Hollywood and Maine

by Allison Whittenberg

  Uncle E kept declining, saying he had to go because he had to wake up early the next morning.

  How early? He said 4 a.m.

  “I really just came by to see all of y’all,” he said as he finally made a motion toward the door.

  Daddy all but blocked his exit. “Well, you just can’t say hi and bye after all this time.”

  He can’t? I thought.

  “Maybe I have time for one song,” Uncle E said.

  “Don’t tell me you brought it?” Daddy asked.

  “Brought what?” Tracy John asked.

  “You’ll see,” Daddy promised.

  Uncle E went outside and came back holding a six-stringed, light brown guitar by its neck.

  Daddy started clapping. As if at a concert, all Uncle E had to do was take to the stage to gain applause. “Uppercase E, play that one song,” Daddy requested.

  “You mean—”

  “Uh-huh,” Daddy said.

  My interest piqued, I stepped into the room. I wondered what that one song could be. “Jailhouse Rock” or “Chain Gang”?

  Uncle E began with his eyes closed, and I recognized the song immediately. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.”

  At that blues song, I really began to fume. Let’s get one thing straight, Escalus Upshaw, you left us high and dry, not the other way around. What revisionist history! He was spewing lines like “In your pocket, not one penny / And as for friends, you don’t have any.” He got the whole thing twisted. We never ditched him. He’s the one who skipped town.

  Uncle E really dragged out the lyrics about being high on the hog and then luck changing. He didn’t have to tell me that things turned on a dime. Just a few hours earlier, I was happy to be called an Afroed Marilyn Monroe, now look at me.

  The rest of my family was hypnotized. They were bobbing their heads along.

  Silently, I admitted that Uncle E was nimble, with his fingers contorting to different positions and his tenor voice pitch-perfect. But I showed no outward approval.

  When he ended the song, Daddy did the “Oh, yeah!”

  Tracy John did the “Woohoo!”

  Leo clapped.

  Ma was tearing up fresh tears.

  And me, well, I was kind of all by my lonesome. The momentum was too high. I was outnumbered; I couldn’t make any difference. If I’d spoken up, I’d have been like a little dog yapping at the parade passing by. Because I hated to feel small, I clammed up and endured.

  four

  With its stained-glass windows and various Stations of the Cross, Raymond’s church, Our Lady of the Rosary, was more decorated than my church, Friendship AME. With the service’s pattern of kneel, stand, sit, and kneel some more, there was a rhythm to it. Despite all this movement, my visit was done and over in three quarters of an hour. Services at my church usually took half the day, and that was when Reverend Clee was keeping it brisk. That was another difference. Catholics called their reverends priests.

  This priest was from the continent of Africa. I had heard that all major religions had been practiced in the motherland: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. I wondered if this onyx-colored man at the pulpit was from one of those villages where the only way you were ever going to get schooling was to follow the mission.

  Raymond told me there were millions of African Catholics, which caused me to ponder: If there were those kinds of numbers, would there ever be a black pope?

  I sat in the fourth row between Raymond and his parents, who both had hair as white as Elmer’s glue. They had pleasant enough faces, but they appeared so old that Raymond could have been mistaken for their great-grandson. They were sedate and calm during the entire Mass, as it was called. Everyone was. There wasn’t a “Yes, Lord” spoken, and nobody asked, “Can I get a witness?” I guessed this was largely due to the fact that the priest delivered his sermon completely in Latin.

  “Do you know what he’s saying?” I asked Raymond.

  “No one does,” Raymond replied.

  I fought off a judgmental frown by setting my hopes on communion time. That was when I would get to take a swig of some of that wine.

  That part was at the very end. I made my way up to the altar with the single-file line and found disappointment again. I knew grape juice when I tasted it.

  That afternoon, I went home to face the music—literally. I expected to see Uncle E and hear more from his songbook. I peeked in a few rooms to find that he wasn’t there. (There is a God.)

  I passed Leo in the hallway. He told me, “Non-Catholics aren’t supposed to go to their church. I hope you don’t go to Hell for that, Maine.”

  “That’s nothing to joke around about,” I told him.

  He skittered away, laughing.

  As I walked into the kitchen, Ma up-and-downed me.

  “How was the service?”

  “It was all right. Quick.”

  She nodded. “Did you have one of them cookies?”

  “They are called communion wafers, Ma.”

  “Communion wafers,” she repeated. “Are they sweet?”

  “No.”

  “So you did have one.”

  “I wasn’t supposed to. Raymond said you are supposed to be confirmed before you accept the sacrament.”

  A worried look swept across her face. “He said you have to be what to accept the what, now?”

  “You didn’t go AME till you met Daddy.”

  “Baptist and AME ain’t that far apart.”

  “Neither is Catholic,” I said.

  She seemed like she wanted to say something but changed her mind and went back to fixing a side dish, which, by the looks of things, consisted of cracked rice cooked with crushed tomatoes and chopped-up sausage. She poured in a liberal amount of chicken broth. That’s how dependent on meat the Upshaw family was; we even needed it to make rice.

  I tried to ease my way out before she started dispersing chores on me.

  “Charmaine, make a pitcher of lemonade, will you?” she requested.

  I washed my hands and began mashing the lemons. When I was done mixing the juice with sugar, a little ginger, and water, I took a taste test. I winced from the tartness, but since I was a little peeved at my family, I smiled. This was good enough for them.

  “Maine, Maine. I’m glad you’re back.” Tracy John ran up to me and started tugging at my sleeve. Those penny-colored eyes of his were stretched wide. “I wanted to ask you about dinosaurs.”

  That statement made me smile because the urgency of his voice didn’t match his subject matter.

  “Remember when we read that book about dinosaurs?”

  “Yes.”

  “You said they were all gone, but I saw on TV where this plane landed somewhere in this place where they was nothing but dinosaurs.”

  I took a step back and folded my arms. “What kind of show is that?”

  “I don’t know, but I saw it.”

  “That’s just something made up,” I reassured him.

  “It looked real,” he insisted.

  “There is no way that could happen. Airplanes exist now, but all the dinosaurs died out millions of years ago.”

  “Then how come they showed it on TV?”

  “Don’t believe everything you see on television. Believe me, Tracy John: Dinosaurs are extinct.”

  “You stink,” he said, and made his favorite fang-face at me. Then he left the room in a comic, highly orchestrated huff.

  “Can you believe what he said to me?” I asked Leo as he entered the room.

  Leo shrugged. “Have you tried Ban Roll-On?”

  During baked chicken and red rice supper, I had to listen to more rave reviews of Uncle E.

  Daddy was with the “What an interpretation!”

  Ma was with the “My. My. My.”

  Leo did the “Where was he hiding all that talent?”

  Tracy John just said “Yep” a lot.

  I had a newsflash for all of them: Singing was something we are known for. Some even feel that it
’s in our genetic makeup, like the melanin in our skin. I didn’t believe that such a thing could be passed on through DNA, but I did know one thing: There were plenty of black men with good voices.

  “And his guitar playing!” Daddy exclaimed, which got them going with another thread. Why shouldn’t Uncle E play an instrument well? He’d had the time to practice. Most people by his age are rooted down somewhere with a job and family. I’d never known Uncle E to pursue employment training, and he’d never been married.

  I let out this statement under my breath: “I could wring his neck.”

  “What’s that you say, Charmaine?” Daddy asked.

  “I can’t make out what you’re saying, and I’m right across from you,” Leo said.

  “Yeah, Maine, don’t mumble,” Tracy John told me.

  “Ne-ver mind,” I enunciated.

  “That was much better,” Daddy said. “I heard that very clear.”

  What’s the use?

  “You don’t know what it did to my heart to see him,” Daddy said.

  You don’t know what it did to my heart seeing him, I thought.

  It wasn’t till dessert that things went from bad to, as the old folks say, worser. Daddy waxed on about Uncle E’s fresh start, and I tried once again to tune out. I believe that Uncle E could change his socks, he could even change his underwear, but no amount of Daddy’s words could ever convince me that Uncle E truly changed from his life of crime.

  “He’s really trying to get his life together, and we can’t let him struggle out there all by himself. That ain’t no way to treat family.”

  “What can we do, Daddy?” Leo asked.

  “Ohhhhh!” I wailed, because it was right then that I felt a sharp pain in my side.

  They all asked if I was all right, and when I said I was, Daddy drove on with his plan to aid his brother. Everything began to speed up, and I thought, Wait a minute, wait a minute. I’ve seen this movie before. I know exactly what’s going to happen next. Whenever the subject swirled around housing and relatives, I knew what was coming.

  “He can stay in my room, Unc,” Tracy John volunteered.

  I thought, Well, that’s not as bad as it could be. A little relieved, I took a forkful of pie.

  “That’s kind of you, Tracy John,” Daddy said, then looked at me. “But—”

  The sweet potato pie went sour in my mouth.

  “Uncle E will take the attic for the time being. Charmaine’s room.”

  In that instant, Uncle Escalus had transformed my nice, fluffy romantic comedy into a three-hankie tragedy.

  That night, up in the attic, I took one long last look around at my short-lived haven.

  Why did Uncle E have to stay with us? There was Uncle O’s place. There was Gammy’s house. He had buddies, I was sure. I didn’t know where, but somewhere he did. Or why couldn’t he spend a few of his own bucks on housing? There was the Holiday Inn, which had lovely accommodations. He could get a room with a terrace and go out there each morning to gather his thoughts. Or he could flop in a flophouse. I hear they come complete with a hot plate.

  Why was Daddy so damn generous? Always willing to give the shirt off his back (or mine).

  I was going to miss my turntable, where I played to death those few albums I owned. I was going to miss my closet with the sliding door. It was almost like having my own apartment. Who would have thought that this little paradise would all disappear so quickly?

  Maybe there isn’t a God.

  five

  The next day before the homeroom buzzer, I filled Millicent and Cissy in on the loss of my room.

  “Another cousin came to live with you?” Cissy guessed.

  I closed my eyes and braced myself till I was able to bring the words to the surface. “Worse, my uncle.”

  “I thought he had a place,” Millicent said.

  I shook my head. “The other one.”

  “The fugitive?” Cissy asked.

  My chest heaved. “Yes.”

  Eight-fifteen a.m. Buzzzzzzzzz. Those left milling about the room took their seats.

  Brushing it off and turning to face forward as roll was called, Cissy said, “Well, he won’t stay too long.”

  I shook my head. So naive. That’s what the indigenous people thought when they first saw Christopher Columbus. My heart sank even lower as I listened to the irrelevant Home and School Association pretzel-sale announcement that came over the loudspeaker: Ten cents for one, three for a quarter. Sure, that sounded like a good buy, but if you ever tried one, you’d know those pretzels were as inedible as a rubber tire. It was all the fault of the organization. They kept the pretzels in boxes all day, and by sale time, when school was dismissed, they were sweaty and the salt had risen to lumps.

  Second period was English class. Our teacher, Mr. Mand, had yet to break from his monochromatic fashion statement. As if he was following some religious doctrine, he wore the same color choice in both his shirt and his tie every darn day. He passed out the slim paperback entitled The Pearl, written by John Steinbeck. Someone I’d heard of but never read. I flipped through this book to find that it had stressed, dog-eared pages, like it had changed hands a lot.

  “Now, class, I want you to pencil your name inside the front cover. This will be yours for the next month,” Mr. Mand told us.

  I looked at the cover art for a moment. It featured a man, a woman, and a child in a canoe on the vast sea. The man held a pearl that was bigger than his head. I wondered what kind of oyster could produce something like that.

  I erased the name Eric Brown and wrote in my own.

  My interest was piqued but soon crested as Mr. Mand droned on about the author’s biography.

  John Steinbeck was born in California.

  John Steinbeck lived in California.

  John Steinbeck died in New York but was buried in California.

  I wished Mr. Mand had skipped all that and gotten to the juice. Like, did Steinbeck marry several times, like a lot of famous people did? Was he able to support himself from his writing or was he one of those starving artists? Did critics automatically dig him or was he panned during his literary career? Did this angst lead to drink? If so, what was his beverage of choice? How about dope? Did he take it? Ever?

  “Steinbeck held socialist beliefs,” our English teacher finally told us.

  Jackpot, I thought, and sat up in my seat a little.

  “Who knows what socialism is?” he asked.

  The rest of the class was dead. Since Raymond sat next to me, my eyes asked him, You want to take this one?

  Always the gentleman, he motioned to me to go ahead.

  “It’s like communism,” I spoke up. “It’s a system where everything is supposed to be shared.”

  “Exactly, Charmaine,” Mr. Mand said.

  Raymond winked at me.

  Mr. Mand went into a deeper explanation. He told us how socialists believed that people who have studied eight years to be neurosurgeons should make the same amount of money as cashiers at Pantry Pride.

  “If being a doctor didn’t give you a lot of money, who would want to be a doctor?” someone from the third row came alive to ask.

  “People who want to help sick people,” Raymond said, and was promptly laughed at.

  I wanted to jump to Raymond’s defense, but before I could say anything, someone else asked how much would pro athletes earn under socialism.

  “The same as a cashier,” the teacher said.

  Demetrius McGee looked up from the comic book he’d been sneak reading. “How about Don Cornelius?”

  “Who?” Mr. Mand asked.

  “He’s on The Soooooooul Train,” someone from the fourth row called out.

  “Oh, the same as a cashier.”

  “So all those big celebrities wouldn’t have their mansions?”

  “Not unless everyone had a mansion,” Mr. Mand said.

  “There’s not enough money or space for everyone to have a mansion,” a girl from the second row said.
>
  Mr. Mand looked over the top of his glasses at us. “Then no one would have a mansion.”

  Dinah Coverdale, Demetrius’s current girlfriend, gave a flick to her long, straight, amber-colored hair and said dryly, “That would never work in America.”

  “Our military practices it,” I said, and went on to explain what my brother Horace had told me. He said that a married private with three kids had a bigger take-home paycheck than a sergeant who lived stag. And whether you had dependents or not, on most bases, everyone got their housing provided for them in identical little rose-colored houses.

  “Excellent point, Charmaine,” Mr. Mand said.

  Dinah made a prune face at me.

  Excellent, Charmaine, Raymond wrote in his notebook.

  “If the United States Army can share and share alike, why can’t the rest of us?” Mr. Mand asked.

  Most continued to jeer, which I didn’t understand. This was humble Dardon, Pennsylvania, after all. I knew for a fact that no one here lived on a luxury estate, or had even seen one up close. Still, there was this undercurrent, a type of righteous indignation. It swelled until the air was thick with it. It was unsettling, like being in a horror flick. Only, instead of zombies, I was surrounded by a swarm of crazed, greedy, foaming-at-the-mouth capitalists. Didn’t they know that in a socialist system, we, the working class, would gain? I did some quick math in my head and figured we had not much (if anything) to lose.

  The class batted the idea around a bit more and then Mr. Mand told us to read the first ten pages of The Pearl for homework.

  six

  The beer distributor on Church Lane had lots of cardboard boxes that it discarded on a regular basis. One day I brought a few home and took them to the attic. I borrowed Daddy’s duct tape and a red Magic Marker. I began boxing up my things and printing on them: CHARMAINE’S STUFF. PLEASE DON’T TOUCH.

  “That’s rude,” Leo said from over my shoulder.

  Not having heard him come up the stairs, I was startled. “I wrote please.”

  “Uncle E’s not going to bother your stuff. He’s not a criminal.”

  “That must be why he’s wanted by the police.”