God. I never knew. Could all that abuse he’s heaped on me all these years have been a cry for help? Maybe Butch has just needed a friend all this time and never knew how to make one. Well, I guess it’s up to me. I can be his friend if he lets me. Who would have thought all could change just from one simple thought I blurted out, not even believing it, on the intercom? Maybe the morning devotions do some good after all.
Like always, school flies by. Mr. Waters asks how the first play meeting went, and I tell him I really liked his friends and the play was gonna be fantastic. All through the day, I keep thinking about last night, and foremost in my thoughts is how I’m going to keep my daddy from seeing the show. He wouldn’t like it one bit. If he just hears about it, I can likely talk my way out of his anger. Bring him around. But if he sees it? How do you stop a grenade from exploding after the pin is pulled?
Mr. Waters swears me to secrecy, and then he tells me about the three shows he’s considering for the one-act play contest. One of them was a big hit two years ago on Broadway, The Lion in Winter. I’d kill to play Henry II. And I know exactly which one of the girls would be perfect for Eleanor of Aquitaine. But I keep my thoughts to myself. Mr. Waters will make his own decisions. He doesn’t need my input.
I head to the parking lot after drama class and my one-on-one with Mr. Waters. Jeep is waiting impatiently.
“What’s up? You didn’t say you needed a ride home,” I call.
“Need to go to C&S Music.”
I’m becoming his private chauffeur, I guess.
“C&S. All the way downtown.”
“You got it.”
I should be annoyed that he just assumes I will take him all the way downtown. But, the funny thing is, I don’t mind. “Okay. I serve at your pleasure.”
He ignores my quip and just continues babbling. “I need guitar picks, a new capo, extra strings. Gotta get ready for Saturday.”
“Saturday? What’s Saturday?” I pretend I don’t know a thing about his gig at the Box.
“Are you f-ing kidding me?” he blurts, right after we both get in the car. Well, actually, I get in, lean over to pull up his door lock. Then he gets in, fuming.
“Gotcha. I remember, Guitar Man. And I don’t have rehearsal Saturday night, so I plan to be front and center to hear the Mislabeled’s first gig.”
“The Goose Bumps.”
“Huh?”
“The Goose Bumps. I think the guys will like it.”
“So, my suggestion is cast aside, unwanted,” I play-whine. “I feel so unloved.” I look at him, a tear dropping from my right eye. I love that I long ago learned to cry on cue.
Jeep looks stricken. “You said yourself the guys wouldn’t like your suggestion. So I thought of something else. It came to me in English. Teach read a poem out loud, and, in his hokey way, he said, ‘Ah, that gave me goose bumps.’” He turns my chin with his hand so our eyes meet. His stare is devastating. He really thinks I’m upset and is bound and determined to apologize. Like I need that. Mislabled/Goose Bumps. Whatever he wants to call his band is fine with me. But why’s his lingering hand feeling so warm on my face?
He continues his impassioned speech. “I liked your suggestion, but I think the guys will like this one better. If it’s any comfort to you, I love you.” He blurts that out in less than ten seconds in one breath, trying to appease me. He quickly drops his hand, clasping it with his other hand in his lap, and he shifts his gaze, staring straight out the windshield. The boy is truly stricken by my rejection.
“I’m just funnin’ you, as LuLu would say.” I break out into a giant, face-slashing grin.
He doesn’t turn. Doesn’t move. Just stares into infinity.
I reach over and nudge him with my fist. “Come on, Jeep. You can call your band anything you want. S’okay. Whatever name you think best.” I put my grin into my voice, hoping he snaps out of whatever funk I’ve put him in.
He sits a moment more, unmoving. He shakes his entire body from head to toe and back up again, like he’s ridding himself of a giant burden. Then he turns, his loveable mug glowing. “You had me goin’ there, you shit,” he says. But his words and his inflection don’t match. He’s not mad.
“C&S, it is.” And I pull from the parking lot. As I turn onto Belknap, I think about his flood of apology. He loves me. Did he really say that? What in the hell? I look over at him. He’s busy playing air guitar to Jagger’s “Jumping Jack Flash” blaring from the radio. Jeep is hysterical. He’s even making Mick Jagger lips as he mouths the words. No, that last he just added to his impassioned plea of atonement because I’d jokingly said that I felt unloved. Jeep’s a kidder. That he is.
Downtown, I spot a parking space right in front of C&S Music. I slide the Chevy into it. I turn to Jeep. “Okay, here’s the deal. I need to get home, so be quick. I’m going around the corner to Crump’s to see what’s on sale, if anything. Fifteen minutes, tops. Okay?”
“’Kay,” he says, saluting me.
I head into my favorite record shop and make a beeline to the clearance bin. A few years back some records were put out called Co-Star, The Record Acting Game. They featured a bunch of famous actors reading scenes from plays and movies. The “game” part was, there was a script, and the actor recorded character lines for one character and the listener read aloud the other character’s lines. I had wanted to get my hands on one of these albums for years, ever since I saw them in this place, but I couldn’t afford one. Finally, the remaining ones were put in the clearance bin, but when you only get a dollar a week for allowance—actually, I only got a raise from fifty cents a couple of years ago—I still couldn’t afford any of the “Co-Stars.” I rifle through the bin, and there… the last one…. Paulette Goddard reading scenes from Peyton Place… seventy-five cents. I see the pencil marks over the original sales sticker, which had read $3.98. The first markdown was three bucks, then two, then a dollar fifty, and now the magic number I had in my pocket. I grab the record, rush to the cash register, thrust it toward the clerk like it is treasure I don’t want to lose sight of. I pull out two quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. She sacks my booty, and I hurry back to the car, anxious to get home and play Rodney Harrington to Goddard’s Allison. I know that much from the TV series I was never allowed to watch.
Jeep is tapping on his watch, standing by the car, when I come round the corner.
“I know, I know. Hop in. It’s not locked.” Another thing Daddy would not have liked. Always lock up, he’s drilled into me a million times.
The ride home is filled with Jeep’s chattering about all he’d bought and how he’d found a lot of it on sale. It all barely registers because I am too keen on getting home to put my new find on the spindle.
I drop him off, speed home, and have the record out of its sleeve before I even get to my room. As I put it on the turntable, I hear Daddy’s car coming up the drive.
I open the script and drop the needle on the disc. I must have put the second side on first because the scene that begins, as I see from the script, is between Selena, played by Hope Lange in the movie, and Dr. Swain.
I hear Paulette Goddard’s velvet voice as Selena says, “What? I can’t be pregnant.”
I read the next line, “Tests don’t lie. I assume you know who the father is.”
“I do.” There is scorn in her voice. “My daddy. That’s who the father is.”
I’m about to read the next line, when I hear, “What are you listening to?” Daddy’s voice does not sound happy.
I see his scowling face as he steps into my room.
“What is this filth?”
Now, I don’t agree with my daddy a lot, but he can make me toe the line very easily. He just has to express disappointment in me.
I tremble. “It’s just a new record I bought. It’s an acting game.”
“Well, I don’t care. Not in my house. We don’t talk about such things here, and I won’t have you acting out your little scenes, saying such crap.” Daddy may have high moral st
andards, but they don’t extend to his vocabulary, especially when he’s mad. “Turn that goddamned thing off, you hear. And don’t let me hear you listening to it again.” And he storms off.
The record has kept playing through all this, only Selena’s lines being said, no doubt speaking more “filth,” as Daddy called it. But I didn’t hear any of it under Daddy’s tirade. I just stood there, thunderstruck, aching inside. I feel dirty. Like I’ve done something heinous. An armed robbery. A murder. A rape. But all I’ve done is tried an “acting game.”
Some game.
I am stunned. A deep, deep hurt rises from inside me. How can he do this to me? How can he say such words to me? Doesn’t he understand me?
My daddy. My unreasonable, opinionated, always right, never wrong daddy. My only daddy. The man who played with me when I was little. The man who is so proud when I bring home straight As. The man who has me sing for anybody who comes visiting. The man who, despite our differences, loves me and cares for me and feeds me and clothes me and pays for my gasoline. My daddy.
I take the disc off the turntable. I crack it in two. I break those two parts in two more. I keep on breaking the record until it is in fifty pieces. I start on the cardboard sleeve. I rip Paulette Goddard’s movie star face straight through her nose. I peel it from its cardboard backing, rip and shred and pull until it is confetti. I take all the debris to the outside garbage, dig deep among the empty cans, the food wrappers, the dirty paper towels and discarded mail, burying it all. Like I’m performing a cleansing ritual. A sacred rite that will put me back in my daddy’s good graces. I wipe tears from my eyes, head into the yard. Sit in the swing of the now-dilapidated swing set I got for my fifth birthday. Void my head of everything that just happened. It’s tough, but I manage. And then I start to do what I always do when I’m bothered or sad or happy, even. I start singing at the top of my lungs. I sing every song from The Sound of Music. It never fails me.
Finally, I stand and go back into the house. I pass through the den, trying to avoid Daddy, fearing he has not recovered from this debacle as well as I have.
“Sounded good, King Cat.”
And that’s how I know he’s not mad at me anymore. He uses the nickname he gave me when I fell over laughing one night, watching Lucy jitterbug with King Cat Walsh.
“Thanks,” I say. And all’s right with the world. At least for now. I still have to keep Daddy away from the show. Funny how Anna Maria hasn’t titled it yet. Living, breathing theater, she’d said. I guess she’s waiting. Maybe for a suggestion from one of us.
Dinner goes smoothly. I made steaks under the broiler. I was careful to cook them medium rare. The last time, I cooked them too done, and Daddy was not happy at all. I couldn’t afford to incur his wrath again today.
After dinner, I head over to the TCU area and rehearsal.
Ben doesn’t have his lover with him tonight. It seems funny to even think that word, but that’s what Jeep said the guy was, and I believe Jeep.
Sometimes I think I’m too naïve. I try to keep up with the world, but a lot’s happening out there. I keep so busy with my acting and singing that it’s hard to find time to read the newspaper, watch the TV news, look at all the magazines. Then, too, Daddy wants to keep me a little boy. I think he’s afraid of the world out there. Or at least afraid of it for me. I’m eighteen and barely know how babies are made. And believe me, I dread the day when Daddy decides he needs to give me “the talk.” I may be unversed in it all, but I know the basics. Anything Daddy would tell me anyway.
We start blocking and get all the way through Act 1 before we quit for the night. Blocking, where the director tells you your moves on stage, always takes a long time, but Ben knows his stuff. He keeps us moving.
What’s neat is we’re doing the show in the round, like they do the musicals at Casa Mañana, Fort Worth’s professional musical theater. The audience will sit in chairs arranged in a circle, around a main performance space. There will be aisles where we will also perform—some of us—putting the audience right in the middle of the action. Ben says he will most probably have to adjust the blocking so everyone in the audience will be able to see at least the most important characters as they speak. It’s a whole new world for me—theater in the round, this radical show, working with Ben.
When all is said and done for the night, LuLu grabs me as I walk out. “I’m starving. This really takes it out of you, don’t it?”
I love the way she mangles the English language, just for fun. It’s pretty obvious she’s smart and knows what’s right. She just looks at life a little different. No wonder, being separated from the rest of us, like black people are. Funny, two days ago, that thought wouldn’t have popped into my head.
“Get a burger? There’s a place in the next block.”
“Unh-unh. That place don’t serve my kind. No coloreds allowed.”
I look carefully to see if she’s kidding, but I see fear. Not much. But some. “What are you talking about? We have a Civil Rights Act now.”
“Yeah. Tell that to Southern honkies. I grant you some places in Cowtown have accepted the law. But not that place right down there. I guarantee it. I’ve heard stories.” She pauses. “I’m not about to be a trailblazer for the black power movement. The doctor and his wife would kill me.”
There was that again. The weird thing she called her folks.
“Okay, how about I get us some burgers and shakes to go. We can sit in my car and eat them. Ben and Anna Maria are still inside, talking. I’d bet we’ll finish our eats before they even come out, so it will be safe here. If anything happens, we’ll scream bloody murder.” I smile.
LuLu laughs. “Okay, white boy. I want a cheeseburger, hold the mustard, mayo only. No shake. Big Red for me.” She reaches into her purse and pulls out a five dollar bill. “Get something for yourself too, now, ya hear?”
I roll my eyes at her. “Yes’um, ma’am, I’s doing what you says.” I don’t know what gives me the courage to give her back as good as she gives. Especially imitating one of those google-eyed black servants from the movies. But she just slaps me on the back and says, “Git on, Rastus.”
I go to the diner and get our burgers. When I return, she comes from the lobby, where she has retreated. It’s a cold night, but I suspect she felt safer inside.
I hand her her bag of food and the glass bottle of Big Red. I also hand over her change.
“This is too much. How’d you pay for yours? I wanted to treat,” she protests.
“I keep some extra money in the glove compartment from my allowance. I slipped some into my pocket earlier, before rehearsal. You don’t need to pay.”
“But I wanted to. Next time, then.”
I unlock the passenger door and open it for her, gesturing for her to enter.
“What a gentleman,” she coos, as she steps into the car.
I go around, open my door, and slide in.
We begin to eat. After she gushes about how good the food is, I venture a question. One that maybe I shouldn’t be asking.
“Why do you call your parents ‘the doctor and his wife’?”
“I’m their trophy.”
“Huh?”
“The doctor’s father was filthy rich. I know—that’s hard to believe, that us black folks could be rich. Well, anyway, the old guy kicked the bucket at the early age of fifty. He had plenty of money to take care of my grandma for the rest of her life, plus he left a huge nest egg for my pappy. But here’s the kicker: the old goat left the doctor’s money in a trust. They paid for his education and gave him a bit of spending money, but most of the money didn’t come to him until he was married and the wife was with child. So I was the prize. The doctor’s wife must have gotten knocked up on the wedding night because I came sliding out nine months and one week after the lavish wedding Grandma threw for them.
“And I was raised by maids. Not those high-toned nannies you see in the movies. No, low-class, floor-scrubbing, no-account white trash maids. I don’t
know where the doctor and his wife found these women, but they had to have been the lowest of the white trash to work for us niggers.”
I’m startled to hear her use that word. I’ve heard it a lot in my life, but not from the lips of a black person.
“Anyway, it’s a wonder I turned into the talented, well-mannered young lady I am. Maybe it was all the rules imposed on me. And the fact the wife refused to pay for the private schools all her lady friends were sending their kids to. So I grew up in the hardscrabble, underfunded, segregated public schools of Fort Worth. And I decided long ago I was going to enjoy myself. And not give a flip what the doctor and his wife thought of me. I would just fly under their radar, pretending to follow all their rules.
“Only on one issue do I persist: I will not, I repeat, I will not become the doctor they’ve decided I should be. The wife is a nurse—that’s the only thing she could be when she went to school, but as she puts it, ‘The world is opening up to our race these days, and you can be a doctor just like your daddy.’
“But I’m going to be a movie star. I know, it’s crazy. How many people make it in Hollywood? Especially black ones. But that’s my dream. And no one’s going to take it away from me. The doctor’s wife, she rants, ‘No colored gal’—she can get real ghetto when she’s mad—‘is gonna be no movie star. You ain’t no Dorothy Dandridge. Besides, look what happened to her. Sure, she got that Oscar nomination, and she did some big movies, but she died. Too young. An overdose. And don’t tell me it was an accident, like they said. Unh-unh. That nigger killed herself.’
“That’s the doctor’s wife. Coarse as a street whore when she wants to be. And yes, I know Dandridge is about our people’s only movie star success—female, anyway—and she had her problems, but she didn’t kill herself; I don’t care what the doctor’s wife says. It was proven she died, actually, of natural causes from an embolism. That overdose was not the reason. No way. No how.”
I finish my burger and sit, drinking it all in. She had forgotten her food as she delivered her story. Now, her tirade over, she takes another bite.
All You Need Is Love Page 6