Twang (22 page)

“Jennifer, Jennifer. This hate you have inside isn’t healthy. When you fantasize evil, you’re giving the enemy ground, and if you don’t get rid of that bitterness it’ll end up destroying
you
.”

My heart was pounding. I swore under my breath.

“You love your mother, don’t you?” Tonilynn asked softly. “I remember you saying you send her money.”

“It’s really nothing for me to write a check,” I said. “I thought if I sent her enough she wouldn’t be afraid of being homeless or penniless and she’d leave my father. But the fact of the matter is, she didn’t stand up to him when I was growing up, and she doesn’t now.”

“What did you want her to stand up to him about?”

“I don’t care!” I spit the words. “It doesn’t matter anymore!”

“You’re angry at your mother too.”

“Yeah, I am! I don’t understand how she can live like she does. My mother’s choice is spineless acceptance, trudging along, swiping her forehead with the back of her hand and sighing ‘Ahh, well, this is my lot in life and I will endure.’ Problem was, I was forced to endure right along with her.” I looked at Tonilynn, shook my head. “Even as a kid, I realized people could choose their destiny to some extent, that they could transcend what life gave them, and I despised her meekness. I used to tell myself that when I made it big, I’d send her so much money that she’d grow a backbone and see she could reach for better things too. She’d feel brave enough to leave him.”

“Poor baby. You didn’t have it easy.”

I felt tears welling. “I wished my father dead, I hoped and prayed we’d leave him, and then, later . . . I just wanted my mother to lift her head out of the sand and admit what he did to me that night when . . .” Suddenly, every cell in my body shrunk back. I began trembling so hard my teeth chattered.

Tonilynn dropped to her knees on the floor at my feet. There was such radiant love in her eyes, I thought I might feel some presence, a glimpse into another world. But it wasn’t enough for me to reveal the worst.

“Oh, darlin’,” she cooed. “It hurts when a mother doesn’t support your dream, doesn’t it?”

“She didn’t encourage my singing, that’s true,” I said in a tight voice. “But I could let that go, if she’d just . . . I mean, I’ve tried to talk to her about some other things. Some things that are very painful to . . . but . . . she just denies . . .” I felt like an angry child, and I liked it. I reached down deep and yelled, “A mother is supposed to be that one person in the world who loves you, who protects you! And she didn’t protect me!”

Tonilynn jumped and rocked back with wide eyes. At last, she cleared her throat, “Let’s just ask the Lord to help you dig up all that ugly stuff. Okay?”

“What if I don’t
want
to dig some of it up?”

“If you don’t look at it eye-to-eye, then you sure can’t forgive it and be free of it.”

What a stupid comment! I knew there’d
never
be a day I could forgive my father! Didn’t Tonilynn know that to forgive him would be the same as saying it didn’t matter?

I took a long, deep breath, gathered all my courage and walked out onstage to smile at that sea of faces, to absorb their energy and anticipation for a nice long minute before strumming a rich G-chord, leaning into the microphone, and
saying, “Good evening, Houston.” Wild hoots, whistles, and cheers began to erupt, to crest, and at last to wind down, giving me plenty of time to study my crowd. There were the usual swaying Stetson hats and glinting belt buckles, the various colorful bandannas being waved or fastened jauntily around necks, lots of plaid Western shirts with blue jeans, and short flirty skirts paired with cowgirl boots.

Glancing beyond, I could see the sun hunkered low in the west, the sky streaked with purple and pink at the horizon. Bright stage lights above me and to my back and sides lit me up in a warm, familiar way. My stage manager motioned my cue from the wings to begin and my voice surprised me as it vaulted out, “All right! Thank you very much! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for that nice, big, warm welcome. You always hear about Texas being the state with the big heart, and I know it’s true!” More whistles and cheers. “And now it’s time for us to take a trip together. A trip to the Georgia mountains!”

Behind me a drum, a rhythm guitar, and a piano bloomed into the beginnings of “Blue Mountain Blues.” I knew the song like the back of my hand, and it was good to have a slow, easy ballad that I could sing in a high tenor to lead off.

When I was a young girl, no more than eleven, I found a place to wind my summer days away, place like heaven. Rocky rills, and soaring hills, creekbeds flowing through trees. But I’m far away now and visit you only in my dreams
.

Blue Mountain Blues, I’m missin’ you
.

Blue Mountain Blues, it’s true
.

When I reached the chorus, I was carried away on the wings of the music. I actually felt the soft moss on the banks of the creek beneath my feet, the water licking my ankles.

The audience began swaying as I sang the chorus three times to end the song, growing softer and softer. Some fans had eyes closed, lips moving along to the words.

I segued into “Gimme Some Sugar, Sugar,” and I could feel it working its way into the crowd, lighting them up with this warm, golden buzz. Thrilled, I leaned out and threw double-kisses. I was alive up onstage, like no other place.

I kicked off into “I’m Leavin’ Only Footprints” and “Walking the Wildwood,” then “River Time,” “Spooky Moon,” and “Smoke Over the Hills,” a soft, mournful waltz with a fiddle that sounded like tears floating in the air. And finally, a silly tune with a rocking beat called “Old Spice and Vitalis,” about an elderly Romeo I met when I sang at a nursing home.

Everyone was smiling by the end of that song. Finally it was time. “Now I’m gonna do a brand-new song for you,” I said, feeling the electric buzz of the microphone on my lips in a surreal way. “Never sung it in public before. About a time when I was still in high school. You all know that time in our lives is hard enough as it is. Right?” I paused and saw a sea of heads nodding, heard random “Amens” and “Sure enoughs.”

“Yes, we’re all exceptionally vulnerable then, and I wanted a song that would say to you young people, ‘Don’t let anybody kill your dreams. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something if it’s in your heart to do it.’ ” My fingers trembled as I strummed up and down the fret for my usual pause before each song. All of a sudden my pick wasn’t feeling like an extension of my fingers anymore. My eyelids and my throat began to ache from holding back tears, and I was so exhausted from my performance, I didn’t have much reserve left to fight the crippling cocktail of emotions—the anger and the hatred, sure, but also shame and despair. I stood up there on that stage disappointed with myself for
feeling
those things when I’d vowed to suck it up. If I fell apart in front of everybody, if my fans knew the truth—how pathetic and broken I really was—then it was all going to be over.

I could see the anticipation on everyone’s face, and I began strumming the wistful, melancholy opening bars of “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” There was nothing to do but suck it up and dive in.

I come in from school, and Mama says ‘He’s home’

I don’t know what’s waiting for me yet

But my heart feels like a stone.

Mama says, ‘He loves you, you’re his daughter,’

But I know the man sure don’t walk on water.

I sung him my song, and it didn’t take long,

’Til he’d stomped on my dream,

Him and his friend, Jim Beam.

My tears wet the night,

and I knew it wasn’t right,

I wanted to say, I wanted to say,

‘Daddy, don’t come home.

I’d rather be alone.

Just walk out that door, ’cause I can’t take it no more.’

I sang on through the high, lonesome sound of the chorus, falling helplessly into the second verse. The faces I could see were totally into it, empathizing with the pain of this young girl, and I gripped my guitar even tighter, stomped my boot, worked hard to sing like it was somebody else’s song, steeling myself to stay in control. But the feelings I’d recently unearthed to write the song were too fresh, and before I knew it I was right back there in that awful time, my dreams newly crushed like a muscadine on the highway.

A young woman in the front row wearing a strapless top and tight jeans was crying so hard her eyeliner ran down into her lips. I wondered if she had a father like mine, and I fought
my impulse to pull her up onstage and give her a big hug. Then the floodgates really opened, and my voice got a really tearful twang as I poured out my soul in a vibrato born from pain. Things got even worse as the emotion crescendoed through another stanza. I wanted to run offstage and hide.

Miraculously, just as I thought I was on the vergeof dying, I managed to switch myself to the tough, resilient Jenny Cloud, and I belted out the chorus one more time, adding a rollicking guitar lick between it and the final verse. Swiveling my hips, I tapped out the rhythm with the toe of one boot in a kind of hillbilly stomp, and bringing the song around to its last rousing chorus—
I’d rather be alone. Just walk out that door, ’cause I can’t take it no more
.

Taking a bow, I leaned into the microphone and said, “Good night, Houston. I love you all!” I pressed both palms to my lips and blew kisses to the crowd. A tidal wave of applause from twenty thousand fans splashed my face with spray before engulfing me.

Aboard the Eagle, Tonilynn sat in the kitchen in her satin nightgown, cold cream slathered on her face. “You were sensational, hon! Care for a little girl talk before bed?” She smiled and gestured at a Diet Coke on the table. I shook my head and walked past her to my bunk, climbed up on my mattress and lay there. I wanted more than anything to fall down into the sweet abyss of sleep, drift in a deep blackness of no thoughts. But it was not to be. I watched a mental replay of my performance, especially the face of the girl on the front row as I sang “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” Her connection to my pain had been real.

“Pizza, the breakfast of superstars.” Tonilynn smiled as she shook the plastic cup of thousand island salad dressing she’d
requested on-the-side all over her salad. “Mike says the buzz is fantastic about last night’s performance.” She tore off a chunk of crusty French bread and slathered it with butter.

At 11:40 in the morning, Frank’s Pizza was fairly crowded. I sat there, my old baseball cap pulled low, a piece of untouched pepperoni pizza on my plate. I sure didn’t feel like a superstar. I felt like a pathetic, divided, and tortured soul who adored her career and hated it at the same time. Music was my gift, but it was also my curse, a huge, itchy mosquito bite between my shoulder blades I couldn’t ever seem to get scratched to satisfaction.

And fame? Fame could be tough in country music circles, where the legitimacy of a new star was scrutinized like a newborn baby’s face. Folks were saying I didn’t deserve to shine so quickly and so brightly because I hadn’t “served my time” by spending a decade singing in bars. It irked me to hear things like, “Jenny Cloud had it handed to her on a silver platter” and “That girl was just in the right place at the right time. She got lucky.”

The ability to write songs and a good voice were gifts, yes, but if my critics only knew the compost heap they sprouted in! I sat there, trying to think what it was I needed. I needed peace. I needed sky and water. I needed the Cumberland River.

“Hon? You okay? Please answer me, Jennifer. Oh, Jesus, help this child . . .”

It took me a minute to realize Tonilynn’s soft voice was calling to me. I blinked, sat up straight. “Sorry. Listen, I’m not feeling too good. I’m going back to the Eagle and lie down.”

I stood, but Tonilynn grabbed my wrist. “Don’t go.”

I sat back down.

“What’s the matter, hon?”

“I’m just . . . I hate my life.”

“Silly!” Tonilynn laughed, threw a napkin at me. “You’re just exhausted. We’ll get you tucked into your bunk nice and early tonight and you’ll be fine. Now eat.”

“I’m not hungry, but I’ll wait until you’re done.”

Tonilynn dipped a crouton in dressing and ate it. “Remember what we were talking about day before yesterday? Folks would kill to be where you are.”