Screaming Divas Page 6

  Esther wasn’t sure what would happen next. Part of her was afraid that Harumi and her fellow band members would broadcast her little adventure all over school. She’d be ostracized, maybe tarred and feathered. People would paint rude slogans on her locker. Call her a dyke.

  But it wasn’t like that at all. Everyone treated her the same as before, except for Harumi who acted as if she didn’t exist. If their eyes happened to meet in the hallway, Harumi looked right through her.

  It was weird. They’d played together all through childhood, spending the night at each other’s houses in each other’s beds. And then suddenly, nothing. Esther had never been so lonely in her life.

  At night, she cried herself to sleep. Then she had dreams—vivid erotic dreams—about Rebecca. Or sometimes she dreamed of Cassie, of licking her scar and wrapping her in yards of pink silk. She was haunted by all the wrong things. Maybe some kind of exorcism was in order. A visit to a shrink. But how could she bring this up with her parents? This kind of problem didn’t appear in Good Housekeeping or Family Circle or the other magazines her mother read. Whenever her father saw a guy with an earring, he muttered “homo.” She was alone.

  9

  When Jack threatened to send Trudy back to Sarah, she lit out on her own. She was living now in a rented house. Every month her grandparents sent her a check for eight hundred dollars to cover living expenses. She wouldn’t come into her trust fund until she turned twenty-one, but her Charleston grandmother had taken pity on her. She didn’t want the girl eating out of garbage cans.

  Trudy’s room was at the back of the house, off the kitchen. At the moment, the sink was filled with a week’s worth of dirty dishes, some of them furred with grey. Trudy tried to mask the odor by burning incense.

  She was stuck with a slob—Madeline—but at least she had her own room. She had a futon in the corner and a few milk crates for her books and candles.

  She’d met her apartment-mate at The Cave. In between slamming and dancing and taking turns in the DJ booth, Trudy took breaks in the Pink Room and became intimately acquainted with the clientele. She’d decided to start a band.

  Trudy got her hands on a guitar. Actually, it was her father’s guitar, the one he’d played back in the day, with Swamp. The instrument had a history of smoky bars, fields of wildflowers, park benches, Greyhound buses. It had been all over the place, probably even Dahomey.

  She was going to ask to borrow it, but when she dropped by Jack’s apartment, he wasn’t home. Trudy decided to cart the guitar off anyhow. He never played it anymore and besides, he might say no if she asked him to loan it to her. He didn’t trust her so much since all the trouble with Adam.

  She’d practice and innovate and turn herself into a brilliant performer. And then she’d start a band. It would be the most exciting thing to hit the town since General Sherman. Yeah, these were good thoughts.

  By day, she practiced. By night, she hung out at The Cave, playing records or slamming on the dance floor. During breaks, she looked for musicians in the Pink Room.

  “Hey, Maddy. I’m starting a band. Wanna join up?”

  Madeline tossed a lock of black hair out of her eyes. “You must be out of your mind.”

  Trudy shrugged. She asked Jeff, the David Bowie lookalike. She even asked Johnny Fad. People laughed, blew smoke in her face. Sometimes they just turned away as if they hadn’t heard her at all.

  Why did everyone treat her proposition like some sort of joke? She was as serious as she’d ever been. The more she practiced, the more she knew that her dreams lay in music. She closed her eyes and saw herself on the stage, crooning into a mic while a huge crowd lit and lofted their Bics in tribute.

  When people were drinking and dancing, they weren’t in the mood for serious talk. She had to find another way to put her band together.

  Trudy made a flyer with scissors and magazines and Elmer’s glue. When she was finally satisfied with her work, she rode her housemate’s rickety bicycle to Kinko’s and made a hundred copies. Then she ran around Five Points, where all the college kids hung out, and plastered them to every telephone pole in sight with a staple gun. When she was finished, she went back to the apartment, picked up her guitar, and waited for the phone to ring.

  “Hey, what’s this?” Madeline barged into her room just after midnight, smelling of booze and smoke. She waved one of Trudy’s flyers in the air between them.

  “I’m starting a band,” Trudy said. “I told you already.”

  Madeline shrugged. “Yeah, whatever. I wish you hadn’t put our phone number down, though. We’ll get half a million calls from creeps.”

  Trudy didn’t answer. Why was Madeline being such a bitch? She looked really cool with her tattooed shoulder and asymmetrical haircut, but sometimes she could be totally square.

  “I’ll get my dad to buy us an answering machine,” Trudy said. “That way we can screen calls.”

  Madeline nodded, seemingly consoled, and wandered off to her room.

  Trudy giggled softly. Jack would never fork out cash for something like that, but the lie had worked.

  The first call came at noon the next day.

  “Hey, I’m calling about the band,” a gravelly voice said.

  “What do you play?”

  “Bass, drums, whatever. I’m versatile. Hey, wait. You sound really familiar. What’s your name?”

  “Trudy B.” She was trying out different names. “Baxter” sounded so boring.

  “Hey, I know you. You’re that psycho jailbird.” The line went dead.

  Later, Southern Bell called about an overdue phone bill. The manager at Yesterday’s, where Madeline waited tables, called asking Madeline to report to work early. Someone dialed a wrong number.

  Where were all the budding musicians, the soulmates in tune with her dreams? Trudy set aside her guitar and put on some music. She threw herself on the bed and let Patti Smith comfort her.

  How was she ever going to get this thing off the ground? Trudy sighed. Maybe she could go solo—set up a drum machine and play the guitar herself. She wracked her brains trying to come up with someone who’d gotten famous without backup. Her mind went blank.

  Two nights later, when she came home from a trip to the Quick Mart down the street, Madeline greeted her with, “You got a phone call. Someone wants to join your band.”

  “Great.” Trudy felt like pogoing. “Who?” She pictured a pale, black-haired guy in leather, a guitar strapped across his hard-muscled body.

  “I don’t know. She said she’d call back.”

  She? Well, okay. This could be good. A girl group. Yeah, that’s the ticket. They’d be like the Supremes with instruments. The Go-Go’s with attitude. It would be a good gimmick, something to get them started while they developed as a band.

  “You know, Madeline, you can still get in on the ground floor,” Trudy teased happily. “I think you’ve got what it takes to be a first class drummer.” She reached over and squeezed her housemate’s biceps. Her muscles were hard from carrying trays of beer mugs and beef burritos.

  The phone trilled and Trudy dove for it. She snatched the receiver on the second ring. “Yeah?”

  “Hi, I’m, um, calling about the band?”

  Trudy gave Madeline the thumbs up sign. Madeline rolled her eyes and retreated to her bedroom.

  “Do you play an instrument?”

  “No, but I can learn. I took piano lessons, so I can read music and I sing. I’ve written some songs, too.”

  Trudy didn’t have much use for a piano, but keyboards—yeah, maybe. Anyway, this chick had a musical background. Her phone voice wasn’t bad. She could probably sing backup.

  “Cool. Why don’t we meet and discuss this?”

  “Um, okay.”

  “What’s your name, by the way?”

  “Cassandra Haywood. Cassie, for short.”

  Cassie? Trudy groaned inwardly. She’d seen her before at The Cave. Cassie, the poseur who looked like Barbie, but pretended to be a punk. Sh
e was blonde and whenever she took the dance floor, guys orbited her like planets. Trudy figured that she was stupid. She was slumming. She probably lived in a nice home with a pool and wore real pearls when she went out to dinner. The girl probably wrote songs about dressing up for dates and broken fingernails. Her image was totally wrong for what Trudy had in mind. Then again, it wasn’t as if the phone had been ringing off the hook. And Trudy wasn’t wild about the idea of a solo career.

  “Let’s meet at Group Therapy tomorrow,” she said, naming a popular bar in Five Points.

  “Okay, Trudy. I’ll see you then.”

  As Trudy sat in her room that night, picking out chords on her guitar, she thought about Cassie. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad having her in the band. In spite of her scar, she was pretty in an obvious way, a way that men liked. Maybe her good looks would help them to draw a crowd.

  Okay. They’d try it. Trudy knew about band histories—the breakups and rearrangements that went with the territory. If Cassie flopped, Trudy would kick her out of the group. In the meantime, her options weren’t exactly multiplying.

  Trudy flashed her fake ID at the door and shoved her way through to the back. Cassie was already there, alone in a booth, sipping what looked like Coke. Trudy slid into the seat across from her.

  “So what do you want to do in the band?” Trudy asked.

  “Whatever you want.” Cassie reached behind her and pulled a notebook out of her backpack. She handed it to Trudy. “These are some songs I’ve written.”

  Cassie’s scrawl filled up half the pages.

  At first, Trudy just skimmed over the titles—“Crash Baby,” “Pretty Please,” “Lady Lazarus Rises Again,” “Daddy’s Disease.” Then she went to the lyrics. Cassie, she realized, was not what she seemed. In spite of her all-American good looks—those blue eyes and that tumble of wheat-colored hair, her size eight physique—inside she was deeply warped.

  Close up like this, Trudy could see the sickle-shaped scar that bisected her cheek. Usually, in the dark, it was barely visible. Trudy had always wondered about it, but never asked. Now she did. “How’d you get that scar?”

  Cassie’s hand flew to her face and covered the mark. It was almost a reflex, Trudy thought.

  “Car accident,” Cassie said. “I lived. Mama died.”

  And then, as if the words had been waiting to come out of her for years, Cassie’s story began to flow. She told Trudy about the child beauty pageants, her mother’s drinking, her father’s affairs.

  “The night my mama died, she was yelling at Daddy about bringing home some disease. I didn’t realize it then, but now I know that he gave her herpes or something.” Cassie shook her head in disgust.

  Trudy wasn’t sure which was worse—a dead mother, or a living mother who didn’t give a damn. She told Cassie about her own sordid upbringing, about the time she’d spent locked up. Most people got all wide-eyed when they heard her biography, but Cassie took it all in with occasional nods and murmurs. Her own tragedies had left her shell-shocked. She was beyond surprise.

  Later, they went back to Trudy’s house and jammed with the guitar.

  “Okay, you sing or scream or whatever, and I’ll play,” Trudy said. She sat on her bed, the guitar in her arms. As soon as her fingers touched the strings, Cassie began flailing like a spastic rag doll.

  “This is number one. I did it with a gun. This is number two. I made myself turn blue. This is number three. I drove into a tree. This is number four. I dove from the top floor. Lady Lazarus! I’m Lady Lazarus!”

  The girl had presence, no doubt about it. Trudy felt hope swell in her chest. They were going to be legends. They’d be a force to reckon with, an inspiration for every little girl in America—hell, the world!

  Cassie finished her number and fell onto the bed. Her perfect breasts rose and fell with each deep breath. “I feel alive right now,” she said, smiling at the ceiling. “Really alive.”

  “Yeah, I think this might work. You and me and ….”

  Cassie sat up as if sparked by an idea. “I know this great bass player. She’s a true musician—a child prodigy—and she’s really cool. I’ll bet she’d be interested. I could ask her.”

  Trudy nodded. Everything was coming together now. She couldn’t believe she had ever been worried. “We’ll have our first practice here on Friday night. Get her to come then.”

  It was already midnight. Madeline banged on the door. “Stop the racket. Y’all sound like a bunch of screaming divas,” she said in a weary voice. “I’m going to bed now.”

  Trudy yanked open the door. “Maddy! I’ve got a band now. Tell the world.”

  Madeline slouched there in an oversized T-shirt, her face scrubbed clean. She didn’t move when Trudy grabbed her and kissed her on the cheek. “You can still join. We need a drummer.”

  Madeline patted her on the head and disappeared into her room.

  “An enemy of rock and roll,” Trudy whispered to Cassie. “But we’ll convert her.”

  That night, the two of them shared a bed. It was kind of nice watching Cassie’s face relax into innocence and feeling the warmth of her body. This could be an initiation rite—sleeping together in the same bed. Anyone who hogged the sheets would be kicked out of the band.

  10

  Esther hadn’t been planning on calling Rebecca. In fact, she shredded and burned the scribbled phone number as she’d promised herself in the car. But one Saturday afternoon, while shopping at the Columbia Mall for her mother’s birthday gift, she caught a glimpse of her. At first, she wasn’t sure. A tall woman with cropped white-blonde hair stood at the Lancôme makeup counter, bent over an array of creams. Esther could only see the back of her—the long, slender but shapely legs, the slightly rounded bottom bound in a tight, black skirt. And then the woman picked up a tube of lipstick and tilted the mirror on the counter. Esther saw her face.

  She could have run in the other direction without being seen, but when she knew it was Rebecca, something leapt inside of her. Buoyed, but also suddenly shy, Esther moved slowly across the store.

  “Hey,” she said, priming herself for rejection.

  Rebecca’s eyes widened in the mirror. She smiled. “Esther!”

  And then they’d wound up going out for coffee, and although Esther had tried to make small talk she’d wound up crying and telling Rebecca about her estrangement from Harumi and all the unfamiliar feelings that had been flooding her heart and mind. But she didn’t tell her how she felt about Cassie. She wanted to keep that to herself.

  In the daylight, in that black skirt and blazer, with her makeup just so, Rebecca looked professional. She listened attentively, looking away only to stir sugar in her coffee, and made little cooing noises whenever Esther paused. It was easy to imagine that she was talking to a counselor or an older and wiser sister.

  “My parents were really conservative,” Rebecca said. “If they’d known I was having feelings for my year nine teacher, they probably would have sent me off to some re-education camp.” She shook her head and the thick gold hoops looped through her ears flashed with light. “Your friend will come around,” she said. “And if she doesn’t? Well, that’ll be her loss.”

  They talked and talked, and Esther forgot all about buying a present for her mother. She drank three cups of coffee while Rebecca told her story. Her parents had kicked her out of the house when she’d declared her love for women, and after a few difficult years in London, stripping and selling drugs, she’d made her way to more tolerant shores. Now she was living in Columbia, selling art in one of the galleries in Five Points.

  “You’re the only one I’ve ever been able to talk to about this,” Esther told her. And then she confessed to having ripped up Rebecca’s telephone number.

  Rebecca smiled kindly. “I came on a little strong that night, didn’t I? I didn’t mean to scare you. Then again, a jolt like that might have done you some good.” She took a gold-plated pen out of her purse and wrote the number on a napkin. “If you ever
want to talk—even if it’s the middle of the night—call me.”

  Rebecca gave Esther a part-time job in her gallery. It was only after school and on weekends, and the money wasn’t great, but Esther loved the atmosphere. Even when hours went by with no customers, she loved sitting on a stool behind the counter, sipping café au lait and looking at the paintings. There were a few tableaus of gardens and historic houses for the tourists, along with an oil painting or two of hunting dogs. But there were also edgy abstract compositions and surreal juxtapositions of zebras and belles.

  Esther loved meeting the artists who sometimes came by to drop off a new painting or pick up a check. She’d met Blue Sky, whose most famous mural was featured in the World Book Encyclopedia under “Art.” She also liked meeting up-and-coming artists like that guy Adam, who’d waltzed in the other day with his sculptures made out of junk. Rebecca had been impressed.

  Rebecca was teaching Esther all about art, and all about how to style herself. Under the older woman’s guidance, Esther had transformed herself from frump to Gypsy Queen. These days she wore her hair loosely rippled over her shoulders and she’d started wearing ethnic dresses with lots of beads. She wore makeup, too, but only when she was at the gallery. At school, she preferred to fade into the woodwork.

  Now Esther had this double life. She was part of the hip Five Points scene in one life, and a lovelorn high school student in another. The lovelorn student pined for a girl she could never have. She wrote letters to Cassie and left them unsigned. She fed them into the mailbox at the corner. Of course there was never a reply.

  11

  From the DJ loft, Trudy looked down upon her kingdom. As long as she spun the discs, she was ruler of the dance floor. Right now, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” echoed against the brick walls, haunting the dancers. They staggered like atomic blast survivors, swooped over the floor like vampires.

  Midway through the song, Jan hauled himself up the ladder leading to the booth. He motioned Trudy to approach him.

  “The band will be coming on after this, so you can come down now,” he said.