Red Heart Novels
True Love Never Dies
Writing in the Bathtub
The tub, with its sloping back and claw feet, fills with all the words from all the books I have ever read. I immerse myself in them, separating alliterations and metaphors with the scissor-cut motion of my outstretched legs, leaving only their impressions in the wake. Lavender prose surges forward, then retreats, as I reach to add warmer words, or cooler ones, turning the faucet handle like a page. They gush in, rising above the overflow drain where the pipes gurgle and swallow them whole. They are clear words, tinged with blues, deep and thoughtful, scalding and soothing. Tears and laughter and lovely turns of phrase flow over the rounded edges and spill across the floor, going everywhere and getting into everything. They calm and incite, express love and bitterness, loss and hope. I impale one on the soft bar of soap with my pen, where I can examine it and maybe make something of it. I wash it away and make a stab at another. I raise my hands and let them drip through my fingers, searching for those that will make a splash on the page.
Memories of Things Never Meant to BeSometimes memories well in my mind and refuse to budge until I deal with them. I’ve been having one of those the last few days, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it was someone’s birthday, or the anniversary of some distant occasion long gone from my consciousness. It’s a memory as vivid as if it had taken place yesterday, and as ethereal as if it had happened in that gossamer moment when my eyes first flutter open in the morning. It’s not a complete memory, but one that comes rat-a-tatting back like cotton candy machinegun fire.
There’s a tree in a yard and its trunk has been painted white. A tire swings on a rope from one of its branches, and there’s a cherry tree with bark like dupioni silk. Its joints ooze with sticky amber-colored sap and empty locust shells. An uncle pushes a motorless mower through the grass. The blades turn and go trsk trsk trsk.
Inside, the house is quiet. There’s no noise, no music, no television. The only sound is the hum of a fan and the silence of shadows. There is no odor of any kind; no cooking smells from the kitchen, no perfumes from the bedrooms. There’s one dim room with a door that’s always open, but no one ever goes in. My mother whispers about a red-haired freckle-faced cousin and the halo that appeared over his head in the days before I came along. There’s an aunt named Helen who sprinkles water on freshly line-dried clothes, rolls them up, and wraps them in a plastic bag. She puts it in the ice box with the lettuce until she’s ready to iron them.
There’s a black telephone with a round dial sitting on a credenza. When the phone is picked up, a woman asks, “Number, please.” The number begins with letters. Sometimes the woman doesn’t answer because other people are having a party on the line. Beside the phone are photographs of the twins who look nothing alike. Bruce is a star on the football team. Janie is a cheerleader and a princess who wears long white gloves that reach past her elbows, and a diamond tiara in her hair.
There are skirt hoops hanging in the basement. They’re worn under a prom dress; and pinned to them is my desire to be grown up and glamorous, too. I want to wear voluminous skirts of tulle and flowers on my wrist, but I’m led away as if these things are sacred, and in my life, I never do wear them.
Bobbie Jean
Bobbie Jean’s eyes were two different colors. All her brother’s eyes were brown, but when Miss Omie was expecting Bobbie Jean, she wished for just one green-eyed baby girl, and that’s what she got. She had one green eye, and one brown eye. She looked like Miss Omie, and they were as close as a mother and daughter could be. Bobbie Jean told her mother everything, and as often as not, Miss Omie would say in resignation, “Bobbie Jean, you know I don’t like it when you do that,” and that would be all. She went right ahead and did as she pleased anyway. If ever there was a real live Scarlett O’Hara, it was Bobbie Jean.
She was a firecracker with a tongue so sharp it could slice a person in half, and I always found it entertaining. When she was in a good mood, she talked with enthusiasm, her voice rising steadily until it broke into a squeak, like a person with laryngitis. When she laughed, she squinched her eyes until she almost looked Asian. But when Bobbie Jean was in a bad mood, they could name a hurricane after her. They could name an entire hurricane season after her.
Miss Omie doted on her. Bobbie Jean had a brother who was much older, married, and out of the house. I met him in passing a few times. The brother she pampered was Billy Bob. He had broken his neck, and was confined to bed. She couldn’t do enough for him. Benton was the brother who feared her, and with good reason. If Benton irritated Bobbie Jean, the war in Viet Nam would not have made it to the front page of any newspaper that day. While Benton usually wore a smirk on his face and a chip on his shoulder, he would never, under any circumstances, disrespect the mama who had raised him up. Therefore, Bobbie Jean was able to trample all over Benton, the same as if she had twisted him by the ear to his knees.
One night, Benton, his best friend Wade, and the twins from down the street, Danny and Donny, all piled into Benton’s old Chevy pickup. Out of what had been boredom and a compulsive need to inflict her quota of brotherly torture for the day, Bobbie Jean insisted we ride along. Benton was determined to go wherever it was they were going and didn’t want her to squawk, so he allowed us to ride in the bed.
We got into the back of the truck and off we went. Benton kept driving and driving. It was fall and the weather had turned cool, so pretty soon, we were freezing. He finally pulled over in a spot of dirt to drink a couple beers and get high.
“We’re ridin’ in the front of that truck on the way home,” Bobbie Jean said.
“Benton will never let us ride in the front of that truck, Bobbie Jean.”
“Yes, he will. Wait and see.”
We were getting colder by the minute while the guys drank their beer. At least they passed the joint. Finally the time came to leave, and Bobbie Jean started to climb into the cab.
“What do you think you’re doin’?” Benton asked.
“I’m fixin’ to get in the truck,” she answered.
Benton dangled his keys and folded his arms across his chest. “Oh, no, you’re not. I told you if you came along, you had to ride in the bed.”
“We’re cold,” Bobbie Jean argued. I knew it was a useless plea.
“Too bad,” Benton taunted. “In the back.”
“Make someone else sit back there. We’re already frozen," she shot back.
“No. Now are you getting’ in the back, or not? We’re leavin’ with ya, or without ya,” Benton said.
“Fine. Go ahead.”
“Fine.”
I began to worry. If Bobbie Jean’s plan was to bluster her way inside, it wasn’t working. All four guys piled into the cab of the truck and closed the doors.
“Last chance, Bobbie Jean,” Benton said, from the window.
“What do you think Mama’s gonna say when I tell her you drove us out here in the country and left us to walk home in this weather without a jacket?” she asked.
“Aw, shit!” Benton jerked off his baseball cap and threw it at the dashboard. “Don’t even start that shit, Bobbie Jean.”
“Okay. Come on,” she said to me. “We’re walkin’.” She turned on her heel and strode away from the truck.
“Smooth move, Bobbie Jean. It has to be twenty miles back to your house,” I complained.
“Quit worryin’. Keep walkin’,” she instructed. “And don’t look back.”
“Bobbie Jean!” I began to challenge her authority over the matter.
She stopped to look at me, her hands on her hips, her head cocked to one side. “Have you heard him start that truck? No, you haven’t. That’s because they’re sittin’ there right now, fightin’ about who’s gonna be ridin’ in the back. Trust me on this now.”
We walked about a quarter mile when the truck rolled up behind us with the twins in the back. Wade got out to let us in. Bobbie Jean made herself comfortable on his lap and sniffed. “I told ya we’d be ridin’ up here on the way back, didn’t I?”