Blackbird (4 page)

“Whatever for?” Efrem said. “You’re going to get a part. Heaven knows you’re about the only person in the whole of what is laughingly called the Drama Department with even a
mod
icum of talent.”

“Thanks a lot, Efrem. You’re a real prince.” That was my favorite expression for awhile there: “You’re a real prince.” I’d just finished reading
The Catcher in the Rye
for Mr. Galvez’s English 4 class which, frankly, I wasn’t all that wild about. The book, that is. I think Holden

Caulfield was more than a bit whiny, what with all that dire teenage alienation schtick, constantly going on and on about how terribly alienated he was from everything. I mean, it’s not as if
my
life has been this seventeen-year non-stop picnic in the park, but if I felt that alienated all the time, I’d just down a bottle of Sominex or fall on a samurai sword or something. It was quite dreary, if you want my opinion. It never fails to amaze me what kind of thing gets called a classic these days. Anyway, Caulfield has this habit (if you’ve read the book, you already know this) of saying to people (très très facetiously, of course), “You’re a prince. You’re a real prince.” It was the only thing I really liked in the whole book.

“You’re a real prince,” I said to Efrem.

“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” he said. “I just meant you’re one of the best actors in this school, for whatever that’s worth, and that you really have no worries about getting a part in this overblown vaudeville skit Mr. Dead End Kid has decided to grace the stage with this semester, that’s all.”

Efrem likes to refer to Mr. Brock, the Drama teacher here, as Mr. Dead End Kid, because the most important thing in Brock’s life (or so it seems to us) is that he used to be friends with Huntz Hall, who was in all the Dead End Kids movies back in the late thirties. Later, he was with the East Side Kids, and still later with the Bowery Boys. Huntz Hall, that is, not Mr. Brock. As far as any of us knows, Brock himself has never done anything bigger than some summer stock in the Midwest somewhere back in the fifties. He isn’t even much of a drama coach, if you ask me. Efrem says those who can’t do, teach; and those who can’t teach, teach here.

Personally, I feel kinda sorry for old Brock. I mean, the man is sixty years old if he’s a day. And sometimes I think, if I reach that age with nothing more to show for myself than having once palled around with some B-movie comedian – I mean, you should
see
the man sometimes, trying to make some meat-headed sophomore remember who Huntz Hall is (“
You
know! The goony one with the baseball cap!”). You’d think he’d get the message. But no. Just give him the slightest provocation, just mention the thirties for heaven’s sake, and old Brock’ll jump right in with, “Say, did I ever tell you I knew Huntz Hall personally?” When I told him once that I’d actually
seen Dead End
, it practically made his whole life worth living. It’s kinda pitiful, I mean it.

“Let’s get real, Efrem – I haven’t got a prayer.”

“What do you mean, you haven’t got a prayer?” he said. “You were easily the best thing in
Thurber Carnival
last year. I said so, in print, as you recall.” Efrem was entertainment editor of the school paper. “You did win last year’s Thespian award, lest we forget.”

“I know, I know,” I said. “But
Thurber
was different. I did the unicorn-in-the-garden thing, and it was very cute and very, very safe. But this play is all about el-oh-vee-ee love, after all. And, being as there’s no black girls in the department, if I did get cast, I’d undoubtedly have to nuzzle some little flower of white womanhood right there on the stage. I just don’t know if this town’s quite ready for that.”

“Oh, come on,” he said, “this is nineteen seventy-
four
. This is hardly the Old South, you know. We’re not
that
far from L.A.”

“We’re far enough.”

Efrem shrugged. “Too true.”

Perhaps I should explain a couple of things before I go on.

First of all, this is a pretty conservative town – no two ways about that. It isn’t very big, about thirty thousand people, and even though we’re not even ninety miles from downtown L.A., it’s still a small town in a lot of ways. There are a lot of Mormons here (who, in case you don’t know any, aren’t allowed to drink or smoke or do much of anything except get married and make a lot of babies and drink more Hawaiian Punch than you would ever believe possible); and those that aren’t tend to be four-square Baptists like my mom and dad, and the Baptists are almost as bad off as the Mormons, except a few of them smoke, mostly on the sly. Which means certain things just aren’t tolerated around here. Like, for instance, the plays done by our Drama department have to be edited – censored, really. All the Gods and Jesuses and sonofabitches have to be taken out, and all the Goddamns have to be changed to damn.

And there is a certain amount of racism here, too. I don’t mean there’s a lynching every Saturday night and KKK parades down the main drag or anything like that, but most of the black people live way out on the outskirts of town, either out on the Air Force base or near it. We don’t, and neither does Cherie’s family, but that’s about it. Even in school, most of the black kids keep pretty much to themselves, and the white kids to themselves. So one thing and another, I thought it was safe to assume my chances of getting a part in that semester’s play were about a million to one.

The play itself was called
Hooray for Love
. It was a comedy revue – a History of Love through the Ages, or so it was subtitled. There was a takeoff on Adam and Eve, a scene about Captain Smith and Pocohantas, that sort of thing. All ending up with scenes of quote love in the seventies unquote. Think of “Love, American Style” in rerun, and you’ve got the general idea.

We in Drama II all thought the play sucked rocks, pure and simple. We had requested
The Skin of Our Teeth
, which of course got shot down immediately. So
Hooray for Love
we got. It was written by an old friend of Mr. Brock’s (not, I hasten to add, Huntz Hall). And it was chock full of little huggies and kissies and just lame-o double entendres so that one or two of our more rabid Mormon citizens were likely to get their panties in a wad over it no matter who was cast. And right off the top of my head I could think of at least two sets of parents who would pull their daughters out of Drama (and maybe even out of school) if a young man of the colored persuasion was to touch them onstage.

So, anything Efrem might have attempted to the contrary, we both knew I really
didn’t
have a prayer, and, frankly, the only good reason I could think of for going to the auditions at all was that Skipper would be there.

“I’m not intending to hurt myself about this thing, Efrem. You and I both know the play bites the big one. Besides, Brock’ll probably make me student director as a consolation prize. And who knows? I might even swallow my considerable pride and do it.” I did a big shrug.

“I still say you’re wrong,” Efrem said. “So where’s Cherie? You always look so naked when you’re not wearing her.” At which point Cherie came in.

“As if on cue,” Efrem said – which was exactly what I’d been thinking. Cherie bounced up the tiers, testing the dress code in a very short blue paisley dress – rather low-cut with a yoke effect at the bosom – which really showed off her breasts and legs. Cherie has these big legs, shapely but large, and truly impressive breasts – quite a handful if a guy’s into breasts and legs. Not that she’s fat, exactly, but she is rounded, if you get my drift. Cherie Baker will never be mistaken for a guy. She stood before me, brown and sweet as a Reese’s Peanut-Butter Cup, a dimply smile on her full-moon face and a yellow rosebud extended to me in her right hand. Cherie gave me a rose almost every morning – heaven only knows where she got them – just because one day I commented on the rosebud she was carrying with her through school. Roses are my favorite flower.

Cherie was also in love with me. So she gave me a rose almost every morning. And almost every morning, it made me feel a little bit sad.

“Morning, Johnnie Ray,” Cherie said in that breathy, little-girl-lost voice of hers, a voice she seemed to have borrowed from Marilyn Monroe, a voice I was sure for the longest time just had to be a put-on. She slid into the chair nearest mine, scooting it as close to me as possible. Then she slipped her small, soft hands around my upper arm, gently at first, caressing my biceps; then she squeezed it hard for a moment, just before resting her cheek against my shoulder. All of which she accomplished in one smooth motion, while sucking in a long breath through her tiny, spaced teeth.

“Morning, Efrem,” she whispered, as much into my shoulder as at Efrem.

She did this nearly every morning, too: the taking hold of my arm, and the long, hissing breath, as if the taking of my arm – an arm just recently beginning to show the effects of Coach Newcomb’s weight-training class – were a wonderful thing for her. And every time she did, it made me feel so sad. Sad for Cherie, for having the misfortune of loving me. Because I hated to see her tossing her love away. And sad for myself a little bit – being at least as much in love with Skipper Harris as Cherie was in love with me, I knew how it felt to love in vain. And I felt a little guilty, too, for not being able to love her the way she loved me. Guilty, even though I couldn’t help it. Try as I might, the most that the touch of Cherie’s impossibly soft flesh against mine, the baby smell of her fluffy Afro against my shoulder could elicit in me was the completely irrational, totally unrealistic desire to protect her from all harm.

As if I could protect anybody from anything.

Come to think of it, the times when Cherie touched me were among the few times during the average day when it was reasonably certain that I would
not
get a hard-on.

At the time, Cherie was one of the two people who knew about me. Or, rather one of the two people whom I had told about me. I’d had to tell her; it was the only thing to do.

We met the first day she transferred here from Pittsburgh. Choir was about to start, and Cindy Metzler, the alto-section leader, approached me, steering another girl – Cherie – by the shoulders. Cindy introduced me as “our very best tenor,” which, modesty aside, I guess I was. Now that I think of it, old Cindy was probably out on a match-making mission, and I was too dumb to notice.

“I’m not actually the best tenor,” I said. “I’m just closest to the door.” And Cherie smiled that smile of hers, full of sweetness and guilelessness and little baby teeth; and then she giggled, covering her mouth with her hand like a little girl. And she melted my heart. I think in my way I fell in love with her right then and there.

We were immediate friends. Cherie was enrolled not only in concert choir but also in the bonehead English class where I student-assisted – and in which Cherie sat behind me, often massaging my shoulders while I corrected spelling tests and sentence diagrams until Mr. Stebner said, “Cherie, I believe my assistant has work to do, and I know
you
do.” Or something similar.

I knew Cherie had a crush on me – Stevie Wonder could see that – and while I did not encourage her attentions, neither did I slap her hands away or wear a t-shirt to school with
Noli Me Tangere
tie-dyed across the front. I’d be a liar if I said the attention wasn’t nice; and in the absence of what I really wanted, the feeling of being admired, being wanted by someone as sweet as Cherie, made me feel good. It wasn’t Skipper Harris by a long shot, but it was certainly better than nothing. And when people – Efrem included – began to assume Cherie and I were an item, I did nothing to squelch the myth.

When she gave me the letter, though, I knew I couldn’t stand to string her along anymore. Not that I’d ever led her on, exactly. Still, I hadn’t felt completely honest with Cherie from the time I began to realize she wanted more than a friendship from me – which was quite early on in the relationship. But I honestly hadn’t realized how serious Cherie was until she gave me the letter.

It was right after I’d told Skipper about me, about how I felt about him – which was easily within the top two stupid-assed-est things I have ever done – and which lowered me into a deep-blue funk the likes of which the world had rarely seen, for about two weeks. It was the first time I really understood the word heartbreak, because it honestly hurt so bad in my chest I could have sworn something in there had broken right in half. And Efrem was all over me going whatsamatter whatsamatter whatsamatter, and I wasn’t
about
to talk about it, but he just kept at me. But not Cherie.

She just stayed there by my side, attached to my right arm like a Band-Aid, pointedly not giving me the old wassamatta-you treatment. And then, two or three days into this deep-purple mood of mine, just before first period, Cherie hands me this big square pale-purple envelope, sealed. She kissed my face, and clip-clopped off to her first class (she was wearing a pair of those big clunky platform shoes). She had written on two pages of crisp paper the same color as the envelope; in pencil, in the erratic-looking little-kid writing I recognized from her spelling tests.