his cups, Dad caught fish. Between them, he and Papaw got sixteen fair-sized bream. Mamaw fried them up for supper, making sure to put the one I caught on my plate. When I tasted the cornmeal crispness and the sweet white flesh, together with hot water cornbread dripping with butter, all the afternoon misery slipped into forgetfulness. We were halfway through the meal when Dad passed out, his face plunging flat down into his turnip greens.

  Mamaw flushed and put her hands over her face. It took all three of us to get Dad into bed, still dressed, with snores rattling from his throat.

  On top of being exhausted from too much sun, the effort to keep up the charade was wearing me out. At least I’d get to take off the mask of pretense in bed in the dark, but I’d thought wrong. With only two beds in the house, Papaw had to bunk with Dad, and I had to share the other bed with Mamaw. On and on she clapped her gums about life in the good ole days until I thought I’d go crazy.

  When, at last, her snores rose in volume to compete with Dad’s, I slipped the splint off my finger and tiptoed into the living room. A butterfly night-light kept me from crashing into the furniture. Praying the springs wouldn’t choose this moment to go clattering onto the floor, I eased into Papaw’s chair and fiddled with his tobacco paraphernalia until I managed to roll a small cigarette.

  I reached for the packet of matches lying next to the tobacco pouch. Not a single one left. Impossible, after all this effort.

  He must have more matches.

  In my frenzied search, I sent the Bible crashing off the end table and onto the linoleum floor. I tensed. Someone was sure to come running with a gun. Not a sound, except the snoring.

  At last, I spotted extra matches on the floor next to the splayed-open Bible. I snatched them, but before my shaking hands could strike one, a flame flared at the end of my squishy cigarette.

  “Practice a little, and you’ll be able to roll them as tight as mine.”

  “Papaw! You scared the hooty out of me.”

  “What do you think you did to me, prowling around and helping yourself to my tobacco?”

  “Sorry. I couldn’t sleep for the snoring duet.”

  “I know what you mean. Your dad’s inhaling the bedspread.”

  “I didn’t think you’d mind if I bummed a cig, since you offered me one earlier.”

  �
��I don’t. Help yourself. Anytime.”

  To ease my anxiety that he might be seeing clear through me, I turned away from his penetrating eyes and took a long drag.

  He signaled me to follow him.

  The front door squeaked as we opened and shut it.

  “Dadgummit!” he said when we were safely outside and on the way to the bench in the yard. “I’ve told Scott to oil them hinges a hunnerd times. Sometimes he ain’t worth the powder to blow him to hell. Drunk half the time.” He turned his face to me. “Now, missy, you want to explain what the deuce is going on here?”

  Think fast, I silently ordered myself and sat on the bench, adopting the modest posture Julie used, my feet crossed at the ankles. I looked at him with fake innocence.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  He scrutinized my face. “Don’t kid a kidder, sugar. You’ve changed. You ain’t nothing like the Julie I know, except in looks.”

  My heart skipped beats. I felt like I was going to crack. It would be so easy to confess I was Carmen and then pretend it was a game Julie and I were playing, since people said we looked so much alike, and to involve him in the deception by making him promise not to tell anyone. But I didn’t dare. What if he spilled the beans? He was sly. One of the last things Julie had said to me was, “No one must find out I’m pregnant.” So be it.

  “I’ll clue you, Papaw. I’m Julie. Who else would I be?”

  “You act more like the other one.”

  “Carmen?” I feigned surprise and talked fast. “It’s been so much fun to find her and have a real sister. People are always getting us mixed up. We were thinking it might be fun to see just how far we could go pretending to be each other, but, of course, we’re too different to get away with that.” I forced a laugh and sucked hard on the cigarette.