Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [65]
Every afternoon after school I was supposed to go stay with Reese at Aunt Alma‘s, but instead I started going over to the West Greenville Cafe on the Eustis Highway. The jukebox had as many old songs as new—Loretta Lynn, Teresa Brewer, Patsy Cline, and Mama’s favorite, Kitty Wells. The truckers loved that music as much as I did. I’d sit out under the cafe windows and hum along with those twangy girl voices, imagining myself crooning those raw and desperate notes. Everybody knew that Opry stars started as gospel singers. All those women singing about their unfaithful men sang first about the certain love of God. Half asleep in the sun, reassured by the familiar smell of frying fat, I’d make promises to God. If only He’d let me be a singer! I knew I’d probably turn to whiskey and rock ’n’ roll like they all did, but not for years, I promised. Not for years, Lord. Not till I had glorified His name and bought Mama a yellow Cadillac and a house on Old Henderson Road.
More than anything in the world, I decided, I wanted to be one of the little girls in white fringed vests with silver and gold embroidered crosses—the ones who sang on the revival circuit and taped shows for early-morning television. I wanted gray-headed ladies to cry when they saw my pink cheeks. I wanted people to moan when they heard the throb in my voice as I sang of the miracle in my life. I wanted a miracle in my life. I wanted to be a gospel singer and be loved by the whole wide world.
Jesus, make me a gospel singer, I prayed, while Teresa sang of what might have been God and then again might have been some black-eyed man. But Jesus must have been busy with Teresa, because my voice went high and shrill every time I got excited, and cracked hoarsely if I tried to croon. The preacher at Bushy Creek Baptist wouldn’t even let me stand near the choir to turn the pages of the hymnal, and without a voice like Teresa’s or June Carter’s, I couldn’t sing gospel. I could just listen and watch the gray-headed ladies cry. It was an injustice I could not understand or forgive. There had to be a way to stretch my voice, to sing the way I dreamed I could. I prayed and practiced and stubbornly hoped.
Driving from Greenville to the Sunshine lot on Highway 85 past the Sears, Roebuck warehouse, the air base, the rolling green and red-mud hills—a trip we made almost every other week now that Daddy Glen was working for his father—we would sometimes get to singing like some traveling gospel family. While I was sleeping somebody touched me, while I was sleeping, Oh! Somebody touched me ... musta been the hand of the Lord ...
Full-voice, all-out, our singing filled the car and shocked the passing traffic. Reese howled and screeched, Mama’s voice broke like she too dreamed of Teresa Brewer, and Daddy Glen made sounds that would have scared cows. None of them cared, and I tried to pretend I wasn’t that bad. I put my head out the window and wailed for all I was worth. The wind filled my mouth and the roar obscured the fact that I sang as badly as any of them.
Once I got so carried away that I went and sang into the electric fan when we got home. It made my voice buzz and waver like a slide guitar, an effect I particularly liked. Mama complained it gave her a headache and would give me an ear-ache if I didn’t cut it out.
“What the hell is she doing?” Daddy Glen acted like I was singing just to make him mad. “She trying to take the paint off the walls or just sour the milk?” He reached past the fan for me with one of his big hands.
“Glen.” Mama’s voice was soft, but it stopped him. He looked at her like she had stuck a needle in his heart.
“You shouldn’t encourage her,” he told Mama. “Gonna have her thinking she can do any damn thing she pleases, and then where will we be? Hell, she’s out running the county every afternoon as it is.”
Mama put her arm around Daddy Glen’s waist. “I know you