Shell Shaker

by LeAnne Howe

  After Jon left, Tema decided to stay in New York City. She liked the variety of working at different jobs, something she’d never have if she returned to the small town of Durant. Some days she was a waitress in a famous restaurant, other times she drove a truck for a green grocer on Staten Island. Eventually she went with a girlfriend to try out for an acting job, an extra in the soaps. She knew nothing about acting, but the woman at the casting call liked the way she looked. “You can pass for anything,” she had said.

  Over the years Tema won bit roles playing Italians, Greeks, Spanish dancers, and an occasional Polynesian. In the evenings, she continued working as a waitress. When she won the coveted role in The Conference of the Birds, she began to develop her strengths as an actress—her bearing, vocal power, and magnetism onstage. The experience changed her. She discovered that she liked being someone else. No, Durant wasn’t for her. Even if she’d never become an actress, she wasn’t about to go home and run the tribe. Her mother had always expected Auda to be politically active, but not Tema.

  “Thank God, Mother got her wish,” she mutters, under her breath.

  A friendly stagehand touches her on the sleeve and startles her. He points to the door; now it’s her turn to wave at him. “I see it,” she mouths.

  Her husband Borden Beane, who plays Torvald Helmer, nods that he also knows the door is sticking. Their cue comes and Borden gives the door a shove. It unexpectedly shuts behind him. Tema pushes hard on the door, but it’s jammed and she’s left offstage.

  Borden ad-libs and calls to her through the door, “Nora, my little lark, stop acting a fool.”

  Tema throws her weight on the door; it opens and she trips over the sill, tumbling face-first onto the stage. For a second, the fall stuns her. She raises her head and looks at the audience, then up at Borden who is enough of a pro to issue her his hand.

  “My dear, you are such a little sparrow, always trying to amuse me.”

  From somewhere in the theater, Tema hears the words that freeze her to the floor. “Hatak abi.” Mankiller. A bodiless voice calls to her in Choctaw and the sound resonates in her ears. She can’t move.

  “Hatak abi.” Mankiller.

  The audience begins to fidget. Three hundred people in the theater and Borden expect her to get up.

  “Hatak abi.”

  Terror. She stares blankly into white footlights that grow brighter and brighter at the lip of the stage. That hissing, gurgling voice—she hears it winding among the seats like a great invisible python ready to gorge itself on her body. Just then something reaches out of the gloom and grabs her by the neck. She jumps up and yelps and mills her arms until the thing goes away.

  She snaps back into character and screams her lines. “No, no, no, I can’t stand it anymore, I’ve got to get out of here!”

  Borden looks surprised, as if to say, not only are you changing your lines, but we rehearsed the scene so differently. “But Nora dear—” he replies.

  Tema feels her performance coming under control and she resolves to finish Act Three. If she makes it through one curtain call, she’ll break her contract and drive to Oklahoma tonight. Her mother will know what to do.

  “Oh, I beg you, please, Torvald. From the bottom of my heart, please—only an hour more!”

  “Your hands killed Red Shoes!” the voice says, in Choctaw.

  Tema clutches her ears and realizes that the danger is coming from the front row. Her mind races. The backstage door is jammed. The wing of the stage is her only escape, but she must remain calm. Sweat pours out of her body. Tema feels her heart pounding—and then it hits her. How dare this thing stalk her! She has done nothing wrong. She leans toward the audience and whispers, her voice as dry as matches, “Wishia cha...go away.” Probably no one else notices. Like magic, the voice retreats.

  She returns to playing Nora.

  Applause thunders from high up in the balcony down to the orchestra seating, and the stage goes dark. One curtain call later, Tema hurries to her dressing room with Borden following close behind.

  “Congratulations, darling. Bad luck about your fall, but you made it part of the performance. No one noticed. Tomorrow night will be better.”

  “I won’t be here tomorrow, I’m leaving. Someone hollered ‘hatak abi’ at me from the front row. I’ve got to get out of here and find Hoppy. I know his band is performing at a bar in Deep Elum so maybe if I hurry...”

  “Hollered? My, my, my, our home training is rearing its ugly head tonight.”

  “Borden Beane, damn it, it’s not hahlahed, it’s hol-lered, I’m from Oklahoma. We say hol-lered,” drawls Tema. “So sue me, but I’m getting out of here tonight!”

  “Hatak attic?” says Borden, rolling the words on his tongue. “Really, Tema, it’s opening night. You fell face-down onstage, but you recovered magnificently. I never heard a thing and I was out there the whole time.”

  She heads for the bathroom and slams the door with theatrical gusto. She looks at her hands. Are these the hands of a killer, like the voice said? She stretches out her fingers. They are not the well-manicured fingers of her sister Adair, nor are they the small delicate hands of Auda. No, her hands are wide and hard, like ping-pong paddles. They look as if they belong to a weight lifter. She purposefully camouflages them while performing. She’d once read that Fred Astaire thought his hands were too large to belong to a dancer, so he kept them cupped or hidden in his clothes when on camera. While preparing for her role as Nora, she watched a dozen Fred Astaire movies to learn how he made his hands seem so insignificant.

  Am I capable of murder, she wonders? She makes a fist and punches the air like a boxer. What did the voice mean? She’s unable to explain it to herself, much less to Borden. Until they met in a show in London, Borden’s whole life revolved around the Royal Shakespeare Theatre. Why shouldn’t he think she’s imagining things? The only ghosts he’s ever seen have been onstage.

  After a few minutes she comes out of the bathroom and sits in a chair at the dressing table. Borden drags a chair beside her. He peels off his eyebrows and hair piece, then reaches for a bottle of sparkling raspberry juice and pours them both a drink.

  “Let me say again that I never heard ‘hatak whatever,’” he says in perfect diction that annoys the hell out of her. “Maybe one of the men snoring in the front row burped and you misunderstood.”

  “They weren’t asleep. They were a good audience.”

  “Asleep is the wrong word,” he quips. “They were dead drunk. During my exit line, I heard a veritable chorus of honkers.”

  Tema sets the glass down and wonders why white men turn everything into a debate. “The first time I heard the voice was in Act Two, but I thought I was imagining things. Then I heard it again and again.”

  “What does ‘hatak abbey’ mean?”

  Tema knows her husband. Each time he purposefully mispronounces the Choctaw words, she considers punching him, but doesn’t. “Borden, you’re totally oblivious to anything that isn’t directly related to your performance. Something is after me, don’t you understand? I’m afraid. As soon I get back to our apartment, I’m calling my mother to see if anything is wrong.”

  “Yes, do that. Try to calm yourself and collect your thoughts again, my little sparrow.”

  “Songbird,” corrects Tema. “If you’re going to quote lines from the script at least get them right. Really you are Torvald sometimes.”

  “Songbird,” he repeats. “Don’t say that. I am not like Torvald Helmer, and I’m trying to help.”

  “In your own way maybe, but not like I—” Before she can get the words out of her mouth, Borden springs from his chair. Moments later, he comes back into the room brandishing a carpenter’s hammer.

  “I’ll pummel anyone who dares slander the mighty Choctaws by calling them loathsome names I can’t pronounce.”

  Tema puts both elbows on her knees. She wants to confront Borden’s lack of sensitivity, but instead laughs at his antics. He must think she’s playing a ga
me. In so many ways they are complete opposites. She’s so much older than he is, even though they’re both thirty-seven. All his life he’s plowed his energy into acting. Until lately, she’s never thought of acting as a permanent career. She likes uncertainty, it’s her spiritual birthmark. But Borden is different. He’s truly English to his bone marrow, with a family tree as long as hers. He trained at the Royal Academy and brings a methodical approach to the craft, while she relies on intuition, a gut feeling.

  She smiles and looks at Borden standing there with a hammer held high in the air. It’s his long legs she loves. Paler than milk, they like to dance to music that ends in intercourse. Then without thinking she stands up and pulls him close, and puts her hands on his buttocks.

  “Yes, do that while we’re having a row,” says Borden. “This is sexual stimulation edged with anger. I can take it.”

  Tema then pulls his mouth to hers, talking softly to his lips. “Nora is a role that is the total opposite of me. She always thought that she should be a wife. Until you came along I never, ever, considered marriage.”

  “I know, darling,” he says, closing his eyes.

  “But then I said, ‘Wait a minute, I may never get the opportunity to play a part that is so different from me, and that’s what acting is all about.’ Even though I’ve denied it, I want to become a serious actress, not an Indian Barbie doll. Nora Helmer may be Ibsen’s skylark, but she’s my feathered Indian woman soaring above the stage like a bird of prey.”

  “Darling, you can fly,” says Borden, slightly aroused.

  Tema kisses him. She doesn’t like to admit how much she truly needs him, especially when she’s feeling so vulnerable. When he pulls her close enough to feel his arousal, her cheeks redden, and she pushes him away. “But even as much as I want this role, I have to leave tonight,” she says, abruptly. “Try and understand.”

  It’s Borden’s turn to blush and he turns his back on her. “Bloody hell, Tema,” he says, quickly adjusting his pants. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of bad spirits, for one thing.”

  Staring down at the floor, she says, “there was something ominous in the audience tonight. The voice said I was Red Shoes’ killer, or something like that. I’ve got to go home and find out what is wrong. When the danger passes I’ll join you in New York, or anywhere else you want. I’ll be the best ethnic extra the world has ever known—I’ll play Cubans, or Latinos, or Lebanese. Besides, everything’s so retro in Dallas anyway. I think we’ve ruined our careers by coming here.

  Borden explodes. “Oh, let’s please remember what we’re fighting about! Coming to Dallas was your idea. We were deliriously happy living in London, where I made a good living, I might add. I took this job in ‘Big D,’ as you called it, so we could work together. So Hoppy could spend time with your family. Just look at how I’ve changed my life in order to be with you. You don’t take me seriously, either. I’ve long suspected that it’s because I’m English, and your family hates me. And no one in the blasted theater called you a ‘hatak ape.’”

  “The words are hatak abi and it means mankiller.”

  “Rubbish,” retorts Borden. “You are not a killer.”

  “Don’t you see, the Choctaw words have been spoken aloud. They said my hands are the hands that killed Red Shoes.”

  Borden falls silent; after a while he says in a low voice, “No, I don’t understand that kind of irrational thinking. In essence you’re saying that speech determines actions. Like God saying, ‘let there be light,’ and the lights come on.”

  “Yes, that’s the way it works.”

  “Darling, we are actors, the universal peacemakers. Acting is the reflection of events that can teach us the folly of humanity, or its greatness. That’s what Shakespeare and Goethe remind us over and over. Tonight, your Nora took control of the stage and transformed us. That’s what a brilliant performance does. If more people came to the theater and understood Shakespeare and Goethe, there would be no more wars, or killing, or suffering.”

  “The English have had Shakespeare for five hundred years and it didn’t stop you from colonizing the world,” she says softly.

  “Okay, bad example, but you know what I mean. You’ve said as much yourself. Tonight the stage door jammed, you forgot your lines, now you’re unhappy with yourself, that’s why you want to run away.”

  “IT made the door jam on me.”

  “This is intolerable.” He sighs aloud.

  There is a long silence and finally he says, “Tema, I’ll gladly go back to New York when our contract ends. Don’t think I want to stay here, I’m completely fed up with snoring audiences and people who say ‘all y’all.’” He sinks down into a chair. “And with fighting you.”

  “This is not a fight. This is a vigorous discussion,” says Tema.

  “No, we’re fighting. This is what married folk do,” he says, “they fight—excuse me, ‘discuss vigorously’—when they’re mad at each other.”

  The dressing room seems to gather shadows. Tema thinks of her mother and father. As far as she knows, they never argued. There were the occasional hard looks at strangers when something bad happened, but never at each other. When her father, Presley War Maker, died, Tema was in Mrs. Phelps’ third grade class holding a Dick and Jane reader. She can still see Adair being escorted in by the principal and blurting out to the class that their father had had an explosion in the brain. That’s how children relate things. They’d seen anger smoldering in their father’s eyes; they believed it finally exploded. Later she would learn to say “aneurysm” in the brain, not explosion. Though explosion was probably the more correct explanation.

  “Tema, I want to understand you and your culture,” says Borden. “You are right, I don’t know anything about Choctaw beliefs, but you don’t give me much of a chance to learn, do you?” He walks over to her. “I will stand beside you on any stage, or stand against any ghost who tries to harm you.”

  “I want us to be together, always, and,” she adds, “to respect each other’s beliefs.”

  “Then let’s go home and get some rest. And make up.”

  “Borden, I need you to believe what I’m telling you.”

  “My darling, you are not a killer, and no one can make you a killer. For once, admit that you’re exhausted and maybe you imagined this. We were good tonight, especially you,” he whispers, looking directly into her eyes.

  Tema feels an odd sensation, as if she’s hearing an echo. She scoops her hands heavenward, and performs one of Nora’s lines.

  “And think of it, soon the spring will come and the big blue sky! Perhaps we shall be able to take a little trip—perhaps I shall see the sea again! Oh, it’s a wonderful thing to be alive and be happy!”

  Borden kisses her hand. “You don’t know much about the English, either. We’ll fight to the death to protect those we love.”

  Tema puts her hand across his mouth. “Shu-sh-h-h! Don’t speak about death. Let’s go home, I am really tired.”

  She quickly changes into a pair of blue jeans, and a black leather tee. She punks up her short brown hair with butch wax, then opens the drawer of her vanity and picks up her Swiss Army knife, inserts it in her left boot.

  “Good lord,” he says, shaking his head.

  She puts her hand inside of his and vows that, for once, she will listen to Borden. Perhaps she is overly tired. Imagining voices. But as they walk across the darkened stage, she feels an eeriness lingering around her. “The past haunts us all,” she says to Borden, “I’ve always known that.”

  The next morning Tema hears her son pounding on the bedroom door of their Dallas apartment. “Mother, Borden, get up!”

  “What’s the matter?” she asks, pulling on a robe and rushing to the door.

  “This fax came from Uncle Isaac, it was sitting in the machine all night. Mother, why don’t you ever check these things?” he says, waving the paper in front of her.

>   Tema realizes for the first time that, at eighteen, her son’s eyes are exactly like those of his grandfather Presley War Maker. Intense and black, Hoppy’s eyebrows knit together as if he’s always expecting danger.

  “Hoppy, why is your hair emerald green?” she asks, taking the fax from him.

  “Mom, please...forget about my hair. Just read this.”

  On Sunday, September 22, someone killed Redford McAlester and the police believe it was your sister. Your mother is also being held in the county jail for the murder. I’m calling the Billy clan together and I need you to come home. Uncle Isaac.

  Tema fingers the sheet of paper, re-reads the words one by one, as if they were written in Braille. Then it hits her: September 22, her mother’s birthday. What could Auda have been thinking?

  Tema grieves for her sister and for her sister’s mixed-up alliances. The last time she saw McAlester he’d grown so fat she hardly recognized him. She and Borden and Hoppy had just returned from London. They’d planned to stay in Durant for a couple of weeks, but the tension between Auda and her mother was so electric, they only stayed a brief two nights. When McAlester came by for a visit, he made sure she knew it was obligatory. He talked about himself in third person, almost as if he were two people. “Never let a chief cut your hair,” he had said to her, then he laughed until he coughed. Later, Tema asked her mother what he meant. Susan Billy had practically hissed when she said it was a Osano’s way of saying he’d had someone killed.

  “You’re kidding, of course,” she had replied.

  “It’s been done—just ask your sister,” her mother said. “We’ve got to get rid of him.”

  Tema reads the fax one last time. Surely, this is not what her mother had in mind. She hands it to Borden, who has been talking to Hoppy. He reads the short message quickly and looks up at her. “No wonder you couldn’t reach them by phone last night,” he says. “You were right, I was wrong. Of course you must go. I’ll call the understudy and square things here with the rest of the company.”