Spelldown (15 page)

The snow has stopped. The wipers stop swishing.

“Here,” Billy Ray says, handing me a tissue. I wipe away the tears. As we drive along Main, the street is deserted. This snow is perfect. Not a speck of sleet has fallen.

Billy Ray parks at the curb in front of Royal Taxi and we get out and walk around to Kelly’s apartment at the back. “It’s awfully late,” Mama says. “Are you sure he’s still awake?”

“I’m sure.” Billy Ray puts a key into the lock and opens the door.

The room is terribly dark. Inside, Kelly calls out, “The power went out, but I found some candles. Come on in.”

Mama and I follow Billy Ray into the room.

Kelly is walking toward us. He’s holding a big white cake with blazing candles. Mrs. Harrison is right beside him.

They’re singing “Happy Birthday” to
Me
.

Billy Ray starts singing.

Then Mama.

If I can bear this moment, I can bear anything.

1: voluntary restraint from the indulgence of an appetite or craving

2: habitual abstaining from intoxicating substances

“Okay, you two, you better behave, or I’ll hang you by your big toes when you get home.” Mrs. Harrison kisses James, then Celia, and helps them into the backseat of the Cadillac. They’re half-asleep, but they giggle when she tickles them under their chins. She closes their door and leans into the front seat and kisses me on the forehead. “And you, my dear, look totally stylish.” She’s just flattering me; there’s nothing sophisticated about my outfit: a maroon poor-boy sweater with maroon checked skirt, and navy blue loafers.

“What about me?” Mr. Harrison revs up the engine.

She sashays around the car in her purple velour robe and kisses him on the lips, then whispers something in his ear.

“Probably be midnight before we get home,” he says.

“My heart is already pining for you,” she says. But I can tell she’s thrilled that we’re going to the Clemson-Duke basketball game without her.

Mr. Harrison toots the horn as he drives down the circular driveway, and then turns onto Plantation Drive. It’s six thirty in the morning. There’s a hoarfrost. Everything looks as if
it were covered by a sheer bridal veil. Mr. Harrison fools around with the heater. The shape of his fingernails reminds me of Daddy’s. He has a juicy aroma, like a Thanksgiving feast without the turkey.

I sniff my underarm. Smells like wet ashes. I’ve only worn the outfit once, but since I started menstruating, my body odor is unpredictable. Sometimes, though, my sweat smells good like burnt cinnamon toast.

“You can listen to whatever you like,” Mr. Harrison says. The radio’s set on a classical station in Charlotte. The Harrisons listen to so much classical music that they call the composers by their first names: Wolfgang Amadeus, Johann Sebastian, Ludwig van.

“Oh, but I love classical music,” I lie. I don’t exactly love it. I live for soul music. Marvin Gaye, Aretha, the Temptations, the Supremes, Little Richard. All my babysitting money goes straight to Motown.

“Rescue Me” is the first record I ever bought, and lately I’ve been listening to it over and over. It’s by Miss Fontella Bass. Fontella is the prettiest name I’ve ever heard in my entire life, and her voice sounds full of good loving she’s been saving up for a long time. I block out Beethoven’s Ninth and sing the song in my head—begging like crazy to be rescued by his tender charms because I’m lonely and blue and aching to pieces with desire.

Mr. Harrison talks about the cold front, then about the Clemson Tigers. Then he starts asking me questions about the National Spelling Bee and which college I want to go to
and all that jazz. I figure he’ll eventually get around to asking me about Daddy.

Just in case he does, I have my speech rehearsed:
Oh, he’s doing well, thank you, sir. He finished up the program at the VA hospital and they found a place for him at Winding Springs, which is an excellent treatment facility for advanced drinkers. They say he might have to stay there for a whole year
.

But he doesn’t bring up the subject. Mrs. Harrison probably gave him strict orders to make this a happy, happy day, like the surprise birthday party they threw for me at their house a few weeks ago. Mama and Billy Ray were in cahoots with them. Gloria Jean and Wendell and the twins came. So did Kelly, Desi, Andrea, Kim, and a few other friends. The biggest surprise was Mr. Harrison playing the drums, wearing that floppy wig, pretending to be Ringo.

We’ve been on the road for quite a while. The kids sleep soundly in the backseat, Celia wrapped in a pink quilt and James huddled in his camouflage sleeping bag. Mr. Harrison’s gray wool pants are perfectly creased, but they look real soft. A black cardigan covers his royal blue turtleneck shirt. I try to imagine Daddy in those clothes, driving this fine car, with a nice, thick leather wallet in his back pocket. But all I can see is that skinny naked man clipping at the holly bushes in the snow. It’s hard to imagine my daddy ever being healthy again.

Mr. Harrison is the only man I’ve ever known who smells good at the end of the day, the only man I’ve ever seen in a tuxedo, the only man who gives me goose bumps and
the willies at the same time. I feel like a queen bee without a hive when I’m around him, but he has always acted like a gentleman toward me. I’ve never heard him curse or seen him get mad or treat his family mean. He is an important man, and I am damn lucky he asked me to go to Clemson with them. But here I am, stinking up the car with my body odor. I wonder if he smells me.

In my head Fontella’s song grows louder and louder. She wants him to take her heart and conquer every part of it. Poor Fontella singing her heart out like that tears me up, because there is no rescue.

The front seat of the Cadillac is big as a bed. I love the soft bone-colored cloth upholstery. “How about some music from this century?” Mr. Harrison says, then changes the station to Big Ways Radio in Charlotte. Aretha is spelling out
r-e-s-p-e-c-t
, and telling her man she’s got to have some of it, especially at night, before he socks it to her. And she tells him flat out that if she doesn’t get just a little bit of
r-e-s-p-e-c-t
, she’s gonna be gone—and he’s gonna be awful lonesome—without somebody like her to sock it to. Aretha knows she’s the prize. I guess that’s why she’s so confident.

“Have you ever seen the Giant Peach?” Mr. Harrison asks.

“The Giant Peach? What is that?”

“You’ll see it for yourself in a few minutes. We’re almost there.”

Soon I see a water tower that looks like a giant peach. It has
WELCOME TO PEACHLAND
written across it.

“Holy moly, the peach looks like it has fuzz on it. It’s amazing.”

“Every time I see it, it shocks me.” Mr. Harrison reaches underneath his seat and brings out a box wrapped in gold paper with purple irises on it. “This is for you.”

“What for? We already celebrated my birthday.”

“It’s to let you know how much I admire you.”

I take the package and put it in my lap. What have I done for him to admire me? Babysat his kids? Won the South Carolina spelling bee?

“Admire me? For what?”

“For being yourself. For being such a champion in life.”

I stare at the present. A sprig of rosemary is laced through the purple bow. I bite my lip to keep from crying. Mrs. Harrison has a big rosemary plant in her kitchen. She uses it in her cooking, but, mostly, she just likes the way it smells. I remove the ribbon. The paper falls away, exposing a brown leather book with gold lettering:
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
. I read the inscription:
To Karlene Bridges, Always remember to celebrate yourself. Good luck. Your friend and admirer, Mr. Harrison
.

My fingers rub the letters he has written. The goodness of the words sends shivers of joy in every direction. I turn the page and recite the first three lines of Mr. Whitman’s book out loud like Mrs. Harrison taught me: “I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” Mr. Whitman speaking to me like that tears me up, especially since he is dead.

Mrs. Harrison is the one who bought the present, asked him to inscribe it, and wrapped it. She wants her fine husband to be some kind of father figure to me. Her being so kind makes me feel sort of crummy for having all those horny feelings about Mr. Harrison, but I remember that Latin phrase,
Cogitationis poenam nemo patitur—
Nobody should be punished for his thoughts—and I don’t feel so bad.

I look over at my handsome pretend daddy and say, “Thank you.”

Mr. Harrison’s eyes say
You’re welcome
, but I’m sorry at the same time. Sorry he will never be able to kiss me the way I long to be kissed. A part of me still wishes he’d kiss me right now. The devil always shows up when he smells weakness, just like Mama says. I close the book and practice conscious breathing, trying to squelch the terrible longing inside of me. Maybe one of these centuries, Billy Ray Jenkins might recognize I’m a girl whose lips were made to be kissed.

When my insides simmer down a little, I change the radio back to the classical station. Beethoven’s violin concerto is playing. According to the road sign, Clemson is fifteen miles away.

I sit close to the door, looking out the window at billboards, factories, and ordinary houses. The air in the car is dry and warm. The music of the violin seeps into my skin and makes me think about the long, hard road of my daddy’s life. Why I was born into my particular family is a mystery, and why I got halfway adopted by the Harrisons is another one. But I know that no matter how much I love the Harrisons
or how much they love me, I do not belong to them. There is something beautifully wrong about it, something almost tragic. But I won’t think about that now—because soon, I’ll be sitting with my pretend family in a brand-new coliseum, rooting for the Tigers to win.

1: sexual drive, sexual energy: DESIRE

2: vital impulse; the energy associated with instincts

3: emotional energy derived from primitive biological urges

I drop the needle on my favorite Zombies record, “Time of the Season,” and stretch out on my bed to enjoy the deep throbbing feeling the song gives me. The drummer sounds like he’s having sex with himself and playing all his percussion instruments at the same time. In between drumbeats there are moans of unbearable pleasure. And then the lead singer, in a deep, throaty voice, asks a girl to give it to him easy, and that if she does, his pleasured hands will take her into promised lands. Then there’s a jazzy instrumental part that lasts awhile before the drums and the moaning start again. And then the singer asks the girl who her daddy is and if he’s rich or not, and whether he’s taken the time to show her what she needs to live. That voice makes me want to be that girl he’s talking to right
now
.

But of course I’m not that girl. I am Karlene Kaye Bridges, the
virgo intacto
, lying on my bed in my boring flannel pajamas. I pull out a half-sucked cherry Tootsie Roll Pop from my pocket, unwrap it, and stick it in my mouth. The harder I suck, the better it tastes. There’s seven inches
of March snow outside. No school today. Even the mill is closed. I’ve been goofing off, talking on the phone, painting my toenails, looking at myself in the mirror, listening to records, wondering if Billy Ray’s going to make it here through the snow.

Mama knocks on the door, then turns the knob. It’s locked.

“Karlene, hurry up, it’s time to turn the upside-down cake.”

“I’ll be out in a minute!” I love to watch Mama make the pineapple upside-down cake: melting butter in an iron skillet, placing a layer of pineapples and cherries on the bottom, sprinkling them with brown sugar, pouring the cake batter over the fruit, and putting it in the oven to bake. But I have never been allowed to turn the cake right side up because Mama says the iron skillet is too heavy.

So, I rush to the kitchen. Mama’s standing by the big black skillet. “Here, just flip the pan over onto the plate.”

My wrists wobble when I lift the pan. Mama reaches around me and places her hands on top of mine, steadying them. Together, we turn the pan gently onto the old turquoise plate. Mama removes her hands. “Now, let it rest a second.”

A few moments pass and then I hear a gentle plopping sound.

“Can I lift it now?”

She nods and I lift the pan from the cake and set it aside. The cake is perfectly bronzed and smells like fresh-baked heaven, and the pineapples look like delicious little suns.

“Now you know how to make your grandma’s Sun Cake,” Mama says in a young voice. The sweet, moist smell makes me want to dig into the cake with my hands and eat the whole thing. Lately I feel hungry all the time, and often find myself in a daze standing in front of the refrigerator trying to find something to satisfy this new, unparticular hunger. Sometimes I eat a half dozen dill pickles and almost a jar of olives before I realize what I really want is a pimento-cheese sandwich.

Someone knocks on the door and I answer it. Billy Ray’s standing there with snow all over his black toboggan. “Come on, let’s go play.”

“I need to get dressed. You want to come in?”

“No, thanks, I’ll wait outside,” he says.

I rush to the bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth. My hair looks dull, so I brush it and put it into a ponytail. I pull on my hip-hugger jeans, white turtleneck, and pale yellow sweatshirt, then scrounge around under the bed until I find my raggedy Converse All Stars high-tops. I slip on two pairs of socks before putting on the shoes. I can’t find my winter gloves, so I grab the pair I wore last Easter. In the mirror, I see a halfway cute tomboy. I put on my red coat, pull the hood over my head, and rush outside.

Billy Ray’s not on the porch, so I run into the front yard looking for him. Suddenly, I am clobbered by one hit after another. Billy Ray’s standing beside a mound of snowballs wearing his tight, faded Wranglers. He’s laughing at me. I throw my hands down into the snow and turn cartwheels until
my feet land, smashing half of the snowballs. I hurl one at Billy Ray’s chest, then he runs away. I pick up a few snowballs and take off after him. He runs zigzaggedly up the street trying to avoid being hit, laughing like a madman. Seeing Billy Ray so happy running in the snow conjures up a vision of my poor daddy, standing in the snow, snipping berries off the holly tree. It seems like something that happened two hundred years ago.