One String Guitar

by Mona de Vessel

  Everybody Loves Raymond. OK. What is your favorite food in the whole wide world?”

  “Well, that’s easy. Macaroni and cheese. Kraft, from the box. It tastes good and it’s easy to make. There ain’t nothing better than that macaroni and cheese.”

  Joey scribbled again in the notebook.

  An orange cat crawled out from under the couch and peered at the trio. They glanced in the cat’s direction as if the animal’s presence was suddenly brnging light to what they were doing.

  “That’s Mimi. Short for Michele.”

  Joey made a strange sound with his throat like he’d suddenly swallowed a bug. Elbe looked at him. His hands were shaking. He tried to clear his throat. He began to cough. Elbe knew that it was a fake cough, the kind that Joey sometimes used to cover up overwhelming emotion.

  “You OK?” Jennie asked. “Want some water or somethin’? There is a cup up there, you can grab some water from the sink if you want.”

  “I’m OK.” He scribbled down something in the notebook, his hands still shaking.

  “You writin’ down the freakin’ cat’s name?” Jennie asked giggling. She seemed youthful in this moment. “Come here, Mimi. Come look at the coffee people.” She laughed again. The cat who had settled with its body half out and half under the couch ignored her.

  “What is your greatest accomplishment?” Joey shot a glance in Jennie’s direction when he asked this. Sensing unnamable but palpable tension, Jennie asked, “What does that got to do with coffee?”

  Elbe jumped in. “Well, it has nothing to do with coffee but we have to ask these questions, all 10 of them because the company we work for won’t give the coffee away unless we bring back a filled questionnaire.”

  “Well, I ain’t done much of anything. Been here most of my life. My kids maybe. Having my kids, I guess.”

  “Kids? You had more than one?” Joey asked clearing his throat again. Elbe was trying to think of a way to alter the direction of the questions but she knew that no matter what she did, Joey would not stop now.

  “Three kids I got. Three girls. Pretty as buttons. All three of them. I guess you wouldn’t know that looking at me, huh?” she grinned humbly.

  “Where are they now?” Joey asked aggressively. He was tapping the pen on the corner of the notebook. Jennie did not notice Joey’s hostility. The mention of the girls had opened up an invisible gateway. Jennie tried to smooth her knotted and unkempt hair. She kept smoothing the hair pulling on its ends expecting longer strands.

  “They had to go away. They had to go away, that’s all.” Jennie repeated as if she were trying to make sense of her own words.

  “What is your favorite color?” Elbe jumped in.

  “Michele had those brown eyes. The speckled brown with gold in ‘em. You know. I loved looking into her little eyes.”

  Joey sat motionless pen in hand, dangling in the air. Drinking Jennie’s every word. Joey could not stop looking at the scar on Jennie’s face in the shape of a half-crescent moon. His eyes remained on these lines, in the way they curved with both tips pointing to opposite sides of her face.

  “Little Mary had those pale blue eyes. The kind that make you think of a pool of cool water, you know?” Jennie looked away in the distance, as if alone in the room.

  “What is your greatest regret?”

  Jennie sat very still as if waiting for an answer to come to her. Joey was plunged into the past. He could see Jennie’s scar, the way it had formed with time. Pink and thin on the edges. Deeper at the center. It was dusk. They live in a house. The house is large and blurred on the edges. It does not have a shape the way houses do. It is not whole or structured. Joey is standing at the center. He is holding a knife. He, her father. The father of the girl he once was. He is holding a knife and Jennie is crying. Her mother is crying. The woman who birthed her is crying. She is crying over and over again. The same words coming out of her mouth. “Stab me, fucking stab me. I want you to stab me.” The words are falling out of her strangely and disappearing in darkness. And she, the little girl is crouching in the corner of the room. They do not see her. They do not see themselves. The man is bunching his fists, the way his fingers are grasping the knife tightly. His knuckles are white. Jennie’s face is white. The moon is out and it is white. She is standing so close to him her breath is on his face. The knife is by his side. She does not look at it. She knows its presence. The little girl is waiting. She is waiting for them to do it. She wants it done so that she does not have to wait anymore.

  “They had to go,” Jennie says her feet planted on the linoleum of the trailer. “The girls had to go.” When she says this, Jennie looks at Joey as if for the first time. “You remind me of my Michele. It’s funny how much you look like her.”

  “I think we’re done with the questions.” Elbe breaks in again. She wants to find a magic wand, something that will peel Joey away from Jennie, away from the stench of the past between them.

  “No, we’re not. We have more questions.” Joey snaps. “I look like her? Yeah?” Joey barks strangely.

  Elbe was afraid of him, of the unwound spring in him. She was afraid of the force inhabiting him.

  “I was five when you left me, Jennie. I was five.”

  Jennie shook her head uncontrollably as if she were trying to shake bees from the sides of her face.

  “I was five, and I didn’t have to go away. You did.” Joey’s face was flushed with rage now. Jennie was still shaking her head.

  “Do you remember me now, Jennie? Remember my eyes? The speckled brown with gold in them?”

  “But…” she hesitated, looked to Elbe for an answer, for escape. Elbe was still. She was looking at Jennie then at Joey, back and forth as if she were watching a tennis match.

  “I didn’t have a son. I had three girls.”

  “I am a boy now. But you made me a girl. I was born a girl.”

  Jennie’s body slumped a little, fell on its side; her hands were crooked claws on her lap. She had become a fallen tree in a storm. Her own weight betrayed her. Gravity was her enemy. She wanted to rise from the chair and leave the trailer, but she could not move. She wanted to ask them to leave but she could not speak. Instead, she looked from Joey to Elbe and back to Joey again in horror.

  “There is no coffee then?” she finally asked.

  “No, Jennie, there is no fucking coffee. And there is no fantasy of your children having to go away. You left me. You fucking left me and when you were done leaving me apparently you left the others.

  “So, I have two sisters huh Jennie? Where are they now? Do you even fucking know where they are now?” Elbe looked at Jennie and felt a pang of pain in her chest seeing how fragile she looked. She had gone from being brittle to becoming a bag of bones on a chair.

  Jennie’s eyes watered and then scanned the room furtively like an animal searching for a place to hide. Elbe searched for Mimi the cat, but she was nowhere to be found. Jennie’s body was shaking. She had unfolded her clawed fingers and was now grasping the sides of the chair furiously.

  “They had to go.” Jennie repeated as if trying to convince herself. Joey wasn’t listening. Elbe knew he was on an unalterable path.

  “I remember, you left at night. The lights were flashing when you went away.” Joey’s voice seemed almost calm now.

  “They came to get me,” Jennie whispered to herself.

  “Who came to get you? Joey asked.

  “The doctors, they came to get me.”

  The whites of Jennie’s eyes were the color of a pale sunset. Jennie was no longer holding on to the sides of the chairs.

  “I didn’t want to go. And when I came back, the girls were gone. They were gone. They had to go away.” She began to scream. Her voice rising in a strident pitch. Elbe motioned for the door. “We should go,” Elbe whispered.

  But her words were lost in the raging of Jennie’s screams. Elbe was sitting still at the table. She was watching Jennie screaming across from her as one watches a car crash. The woma
n who had brought Joey into the world was no longer aware of his presence or Elbe’s. She was crying and shaking and contorting her body in the chair.

  Elbe walked over to Joey slowly and placed her hand on his shoulders. She leaned gently to his ear. “Joey, we really should go.” A few seconds went by as Joey sat still continuously staring at his mother. Elbe waited. Joey stood up slowly. Then, imperceptibly, he began to pull away slowly from the table, keeping his eyes on Jennie. Outside on his chain, the dog was barking again. His booming voice echoed in the distance, almost beckoning them to come outside. The world was calling them back to the places they knew. At once Jennie turned and saw them both, as if for the first time.

  “Who are you and what are you doing in my house?”

  Elbe and Joey had their backs turned to Jennie. Elbe pulled the door open. A cold late autumn wind whipped them both in the face.

  Jennie ran to the door. When she reached Joey, she grabbed him by the arm and pulled him towards her. “I did not leave you. They took me away.”

  For a moment everything stood still. As if untethered, the dog stared at them in anticipation of freedom. Elbe thought it strange that the wind had magically died down. Joey faced Jennie and her smeared make-up, eyes bulging out of their sockets. Joey stared at every line on her face as if trying to decipher a secret code. For a momentk Joey saw the lines that spoke of her broken life, of the love she had never had, of the children she had lost. Right below the mouth, a groove pulled her bottom lip towards the ground in a state of permanent grief. Both eyes were sunken and around them, a deep circle had formed. Joey thought furtively about the ways we carry the past around with us. He thought about the way Jennie’s life had drawn a map of itself, etched in her skin. Each groove was a memory that wouldn’t fade.

  Elbe was now outside. The mangy dog had begun barking again. The wind was blowing. Joey knew their moment had ended. He turned his back on her. In the growing distance, he heard her crying faintly. When they were both in the dog’s circle of contact, the animal jumped on them and licked their hands respectively. Don’t go, he seemed to be saying, trying to lick them as fast as he could while they were still within reach. What hung beyond this moment? The wind began raging again. Jennie’s cries could not be heard.

  **

  For a long time, they rode in silence. Elbe drove and Joey sat quietly watching the road go by. All American highways looked the same after a while. The scarcity of trees and nature made it impossible to discern what region they were in. Joey counted each exit they passed and sounded out the names of the towns in his head. Elkhart, Weston, Elyria. If he could ground himself in reality, Joey thought he would survive.

  Elbe broke the silence knowing this was something Joey could not do for once.

  “Have you ever seen Seven Guitars by August Wilson?” she asked, staring straight out at the darkening road. Joey shook his head in silence. She turned on the headlights.

  “There is a scene where this old loon, Hedley, is hanging out with his two friends Floyd and Canewell. They’re all sitting around shooting the shit and Hedley starts nailing a string to a two-by-four saying he’s building a guitar. Both musicians, Canewell and Floyd make fun of him telling him he’s crazy for thinking that he can make music out of a single string. They’re on his case but Hedley hushes them. ‘Watch!’ he says ‘Listen to this,’ and he starts plucking the shit out of this string.”

  Elbe looks over as Joey intently stares out at the road ahead in darkness. She continues.

  “So while he’s playing his one-string guitar, Hedley tells them a story about his grandfather and how he, too, played a one-string guitar back in the day because it allowed him to hear his mother praying. And suddenly Floyd and Canewell get it. They’re sitting there, listening to this strange sound coming from this single string and they begin to think about their mothers who are now gone. My favorite part in the play is when Floyd says, ‘If I could hear my mother pray, I’d pray with her.’ Floyd’s like, ‘I’d give anything to hear my mother’s voice again, just one more time.’ That’s when the guys figure it out, you know?”

  “What do they figure out?” Joey asks looking at Elbe as she’s driving.

  “They realize that their mothers, their ancestors are all there, all around them and anytime they want to hear them, all they have to do is play the one-string guitar.”

  “Huh.” Joey adds starring at the dark road

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  “Not really, no.” Joey shrugs.

  “Never mind.” Elbe felt a surge of loneliness at the back of her throat. Ahead, the road had become a single passage of light pierced by headlights. Elbe drove in silence. Moments later, in the faint glow of the headlights of their car, Elbe saw that Joey was crying in silence.

  **

  By midnight, they pulled into a motel in the town of Adrian somewhere near Toledo. Joey had hardly spoken since they’d left his mother’s place and Elbe had grown accustomed to the silence between them. She felt a strange comfort in their ability to stay in each other’s presence without the necessity for words. Elbe unlocked the door of the dingy mustard-colored room they got for $49.99. The place was stuck in some kind of time warp from the 1950s with velvety gold and maroon wallpaper. Joey marched straight into the bathroom and closed the door. Elbe sat down on the bed and turned on the television. A flood advisory in a town a few miles away came on the news.

  “We might not make it all the way to Des Moines without getting caught in that storm.”

  Joey’s voice fused back from the bathroom. “Yeah? We’ll be alright.” Elbe was relieved to hear Joey’s voice again. Although she had found comfort in the silence between them, she had begun worrying about him. The door opened. Joey came out of the bathroom wearing boxer shorts. Elbe noticed the lines of Joey’s body and for the first time, she laid eyes on him as if she had never seen him before. She got lost in the way his boxer shorts hung low on his body, exposing the line of his perfectly flat stomach. She starred at Joey’s exposed chest. The two scars under the line where breasts had once existed. Elbe could not take her eyes away from Joey’s body as he babbled about the inclement weather. To Elbe, Joey had always been a boy but now, seeing seeing his body like this, the faint traces of femaleness had taken her by surprise. Joey’s maleness was not something Elbe could pinpoint to the shape of a body. It wasn’t a sex or the absence of breasts. Joey was a boy beyond all of that.

  “I don’t give a shit if we get caught in that fucking storm. It will make for a nice joyride.” Joey said before shutting the bathroom door. Elbe laid down on the bed and closed her eyes.

  **

  The next day, Elbe offered to drive while Joey, completely unphased by the events of the previous day, had returned to telling wild, cavalier stories about his life.

  “So I’m dating this girl named Lotus, right and all she wants to know about me is if I’m black.” Joey relaxed back into himself again.

  Elbe drove keeping her eyes on the slick turns after the brief rainfall.

  “‘What are you,’ she asks me—when I’m still inside her! I push her off me laughing and she keeps on gnawing at me like one of those fucking chihuahua puppies. ‘So are you black?’ she asks, all whiny and shit. I’m like, ‘do I look black to you?’ And she goes, ‘that’s the thing, you look black, but you don’t act it.’ Can you fucking believe this shit? And then—wait, it gets better—she says, in her girly voice, ‘OMG, that’s what throws me off! I mean, yeah, you’re light-skinned and all that, but it’s your hair that gives it away.’ Can you believe that shit?

  Elbe laughed, rolled down the window. “You like it that way, Joey, don’t give me that bullshit about being a victim of the ladies.”

  “I can’t help it. I’m a sucker for good pussy. You know what gets me every single fucking time? It’s that whimpering they do during sex, like a tiny wounded animal. The first time I heard it, I was about eleven, sharing a room with two foster brothers, tiny boys of two and three and my fo
ster sister Lisa, she was like eight years old at the time. My foster mother Lisa was in her room next to ours and I heard her crying like she was wounded. I sat up in bed, real still and waited for the sound to come back. And when it did I got up out of bed and inched my way quietly to the door. Inside the keyhole, I saw a tiny sliver of my foster mother buried deeply under a man’s body, moving above her to the rhythm of her cries. It made me scared and excited both. I turned to see if the others were sleeping, and when I saw they were, I returned to my bed and beat off for the first time. I wanted to have whatever it was that man had to make a woman sound like that.”

  “Dude, TMI!”

  “Oh shut up, you fucking love my stories.” Secretly, Elbe did like the intimacy she shared with Joey, how open he was with her about his past, his life and experiences. She knew she couldn’t give him what he gave her, but she also knew he didn’t need it as much as she did. Joey was on a roll. He was talking about his childhood and nothing could stop him now. Soon, they would come upon a series of small towns where motels became scarcer. Elbe made the mental decision to keep driving through the night.

  “I didn’t stay long in that foster home.” Joey continued. Not long after that day, the same guy who’d made Lisa cry, showed me his dick when I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth one day. He came right in, didn’t say a word. Closed the door and pulled down his pants. I just stared at him and then without thinking, I kicked him in the balls. He just folded over like a cartoon character and made this strange muffled grunt and that was that. The next day I was with Social Services again and I was sent to my sixth foster home.”

  Elbe thought about how relieved she felt that the focus of the conversation was not on her. She was glad she didn’t have to think about what they were about to do in Pine Ridge. She thought about the fact that she would meet her family in less than 12 hours. She closed in on Joey’s words and gathered them around her like a safety blanket.