Freedom's Just Another Word

by Caroline Stelllings

  I didn’t have a clue what to say and neither did anybody else. She turned around to see what had happened to the guys who had gone inside the store. “Where the hell are you?” she hollered into the air.

  I remembered Thelma telling me that story about Bessie Smith, how the ambulance had to travel so much farther to get to an African-American hospital. The greatest singer ever, The Empress of the Blues, and they wouldn’t even treat her injuries.

  “So what’s your name?” Janis asked me.

  “Louisiana,” I said. “But you can call me Easy.”

  “Okay, Easy. Then you can call me Pearl.”

  I can? Only her friends call her Pearl. I can call her Pearl!

  “Why do you call yourself Pearl?” I asked, then immediately wondered if I should have. “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

  “Ha!” She tossed her head, and the feather boas in her hair flew every which way, framing her face like the snakes of Medusa. “Pearl protects me from the world, honey. The bloodsucking leeches that want to take too goddamn much from me. Great big goddamn chunks of me. Janis has given them all she can. Ya’ know what I mean?”

  “Well…uh…”

  “I cain’t give ’em any more!” Her voice was midway between a whine and a wail.

  She dragged on her cigarette a couple of times, then her tone changed.

  “So, Easy, why do you have Cajun instruments?” she asked. “You from the south?”

  “My parents are from Vinton,” I replied.

  “Jesus Key-riste, you’re kidding me!” she roared. “The best live music I ever heard was in Vinton. I crossed the state line every Saturday night to hear those cats—they were terrific.” She stared at me for a minute. “Must have been some hell for your parents—everything so goddamn segregated. I never went to those asshole ‘whites only’ places, let me tell you. The black bars were where the real music was.”

  I said nothing, but it was the first time in my life that I was actually proud to be black. Janis saw it as a plus, and for once, so did I.

  The next thing I remember was one of the members of the Full Tilt Boogie Band coming over to tell her that the store was out of Southern Comfort. Behind them, guys I didn’t recognize—I guess they were sound men or gofers—were carrying case after case out of the store, and another guy was filming the whole thing. Since the camera crew was traveling with the musicians, I gathered a documentary was being made of the entire tour.

  “You mean they’ve got every sonofabitchin’ bottle except Southern Comfort?” She threw her arms in the air. “What kind of a place is this?” The cameraman turned toward her. “And keep that goddamn lens off me. I’m not in the mood.”

  She started stomping toward the store and I picked up my instruments and followed her. Another guy—maybe one of the promoters—walked past us with a second box, and Janis accosted him.

  “Where the hell’s the Southern Comfort?”

  “None in stock, Janis,” he said. One of her band mates opened up a bottle of red wine and offered her a drink. She tilted it back, took a swig, then spat it onto the ground near my feet. “Goddamn stuff stinks,” she screamed. Erratic, headstrong, bitchy even—but Janis had life by the scruff of the neck and made everyone around her seem as dull as botany teachers.

  Nobody could calm her down, not even Sylvia Tyson, who tried to console her with the news that they’d cleaned out everything in the store, including a giant display bottle of Canadian Club. Janis told her where she could put the giant display bottle of Canadian Club, and in a shrill, horrified, accusing voice opened the door of the liquor store and let the cashier have it. Sylvia tried again, this time taking her by the arm and suggesting that someone might be able to combine liqueurs and come up with a drink that was similar to Southern Comfort. Janis’s reaction was proof positive that what I’d read in Newsweek about her being a “volatile vial of nitroglycerin” was no exaggeration. She tore into the singer, calling her idea the worst piece of shit she’d ever heard (since Southern Comfort can only be made in New Orleans) and accusing her of being an asshole for suggesting it.

  Sylvia Tyson (a Canadian, by the way) took the Texan’s shouting like a lady, smiled and walked away calmly—and I discovered the real reason why the north won the American Civil War.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Janis turned to me and crossed her arms in front. “Ain’t no way in hell I’m gettin’ back on that train without my Southern Comfort.” Her voice, husky to that fascinating point just shy of baritone, was so self-assured that I began to wonder where she planned to stay in Saskatoon, and if she’d mind bunking with me in my room over the garage.

  Then she cast a speculative eye over me and blurted, “Do you have any at home, honey? I mean, your parents are from Louisiana, right? C’mon—Easy, that’s your name, right? C’mon, Easy, would you get me a bottle from home?” She glanced at the train. “There’s still time.”

  “My mother—well, Thelma—she’s dead, and my father doesn’t drink much,” I said apologetically. When Janis started to panic, I felt like a doctor who’d given her the results of a test, and the prognosis wasn’t good. “Anyway, my place is twenty minutes from here, so—”

  Curses started to fly like sparks from her mouth. They weren’t directed only at me, but included the liquor store, the crowd, the prairies, and God. I began to wonder what those Southern Comfort people put in their liquor, and figured it must be a derivative of nicotine and salted peanuts. The Deadhead, having heard the screams, ambled over and offered Janis a joint to bring her down.

  It didn’t.

  Behind her, I saw those huge bees on the roof of The Beehive, and it hit me. I could dash over there and get a bottle! With a triumphant smile I told her my plan, and she hugged me so tight that her feathers went up my nose. Then she realized she had no money.

  “I’ve got no bread on me. Oh, shit, I’ve got no bread.” Her eyes scoured the lot, looking for someone to give her some cash, but everyone was already back on the train. “There’s no time.”

  “I can do it,” I hollered over my shoulder, as I felt for money in my pocket. (I always kept a five and a ten-dollar bill with me when busking, in case someone needed change for a twenty.) I ran as fast as I could around the block and to the bar. Being the middle of the afternoon, the place was empty except for one customer, a creepy man sitting alone in the dark. Instinctively, I located all the exits, then made my way past him as he watched me over the top of his beer, his eyes following me like one of those portraits in a haunted house. Nobody, not even the floor washer, was anywhere in sight. I called out for Mr. Penn, but he wasn’t around. I grabbed a bottle of Southern Comfort—it was down a few shots, but almost full—then quickly scrawled a note that I had taken it for Janis Joplin. I stuffed a ten-dollar bill with the note under a bottle of Cointreau and took off past the creepy guy.

  With a terrific feeling of godly accomplishment, I handed Janis the bottle, just as the train fired up its engine. She guzzled several mouthfuls, then ran to catch it. “I’ll pay you back one day,” she bellowed.

  “Forget it. It was an honor,” I said. It was, but it sounded so square the way I said it, I felt like a botany teacher again.

  Then she stopped, turned around, and looked at me. “You’re really good, you know,” she said. “And I’m not saying that ’cause you got me my Comfort.” She hopped up onto the train, then dashed over to the window closest to me. She rammed it open and hung out.

  “I got no time to find my goddamn purse, but listen—”

  “Yeah?”

  “Is there any way you can get to Texas by next Friday—the tenth?” She was scribbling something down on a paper, the train was starting to move, and I felt like I was in one of those dreams where your feet are glued to the ground. “Get down to Threadgill’s, you hear me?”

  The paper flew out the window and I chased it as a gust from the tra
in’s engines blew it from my grasp. If it had flown under the wheels, I’m sure I would have risked death or dismemberment to go after it, but happily, it landed in the gravel near my feet.

  “Easy?” I could hear Janis’s voice, but all I could see was her bangle-covered wrist sticking out, and her hand waving.

  “Yeah?” I said, scooping up the slip of paper and jamming it deep into my pocket.

  “Don’t take any shit from anyone, you hear me?” she screamed.

  “Shit?”

  “Just tell them Pearl sent you. You’ll be okay.”

  

  Larry stayed for dinner at our place because Mrs. Hill was holding a meeting of her women’s (spy) club and she wanted him out of the house. I tried to make supper, but having just been told by Janis Joplin that I was a good singer, I found it difficult to concentrate on anything as mundane as food. Larry didn’t help matters, either. When I tried to tell him and Clarence about meeting Janis and what she’d said, he interrupted me with his mother’s recipe for fried potatoes and a speech about why 4-H is such an important club for young people.

  “Heads, hearts, hands and health,” he told Clarence and me. And then, after a foray into the mission of the group and all the various farm-related activities it provided, he interrupted me again, this time with a list of the ribbons he’d received for his Amber Durum Semolina.

  “It’s a spring-planted wheat,” he explained, “but you still have to leave a little stubble to protect the seeds.”

  “Janis Joplin told me that I was a good singer, and even offered to introduce me to the guy who started her career, and all you can talk about is wheat?” I threw up my arms. “This is Pearl we’re talking about. Pearl.”

  From his position in the middle of the sofa, Gillie dozing on his knees, Larry giggled at the television set and Clarence stood behind him watching. Neither one of them heard a word I said.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you two, anyway?” I moved in front of the set to block their view.

  “Don’t swear,” said Clarence. “And could you move out of the way, please?”

  They were watching a rerun of The Andy Griffith Show, and the episode involved Deputy Barney Fife pretending to be a department store mannequin in order to catch a shoplifter. Larry laughed hysterically, then slammed his thighs with the palms of his hands, and my already taut nerves were worn to within a hair’s breadth of the snapping point.

  “I’ve got enough money for the airfare one way,” I tried to tell my father. “And if I have to hitchhike back, I’ll—” I figured the word hitchhike might provoke him, but it didn’t, so I tried a different approach. “Clarence, if you can loan me a couple hundred bucks, I can do this. I have enough to pay for more than half myself, and—”

  “Can’t do it this month, Easy,” said Clarence. “The hoist is broken and I’ve got a huge order of parts coming in.”

  “Doesn’t anybody care about my career?” I shrieked. “This is Janis Joplin, for God’s sake, and she said I was really good.”

  “I think you’re good, too,” offered Larry, still laughing at the show. I felt like saying “Who the hell cares what you think? You’re nobody.” Then—to make matters worse—he started on about the wedding.

  “Skeeter can’t wait to meet you. She can’t wait to hear you sing.”

  “Sing? Sing?” I cried. “Who said I’d sing?”

  “Skeeter said she’s going to—”

  And that was when I cracked.

  “Skeeter! Skeeter! To hell with Skeeter and to hell with you and to hell with the wedding! I’m leaving. I’m going to get to Austin somehow.” Then I brought up Thelma, something I ordinarily wouldn’t do because normally I wouldn’t want to hurt Clarence. But this time I did. “Thelma—she would have been happy for me,” I muttered.

  “Thelma would have told you not to get a swelled head,” added Clarence.

  “You mean you’re not going to the wedding?” asked Larry, as I dashed out the door and down the stairs to outside. He got off the couch and hollered to me as I ran down the stairs. “You mean you’re not going to the wedding?” I had burst his bubble and taken wicked satisfaction in doing so.

  “No. And you two can make your own supper!” I hollered. Then I threw myself onto the lawn and pounded my fist on the ground.

  I am going to get to Texas.

  I am going to be famous like Janis Joplin.

  I hate Saskatoon and I hate Clarence and I hate Larry and I hate his cat.

  No you don’t, Easy, said Thelma in my mind. I pulled myself up to a sitting position. What’s getting into you, girl? You’ve never spoken to your father that way.

  I tried to erase her from my mind, but she reappeared.

  Don’t get a swelled head, Easy.

  That’s just what Clarence said she’d say.

  I hated truisms. Pride cometh before a fall and sayings like that. It’s okay for somebody who hasn’t got anything to be proud of—people like Marsha, who love to be miserable—but Janis liked me! The most famous female blues singer of our generation liked me! To hell with pride cometh before a fall.

  I picked myself up and started walking—to where, I didn’t know, but I knew from experience that if my feet were moving, it helped my brain to think. And it worked. By the time I’d made it to Mrs. Hill’s place, I had a great idea.

  The nuns. They were the answer to my problem. At least they might be, if I played my cards right.

  I flew back up the stairs and found Clarence and Larry trying to figure out how to prepare spaghetti, since potatoes involved too much peeling. Larry had an apron tied around his middle, and Clarence was on a stepstool searching for canned sauce.

  “Oh, good,” said Clarence, “you’re back. Then you can—”

  “No, I can’t,” I replied.

  Larry cornered me about the wedding again. “Please come with me. Can’t you leave for Texas Sunday morning?”

  I didn’t answer Larry, and turned to my father instead. “Clarence, I need to take the truck for a while.”

  “When will you be back?”

  I didn’t answer him, either. I grabbed the keys off the hook beside the door, and was in such a hurry I stepped on Gillie’s tail.

  “MEEEEAHHHH,” he screamed. Larry scooped him up, and I scurried down the stairs, hopped into the truck, and made my way to the convent. Thelma tried to enter my mind the whole time I was driving, but I focused on the road and didn’t listen to her. I knew what she was going to say, anyway. I knew she was going to tell me to slow down and calm down and cool down.

  As it turned out, once I’d reached the convent, everything slowed down, calmed down, and cooled down automatically. To a grinding halt.

  I parked as close as I could to the main entrance of the building, which had a dirty gray prison-like facade. An older, sad-looking nun answered the door when I rang. She had a weepy tear-duct in her right eye, and apparently unable to lift her feet, she scuffled with every step.

  “I’d like to speak with Sister Beatrice if that’s at all possible. Or—well, I guess Marsha Evanko would do. She’s a postulant here.”

  The nun showed me where to sit, then shuffled down the long hall and turned right when she reached the end. The convent was an austere place with oak benches as hard as tombstones and stale air that smelled like a wet cough-drop box. An ancient elevator to the left of where I sat made creaking, wheezing sounds, as if it resented doing its job. What few long, narrow windows there were allowed only single rays of evening sun to penetrate the building.

  The corridors radiated from a central point, in the middle of which stood a huge statue of Christ suffering on the cross. I got up and walked over to study it, and found the agony on the face of Jesus disturbing.

  Then I noticed someone standing near me in the shadows; she appeared suddenly and silently behind me. She approached the statu
e, made the sign of the cross, then turned around to face me.

  It was Marsha.

  “He died for your sins,” she explained grimly.

  Sins? What sins?

  Other than keeping bad company and drinking milk straight from the carton, I hadn’t done too many bad things in my eighteen years. If I spent much more time with Marsha, though, I figured I’d soon start dreaming some up.

  White and thready-limbed, she reminded me of a kid I sat next to in grade one, who always had a baggie full of jujubes in her desk. She kept it tightly sealed, but every once in a while would pull one out, shove it in her mouth, then quickly close the bag again. Never once did she offer me one. Never once did I ask. Marsha was like that. She gave nothing.

  I looked up at Jesus and thought to myself that whereas Marsha clutched her sins to her chest like they were a beloved old shawl and wasn’t letting go of them anytime soon, I didn’t have time to worry about right and wrong. I was determined to get to Austin and become a big star like Janis Joplin. Even if it meant involving Marsha in my plan. I asked her when she was leaving for New Mexico, and she pulled down her mouth. In a voice that was as dark and dreary as the convent, she said, “God willing, we will be leaving early tomorrow morning, right after mass. And God willing, we will be at the American border by the afternoon. Why do you ask?”

  I was about to say “Because God willing, I’m going with you,” but before I could figure out how to break it to her, Sister Beatrice came clipping down the hall. She, too, crossed herself in front of Jesus, then smiled when she saw me.

  “Hello, Louisiana,” she said. “How good to see you!”

  “Good to see you, Sister,” I replied.

  We all stood there for a minute, then Sister Beatrice broke the silence with a question.

  “So what brings you here tonight?”

  “Well…uh…remember when you said that if there was ever anything you could do for me, I shouldn’t hesitate to ask?”