Diary of a Blues Goddess (11 page)

Makes me just plain mad. 'Cause I can wear a fine dress specially made. I can put a flower in my hair and wear perfume from France. But still places don't want no Negro woman… most especially mingling out front. Fine to sing, but don't sit down and talk with the customers afterward. Some nights I just played shacks, that's all they was. Shacks with a piano inside that catered to the colored folk. Dirty, ragged… but full of life, I can tell you. Like Mother Music herself, you can't quiet us forever. We will not be silenced.

I'm so, so tired. Myra, she is full of laughter, full of life. I can scarcely remember when we was little girls, little girls holding hands and singing songs. She and I used to learn all spiritual-type songs that our grandmama sang. Sad songs. Cotton-field songs. Songs about hard times. Songs about Jesus. But that seems so long ago. That little girl, holding hands with her sister. One hand colored, one hand white. I can't remember that joy. It's why I sing the blues, I think. That and this never-ending tiredness. Sometimes I think I'm tired because I am sad. Other times I think I am sad because I am tired. Now I know that doesn't seem to make a lick o' sense, but it's how I feel inside.

Happy New Year, I say to myself, tonight. I whisper those words. Happy… New Year. Here, nestled in the arms of Mother Music, I am determined to find happiness. For this year, I say I am going to have a happy year, a new year, a happy new year. I'm going to live those words.

I've made a decision. Maybe I just made it now, this moment, as I write.

I'm going to stay here with Myra for a while. I'll sing downstairs. The piano player, Harold, he is talented. I'll stay here and sing. I will sing the songs of Mother Music, the songs of this city, the songs of the South, of the blues, Jazz songs.

I will sing… and I will rest. I will try to find out why it is I am so tired. And cure myself. And maybe, in this momentous year, I'll remember what it's like to laugh.

I stopped reading, feeling my great-aunt's very tiredness coming through the page and into me.

"She really wrote this." I ran my fingers over the page. Her handwriting was thin and delicate. For someone whose mother died and father took off for parts unknown, holding a piece of my family history filled me with a sense of awe.

Dominique, Jack and I were all still nestled across my bed; I was in the middle. I had read the words aloud. Then I read a second entry. She wrote about a club she played—or was going to play—but she and a largely white band were turned away because she was black. Her reaction was a mixture of fury, humiliation and weariness.

Dominique looked at me, and said, "The South's strange legacy, sweet cheeks."

"Could you ever call my by just my regular old name?"

"I could, but that wouldn't be half as much fun, honey bun."

I held the diary reverently. "It's as if she's right here when I read this. I just can't believe she hid the journal in the house. Some nights I swear this house is alive with spirits. Not Sadie slamming doors, just a feeling, instead, like we're all being watched."

"Let's hope not," Dominique said. '"Cause what I don't want is any ghosts watching me."

"Read more," Jack urged.

I shook my head. "I want to savor it. I… I don't know. Want to read a little bit each day."

"I never knew your nan's name was Myra," Dominique said. "I would have figured it was Mitzi or Cha-Cha or something wild."

"Cha-Cha? That's a drag-queen name." I rolled my eyes. "It's Myra May." I climbed out from between the two of them and went over to the fireplace. I had a faded black-and-white photo of Nan and Irene when they were seventeen and twenty-two, respectively. They both wore hats and gloves, Sunday-church dresses. They clutched hands and grinned at the camera with exuberance, as if the photographer had just caught them sharing a private joke while they stood in front of this very house. The frame was ornate silver and tarnished.

"Here," I brought the picture over to them. "Here they are. Right about the time Irene wrote in her journal, too. Give or take a year or so."

Jack and Dominique looked at the two sisters. "Nan was beautiful," Jack said.

"Still is," Dominique mused. "Red sure thinks so. He was moonstruck all night. And Irene 'was beautiful, too. Look at those eyes. They're kind of like yours, Georgie. Like a cat's. You look more like her than Nan. And you sure don't look like your mother. Or your father, what I remember of him, and pictures."

"They don't look like sisters, do they?" Jack asked.

"No. Not really. The happiest stories Nan tells, though, are of when they were girls. She said they shared a secret language. Almost like twins, even though there was that age gap between them." I put the frame on my nightstand. "Irene watched out for Nan. Loved her very much. Nan said it was like she was more a mother, especially when their baby brother died and their mother became depressed. Irene practically raised Nan."

Dominique stretched and yawned. "Well, I love hearing about all this, but thanks to this haunted house, it's now after four o'clock in the morning. I'm going to my room. A girl's got to get her beauty rest!"

She slid off the bed and stood. Pulling herself up to her full height she stared up at the ceiling and said loudly, "Any ghosts… y'all just keep away from me. All this nighttime activity isn't good for the circles under my eye." She looked over at Jack and me. "I'm going to need a cucumber mask tomorrow. You will, too, Georgie. You look like a wreck. Your hair reminds me of a fur ball my cat spit up the other day."

"It's 4:00 a.m. and I've drunk the better part of two bottles of champagne. Could you cut me some slack?"

I sat down on my bed. Dominique was forever concocting beauty potions in the kitchen. No one escaped. One time Nan came home from church to find me, Maggie, Dominique, Tony and Jack all with some kind of magic mud on our faces. Cucumber masks were Dominique's cure for what ails your face the night after too much drinking and too little sleep. Which is pretty much de rigueur around here every weekend.

"Precisely. Hot-oil treatment for your hair, cucumber for the face. I don't even know whether that will be enough, but at least it's a start."

She blew kisses at Jack and me, turned and shut my door, and went off down the hall. Jack scooted up on one of my pillows. He patted the other pillow. "Come on and lie down, Georgie. Between all the champagne earlier, and then… I don't know what you'd call it… a haunting? You must be wiped out."

I nodded, yawning. Moving up to my pillow, I faced the fireplace, my back to Jack. He curled up around me, spooning me. Call it the tiredness, or maybe the lingering effects of the champagne, but I found myself leaning back against him.

We'd lain in a hundred beds together before. On the road, we always chose each other as hotel roomies. We occasionally played a more far-flung wedding. We've even played on riverboats a few times, though I get seasick. Mike, Gary and Tony—when he is on the road with us—always share a second room. Their slovenliness dictated my roommate choice. Mike is the worst offender. Underwear on the floor, socks strung across the tops of lamps, crushed beer cans, cigarette butts. Tony's a little neater, but still, in their bathroom, whiskers sprinkle the sink and counter. Wet towels on the floor. Gary, though fastidious, roomed with them because he snored, and I tried one night with him on the road and nearly smothered him with a pillow. Jack, both neat and a quiet sleeper, became my buddy. Yet tonight, I scooted my hips against him, finding a place to nestle as if I'd been there all my life. In the past, he'd held me when I broke up with boyfriends. Like Mr. Married-but-I-forgot-to-mention-it. I held him when his brother Tom nearly died in a motorcycle accident before Tom went to rehab and sobered up. This was different.

Jack brushed my hair away from my ear and whispered, "You sang tonight like I've never heard you before."

"You've heard me sing the blues."

"Not like tonight. You sounded like Billie Holiday. You had this edge to your voice. It was like you were channeling your aunt Irene or something."

"It's the Chivas that Red feeds me every Sunday," I murmured. I wanted to go to sleep, and my body ached with tiredness. But my heart was beating as though a bird had taken up residence in my rib cage and was flapping its wings faster and faster.

He was raised up on one elbow, his hand now reaching over and touching my face. "You know… I've always loved your hair. Don't listen to Dominique," he whispered.

"It does look like a for ball."

"It doesn't." His fingers traced my cheekbone. "And I love your face. And your voice."

He nuzzled my neck. "I think you should let your hair go wild. It's sexy that way."

"Easy for you to say, he of perfect white-boy blond hair."

He didn't say anything, just kept stroking my hair softly. I let myself relax a little, but still my breath was shallow. He kissed the back of my neck again.

"Jack… " I murmured.

"Hmm?"

"Let's go to sleep. This may not seem like such a good idea in the morning."

"Roll over and look at me."

"No."

"Please?"

I rolled over, as I had a hundred times before. This time he took my face in his hands and kissed me. Then he pulled back, and his tongue traced its way down to the hollow of my neck.

"Jack… don't," I said, though my body wasn't thinking
stop
.

"Why?"

"Because we have to work together, and if we make a mistake it puts the entire band in jeopardy."

His hand slid under my T-shirt and played with my nipples, first one, then the other, his thumb circling them. "We won't make a mistake. We're best friends. We'd never hurt each other."

"Have you paid attention to all my other relationships? My haircuts last longer than my typical relationship."

Jack's hand traveled down and was now stroking my stomach, giving me butterflies.

"But this is different. This is you and me." He slid closer to me, so our stomachs were touching. He pulled up his shirt, letting me feel his skin against my skin.

And so I did what any blues goddess would do in my position. I ignored every bit of good sense I had in my head.