“Over there!” Maya shouted to me. Up a flight of stairs and we found our section. The ushers wouldn’t let us through until the opening band had finished their song. It was dark inside, lights on the stage illuminating a band made up of girls who looked to be about Lou’s age. My eyes strayed to the seats around us. There were still a few empty ones, and people talked while the band performed. They weren’t here to see these girls, they wanted Georgia Waters.
“Okay, you can go,” the usher said, moving aside. She shone her flashlight to our row and we made our way to our seats. I sat down with butterflies in my stomach and took in the view from the second balcony. Thousands of people were gradually filling their seats. I looked over at Maya.
“Step four, complete!” she said giddily.
I craned my neck, scanning the crowd, trying to get a view of the backstage entrance. Maya didn’t know it, but there was an additional step to our plan: meeting Georgia. A USB of my mixes and one of the photos was tucked in my bag, ready to be shared with her. I had no idea how I’d find my way back there, or what I’d say to get past security, but I’d figure it out. We hadn’t come all this way to just go home after the concert.
A few minutes later, the lights dimmed, people rushed to find their seats, and a hush filled the stadium. Georgia Waters was about to take the stage.
She came on in darkness, just a shadow moving across the stage. When she hit her mark, a spotlight illuminated only her. She slowly raised her hands over her head. All twenty thousand of us stood up, spellbound, and started cheering. Beside me, Maya gripped my arm and screamed, jumping up and down. The energy of the crowd was contagious. My breath caught in my throat. It didn’t seem real. There she was! Georgia Waters!
She opened her mouth and sang one note. At first, we cheered, but as the sound carried, the noise in the stadium died. No one wanted to shatter the moment she’d created. I was sure she’d stop, gasping for breath, but it just went on. Until finally, the note ended and the stage went dark again. By then, we were all in awe.
The lights stayed off, and without any accompaniment, she started to sing. Her arms fell to her sides, and the sheer power of her voice made me sway; I was incapable of doing anything else. I was entranced — we all were.
The stage started to fill with musicians. Saxophone players, a drummer, the rhythm section, two bass players, four backup singers, a keyboardist. By the time the lights flooded the stage, there were at least twenty people up there with her, but only one lead singer. She commanded the stage; this was her show.
“Oh my god! She is amazing!” Maya looked at me in wonder. All I could do was nod. Even if you weren’t a fan of Georgia Waters, she was captivating on stage. There was no denying the power of her voice. I felt myself sway and I gripped the back of the seat in front of me, worried I’d tip over. Maya caught my arm, oblivious, as swept away by the music as everyone else.
I focused on the woman on stage, trying to push away the thoughts about who she was. Maya’s hands were in the air and she started dancing when a fast song came on. I joined her, screaming with abandon when the first few notes started. As the show went on, Georgia changed outfits twice. The screen behind her lit up with images and footage from old shows. It was a riot of colour and movement. Her band took centre stage for guitar and sax solos, while she stood off to the side, dancing. When she moved back, she thanked them in her husky voice.
“Excuse me while we do a little reconfiguration,” she said into the microphone. The lights went out, and when they came back on, she and the piano player had moved to a smaller stage just below our balcony. I peered over the railing for a perfect view.
I gripped Maya’s arm. This was the closest I’d been to my mom in ten years. She sat on a stool, pulled a microphone off a stand, and held it up to her lips. The sequins on her dress sparkled in the light and the crowd hushed. Thousands of phones blinked in the darkness.
When she started singing, it was just her voice and the piano. A sad song about lost love. “Slipping from my fingers, you leave / we’ll meet again, I have to believe.” It felt like no one in the audience was breathing. We all watched, mesmerized, her voice transporting us somewhere else.
She finished and there was silence. Even Georgia was under the spell of the song. She sat on the stool for a minute, collecting herself. I wondered if the song had more meaning to her because she knew Dad, Lou, and I might be in the crowd. A small glimmer of hope flickered. Was she singing to us?
Maya leaned against me. I blinked back the tears threatening to spill.
“I love you, Georgia!” someone shouted from the crowd, shattering the stillness. She chuckled and held the microphone up close to her lips. “I love you, too.” The moment had been broken, but I knew, just knew, that that song had been for us.
Georgia Waters moved back to the bigger stage in the middle of the crowd. “Thank you all for coming. It’s a really special show for me. I love coming back here. It’s been ten years since the last show, which is too long!” A cheer went up. When it got quiet, she spoke into the microphone, her voice dropping to a serious tone. “There’s someone in the audience tonight that means the world to me.”
My breath caught in my throat. Was she talking about me? Did she know I was here?
Georgia held the mic up to her mouth again. Her voice echoed into the quiet. “Laura, come on up.” From out of the audience, a little girl and her parents walked onto the stage. The girl had no hair, but she wore a fancy dress and was grinning from ear to ear. Her face appeared on the jumbo screen. “Laura is an amazing little girl, aren’t you, Laura?” She took the child onto her lap and held her against her chest. Laura grabbed the microphone and held it too close to her lips.
“You said you’d sing ‘Lullaby’ to me,” she said. The crowd laughed and Laura’s parents covered their mouths and shook their heads. My mom looked at the crowd with a How can I argue with her? expression.
“Yes, I did. Do you want to tell the nice people here why I promised you that?”
“Cuz I’m such a brave girl.” Her five-year-old voice echoed through crowd. “I’m a fighter.”
“Laura has leukemia,” Georgia said. Her voice cracked and she held the little girl tighter. “And one of her wishes was to come see me perform. And Laura, honey, if I had a daughter like you, I’d be so darn proud.”
I didn’t even try to hold the tears back. They streamed down my face. Maya’s arms were around my shoulders, holding me up. I couldn’t pull my eyes away from my mom, holding that little girl in her arms. Watching them was like getting a million paper cuts all at once.
When she did let Laura go back to her parents, the three of them sat on stools brought on stage especially for them. This version of Georgia Waters’s “Lullaby” was different. Still uplifting, but quiet, sung unplugged, her voice lifting the audience to its feet again to cheer, not for her, but for the little girl on stage with her.
The camera stayed on Laura’s face the whole time Georgia sang. We all saw her smile as her parents sat on either side of her, wiping their eyes. There wasn’t a dry eye in the audience. How could there be? And every one of us was silently thanking Georgia Waters for being so amazing. For her kindness and love, for showing us what a big heart she had.
And as moving as the whole thing was, it broke my heart. I was her daughter, but she didn’t even know me. Hadn’t tried to know me. She shouted out “I love you” to random fans. If I had a daughter, those had been her words. You do have a daughter! I’m right here!
I felt sick. My head started to swim and I had to sit down. Everyone else was still standing, and when I sat, all I saw were legs and backs swaying to the song. “Are you okay?” Maya asked, bending to look at me.
I shook my head.
She pursed her mouth and frowned with worry. “Do you want to go?”
Wants and needs swirled in me. I wanted to stay, I wanted to soak up every moment of being in my mom’s presence, like it would leak into me and fill the empty spot she’d le
ft. But I needed to leave. It was too painful to watch her shower someone else with attention, to be just another faceless fan, when I should have been so much more.
Maya grabbed my arm. “Maybe you just need some air,” she said. She pulled me up and propelled me past the people standing in our row. With shaky legs, I made it to the corridor and leaned against the cool cinder block wall.
“I don’t know what happened,” I said. “I just got all light-headed.”
Maya gave me a sympathetic look. The monitors in the empty hallway showed my mom hugging Laura and her family before they went off stage. The crowd cheered like crazy, the volume so loud it shook the stacks of plastic cups at the beer vendor.
My mom had been on stage for ninety minutes. “This is my last song. You’ve all been a wonderful audience, haven’t they, guys?” She turned to her band, who gave her the thumbs-up. It was a fast, upbeat song, almost like gospel music, and the crowd clapped and sang along to all the words. Maya and I stood under the monitor watching, my head a jumble of emotions.
The music pounded inside the stadium, but as soon as the concert ended, thousands of people would be flooding into the hallway.
Maya pulled her eyes away from the monitor and looked at me. “Are you glad we came?”
I sighed. “Yeah, of course.” As hard as it had been, I didn’t regret seeing her on stage. Lou and Dad thought it would make things worse, but in a way, it had helped. It filled in some holes for me, to know what she’d become. “It was just — seeing her with that little girl.” I frowned, conscious of the dried tear stains on my cheeks. “It was kind of a lot.”
Maya nodded. “Yeah.”
“I couldn’t have done this without you,” I said. “Not just getting the ticket, but the whole thing. I —” My voice caught in my throat. “Thanks for everything.”
We stood against the wall until I felt better. Stronger. I hadn’t come to this show to end up a bawling mess in the corridor. No matter how hard it had been seeing Georgia on stage, there was something I had to do.
I looked up and down the empty corridor and turned on my phone. There was a long list of missed calls from Lou, but I ignored all of them. Instead, I went online and found a map of the arena, holding it out for Maya to look at. “Backstage is that way.”
“So?” she asked, even though she already knew the answer.
I met her eyes. “I need to see her.”
“Dizzy —” she said warningly, but I shook my head.
“I have to at least try.” I pulled out the photo of her holding me and showed it to Maya. “She can’t push me into some hidden corner of her past. I’m her daughter.”
Maya sighed, resigned. She knew I wouldn’t let this go.
“We came all this way.”
Leaning over my phone, she scrunched her forehead as she looked at the map. I’d been backstage before to hang out with musicians Dad knew. I’d thought nothing of finding our way to the “No Admittance” area to meet them. But this time, my head felt scrambled. I was literally dizzy knowing how close I was to meeting my mom.
I didn’t let myself think about what I’d say if, when, I found her. Walking through the corridors was eerie. There was plenty of noise inside, but out here, steel doors had been pulled down over the food and beverage counters and it felt like a ghost town. A few security guards were making their way into position, getting ready for the onslaught of people who would be charging out of their seats in a few minutes.
We walked to section 110. Black curtains hung across the entrance to the seats with a chain in front that said, “No admittance.” “Now what?” Maya asked under her breath. A security guard was stationed in front of the entrance to the seats. We could keep walking around the concourse, but not into the section behind the stage, which meant there was no way to gain access to the backstage area.
“Keep walking,” I whispered. The next entrances had more security. All the guards looked at us suspiciously as we walked past them. There weren’t any other concertgoers in this part of the arena. Everyone was soaking up the last few minutes of the show.
As we walked farther, it was obvious the stage was behind us. The sound quieted and it felt deserted. One of the guards, a woman wearing the standard navy pants and T-shirt with “security” emblazoned across the back in yellow had moved away from her post. She’d walked closer to the monitor to watch Georgia’s final moments on stage. Maya and I exchanged a glance. Her back was to us. If we moved quickly and quietly against the wall, we could slip into the entrance.
On the monitor, Georgia was coaching the audience to clap with her. The band was jamming along, and she threw her head back in laughter. I yanked on Maya’s arm and we ducked under the chain. I kept my eyes on the guard, but she was swaying to the music, oblivious to what we were doing. It took another second to slip through the black curtain into the tunnel-like entrance where we could hide in the shadows. We looked around. No other security guards patrolled this section. We could go down the stairs to ground level.
Gingerly, we held the railing and went down the cement stairs. It was a long way down from where we were. “Careful,” I whispered to Maya. Her wedge boots were not made for walking down steep cement stairs. As we got closer, trolleys of gear had been left abandoned, and cords criss-crossed the back area. Three-storey black curtains separated us from the stage. From where we stood, the skeletal underpinnings of the stage and lighting structures towered above. One guy, a roadie with a pot belly and unruly beard, walked past us and started rolling up a cord on his arm. We stayed in the dark, watching. When he was done, he loaded it onto a cart and pushed it toward a garage door.
“Hey, Dewey,” he shouted. “Get the rest of this gear packed up. We gotta get the trucks loaded.” Another person loped into view. Maya gripped my arm and we shrank against the wall.
The sound on the stage reached its crescendo and then the lights went off. The whole stadium was plunged in darkness. After a flurry of activity on the stage, the curtains parted. Excited whispers filled the air as flashlight beams shone on the stairs. The stage crew held the curtains apart as the backup singers and band came off the stage. There was laughter and celebration.
The onstage lights came on again. The crowd’s cheering was deafening. A roar of applause. It shook the stage. I imagined Georgia up there, taking her final bow, thanking the audience. When she was done, she’d come down these stairs, walk close enough that I could shout out to her. The spotlights on the stage shone through the gap in the curtains as they parted. For an instant, Maya and I were illuminated. And then darkness fell again. With two people on either side, holding her arms, Georgia made her way off the stage and down the stairs.
Seeing her beside burly security guys, she looked small. Human. Not the diva from the stage. She sighed and gave a throaty laugh, like she was congratulating herself. She stood right in front of Maya and me while a sound tech raced over to her, removing the mic box and earpieces. Maya gripped me, her nails digging into my arm.
If I leapt out of the shadows now, the guards would flatten me. I kept quiet, pressing myself against the wall, and shook my head at Maya. Georgia, free of her sound gear, walked toward a narrow hallway, probably leading to dressing rooms. I’d lose her as soon as she went down there. Her security guards wouldn’t let anyone near the door, never mind inside to talk to her.
This was my chance. I looked at Maya. In the dim light, the whites of her eyes shone. “Get their attention,” I whispered. “I need to sneak past them.”
Maya looked at me, panicked. She shook her head. “I can’t!”
“Please. It’s my only chance.” We’d got this far, I couldn’t give up now.
She hesitated, but then nodded. Her grip on my arm loosened. We stayed against the wall until we were close to the dressing room hallway, and then Maya burst into Georgia’s path, shrieking with excitement. “Oh my god! I can’t believe this is happening! Georgia! I am your biggest fan!” There was a ruckus as the guards grabbed Maya. “Get off me!�
� Maya yelled. “Georgia, Georgia!” But Georgia had gone down the hallway, unattended, her shoes clacking on the cement.
“How’d you get in here, anyway?” one of the guards wheezed.
Maya started arguing with them, saying she won a contest and she was given a backstage pass. She used her most indignant voice and tried to shake their hands off her. It was such an un-Maya thing to do. I could still hear her arguing as I made my way down the corridor, sneaking past the yellowy lights that illuminated the emergency exits.
There were doors all down the hallway, but I caught the wisp of fabric swishing just as a door was shut at the far end. I ran to it. I didn’t knock. I just barged in.
She didn’t turn around, but I could see her reflection in the mirror at the dressing table. It was exactly like what a dressing room looks like in the movies: rows of round bulbs on top of the mirror; the table littered with makeup, bottles, and creams. In the corner was a rack of dresses, most of them sequined, and a privacy screen had been set up across from the makeup chair. It was where Georgia sat now.
“Where’s Trudy?” she asked. “You’re a new assistant?”
I gulped and nodded. There was a lock on the door and I pressed it in, quietly.
“God, you all keep getting younger.” She gave a wry laugh and sighed. “The sooner you can get this pancake batter off me, the better.” She leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes. Pancake batter? It took me a minute to realize she meant her makeup. With shaking hands, I walked to the table. She opened one eye and peered at me. “How old are you?” she asked and then she grinned. It changed her face. The apples of her cheeks rose and her red lips stretched. “You nervous, sweetie?” she asked. I swallowed, too shocked that I was so close to her to do anything but nod.
With a laugh, she pointed to a box of makeup-removing wipes. “Trudy uses those and then this cream. You’ll need a cotton ball to take off the cream.” I nodded again. Up close, the layer of makeup was as thick as pancake batter. It coated her face, giving her skin an inhuman flatness.
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