Heart Breaths

by Hendin, KK

And if she wasn’t right about the “scholarship kids” being only a little higher on the social scale than lepers, maybe she wasn’t right about me. About the way that I was a failure. An embarrassment. That nobody was ever going to want me.

  Maybe she wasn’t always right.

  I breathed out, and felt a piece from the wall around my heart crack off.

  I felt my heart breathe a little.

  “How was the birthday party?” Grandma Evelyn asked me the next day. It was the morning slump, after all the morning commuters had gotten their daily shot of caffeine and before the lunch rush began.

  “It was really sweet,” I said, slicing tomatoes for the little salad bar.

  “I’m glad you went,” she said.

  “Went where?” It was Sam, here to pick up the order of coffee and pastries for the ladies at the salon.

  “To Noie’s birthday party,” Grandma answered, leaning over and pinching her cheek. “Your hair looks different today, Samantha Jo.”

  “It’s Maddie’s fault,” Sam said, turning her head to show off her new haircut.

  “Whoa—why is your hair my fault?”

  “Because of your pink, silly,” she said, laughing. “I decided that if you could do something crazy, than I should also. You know, live a little.”

  I laughed in astonishment. Not since the accident had the thought that anyone would use me as an example of someone who was living a little even crossed my mind. I tilted my head to try to see what she had done. “Oh my God, you shaved off part of your hair, Sam!” I gasped, gaping at her newly shaved triangle at the side of her head.

  “I know, isn’t it awesome?” she asked, running her hand over it proudly.

  “I wasn’t expecting that at all,” I said, still trying to adjust to the new, more punked out Sam. “What does Chris think?”

  She giggled. “He thinks it’s the sexiest thing ever,” she practically purred.

  I burst into laughter. “He thinks it’s sexy, huh?”

  She nodded, looking supremely smug. “I had no idea that shaving off a little bit of my hair would turn him into a sex-mad god, but it has.” She looked at me. “If he’s any indication of men, honey, you should take a razor to your hair as soon as you can.”

  I had a sudden image of myself with a newly shaved triangle at the side of my head, showing Gabe. “Sam, I told you I’m not looking for a relationship.”

  “Oh, please.” She scoffed. “Honey, you can’t hide behind yourself forever, you know. The pink was just the start of everything. Right, Grandma?”

  Grandma Evelyn nodded. “I believe so, honey.”

  I groaned. “Grandma, really? Do you have to encourage her?”

  “It’s not her who needs the encouragement, it’s you,” she said, tapping me on the nose before going to ring up a customer.

  “I don’t need encouragement,” I protested.

  The lady waiting by the register laughed. “Honey, you need all the encouragement you can get.”

  I turned to stare at her. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

  “Charlene. I was at the salon when you did your hair. Don’t stop with just the pink, honey. I saw your face. You’ve been hiding behind someone else for far too long.” I gaped at her in astonishment. “Some advice for you, honey,” she said as she turned to leave the café. “Let yourself go and do something tacky for once.”

  “Do something tacky. What kind of ridiculous thing is that for her to say,” I muttered to myself as I watched her helmet of permed white hair walk out of the café.

  “It’s not ridiculous. It’s brilliant!” Sam crowed, reaching over to grab my hands and bounce excitedly.

  “No, it’s not brilliant,” I said, trying to let go of my hands. “It’s stupid.”

  “Oh my God, this is brilliant!” she repeated, pulling out her phone. “I could kiss her right now.”

  “Now, that I’d like to see,” drawled Chris as he strolled up to the counter, wrapped his arms around her and kissed the top of her head. “Who are you making out with?”

  “Oh, you,” Sam swatted his arm. “You’re such a guy.”

  “I know,” he said, pulling her closer to him. “But you didn’t answer my question, sweetheart.”

  “Chris, you’re off tonight, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  She leaned to whisper something in his ear. His eyes widened, and he looked at me. “She’s gonna be okay with that?” he asked.

  “No, she won’t be,” I said. “I don’t even know what she said, but the answer is still no.”

  It was seven-thirty, and if I inhaled one more breath of hairspray, I was going to throw up. “Sam, I can’t breathe!” I choked.

  “Almost done,” she said, inserting another bobby pin into my hair. “Oh mah gawd, Maddie, you will never recognize yourself.”

  I groaned and closed my eyes. “And I hope to God nobody else does either,” I said. “Are you going to let me see what you’ve done to me or not?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “I have to do your makeup first.”

  “No, not makeup, too,” I moaned.

  “Oh, hush,” Sam’s friend Hannah said, sitting on the counter and swinging her legs. “You know this is a great idea.”

  I would have turned to glare at her, but Sam had my head in a tight grip. “No, it isn’t.” I said. “I think Grandma drugged the cheesecake in the café today, because I have no other explanation for why the hell I said yes to this.”

  Hannah laughed. “Because it’s almost summer, you’re twenty-two, and apparently, nobody ever taught you how to have fun, and now we’re gonna fix that.”

  “Going to a honky-tonk bar and singing Dolly Parton on the karaoke machine is going to teach me how to have fun?”

  “Duh,” she said, pulling out a compact and checking her makeup. “Coming here was the best thing you ever did to your fun.”

  “You can look now,” Sam said, spinning the chair. “Damn. I do good work.”

  If I hadn’t known that there was a mirror there, I don’t think I would have recognized myself. “Sam, I look like I raided Dolly Parton’s closet,” I said, gaping at the gigantic poof of hair that was currently exploding out of the top of my head.

  “Excellent,” she said. “That was the look I was going for.”

  “I’m not going out in public like this,” I said, trying to reach for the makeup remover. “This is insane.”

  Snatching the makeup remover out of my reach, she laughed. “Yes, you are. You’re going to come with us to Billy Bob’s Honky Tonk and Karaoke Bar, and you’re going to sing Dolly Parton, because girl, you’re practically her clone right now. And it’s going to be wonderful and tacky and fun, and we’re all going to drink a little too much and end up singing something stupid together like ‘I Will Survive’.”

  I started to panic. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “Yes, you can. Relax, Maddie. Nobody is gonna know you there except for us. And we’re your friends. Friends do stupid things with their friends.”

  We’re your friends.

  I didn’t know how or why Sam had decided that I was her friend. That she even wanted to be friends with me. I was emotionally screwed, was drowning in my own self-pity, and if I wanted to be honest, there was a stick permanently wedged up my butt.

  But we were friends, and I wasn’t going to look that gift horse in the mouth.

  “Fine,” I said. “One time, and that’s it. Even though there is no way this hair is going to fit in your car.”

  “Then it’s a good thing there’s a sunroof, isn’t it?” she said, poking me as we walked out of the salon.

  Walking into Billy Bob’s Honky-Tonk and Karaoke Bar was like walking into every Southern cowboy cliché. Ever. All in one building.

  Taxidermied heads hung from the walls, there were rifles lined behind the bar, and every single man in the entire place as far as I could see was wearing a cowboy hat.

  “Oh my dear Lord,” I whispered as I stare
d.

  “I know,” Sam said, leading me in. “Sometimes, I think they’re all just acting. But no.”

  Following Sam, we sat down at a little table and people-watched as Chris and Bryan, Hannah’s boyfriend, went to get drinks. “You excited for your karaoke debut?” asked Mary Elizabeth, one of Sam’s friends I had met at the birthday barbeque.

  “Uh, no,” I said.

  She laughed. “Liquid courage will change all that,” she drawled. “Don’t you worry.”

  The music began, a loud, rollicking country song. Sam whooped. “Come on, let’s dance!” she said, pulling me from the table.

  “Don’t fight the tacky,” said Chris, coming back with a pitcher of beer. “Go dance.”

  “But someone has to stay at the table,” I protested.

  Chris turned to look at Bryan and Hannah who were making out at the table. “I think that’s covered.”

  The music was loud, filled with guitars and yee-haws. I tried to concentrate as Mary Elizabeth and Sam taught me the moves to the dance. “Now, step, touch, touch, step, touch, kick,” Mary Elizabeth instructed.

  Slowly, clumsily, I began to repeat the steps with her, getting a little more confident as I went. “You see?” Sam yelled over the music. “You’re dancing!”

  “This isn’t dancing!” I yelled back, a small grin creeping across my face. “This is an interpretive cattle stampede!”

  “You’re crazy!” she yelled, laughing and swinging me in a circle. “Crazy, crazy, crazy!”

  I was crazy.

  And that was kind of okay.

  “Can I cut in?” I turned to see a cowboy standing there. He was actually pretty hot, in his plaid button down, jeans, and cowboy boots. But no. I was not going to get picked up while I was dressed as Dolly Parton’s Northern, less well-endowed, miniature clone.

  “Sorry, not tonight,” I said, flashing him an icy smile and hoping he would leave without anything happening.

  “You sure?” he asked.

  “Positive,” I said, turning back to Mary Elizabeth and Sam who were watching me, open-mouthed. “Thanks for asking.”

  “Holy shit, girl, how did you do that?” Mary Elizabeth asked as we headed back toward the table.

  “Do what?”

  She looked at me like I had just fallen off the moon. “Brush him off like that. You literally turned into an icicle. A really nice, smiling icicle, but an icicle.”

  I shrugged. “Product of my upbringing,” I muttered.

  The night wore on, with us sitting around the table, laughing, drinking beer, and occasionally dancing to a truly terrible country song. I hadn’t been to that many bars when I lived in New York, having cocooned myself in, studying and trying to keep living. But I doubted this was a typical bar. Maybe it was for North Carolina. I was slowly relaxing, sitting here in what felt like a giant Lincoln Log house, and mostly forgetting about my hair and clown makeup. It felt like what a barn dance probably felt like—everyone was here—from college kids to grandparents, and everyone was dancing. The music was a mix of every country station I had heard driving down—Johnny Cash and Taylor Swift and George Straight and Carrie Underwood. It was music, and it was loud, and that was what counted.

  The music wound down, and the microphone clicked on. “Good evening, ladies and gents!” drawled a Southern voice. “And welcome to Billy Bob’s Innnnncredible Karaoke Night!” The crowd cheered, and I clapped politely, hoping that there would be so many people who wanted to sing that there wouldn’t be enough time for me to go.

  “And for our first performer, we have Myra Ellen Banksfield!” The crowd clapped and cheered as an overly made-up lady walked on stage. She took a little bow and walked over to the karaoke machine. A few seconds later, the music began, fast and upbeat. “This is for all you girls about thirteen,” she began to sing along to Martina McBride, her voice a little off-key but enthusiastic.

  “You’re beautiful the way you are,” Sam sang along, bobbing her head in time to the music.

  “Come on, everyone!” Myra Ellen called, like we were at a concert instead of some little hillbilly karaoke bar. But everyone sang along, stumbling over the words, off-key and loud. This was one of the most bizarre crowds I had ever been a part of—I don’t know where the mean drunks were that night, but obviously karaoke wasn’t their thing.

  “This is kinda fun,” I said to Sam.

  She flashed me a brilliant smile. “I told you so,” she sang, poking me in my ribs. “I told you so, I told you so, I told you so.”

  “Okay, try not to let it get to your head,” I retorted, smiling at her exuberance. “I said kinda, not all the way.”

  “Thank you!” said Myra Ellen, taking a sweeping bow and walking off the stage as the crowd clapped and cheered for her.

  Watching one karaoke singer after another, I leaned back against my chair, enjoying the show.

  “And next singer on our little roster is Maddie Gray. Maddie?”

  Oh no.

  “Maddie, that’s you!” Hannah said, pointing out the obvious.

  “Maybe there’s someone else named Maddie,” I said, feeling my heart plummet to my stomach. It wasn’t stage-fright. It was reliving some painfully bittersweet memories. Ones that would probably make me cry. And the last thing I wanted to do now was start crying on the karaoke stage in front of a herd of tipsy Southerners.

  Sam threw me a dirty look. “Stop being a baby,” she said. “Go and sing.”

  “I can’t sing,” I protested.

  “We had this conversation already,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody cares. I don’t think that anyone here is really all that sober anyway. And you can’t possibly be any worse than that last guy.”

  I shuddered. If there was a tune to the song he had sung, he had never heard of it.

  Let your heart breathe.

  Let yourself live.

  He wants you to be happy.

  I stood up and walked toward the front, listening to the table cheer. I stared down at the microphone and waited for the song I chose to play. The audience was mostly quiet as I sat down on the stool in the middle of the stage, listening as the music began to play. It was a song that was supposed to be sung as a duet, but there was nobody to sing it with me.

  Fitting.

  “Whiskey Lullaby.”

  The song had haunted me. Closing my eyes, I let myself sing with all I had. It wasn’t about anyone watching anymore. I was singing for myself. I was singing for Ravi. For Devi. For the truck driver, who hadn’t survived the accident, either. I was singing for myself.

  And as I sang, I let myself breathe out. Breathe out the life the truck driver had had. The life that led him to driving a semi while completely and utterly drunk.

  I didn’t forgive him.

  I couldn’t.

  But I was able to breathe out the pain that he had to numb so he could keep going. Until he numbed it so much that he stopped breathing. I breathed out, and finished the song. “They laid her next to him beneath the willow, while the angels sang a whiskey lullaby,” I sang, humming along as the song drew to a close.

  The music stopped, and there was complete and total silence.

  I opened my eyes and stood up. “Thank you,” I whispered, and put down the microphone.

  It was like the room snapped out of a trance. Applause spread through the audience like a wave, and I smiled as I walked back to my table.

  “You said you can’t sing, you liar!” Sam yelled, wiping her eyes and sniffling before reaching over and pulling me into a hug. “Maddie, you just cracked my heart into little pieces.”

  I shrugged. I hadn’t sung since before the accident. I hadn’t let myself.

  The cheering continued, as I sat down at the table, blushing, but feeling a smile creep across my face. I felt my heart breathing a little as the applause continued.

  “I believe we have an angel singing in this room tonight, y’all,” Billy Bob yelled over the cheers of the crowd. “Right in our own little karaoke bar!”


  I smiled, remembering what it felt like to be applauded.

  Remembering the nights I would join his band, the nights we would get together and make music.

  “Encore! Encore! Encore!” the chant began, with Sam, Hannah and Mary Elizabeth laughing and yelling along.

  “Miss Maddie!” yelled Billy Bob into the mic. “Can you do us the pleasure of gracing us once more with your beautiful voice?”

  Breathe, Maddie.

  Standing up, I walked back to the stage as the cheering got louder. “Thank you,” I said, picking up the microphone again. “And since this is an encore, does anyone have any song suggestions?”

  All at once, everyone was yelling, and of course, I couldn’t hear what any of them were saying.

  “Okay, try this again,” I called, getting back into the rhythm of working a crowd. I had never done a karaoke honky-tonk, but a crowd was a crowd was a crowd. “Raise your hand if you want something slow, and raise two hands if you want something fun.”

  The crowd’s hands flew up, and I laughed. “Okay, I can’t tell, so we’re going to do some Taylor Swift.”

  A couple of men booed. “Y’all, I’m not from around here, I don’t know that many country songs. You want an encore, you have to work with what I know.” I leaned against the karaoke machine and flashed them a grin. “I can always sing something like ‘I Will Survive’,” I threatened.

  “Noooo!!” they yelled.

  Flipping through the song choices, I found the Taylor Swift song I was looking for. “One, two three,” I counted as the music began, putting on what Ravi used to call my metaphorical sassy pants.

  I was singing there, with a banjo as my backup, asking why people had to be so mean, and Salena’s words drifted through my head. Breathe out a memory you don’t need anymore.

  And once again, I thought of my mother. Of the condescending remarks she made the first months after I moved back into the house. Not that she would ever be watching a football game, but the feeling was there just the same.

  The girls in the crowd joined in as I sang the chorus, with everyone cheering at the end.

  “Thank you!” I said, taking a little bow as the crowd cheered. Hopping off the stage, I headed back to the table. “No more encores,” I said as I sat down at the table while they clapped.