Born Blue (15 page)

I said how I be fine, I just need to sleep more, but inside I were sure I gonna die. Weren't no part of me that didn't feel in a fever and sore to the bone.

Then she asked about the baby, where it be.

I said the daddy got the baby. I said, "She with Harmon and his rich parents. Ain't nothin' gonna happen long as she with them."

And the maid said, "So, who's taking care of you? Why are you all alone at this hotel?"

"I'm a famous singer," I said. "Well, not famous yet but almost. I just split with my band, so I come here to crash, know what I'm sayin'?"

"Yeah, girl, I think I do," she said.

She patted my arm and told me I felt hot, and she said maybe I needed me a bath to bring my fever down. She went into the bathroom and run the water, and I dragged in shivering behind her and watched her fill the tub too high.

When it was way to the top almost, the maid stepped back from the tub and said to me, "You get in, and I'll be back in about an hour, after I finish my last set of rooms. Then I'll try to comb out your hair if you want. Why don't you wash it with that hotel shampoo? It's got a cream rinse in it that should help some."

I said okay, and she left me alone. I drained down the water 'cause it looked deep enough to drown in. Then I climbed in the tub. Felt like I were climbing into a bed of ice, were so cold. Took a long time till I got used to it.

I sat in the cool water almost the whole time she were gone, draining it and adding more water every time my fever heated it up, but I laid hot wash rags over my sore tits. They was swollen so big and hard, they hurt enough to make me wanna pass out. I lay back against the cool
tub, with them rags on my tits, and tried to put my thoughts away from shivering and dyin'. I thought 'bout the maid and how she were too pretty for sweating away in a hotel, cleaning rooms. I figured she could be a fashion model 'cause she real tall and thin, with long, tiny muscles showing in her legs and arms, and she had dark black skin and a small face from the nose down to the chin, but big eyes and a big round forehead on top. She wore her hair way short like it be a crown on her head, and she looked beautiful, so beautiful, like a queen of royalty.

Before she come back, I took me a shower to wash my hair. And I left the drain closed so the tub filled up too high again. I quick got out the tub and put the panties and pants I been wearing all them days in the water to soak Straight away the bathwater turned red. It looked like a whole tub of watery blood, so much blood, just like in my dreams. I turned the knob to let out the water and looked away till I heard the drain sucking at my clothes. Then I run the water cold again and soaped up my things and held them under the running water. I rubbed my panties together to try to get out the stains. Were stains on top of stains in them underpants, and I couldn't get none of it out Weren't nothin' to do but throw them away.

When the maid come back she found me wrapped in towels, sittin' on my bed, with the phone in my hand. I quick set it down and she smiled at me.

"You got somebody coming to pick you up?" she asked.

"Ain't nobody home. Ain't been nobody at that number for years," I said.

The maid felt my arm. "You broke your fever. That's good." She reached in her pocket. "I brought you these Advil sample packets the hotel gives out." She pulled out the packets. "These should help."

I took them from her and said thanks. I laid them on the table by the bed. Then I picked up the spare change of clothes I had took out from my diaper bag, and I slow put them on. I already had my underpants on 'cause I still needed to keep a pad soaking up the birth-giving blood.

While I were dressing, the maid got me some water for the Advil. On her way back she seen my old underpants in the trash can, and she squatted down and pulled them out and saw I been bleeding.

"You need to get to a doctor," she said. "How long ago did you have that baby?"

I shrugged. "Five, six days. I lost track."

She dropped the panties and stood up. "Where are your parents? You have any parents?"

I were folding up my dirty shirt and bra real careful, like they be new and clean. I slipped them into the diaper bag, checking while I were at it to see that my money still be safe. I said, "My parents in prison. But don't need parents, anyways, 'cause I'm eighteen."

The maid shook her head and made a face like she real wise. "I know you're not eighteen," she said. "I'm just nineteen, myself." She handed me the glass of water, and I took the pills while she pulled a chair out from the table and brung it closer to the bed. She patted the chair.

"Come here and sit in this chair, and I'll comb out your hair. It's sure in a tangle, isn't it?" She pulled a comb out of the pocket of her maid's uniform.

I sat down careful 'cause everything hurt, especially my tits, leaking out milk, but weren't enough to give any relief.

The girl pulled my hair back gentle and combed it, bit by bit. I bent my head forward and let her pull at my hair, and it never hurt 'cause of how little-bit by bit she did it.

"Why don't you come home with me," the maid said after we been sitting saying nothing to each other for a while.

I kept my head bent and she kept combing.

"I don't even know your name, and you don't even know mine," I said.

"My name's Rosalie—Rosalie Brown." She brung her long hand forward over my shoulder, holding it like she wanting me to shake it.

I touched it and it were warm, and I saw how at the bottom of every fingernail, just around the bottom of the nails, were black skin even blacker than the rest of her skin—little shiny patches of the blackest skin. I held her hand and didn't want to let go.

She shook my hand in hers and asked, "What's your name?"

I held on to her hand. "Leshaya," I said. "Leshaya? Leshaya what?"

"Don't have no last name. I be just Leshaya, like Odetta be just Odetta. Never had no last name."

Rosalie Brown squeezed my hand in hers, and I held on.

ROSALIE LIVED IN
a small green house, with a mama and three brothers and four sisters. All them living together bunched up in this little room and that little room—and there Harmon had a house so big, lots of the rooms stayed empty most of the time.

Rosalie's mama said welcome to me, but she pulled Rosalie off to the bathroom and wanted to know why she bringing another stray cat into the house. Seemed Rosalie every now and again bringing someone home from the hotel. Her mama didn't sound too happy 'bout me, and if I had anywhere else to go, I woulda gone right then, but I were dyin', so I just sat at the kitchen table and let everybody stare at me. We all could hear what the mama saying to Rosalie, 'cause no one else were talking.

Rosalie told her mama a bit of my story, about me just having a baby and being sick, and her mama come
out the bathroom and put her hand on my head. "You feeling all right, baby?"

"No, ma'am," I said.

And she said, "I should say you're not! Rosalie? Why didn't you tell me? We need to get this girl down to the hospital."

I got to stay at Rosalie's. We spent all night down at the hospital, waiting—in this room with no air to breathe—for my turn to see a doctor. We sat with screaming babies and whining kids and cranky parents till finally somebody called my name.

The doctor seen me for two seconds, then give me all kinds of stuff to dry my milk out and cut the fever and stop my bleeding. He said he wanted to see me again in two weeks, but after that miserable night, I figured dyin' were fester and sweeter.

For all the days I lived with Rosalie and her family, I didn't remember but three of their names: Rosalie, 'cause she the one that brung me home; Myra, 'cause I went to school with her for a while; and Cliff, 'cause he were eighteen years old and way good lookin', like Rosalie. I kept my eyes on him so much, he told me to quit staring, but I knew he liked it, 'cause he were always standing in my way.

I slept on the floor in the girls' room. I had a thin mattress that rolled up and fit under one of the beds in the daytime. Every night someone woke me up—stepping on me to go to the bathroom.

I didn't hardly never see Rosalie, 'cause she worked at the Holiday Inn in the day and went to college at night. She studied every chance she could. Didn't never see a body work as hard as she did. Everybody had jobs to go to in that family—'cept the little ones and Cliff—and Rosalie's mama said if I were gonna live with them, I needed to get me a job, too.

Myra wanted me to work with her at The Coop, a restaurant college kids hung out at. I thought 'bout my baby, Etta, and told her I couldn't be wasting my time chopping veggies at no restaurant, I had to get me a job singin'.

"Know where I could get me a job singin' soul music, jazz, the blues, that kind of thing?" I asked.

"Talk to Cliff," she said. "He hangs out at a place that's got a band like that They call themselves 'Kind of Blue.' I haven't never heard them play before, but they do some gigs round and about"

I were happy to talk to Cliff. He were sitting in the one chair in the house that weren't pulled up to the kitchen table. I come up to him, stepping over the two little ones playing at his feet, and sat on his lap.

"Girl, get off my legs. You're too heavy."

"I am not," I said. "I know you liking it I know you like what I got"

Rosalie's mama called out from the girls' room, "That's enough of that kind of talk! Didn't we just spend another long day down at that hospital with you,
Leshaya, and you fussin' the whole time? You leave my Clifford alone!"

Me and Cliff laughed, and he set his hand on my thigh like he weren't even thinking 'bout what he was doing, but I could feel heat in his hand. It burned so hot it 'bout melted me down to the floor.

I leaned against him and said, "Cliff, I heard you know 'bout a band called Kind of Blue. I wanna sing with them."

He put his other hand on my lower back and rubbed it round and round. "Yeah? Well, they already got a singer."

I run my hand up his chest. "Not like me, they don't."

"Listen to you! You so full of yourself."

I nodded and moved his hand up higher on my leg. "I am 'bout singin'. Who they got, anyway? Cain't be nobody too good."

"That's what you think," he said, sliding his hand all the way up my leg.

"Yeah, that's what I think."

I made sure me and Cliff got on way good, and one day he took me to his friend Jay's house and told him I wanted to sing with the band.

Jay were a goofy-lookin' guy, with a long, hook nose and a big, big Adam's apple poking out his neck, and first thing Jay said was, "She's white."

And I said right back at him, "Ain't white, just light And my daddy be blacker 'n you, that's for sure."

Jay stuck his goofy face up to mine, leaning over to do it, making me lean away 'cause he had marijuana breath. He said, "You're pretty, but you're pure vanilla, and we're not a mixed band. Anyway, we already got a singer." He stood up and flicked Cliff on the arm. "Man, what you doin' bringin' her around?"

"Bet you a thousand dollars I can sing better than whoever you got," I said.

Jay tilted his head at me. "Where you gonna get a thousand dollars?"

I crossed my arms over my chest 'cause that's where his eyes kept looking. "Singin'. I been paid plenty for singin', so you gonna hear me or not?"

Cliff nudged the dude. "Won't hurt to listen."

Jay squinted his eyes up at Cliff. "You got a thing goin' with her? This girl that hot natured?"

He didn't wait for Cliff to say nothin'. He put his arm round Cliff's shoulder and pulled me by the hand over to his other side so he could put his hand on my ass and squeeze it. Then he said, "Why didn't you say so? Sure, I'll give her a listen. Might be someone could use her, some other band or something, seein' how she's so hot-blooded ready to sing."

I weren't sure what all he meaning, but I knew he weren't just interested in my voice. I stepped away from the two of them, turned round to face them, and I said, "You the band that's gonna want me, and I'll sing for you, but that's all—period. That is, if
you
good enough, Mr. Ugly."

DIDN'T TAKE LONG
before Rosalie's mama sorry she took me in. She were all the time getting calls from school saying I been ditchin', and when she tried to get me to say where I been, I told her every kind of lie, and she knew it. She were smart, that one, but she liked the money I brung in, and that's what mattered most. Maybe if she didn't like it so much, she woulda seen I spent most of my time out with Cliff, but she liked being blind about the two of us. Seemed Cliff were the only one of mama's older children who didn't work regular. Rosalie said he couldn't concentrate well enough to hold down a job for long. His mind was always wandering off the job, and his body was always following.

I told Cliff if I got in Jay's band, he could be my manager. Every singer's got to have a manager, and since Cliff thought I were the most special thing to ever come into his life, I figured it would work out real fine, and it did—for a while.

Of course I got in Jay's band. The second him and the others heard me, Kamay were out and I were in. Kamay were the drummer, Tank's, girlfriend. After I come along, she still hung round the band, anyway, while Tank played drums, and now and again she played keyboard. Sometimes she sung with me or sung one or two songs on her own, but didn't matter to me, 'cause she weren't too good. Her bad singing just made me sound even better, and after I'd had my Etta, weren't nothin' my lungs couldn't do to a song. Were like givin' birth were some kinda strength-building exercise for the voice, 'cause, baby, I could melt it, burn it, smoke it, pipe it, and sink it! I could set the whole band on fire, the way I sung my songs. I could turn a mellow crowd into a rowdy mob and then set them down again, so mellowed-out they cain't walk I mean, I had that kind of power.

We had a regular gig at Osprey's Downtown, where the college crowd hung, and on weekends we sometimes drove up to Birmingham or over to Montgomery to do some music at the clubs and bars they got there. I had me a fake ID so I could get into the clubs, but Jay give me a chaperone, anyway. My chaperone were supposed to see that I didn't get no alcohol or nothin'. His name were Bob, a fat white dude with long greasy hair and dirt tinder his nails. He always wore BO-smellin' T-shirts under stinkin' plaid shirts that wouldn't button over his big old belly, so he left them open. He were so tanked his own self, he never knew what I were dippin' into, and
before I knew it, I were trying all kinds of junk and finding my "Ecstasy" in pills and thrills.