Anthem

by Deborah Wiles

  “So neither of you has a home?” asked Molly, then remembered her manners. “I don’t mean to pry, but … you’re here in my aunts’ house. Why?”

  Lucy began to make coffee. “I left home,” she said. She put two cups onto two saucers on the counter. “I haven’t found my new home yet.”

  “What about Marvin?”

  “You’ll have to ask him,” said Lucy. “There are lots of us out there now, young people who don’t want what our parents have, don’t want a world full of hate and war. Is that what you want? This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius — haven’t you heard?”

  It made no sense to Molly. “Aquarius” was just a song. You grew up, you went to college — or not — you got married — or not, but most likely you did — and you had kids — or not, but most likely you did — and you lived in a house where you had your own dishes and your own neighbors and your own backyard and friends and cookouts and parties and birthdays and years and years of things you did in that house, with your family, until you grew old, and you were happy — or not — and that was how it worked. Right?

  Lucy poured the coffee into The Aunts’ china cups.

  “They’ll be up all night with that coffee,” said Molly, even as she realized a moment later that it was what her mother always said to her father when he made his nightly coffee.

  “They read into the night,” said Lucy. “And they sleep late, which is good, because so do we, after we’ve been on the Strip half the night.”

  “What’s the Strip?”

  “We’ll show you later,” said Lucy. “Here. Help me with these.”

  They all watched The Dating Game and half of The Newlywed Game together, after which the television was snapped off and The Aunts were escorted back upstairs.

  “They’ve got their own bedrooms,” Molly observed.

  “And their own televisions,” marveled Norman.

  “And they’ll get breakfast in bed tomorrow,” said Lucy.

  “Served on trays that belonged to their mother,” said Marvin.

  Trays that would have belonged to my great-great-great-aunt, thought Molly. “You’re good to them …” she said to both Marvin and Lucy, her sentence trailing off.

  “They’re good to us,” said Lucy. “It’s the least we can do for the room and board.”

  They made their peace with one another in the kitchen. Marvin seemed unfazed that Janice and Pam were arriving the next day. “Doesn’t matter where I lay my head,” he said. “Everything’s temporary. But I like your aunts. They are sweet old ladies.”

  “They do all right on their own,” said Lucy. “They’ve just been lonesome and they enjoy the company. And you should see the freezer! There are enough TV dinners in there to last two lifetimes.”

  “When are you leaving?” asked Marvin. He made himself a sandwich.

  “Tomorrow morning,” said Molly.

  “Too bad,” said Marvin. “There’s free music in the park on Sundays, bunches of local bands, and this great new band from Macon, the Allman Brothers, show up most Sundays.”

  “I knew it!” said Norman. He spun in a complete circle and drummed his fingers on the countertop. “I knew it!”

  “We don’t have time for lollygagging in any park tomorrow, Norman,” snapped Molly. “Or have you forgotten?”

  Norman pointed at his cousin, his index finger as straight as a knife. “Maybe you have forgotten our deal, cuz. Music.” He pulled The Great Speckled Bird from his back pocket and flapped it on the kitchen counter, where it unrolled itself.

  “The Bird!” said Marvin, his mouth full. “I sell that on the Strip. Half the hippies in town sell the Bird for some dough. Come on. I’ll show you where. It’s happenin’, man. It’s the scene. Music, madness, and a little mayhem.”

  “All peacefully parceled out,” added Lucy.

  “No!” said Molly. There had been enough mayhem in this day. She couldn’t imagine more. No matter how peaceful Lucy promised it would be, it made her anxious.

  “Yes!” said Norman, his eyes shining with anticipation.

  “No!” Molly stamped her foot and at the same time wondered how she would get across the country and all of the unknowns she couldn’t imagine if she couldn’t even walk downtown in the city of Atlanta.

  As she began to flounce away, Norman stepped in front of her. “Yes,” he said, his face suddenly serious. “You were right about the phone call, but you’re wrong about this.” Molly frowned and took a step back. Norman felt strong and sure of himself for once. “I’ll go without you,” he said.

  Molly looked her cousin full in the face but remained silent. Then she turned and left the room. She was getting very good at leaving a room when it suited her. She sat in a Queen Anne chair in the living room and considered her options. As she did, something in her relaxed and she felt a tingle across her shoulders, a dusting of possibility, as well as a dread of being left alone with her aunts in this mausoleum of a house.

  Back in the kitchen, long-haired Lucy-in-the-sky, with her rings and her twinkling diamond-blue eyes, entwined her arm with Norman’s. She clasped his hand. Norman felt the hair on his neck stand at attention.

  “She’ll come,” Lucy said in a magically soothing, musical voice. “She’s been issued a cosmic invitation. The vibes are pulling her there already.”

  WITHIN YOU, WITHOUT YOU

  Written by George Harrison

  Performed by George Harrison and the Asian Music Circle

  Recorded at EMI/Abbey Road Studios, London, England, 1967

  Tabla/percussion: Natwar Soni

  By the time they left The Aunts’ house, all four of them together, it was close to summer-dark, almost 9:00 p.m. Fourteenth Street was littered with young people wandering from Piedmont Park on one end to the Strip on the other. Marvin pointed out landmarks on the way.

  “That’s the Twin Mansions,” he said. “The French Consulate was there, but they moved out so freaks crash there now, or at the Columns. And that,” he said, pointing, “that is the Black Panther headquarters.”

  “Really?” said Norman.

  “I think he is misinformed,” said Lucy.

  “I thought these houses were castles when I was a kid,” said Molly, the first words she had spoken since leaving the kitchen. “Now they all look like they’re falling apart.” She had wordlessly vacated her Queen Anne chair and followed them out the door. It had been that simple.

  “The neighborhood’s changing,” Lucy explained. “That’s why we’re all camped out here. Cheap rent.”

  Lucy now tinkled when she walked. She had tiny bells on her lace-up sandals, and bracelets on each arm. She walked way too close to Norman for Molly’s comfort, so Molly parted them, silently, with her arms, like a chaperone at a school dance. Then she stepped between them and walked ahead of them, her point made.

  Lucy sidled back to Norman, who shoved his hands in his pockets, pursed his lips, and stared at the motorcycles and bikers at the Catacombs. “That’s a great pad to crash later,” said Lucy. “By then, most of the bikers are down on Tenth Street.”

  They rounded the corner at Fourteenth and were officially on the Strip, the blocks of Peachtree Street between Eighth and Sixteenth Streets. It was dusk. The river of humanity that flowed along the sidewalks on Peachtree crested over Norman and Molly. Norman, senses already on overload, instinctively grabbed Molly’s hand so they wouldn’t get separated. Molly grabbed back and took a deep breath as they entered another world.

  “This way!” sang Lucy as Marvin grabbed her hand and she grabbed Norman’s other hand and the four of them snaked around bodies wearing beads and bracelets and braids; bodies in bell-bottoms, bandanas, and flowered shirts and skirts. Bodies nodding, laughing, smoking, singing, selling all manner of goods including The Great Speckled Bird. Norman shouted that he wanted to buy a new copy, but Marvin yelled, “Let it go, man! They’ll be in the park tomorrow! Come on! Ziggy!” Marvin was a different person on the Strip. He was open and light-filled, wavi
ng his free arm in front of them like he was leading them off to Oz to see the Wizard.

  Molly swallowed, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes wide to take it all in. I’ve gone down Alice’s rabbit hole, she thought. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see Alice herself, the dormouse, the caterpillar and his pipe sitting on his toadstool, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat. It felt so utterly … unreal? Yes, she thought. Unreal. Not like real life at all. Unreal.

  Norman hauled her past the Hare Krishnas dancing and shaking their tambourines and selling incense for ten cents a stick, next to the boys with hair to their waists who played bongos on the curb, and a harmonium player — or was it a sitar? Molly didn’t know either instrument — who sat with the Krishnas and played the same six notes over and over again, their heads bobbing and warbling to some invisible scene within them.

  The last wash of daylight created warm golden shadows that blanketed the beat. The air surrounding them was flowery and sweet, laced with the smell of sweat and sun-singed leaves.

  Beards and bare feet; sandals and suspenders; headbands and felt hats. Bodies — including theirs — weaved and waved in time to some kind of different rhythm, a rhythm that enveloped them and lifted them into a place not of this world, a rhythm pulsating, undulating, within them and without them, everywhere.

  I should hate this, Molly thought, but she didn’t. I should be afraid. But she wasn’t. She couldn’t resist the energy. She felt pulled along like a thread in a tapestry. And now, suddenly and surprisingly, she was in it, right in the middle of it, whatever it was. She was here. Now. There was a great vitality here that propelled her along on its own dedicated highway.

  Molly’s carefully cinched heart began to open, like the softest, loveliest lotus flower. She could feel its insistent beat within her fourteen-year-old chest. It’s been so long since I’ve felt something.

  She forgot about her old trip and began a new one. She closed her eyes and bumped shoulders, hips, arms, with the great wash, as her guides pulled her past a leather shop with its heady smells, past a record shop plastered with posters announcing local bands and concerts, and into a shop decorated in wind chimes and pendants, peace signs and paper flowers.

  As she opened her eyes, posters told Molly to

  Let Your Freak Flag Fly!

  Be Peculiar.

  Don’t Trust Anyone over Thirty.

  Make Love, Not War.

  “You need this,” said Lucy. She pulled a long, gauzy fabric in swirls of peacock blue, ocean green, and deep purple from an open dresser drawer full of similar goods. Molly shook her head, as if to wake herself from her dream. “I’m fine,” she said. She wore her third outfit of the trip: shirt, shorts, socks, and Keds, all of them in solid cotton colors.

  “Trust me,” said Lucy, her bracelets singing a tinny little song. “You need this.” She laughed in an affectionate tone and paid for the skirt before Molly could resist further. So Molly quit resisting.

  “It’s perfect!” said Lucy. She wrapped it around Molly twice, right over her shorts, looped the strings through soft fabric hooks, and tied them in a bow at Molly’s hip. “There! We’re twins!” she said. The bottom of the skirt brushed the tops of Molly’s Keds.

  Lucy took the green rubber band out of Molly’s hair and snapped it onto Molly’s wrist. “Jewelry!” Then she fluffed Molly’s long brown tresses around her shoulders and wheeled her around to look in an old dresser mirror. Scarves peeked from another dresser drawer and Lucy pulled out an orange one and tied it around Molly’s forehead.

  Molly laughed with the kind of belly laughter that signals delight, a natural high. “I don’t recognize myself!” she said with a wide smile. But she didn’t mind. It made her happy.

  Norman bought a pair of sandals. They were two sizes too small, but the largest size they had. Marvin talked him into them. “You can’t wear church shoes on the Strip, man. Or anywhere! It’s not cool. So your heels hit the pavement? No biggie.”

  Norman looked at his gigantic feet. They were very white. “Groovy” was all he could think to say.

  Marvin laughed. “Nobody says ‘groovy’ anymore, Norman.”

  Norman tucked his wing tips under his arm, and Marvin cast a thoughtful look at Norman’s long feet. “Really, man. You should just go barefoot.”

  “Groovy,” Norman repeated. He wiggled his toes in his short shoes.

  At Tenth Street, they waded past a gaggle of Atlanta City Police who were using bullhorns to remind the crowds of the 11:00 p.m. curfew. Bikers congregated at the parking lot on the corner, revving their motorcycle engines and creeping closer to the police. It looked like a confrontation was brewing.

  “They hate us,” said Lucy. Molly wasn’t sure if she referred to the bikers or the police, or both.

  “Turn right,” said Marvin. The crowd thinned as they got onto a side street. “I know this neighborhood. I used to crash here sometimes, before I met your aunts.”

  Just then a tall, barefoot boy with an enormous Afro, striped pajama bottoms, and no shirt or shoes came toward them on the sidewalk.

  “Hey! What’s happenin’, Superman,” said Marvin.

  “Hey! Marvin Gardens! Hey, man!”

  “Marvin Gardens?” said an incredulous Norman. “Your name is Marvin Gardens?”

  Marvin laughed as he embraced Superman. Then he grinned at Norman. “You don’t think anybody here goes by his real name, do you, man?”

  “But Marvin Gardens? That’s a property in Monopoly!”

  “That’s my name!” said Marvin. Then, addressing Superman, he asked, “What happened to your cape, man?”

  “My old lady took it,” said Superman. “She saw me lookin’ … at Frida Kahlo and she took away my superpowers.”

  “Bummer, man.”

  “No sweat,” said Superman. “I’ll get ’em back. Lois Lane can’t resist Superman.” He wore an enormous cross on a long silver chain around his neck. He nodded in recognition at Lucy and called her Miz Diamond Skies. She returned his nod with a demure smile. Then Superman’s gaze fell on Norman. “Who’s the cat with the walkin’ shoes?”

  “This here,” said Marvin Gardens as he gave Norman his Strip name, “is Normal.”

  Norman groaned. Suddenly, he was wearing gym clothes that showed off his alabaster-white legs, and he was trying to do a pull-up to the jeers of the degenerates in PE.

  But then Lucy’s hand found his. “He’s anything but,” she said.

  Norman’s breath caught in his throat. He stood taller and looked Superman in the eye as if to say, That’s right, I’m anything but normal, even though in his heart he knew he was.

  “I’m not Normal,” he croaked, meaning that wasn’t his name, but it came out all wrong and Molly winced for her tongue-tied cousin whose hand was still wrapped around Lucy’s.

  Lucy laughed and kissed Norman on the cheek … which Molly observed almost made Norman’s knees buckle. She looked at the skirt Lucy had given her and wondered what had possessed her to say yes to any of this.

  “We’ve got to go,” she said. She felt far away from the flow of the Strip; its effects were evaporating.

  “And this is his sister —’’ said Marvin Gardens, as if he’d just noticed Molly.

  “Cousin,” interrupted Molly. “I’m Eleanor Rigby. Nice to meet you. We’ve got to go.” She tugged on the dumbstruck Norman and turned to leave.

  “Not that way, Eleanor Rigby,” said Superman. “Cops and bikers are about to start a rumble to clear the freaks off the street. Come this way.” He held a brown hand out to Molly and she stared at it. What does he want? went through her head along with a tiny panic at not knowing what to do or how to respond to this offering from a stranger. She could just turn and walk away. She’d perfected that move since they’d arrived in Atlanta.

  She settled for a prim “Thank you.” Superman stared at her with dark eyes that held a kindness that seemed to sense her lifeless heart trying to stay open, trying to find a beat. He smiled a sloppy, warm
hearted smile. Molly smiled back.

  “Got something to show you,” Superman said.

  The streetlights clicked on along Peachtree Street. The little band of five now walked up Tenth Street and into the shadows. They left the great wash behind them and ventured into the soft night, children following a skinny Pied Piper in striped bell-bottomed pajama pants.

  MERCY, MERCY, MERCY

  Music written by Joe Zawinul

  Performed by Cannonball Adderley

  Recorded at Capitol Records, Hollywood, California, 1966

  Drummer: Roy McCurdy

  Lyrics by Johnny “Guitar” Watson and Larry Williams

  Performed by the Buckinghams

  Recorded at Columbia Studios, Chicago, Illinois, 1967

  Drummer: John Poulos (concert)/John Guerin (studio)

  The house was an old green Victorian with trim painted the colors in Molly’s skirt. A sign posted at the door said BE-IN BY THE LAKE AT PIEDMONT PARK SUNDAYS! MEET HERE AT 12:30 P.M.

  “This is the Twelfth Gate,” said Superman. “My friend Robin started it as a coffeehouse. We usually have folk singers and poetry, but there’s jazz tonight. Very special.”

  “I’m in!” said the very not-in Norman. He’d never heard a live professional jazz band play. His heart beat faster thinking about what waited for him just through the door.

  “You’re hip to the scene?” said Superman with another smile. “Got any bread?”

  “I do,” said Lucy.

  “How do you always have money?” asked Molly.

  “I came into this world with money,” said Lucy with a sigh.

  “Then what are you doing here, living with my aunts?”

  Lucy fished in her fringed shoulder bag. “Money isn’t everything.” She began pulling bills from the inside of the tiny beaded bag. “Just be my friend for a night, will you?”

  Superman ushered them into the foyer, where a heavily tattooed man named Pete wore a jean jacket with no sleeves, a handlebar mustache, and a ponytail to rival Molly’s. He repeated a litany in a gravelly monotone:

  “Welcome to the Twelfth Gate. The cover charge is one dollar tonight. You don’t have to buy anything to eat or drink, but we appreciate it if you do. We brew Georgia sassafras tea. Also Darjeeling. No drugs allowed. No alcohol. This is not a crash pad. It’s a coffeehouse sponsored by the Methodist church. Are you in or out?” He held out a lined hand.