Semiprecious

by D. Anne Love

  A Southern Plains bus driver was drinking coffee at the counter. I slid onto the stool next to him. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can you help me find Fremont Street?”

  He set down his coffee cup and spun around on his stool. “Let’s have a look.”

  I handed him the bus schedule. He flipped it over, and there, in tiny print, was a list of street names. I felt dumb as a box of salt.

  “Fremont, Fremont,” he muttered, running his finger down the list. “Here it is. B twenty-six.”

  He showed me how to match the grid to the color-coded bus routes. “You want the green route. Bus number eighty-eight. There’s a bus stop about a block up this street, in front of Woolworth’s. You can’t miss it.”

  “Thanks.” I folded the schedule, picked up my book bag, and headed out the door and into a cold drizzle that made me wish I’d had enough gumption to bring an umbrella. I jogged up the street to the bus stop, where a couple of people waited with umbrellas and packages. By the time the bus swayed up the street and shuddered to a stop, my toes felt like icicles.

  I got on and dropped my forty cents into the coin box. All the seats were taken, so I stood in the aisle, smushed between a couple of kids dressed in jeans and leather jackets and a woman in a nurse’s uniform. A buzzer sounded. The driver pulled over and the kids in jeans got off. An old man with watery eyes got on and stood so close to me I could smell stale tobacco and his hot, sour breath. He smiled at me, showing a row of corn kernel teeth, but it wasn’t a friendly smile. It creeped me out.

  The nurse moved over and stood between me and the old man. “Which is your stop, hon?” she asked me.

  “I’m going to Fremont Street.”

  She glanced out the window. “The next street is Western Avenue. Get off there and walk down three blocks to Fremont. I’ll babysit Romeo here.” She pulled the cord to signal the driver and the bus ground to a stop. “Be careful,” the nurse said. “This isn’t the safest neighborhood in town.”

  The bus pulled away, belching fumes and smoke. I crossed the street and walked to Fremont, looking for number 26. In my imagination I’d pictured a street with pretty buildings and glittery stores filled with beautiful clothes and fine jewelry. I imagined the ladies’ hotel as a place with wide marble staircases, a revolving door, and a bellman to help you carry your stuff.

  The reality was something out of a horror movie.

  Brown weeds poked through the cracks in the concrete steps leading to the door. Half the windows were broken out and boarded up. Pea green paint was peeling off the shutters. In the gutter was a pile of broken beer bottles, plastic bags, and cigarette wrappers. It was hard to imagine Mama, who was so particular about every little thing, setting foot inside such a dump.

  I opened the door. The hall was dark, and it smelled like pee and fried onions.

  “Wipe your feet!” bellowed an old woman from behind a counter.

  I looked around to see who she was yelling at.

  “Yes, you, missy!” she hollered at me. “I’m talking to you.”

  I scraped my shoes on the doormat and went into the lobby. The woman said, “We don’t rent rooms to kids.”

  “I’m here to see my mother, Melanie Hubbard,” I said. Then I remembered Mama’s new stage name: “McClain.”

  Now that I was finally here and about to see Mama, my heart sped up, and my palms got sweaty. I wiped them on my jeans, dug my comb out of my backpack, and raked it through my damp hair.

  “Melanie, the blond one who acts like she’s Grace Kelly?” The old woman gave a short laugh that sent her into a coughing fit. When she got her breath back, she said, “She’s a looker all right, but I can’t say beans about her singing. My regular tenants complained so often about her loud practicing, it was a relief when she moved out.”

  The room started to spin. “Mama moved?” Hot tears sprang to my eyes. “I have to find her!”

  “Calm down! She left a forwarding address so I could refund her deposit. I’ve got it around here somewhere.”

  The woman opened a metal box filled with yellow index cards and began sorting through them. I was so exhausted and hungry I started to shake. Black spots swam before my eyes. I felt weightless.

  “Hey, what’s the matter?” The woman’s voice sounded far away. “Are you sick or something?”

  The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor and she was pressing a wet washrag to my forehead. “You’re white as a sheet, girl. How long has it been since you ate anything?”

  “Yesterday. At the bus station in Arkansas.”

  “Where’d you come from?”

  “Oklahoma.”

  “Can you sit up?”

  She took ahold of my shoulders and helped me up. “Sit here and catch your breath. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The ceiling creaked as somebody walked around upstairs. A door slammed. A radio came on. The phone behind the desk rang and rang. Then the woman came back with a plate of saltines and a glass of milk. “This ain’t much, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Who would have thought crackers and milk could taste so good? I devoured it all and wiped my mouth with my fingers.

  “Better?” The woman looked down at me, and I realized she wasn’t as old as I’d thought. She’d just lived a slipping-down kind of life. I wondered whether she’d once had dreams of her own. It made me sad to look at her.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  “Garnet.”

  “I’m Tina. You want some more crackers?”

  “No, I’m okay. Thanks, though. The milk was real good.”

  She handed me a card with an address on it. “Here you go. She’s at the Cumberland Apartments on Fairview Drive. Moved there a month ago.”

  I unfolded my map, my mind whirling. I couldn’t believe a mother would move and not tell her own kids where she’d gone. Tina said, “You can take bus eighty-eight to Sixth Street. Transfer to the red line there. Transfer again at River Road and that bus’ll take you all the way out to Fairview.”

  My heart sank.

  “What’s the matter now?” Tina asked.

  “I don’t have enough money for all those transfers. I’ll have to walk.”

  “In this neighborhood? Not a smart idea. Besides, Fairview Drive is clear across town. You’d never make it before dark.” She handed me a crumpled bill from her pocket. “This should do it.”

  I was so relieved I nearly started crying. “I’ll pay you back. I promise.”

  “Forget it,” Tina said. “Consider it my good deed for the day.”

  “Thanks.” I picked up my stuff and started toward the door.

  “When you see your mama tell her Tina says hey.”

  Outside, the streets were slick and shiny with rain. I walked back to the bus stop to wait. The clock on the bank building across the street said 3:25, but the dark clouds and cold wind made it seem later. Already the street lights were coming on. It seemed that hours passed before Bus 88 arrived, and hours more before I boarded the bus for Fairview Drive. As it lumbered down the noisy, traffic-clogged street, I watched the night lights coming on in the office buildings, and Christmas decorations twinkling in the store windows. It was getting dark when the bus let me off in front of the Cumberland Apartments.

  Everything was spick-and-span. All the paint looked brand-new. Even though it was November, pots of red geraniums flanked every apartment door. Outside the office, arrows pointed the way to a pool, a gym, and a clubhouse. I figured Mama must be doing pretty well in the singing game if she could afford to live in such a nice place.

  In the office a woman wearing a blue suit and pearls looked up Mama’s name in a book. “Here we are. Apartment twelve. It’s to your left, across from the pool.”

  I found apartment twelve and stood there gulping air, scared to ring the bell, almost wishing I hadn’t come. But it was too late to turn back. I pressed the button and heard a faint chime. The door opened, and there was Mama.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 
; “Garnet?” Her voice was a coiled spring. She clutched at her pink bathrobe and blinked like she was seeing a ghost. “What in the world are you doing here? Where’s Opal? And Julia?”

  “I came by myself.” My backpack was getting heavy. My fingers and feet were freezing in the cold rain. “Can I come in?”

  “Oh! Of course, come in!” Mama held the door and I went inside, so happy to see her that I wanted to fall into her arms and cry for about a million years. But I could tell she was mad at me for showing up, so I just stood in the hallway, looking around. The living room was bare, but I could see a bed, a dresser, and a mirror in the bedroom down the hall. There was a teakettle on the stove in the kitchen, a bunch of flowers in a vase on the kitchen table, and in the corner, a stack of sheet music and Mama’s guitar.

  Mama tied the sash of her robe and yawned. “Sorry. I worked a double shift and I’m beat.” I followed her to the kitchen. She filled the teakettle, lit the stove, and took a couple of mugs from the cupboard. “Now. What’s this all about, Garnet? How did you get here? Does Julia know you’re here?”

  We sat at the table waiting for the water to boil, and I told her about Daddy’s disability money being all tangled up in red tape and about Aunt Julia selling her piano just to feed Opal and me. I told her how much I hated taking welfare food, hated Willow Flats School, hated Faith Underwood and Celestial Jones and their prissy friends. I told her about Charlie Twelvetrees and the worry dolls, and how they gave me the idea to come and fetch her.

  “You never meant to come back for us,” I said. “You and Aunt Julia lied.” Now that I was there and rehashing all the injustices I’d suffered since August, I was getting madder by the minute.

  Mama took a sugar bowl out of the cabinet. “Maybe we should have told you the truth from the beginning, but we were trying not to hurt you.” She sighed. “I’m sorry you’re having such a hard time of it, but there’s nothing I can do.”

  “Yes, there is!” I yelled. “You can come home and take care of your kids the way you’re supposed to. You can take care of Daddy when he gets out of the hospital. That’s what mothers do, Melanie, they take care of their families!”

  I hurled my tea mug across the room. It shattered on the floor. I sat there shaking, my feelings for Mama bouncing back and forth between love and hate. Mama and I stared at each other. The kettle shrieked.

  She didn’t say a word. She took the kettle off the stove, swept up the broken pieces, then went down the hall to her bedroom and closed the door. I heard the shower come on, and then the sound of drawers opening and closing. Half an hour later she came out in a cloud of White Shoulders, looking perfect, acting like nothing had happened. “Are you hungry, precious?”

  “Garnets aren’t precious. I looked it up.”

  “You’re precious to me.”

  “You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”

  “You came all this way just to hurt my feelings?”

  “I came to tell you it’s time to give up, Mama. It’s time to come home and act like a regular mother. We had a life back in Texas. Don’t you miss it, even a little bit? Don’t you miss me and Opal? Don’t you miss Daddy?”

  “Honestly?” Mama said. “I miss my precious gems, but I do not miss Mirabeau even a little bit. Sometimes I miss your daddy. But he was gone so much, I felt like a single parent half the time anyway.”

  “He had to work! It wasn’t his fault.”

  “You’re defending him now, but don’t you remember how mad you got last spring when he missed your baseball game?”

  “He said he was sorry.”

  “He’s a good man,” Mama allowed. “One of the best in the whole world. But he drives me crazy. As long as there’s fried chicken on the table and his truck is running good, he’s a happy man. He never figured out that I need more than that.”

  It came to me then that Mama had spent so much time running over other people’s feelings like they weren’t as important as her own, that she couldn’t see that her dream had turned into a curse that was hurting her whole family.

  She eyed my dirty backpack. “Any clean clothes in there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “Go get cleaned up. We’ll let Julia know you’re safe and get something to eat.”

  Don’t get me wrong. I was still mad as a hornet, but I was starving, too, so I didn’t give her any more back talk. I bathed, washed my hair, and changed into my clean sweater.

  “You look nice, honey,” Mama said when I came out of the bathroom. Her eyes were begging me to forgive her, but I couldn’t.

  “Can we go now?” I fluffed my damp hair with my fingers and fussed with my bangs so I wouldn’t have to look at her.

  Mama picked up her purse and keys. We walked across the parking lot and climbed into the truck. It still had the faint Daddy-smell I remembered, a mixture of leather, hair tonic, and spearmint gum.

  Mama’s driving skills had not improved one iota. She gunned the engine, spinning the tires on the wet pavement. Then we shot out of the parking lot and sped past stores and office buildings, laundromats, and restaurants. We passed the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and a yellow house with white painted curlicues above the porch. Mama said, “There’s the Hilltop Café, where Ruby Lee Sims was discovered. One day she was waiting tables and singing backup, the next she was cutting records for RCA.”

  We turned down a side street lined with record stores and T-shirt shops, and stopped at a steak place. Mama cut the engine. “I’m telling you, Garnet, Nashville is a town where your whole life can change in the blink of an eye. All it takes is being in the right place at the right time.”

  We went into the restaurant. A hostess in a black dress led us past a darkened stage to a booth in the back, and handed us menus. The waitress came over and plunked down two glasses of water and silverware rolled up in white napkins. She smiled automatically, then did a double take.

  “Well, hey there, Melanie. What are you doing here?”

  Before Mama could say anything, the waitress said, “Wait. Let me guess. You love it here so much you just can’t stay away even on your night off.”

  Mama tossed her head and laughed her movie-star laugh, like she thought a talent scout might be hiding behind the fake palm tree in the corner, scoping her out. “My daughter just arrived in town and she’s famished, aren’t you, precious?”

  I nodded and opened the menu. Mama took it away from me and said to the waitress, “Bring us two specials, medium well, baked potatoes, hold the butter and sour cream on mine. Coffee for me, and … Garnet? How about a Coke, honey?”

  “Okay.”

  “Be right back.” The waitress grinned at me. “Welcome to Nashville, hon.”

  When she left, Mama slid out of the booth. “I’m going to call Sunday Larson. I won’t be long.” She dug through her purse and handed me some change. “Go play the jukebox if you want.”

  But I stayed put. I sipped my water and watched Mama feeding quarters into the pay phone at the back of the restaurant. She was wearing tight jeans, a white shirt with silver buttons, and suede high-heeled boots the color of butterscotch pudding. She hadn’t said a word about her recording contract, but I figured she must be making pots of money to afford such nice clothes plus the apartment on Fairview Drive.

  She hurried back to the booth and scooted in, dropping her purse on the seat. “Sunday’s going to drive down to Julia’s and let her know you’re okay. I’ll bet Julia is worried sick. It was thoughtless of you to just up and take off like that.”

  “It runs in the family.”

  “Don’t be a smart mouth. Julia probably hasn’t slept a wink since you left.”

  “I left Opal a note. She knew I was coming after you.”

  “Well, I’m sorry you’ve made a fruitless trip.”

  The waitress brought our food and the check. “Here you go,” she said. “My shift’s over and I’m outta here. See you tomorrow, Mel.”

 
; I salted my potato and dug in. Butter oozed out, warm and fragrant.

  Mama said, “Tell me more about school. Surely there’s something you like.”

  The good food was putting me in a better mood, so I told Mama about Powla’s art class and about the painting I was working on for my history project. “It’s called American Dreams,” I told her. “Miss Mendez says she can tell from my sketches it’s full of irony.”

  “Irony?” Mama laughed. “I’m not sure I know what that word means.” She took a bite of potato and sipped her coffee.

  Then I told her about the scenery project and how Miss Mendez said it would be good for me. “But it’s an after-school thing, and there’s no way to get home once the bus runs.”

  “I am truly sorry about that, Garnet,” Mama said. “I know how it feels when you’re just bursting to express all the emotions inside you, and there’s no way to let them out.”

  The wistful way she said it made me realize that something about Mama had been altered since leaving Mirabeau. She wasn’t the bubbly, hopeful person I remembered. She seemed older somehow. Maybe deep down she regretted running away, but she’d have died before admitting it.

  She went on. “I had the same problem when I was in school. Julia had a bad wreck and demolished our truck. For a long time she couldn’t drive, and by the time she was better, she’d lost her nerve. I had to bum rides from my friends, which was a huge pain in the old patootie, believe you me.”

  I waited for Mama to confess what I already knew: that the accident had happened because Aunt Julia was driving too fast, trying to save Mama’s reputation. But Mama motioned to another waitress for a refill on her coffee and changed the subject.

  “How’s Charlie Twelvetrees these days? I swear, that man is older than dirt.”

  “He’s okay. He came to Thanksgiving dinner at Aunt Julia’s.”

  Mama grinned. “I’ll bet he brought coconut cake.”