Sister Golden Hair: A Novel

by Darcey Steinke

  The man sunk his finger between the woman’s legs and sucked her nipples, an expression on his face as if he were going to have a seizure. The camera floated down to his penis, hard and bobbing like a sea creature. The woman grabbed the penis with her tiny hand and started to pump it, as if trying to get water out of a well.

  When the film was over, Dwayne jumped up to turn off the projector. Sheila and Larry had dissolved into one another on the couch. Dwayne put his finger over his lips and walked over to the stairs. I hesitated. I certainly couldn’t stay down here where Larry had his hands up the back of Sheila’s shirt, his face pink and desperate. But I wasn’t sure I wanted to go up the stairs with Dwayne. He shrugged his shoulders and went on up alone.

  A part of me knew I was in over my head. I wanted not to go home so much as to be little again, sitting on my dad’s lap while he read to me from my book of children’s Bible stories. But here I was terrified and thrilled at the exact same time. Dwayne paused at the top of the stairs, glanced behind him, and walked down the hallway toward his room. I watched Larry, still entwined with Sheila, move his hand up to the lamp and turn out the light. The duplex was dark as I moved up the stairs.

  Halfway down the hall, Dwayne jumped out of the closet where he’d been hiding.

  “Get in the car!” he shouted at me.

  I was confused.

  “You mean go outside and get in the car?”

  His features had rearranged and his pupils were dilated. I knew he’d been drinking, but now I was worried he’d taken acid. I had heard stories of kids jumping out of windows or walking into traffic. One girl, thinking she was a seagull, had jumped off the top of a Ferris wheel. And a boy, the next town over, had stabbed himself with a steak knife.

  He stood with his hands on his hips. Should I try to kiss him or hug him, try to snap him out of his bad trip? He balled up his fist, swung. I flinched as he punched the air, then fell back against the wall, moving his head back and forth as if being slapped this way and that.

  He was Hutch. I wasn’t sure, though, which particular episode we were in—the one where Huggy Bear gets kidnapped by the psychotic drug lord? Or maybe the one where the delicate country music star is stalked by an obsessive fan? As he shook off the slaps and stood back up, he brought his fists up in front of his face. I realized we were back at the dump with the preppy boys. But this time Dwayne was Hutch, taking out one after the other, punching the air, flying sideways into karate kicks.

  I took a baby step toward the stairs, but Dwayne pulled my arm, he wanted an audience, as his bangs stuck to his sweaty forehead and he threw up his elbows, knocking some poor kid in the chin.

  “Stop,” I said. “You’re hurting them.”

  He looked at me, blinking. At first I thought he was angry, that he felt stupid for pretending, but then he smiled. We heard an explosion and then another. We ran outside. The few people who hadn’t gone downtown sat out in lawn chairs. The girls from 4B waved sparklers and we could see, up in the sky, the blooming light.

  The summer crept forward with nothing much happening until one hot day in August. Eddie, Phillip, and I were sitting down to eat peanut butter sandwiches when an unfamiliar convertible drove up the hill and parked in front of 17A, across the street and down the mountain a little from our duplex. A dark-haired guy in a denim leisure suit and a woman in a long floral dress with a pointy white collar got out and walked up to the front door. They didn’t knock. They just stood under the hot sun in their big sunglasses, smiling. Other cars parked and by the time I finished my lunch, the line of people stretched down the sloping street almost to the Bent Tree sign. They were all dressed for a party, women in makeup and false eyelashes and men in ties, although it was nearly a hundred degrees. Among the group was a man in a Hawaiian shirt and white pants, his bald head shining in the sun. Beside him was a tall, skinny woman with twin boys, both in blue blazers and red bow ties.

  A few days earlier, a man had driven up to 17A, a heavyset guy with just a folding chair, a card table, and a few boxes in his trunk. The young woman who lived in the duplex, a dog groomer named Dolores, was visiting her mother in Richmond. I figured she must be letting a friend use her place while she was gone. Through the front window I’d seen the new guy watching the black-and-white television with tinfoil on the antenna, and drinking from a martini glass. Maybe the man had come back to Roanoke and was throwing a huge party and the people lining up now were all old friends. Maybe he was a well-known doctor and the people all suffered from undiagnosed illnesses? Or could he be giving away, to the first one hundred folks, coupons for free television sets?

  Eddie and Phillip weren’t interested in speculating about what the man did. Instead, they wanted to take advantage of the crowd. Their entrepreneurial streak had been awakened that spring. They’d sold the dessert off their school lunches and used the profits to buy candy bars, which they then peddled at recess for twice what they’d paid.

  Now, with a gathering crowd of people, they brainstormed about what to sell. It was a hot day, so Eddie suggested setting up the sprinkler and charging people to jump through the cool spray. Phillip suggested linking extension cords out the front door and charging for a few minutes of cool fan air. I vetoed these ideas.

  “I got it!” Phillip said. “We’ll sell Kool-Aid.”

  As we were setting up the card table, Dwayne walked up the hill. He wore white jeans, a white belt, and his Dingo boots. He’d blown out his blond hair and looked like the angelic version of his usual self. I asked if he knew what was going on and he smiled widely and said, “Casting call,” reaching in his pocket and pulling out an ad he’d torn from the morning newspaper. He handed it to me.

  Do you have talent? Universal International Studios is looking for extras, dancers, singers, and horseback riders for a Civil War film to be made in the area. Those interested apply at 1:00 PM to Glen McCabe in Bent Tree, 17A. August 10, 1976.

  “See,” he said. “I told you the South would rise again.”

  A van pulled up with an airbrushed eagle on the side. The door flew open and people dressed for square dancing jumped out, the men in Western shirts and Texas ties and the women in calico skirts and crinolines.

  “Gotta go,” Dwayne said. “I’m going to cut the line.”

  At one o’clock sharp as promised, Glen McCabe, his hair slicked back, wearing a shirt open to show a slew of gold chains, came out onto the stoop. Everybody cheered.

  “Welcome,” he said, “and thank you for your interest in our little production. The director told me it was a long shot that I’d find extras here, but you all have proven him wonderfully wrong. I look forward to meeting each and every one of you.”

  Dwayne, who’d been standing on the grass, walked up to the man.

  “I have riding experience.”

  This was the first I’d heard that Dwayne was a horseman, but in the days that followed he’d claim that, thanks to his Confederate ancestor, he knew how to handle a saber and light a cannon fuse.

  Glen McCabe was the most exciting thing that had ever happened to Bent Tree. His arrival derailed the idea that Bent Tree was purgatory. All day folks went into 17A with hopeful, subservient expressions and came out beaming. Every hour Glen walked down the line, tousling the hair of the twin boys in red bow ties, pulling a coin from the ear of a lady in a halter top, admiring the Civil War artifacts people brought to show him: letters, Confederate jackets, swords. Some even brought photos of relatives, somber-looking young men with beards holding guns. Because the United Daughters of the Confederacy had held a Civil War Ball a few years ago, a few women wore hoop skirts and carried silk parasols. Even my own family stood in line. McCabe promised my mom the part of an antebellum lady and Phillip was going to be a drummer boy.

  Mrs. Smith called an emergency meeting of the UDC and asked me to help pass the punch and finger sandwiches. Most of the ladies had gray hair and wore shirtwaist dresses and practical shoes. One exception was a woman who claimed to be the descendent o
f a captain who had fallen at Shiloh. She had dyed black hair and wore a long white dress.

  They ate pimento cheese sandwiches and drank sweet iced tea.

  Before the meeting started I passed around a plate of deviled eggs.

  “Are you the new junior member?” the lady in the long dress asked. Mrs. Smith had told me about the children’s wing of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.

  I shook my head and felt my cheeks warm up.

  Mrs. Smith called the meeting to order. She told the Daughters about Glen McCabe and the Civil War movie; how Cary Grant was to play John Bell Hood and Mickey Rooney would play Stand Watie. On set the Daughters would make sure period details were accurate. The precious historical items they had gathered for so long—gloves, Bibles, letters—would finally be seen by millions. Glen had also offered a thousand dollars to the Daughters for on-set catering.

  Mrs. Smith nodded at me to bring out the lemon cake and the pink dessert dishes. I asked who wanted coffee. After they were done eating Mrs. Smith went to her piano and started to play. The women sang loud, particularly the last verse.

  And here’s to brave Virginia!

  The Old Dominion State

  With the young Confederacy

  At last has linked her fate.

  Impelled by her example, now other states prepare

  To hoist on high the bonnie blue flag

  That bears a single star.

  I slipped out and into the kitchen to do the dishes and lay them out on the linen dishcloths. I rinsed grounds out of the percolator and wiped down the countertops.

  It was dark by the time the Daughters finished singing the song about Shiloh. Mrs. Smith called me back into the living room to help her pass around candles like the ones my father used for Christmas Eve service, white wax with paper drip skirts. She turned out the lamps and the orange flames lit each woman’s face. Mrs. Smith read names off an index card. Adam Ickis, private; William Marr, private; Chester Adams, private; Tilman Valentine, private. After each name and rank was read, his great-great-granddaughter extinguished the flame, until all was dark and the women sang “Dixie,” without accompaniment, into the dark living room.

  When I got home my mom had the stereo headphones on and was singing to her favorite musical, Fiddler on the Roof. Phillip had his head wrapped in paper-towel bandages and was making a saber out of tinfoil. My father was on the couch reading. Mrs. Smith had come over to see if my dad was willing to be a Civil War chaplain but he’d refused, saying everyone had lost their minds.

  I ran up the stairs and locked myself in the bathroom and placed my hands on my invisible hoop skirt and said, “Oh you do run on, teasing a country girl like me.” And I practiced slapping Rhett and then kissing him using the pillow I’d brought in from my bed. “Atlanta’s burning,” I said into the mirror dozens of times. I tried to mist my eyes up by thinking of how Mr. Ananais’s cat, Hector, had gotten his paw run over and now had only three legs, and how the kids still teased Pam on the bus, calling her butt-ugly and Kool-Aid face. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make myself cry.

  In the mirror I was stiff and unnatural. I could not be like the girls at school and cry whenever I wanted. I’d never be an actress and live in a castle high up in the Hollywood Hills, eating lobster tails and chocolate éclairs. I’d thought it was adorable the way Dwayne went on about Hollywood. Even before Glen McCabe, he’d talked of wanting to move there, getting a house with a pool, learning to surf, and going to parties where he’d meet David Soul and Keith Carradine. I knew he was dreamy, but I liked to put my head on his chest and listen to him go off into La La Land. There was something soothing and familiar about the tenor of his voice.

  I could hear people on the street. Most of them had disappeared for the day once auditions were over, but some camped out, sleeping in their cars. I could see Mr. Ananais picking up the garbage with a stick and looking sadly at the trampled grass.

  The next day people started getting in line at 6:00 AM. I heard them talking below my window about how Glen said he’d pay ten dollars an hour, fifteen if you had a beard. One guy said if he could get hired, he’d be able to make his car payment. Another said he was going to pay for his mother’s hernia operation.

  By nine o’clock over a hundred people had lined up. Eddie and Phillip carried Lulubell over and Glen gave the cat a part as a lazy Confederate kitty lying out on a porch. Her job, Eddie told me, was to act uninterested. Yesterday the people in line had all looked vaguely theatrical. Today the people looked more ordinary: guys in gray work shirts, housewives, teenagers. Everybody thought they had hidden talents. Even those who had no talent thought that having no talent must be a sort of talent.

  Dwayne appeared just after nine, saying he’d quit Hancock’s for a job helping McCabe. His duties included collecting the ten-dollar application fee, distributing forms, and asking people if they had experience singing, dancing, riding, or sword fighting. Dwayne told each applicant that, once registered, he or she would be a full member of the Screen Actors Guild. I heard him tell several people that, after Glen’s film wrapped, he was going to move to Los Angeles. To think of him living the good life while I was stuck in Bent Tree made me sick to my stomach.

  Dwayne ran out of the duplex to tell me that Glen knew David Soul and that Soul was interested in the part of Jeb Stuart! I tried to ask him to take me with him to LA, but he was so excited that Liza Minnelli was going to lead the Southern belles in the big ballroom dance scene, I didn’t have a chance. Just before lunch he told me George C. Scott had agreed to play Grant, and Al Pacino wanted to be Ambrose Burnside. Glen was in negotiations with Sylvester Stallone to play Longstreet. Late in the afternoon Glen got the OK from the studio to burn down a barn. He and Mrs. Smith were going to scout locations in Vinton in the morning. Mrs. Smith was going to do the paperwork with the fire department this afternoon. She’d invested in the film, and so she would have some creative control. Dwayne roamed up and down the line, mostly dealing with girls. One nervous girl in a tube top and feather earrings burst into tears, and Dwayne rubbed her back till she got ahold of herself. He fed ice cubes to a girl who fainted and waited with her until her mom arrived.

  Near dinnertime Dwayne came to get me for my audition. I’d been in the bathroom practicing, going over my facial expressions and trying to make my smile look genuine. I’d rehearsed for so long in the bathroom mirror I had no idea when my expression looked natural and when it didn’t. We walked in silence, side by side, to the door of 17A. Inside, the duplex was cool, dark, and smoky. The rooms were the same as ours, the gold shag and plaster swirl ceiling, but with pictures of puppies and stacks of magazines about dogs. Glen sat on his folding chair, a shoe box full of money at his feet. He stirred his drink with his pointer finger, then put it inside his cavernous mouth and sucked.

  Time wobbled off its usual track and seemed to elongate.

  “This is the girl I told you about,” Dwayne said.

  “Can you act, my dear?” Glen asked me, leaning his massive form back into the chair.

  “I thought you wanted extras?”

  “We have a few speaking parts,” he said. “For the right people.”

  He tipped his glass to his mouth, holding his pinkie out, the ice clinking against his teeth. Even though it was freezing in the duplex, his upper lip sweat like Nixon’s. He closed his eyes.

  “I see you as a girl dressed as a boy,” Glen said, “so you can fight for the motherland you love.”

  A girl inside a boy. I liked that.

  “She has a certain look, don’t you think?” Dwayne said.

  “I see a scene where you show the soldier boy you love your womanhood.”

  I was not exactly sure what he meant; the term womanhood had always confused me.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me.

  “Would you be willing to do that?”

  “No,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

  McCabe frowned and turned to Dwayne.

  “I
thought you said she wanted to be in our film?”

  “She does!”

  “Apparently not,” McCabe said, standing and walking into the kitchen. He swung open the refrigerator door and got out a bottle of vodka.

  I waited for him to say something more.

  “You’re free to go,” he finally said. “Good luck with your life.”

  I retreated to my room and lay there, staring up at the ceiling. I stared into the eyes of the Egyptian on the poster above my dresser. Was this really my only chance? Was I actually blowing everything? Like everybody else, I wanted to be saved.

  I walked over the shag, down the hallway, and locked myself in the bathroom. I stared into the mirror. I was skinny and pathetic. I pulled off my dress and reached around to unhitch my bra, letting the white cotton cups fall. I looked in the mirror. I didn’t want to see myself the way I did every day when I pulled my clothes on in the morning, or pulled them off and put my T-shirt on at night. I wanted to see myself the way Glen McCabe wanted to see me. My nipples were small like pearl buttons, a washed-out pink flooding up around each.

  I heard a knock on the front door and Dwayne asked my mom if he could see me. Normally my mom would have never let a boy come to my room but something about McCabe’s movie had pushed aside her anxieties and suspicions. I heard her say, “Go on up!”

  I pulled my shirt back on and ran to my room. Quickly, I tore down the kitten poster, throwing it under the bed. After that I arranged myself against the pillows and moved my face into a smile.

  “Hey,” Dwayne said, coming through the doorway.