Blackbird (7 page)

While Steve Miller sang “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker” (with Mr. Galvez singing along softly and just slightly off-key), I tried to work on my short story, but my mind kept wandering. Skipper and Cherie and Carolann and the auditions and then Skipper again. Finally, I wrote this little poem – about Skipper, naturally. It just came out, all at once. I never even erased a word.

And now

Once again

I see your beautiful

Funny face,

And your cartoon kitty-cat smile

Makes me smile.…

Oh, my love,

If you knew how many times

I went to touch your hand,

Your hair,

But was afraid,

And didn’t.…

Not exactly “Dover Beach” – poetry is Efrem’s thing, anyway – but I liked it. I even turned it in.

Chapter Four

The auditions started out pretty much as expected.
Hooray for Love
required a cast of eight – four guys and four girls – and considering there were probably six people in the Drama department with any talent at all, it wasn’t too difficult to guess what the cast list would be before the auditions even began. For me, the hardest part of the whole thing was watching Skipper play with Kathleen Morgan all through it. Skipper had picked up this big white feather from somewhere – the props closet, most likely – and he was tickling Kathleen’s face with it, tickling her neck. And she was giggling, and saying, “Stop it, Skipper,” and giggling, and it just about made me puke. I mean, as if it weren’t enough just being totally nuts about Skipper and not having a Popsicle’s chance in hell of ever getting my hands on him, without constantly having to witness the spectacle of Skipper falling all over Kathleen.

Did you ever notice how when you’re lonely, it seems like the whole bloody world is suddenly determined to make sure you never for one minute forget how lonely you are? And I don’t just mean the Skipper and Kathleen thing. You can’t walk two steps on campus without tripping over a couple of kids rolling all over each other on one of the lawns, slurping up each other’s lips like they were about to declare prohibition on smooching or something. Sometimes I’ll see some couple just going at it like there’s no tomorrow, and I feel so lonely and so jealous of them that it throws me into the most awful melancholy, and I could almost cry. And I feel like if I had the atom bomb, I’d just drop it right on these kids laying around sucking face, just so I don’t have to friggin’
see
them.

Even some songs can make me feel like the loneliest man alive. “Killing Me Softly” is like that. I’m not even sure what it’s about, but I swear, it just kills me. “Just Walk Away Renee” by the Four Tops – Boo-hoo City. “Popsicles and Icicles,” by the Murmaids – every time those girls sing “these are a part of the boy I love,” I get a feeling in the middle of my chest like a balloon inflating inside me, and I feel like if I don’t find a guy to love me, I’ll just, I don’t know, explode.

Anyway, I sat there watching Skipper playing with Kathleen. Which for me was just about as healthy as using ant stakes for lollipops. But I watched them. It was like a car accident on the freeway: I couldn’t seem to look away. And there was Cherie (a girl with absolutely no intention of auditioning herself, of course), clutching my arm and watching me watching Skipper.

And don’t think I couldn’t see the humor in all this, because I could. I mean, Kathleen was no more in love with Skipper than the man in the moon. She was just toying with him. He was never going to get anywhere with her, since she’s a Mormon and is saving herself for marriage, after which she’ll have a litter of little Mormettes and be able to help create celestial kingdoms after she dies (I swear – she told me this herself). So there we sat in a little row: Cherie in love with me in love with Skipper in love with Kathleen in love with, I don’t know, the Archangel Bony Moroni or something. Very
Midsummer Night’s Dream
. And Efrem, our very own Rex Reed, who also showed up just to watch, sitting behind me and (I had no doubt) thinking, “Lord, what fools!”

So first off, Brock has some of the real hopeless cases read, a few of the real no-talents with no chance of ever getting a part in anything. Then he had me read a scene with Jenny Borders – a mercy reading, I figured – something set in the twenties, with a husband and wife, and the wife is going off to vote for the first time. It was a pretty lame scene, but Jenny’s pretty good, and I think we read it well. Then Skipper, Kathleen, and Paul read the opening Adam and Eve scene, with Skipper playing the snake. He fluttered his tongue like a snake while he read, which was just about the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in my life.

After a few more readings, Brock had Skipper and Kathleen read the Romeo and Juliet scene, and it was direct from Puke City. Skipper and Kathleen are two of the most talented people in the department, but between making goo-goo eyes at each other and trying to come off like the Royal Shakespeare Company (doing these lame Diana-Rigg-in-
The-Avengers
British accents), they ended up looking like a couple of broken-down music-hall players. It was really quite embarrassing.

After they’d finished, Brock said, “Stay up, Kathleen. I want you to try the scene with Rouss.” Meaning me. Brock always called me Rouss. Well, you could have knocked me over with Skipper’s feather. Skipper smiled and said, “Show ’em how.”

So up I went, and Kathleen looked almost as surprised as I was. I sort of shrugged, and gave her a “Well – here goes nothin’” look.

And so I launched into, “But soft! What light through yonder window breaks,” trying my best to make it sound as much as possible like a regular kid saying regular things. I didn’t have to worry about the lines: I knew the scene pretty much by heart. Kathleen seemed to pick up on what I was doing right away – she’s a pretty fair actress, as I’ve said – and she got into it, too. And the scene was good. Really good. I could feel it in my bones.

When we finished, both Kathleen and I laughed out loud it was so much fun, and everybody in the room applauded. Brock said, “Nice job.” When I sat down, Cherie squeezed my arm and nearly smiled her lips off. Skipper turned to me and whispered, “Way to go, buddy. You’re in like Flint.”

I got home feeling pretty darn good about life. My showing at the auditions had me pretty cocky. Efrem had said that my reading was so good, Brock had almost no choice but to cast me. “Maybe,” he said, “they’ll cut out some of the kissing and stuff.” Why I actually let myself believe such a well-meaning crock, I shall never understand. I guess it wasn’t until the reading that I’d let myself admit just how much I wanted to be in the show, to do that friggin’ Shakespeare scene. I wanted it so much, in fact, that by the time I got home, I was actually convinced that I had a chance, a good chance.

I could smell Mom’s sausage-and-rice cooking, which is one of my favorite foods. I could hear Walter Cronkite’s voice coming from the den, so I knew Dad was becoming one with his favorite rocking chair and sucking up the evening news, full of President Nixon and Watergate and blah blah blah. Mom and Efrem’s mom were in the kitchen talking; they’ve been best friends practically from the minute we moved here just over two years ago. Their voices sounded like a duet from some spoken operetta, Mrs. Johnson’s soprano and Mom’s low alto taking turns and overlapping.

I thought I heard Mom say the name Todd, and my ears pricked up. I walked into the kitchen and said, “Hi Mom, hi Mrs. Johnson,” and both women clammed up and turned to me, coffee mugs halfway to lips, with these looks on their faces, almost guilty. And I knew something was up.

“What’s going on?”

“Nothing is going on,” Mom said in a tone that was as good as telling me something was going on.

“Come on, Mom.”

“If you don’t mind, Shirley and I were discussing something that’s none of your business.”

“Clara,” Mrs. Johnson said, finally putting her mug down on the kitchen table, “you might has well tell him. He’s sure to hear about it at school tomorrow, anyway.”

“Well, since you’re sure to hear about it at school tomorrow anyway” – Mom sniffed a breath – “your friend Todd Waterson went and got the pastor’s daughter pregnant.”

So that’s it, I thought. Why Todd seemed so strange this morning. I said, “Todd’s not exactly my friend, Mom.” Which was true.

Though heaven knows, I would have liked to be his friend. She just snorted, as if she knew I was hiding something. Mom has this funny attitude about kids my age. Somehow, whenever some kid in town does something wrong, she always acts as if every kid in town did it, including me. Especially me. “I guess they have to get married now,” I said.

“Married?” By Mom’s tone of voice, you’d have thought I’d suggested they jump off the top of the Empire State Building hand in hand.

“Yes, Mother. Married. You know – here comes the bride and all that.”

“Now, don’t get smart with me, Little Mister.” Mom wagged a warning index finger at me. There was a Band-Aid on her fingertip from where she’d cut it while chopping okra for gumbo. It was all I could do not to laugh. Mom’s about half a foot shorter than I am, Afro and all, and weighs about ninety-five pounds soaking wet, so whenever she tries to get tough with me, it’s really kind of funny. I managed to say, “Sorry, Mom.”

“All right, then. They’re sending the girl away.”

“Sending her away? I don’t get it.”

“Well, she obviously can’t have the baby here,” she said, as if that should have been obvious to any mongoloid.

“All right, I give up. Why can’t she have it here?”

Mom rolled her eyes heavenward in this way she has that means, “My dear, dear son – all that book learning, and not an ounce of common sense.”

Finally she said, “Johnnie Ray, it’s a disgrace.”

“Aw, c’mon, Mom.” It sounded a bit on the medieval side to me.

“She’s the pastor’s daughter, Johnnie Ray.” Mrs. Johnson spoke halfway into her coffee mug. “It’s a reflection on him.” I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but our family and the Bakers – Cherie’s folks – are about the only black families who go to the basically white Baptist church. Most of the others go to the black church across town, but we’d just as soon go to church in the same neighborhood we live in.

“How can he be expected to lead the church if he can’t even control his own daughter?” Mom said.

And I so wanted to say something really snotty, like “You’d think
he
was having Todd Waterson’s baby” – but I didn’t. I just said “I see,” even though I didn’t, exactly. And then, just as a semi-graceful segue, I said, “So what’s for dinner?” Even though I knew.

“Sausage ’n’ rice,” Mom said, her face brightening once we’d moved to a nice safe subject like food. “It’ll be ready at six.” Which is when we’ve had dinner every night for as long as I can remember.

“Well, then, I guess I’ll go to my room. Nice to see you, Mrs.

Johnson.” Mrs. Johnson said, “Nice to see you, Johnnie Ray,” and I started toward my room.

I stopped at the living-room phone and looked up the Watersons’ number in the church directory. I called and let it ring several times before hanging up. I don’t even know what I would have said.

Gee, kid, sorry your chick’s knocked up?

The news about Todd and Leslie, and especially Mom and Mrs. Johnson’s attitude, took a lot of the shine off my good mood about the auditions. I thought about the fact that if they, two of the less rabid adults in town, felt that way, there were probably people in the congregation who’d want to see Todd drawn and quartered as an example to all other horny teenagers, and pretty soon I was quite depressed.

I’m like that sometimes. Hearing about somebody else’s troubles – Todd’s or Efrem’s or the starving children in Africa – I’ll just get so depressed. Not all the time, of course, and not every bit of bad news I ever hear – heaven knows, a person could
stay
depressed. Just every now and then, I’ll hear something – about some baby with leukemia, or the number of times over we could kill every living soul on earth with our nuclear weapons or something – and I’ll begin to feel like life just makes no sense at all. Just none at all.

And I’ll want to cry like a baby, or break things. Usually, though, I’ll just go to my room and listen to my stereo, a big old Magnavox mahogany cabinet model that Dad let me keep in my room after he finally broke down and bought a set of components for the living room.

So I went to my room, threw my books on the bed, and put
Court
and Spark
on the turntable. I sat on the floor with my back up against the cabinet and let Joni’s voice pour over me like cool honey. I figure, if you’re going to be depressed anyway, you might as well listen to Joni Mitchell.

Chapter Five

I was almost late to school the next day. Despite the fact that I woke up a full hour early, being so anxious about getting to school to check the bulletin board outside the Drama building. The reason why I was almost late was because I was locked in the bathroom jerking off. As I mentioned before, I get an awful lot of hard-ons, and a pretty good percentage of them seem to end up in my right hand. In other words, I jerk off quite a lot. Which bothers me sometimes, like maybe I do it too much. Johnnie Ray Rousseau, boy nympho – film at eleven. But, how much is too much? Twice a day? Five times? Ten? I’m sure Pastor Crandall would say that it’s too much if you do it at all. And some days, I actually lose count. I’ll do it in the morning before school in the bathroom, and at night against the sheets, maybe one or two quick ones in the head at school between classes. Sometimes, if I’m left alone in the house on a weekend or in the evening, I’ll do it over and over, just to see how many times I can. One Saturday, I did it twenty-two times. I finally stopped for fear I might come blood or something.