OLD DAN TUCKER

Three years is a long time to have a crush on someone. Especially if the first year goes by and you’ve never even touched them. Just lots of staring and fantasies.

Marty played the guitar. He’d sit on the lawn at the Park with some of the other guys and play hit songs from his favorite bands. I’d sit there mesmerized watching his long fingers flick the strings of the guitar and absorbing every note. I wondered how long it took him to learn to play ‘Stairway To Heaven.’ Everybody played that song. You had to. It was an anthem. But it never sounded as beautiful as when it came from Marty’s guitar. Jimmy Page could’ve been standing right next to me, wailing through one of those long version guitar solos and I wouldn’t have noticed. All that existed was Marty slumped over his guitar, blond hair hanging in his face and his all-consuming look of concentration. There was no doubt about it, Marty loved music.

So, I figured that was my way in with him, through the music. I had saved some money from my job as a salesgirl at Capwell’s Department Store. I kept it hidden inside my teddy bear. He had come with a music box inside and the little winding knob was on his back. I had surgically removed the music box in an emergency operation one boring day and carefully stitched up the wound leaving about a half an inch hole. The absence of the music box caused a hollow indentation in his back and in an attempt to fill it back up, I stuffed my extra cash inside him. Why it was necessary to hide my money in the first place I don’t remember, but I was at that age where I felt I had to hide everything and my mother was at that age that she felt she had to snoop through everything. I think all mothers snoop when their child starts having secrets and acting in ways they can’t explain. But money wasn’t really something I needed to hide. Not like drugs, or diaries, or the birth control pills my friend Sandy kept hidden. I remember the day she came to school in dark sunglasses and we all teased her as she approached. She didn’t laugh or speak, she just kept walking toward three giggling girls and when she reached us, she pulled off her glasses and revealed a huge black eye. We, of course, stopped laughing and went into concerned friend mode. We pummeled her with questions and she began to cry. All she could get out was that her mom found her birth control pills.

So anyway, I hopped on the 72 bus and got off at El Cerrito Plaza, walked up to the shopping Center and bee-lined straight to the music store with the pretty wooden guitars hanging in the window. I let the man show me a few and I hugged their polished wood bodies as if I knew what I was doing. I strummed the nylon strings. I knocked on the wood, cause I think I heard somewhere you’re supposed to do that. Then I bought the cheapest. I paid my thirty-five dollars and left with my guitar and songbook, ready to conquer this instrument and win Marty’s love.

My parents thought the guitar was just a whim. They didn’t believe I would stick with anything longer than a week, or at least that’s what they always used to say. I had first asked for a piano when I was seven. They said “No” despite the fact that I spent every chance I got pounding out songs on pianos wherever we’d go and teaching myself to play “Exodus.” Even then they didn’t think I was serious about wanting a piano. “You’ll play it for a week, then you’ll lose interest in it,” they said. “Then we’ll be stuck with a piano.” They didn’t see I wasn’t the kind of child who’s lost interest in anything quickly. They didn’t see I never let go.

I sat in my room day after summer day, plucking at nylon strings and flipping through pages of folk tunes. The man in the store said I should put off learning Led Zeppelin for a while and start with some simple tunes. I focused on one. My fantasy was that I’d go to the park and all the guys would be sitting around on the lawn. Marty would be there with his guitar and I’d sit next to him and when he got tired of playing and laid it down on the grass, I’d pick it up and start playing my perfectly rehearsed version of “Old Dan Tucker.” The guys would all be impressed with my dexterity and nimble chord changes. Marty would have a reason to be in love with me and we’d live happily ever after.

But Marty and the guys stopped bringing their guitars to the Park before I mastered Old Dan Tucker. My guitar sat in the corner and gathered dust. Every time my mother walked by my room she’d say it was a waste of money. So I hid it in the closet. But it wasn’t a waste of money. I hadn’t gotten tired of it.

I still wanted the guitar.

I still wanted a piano.

And I still wanted Marty Koutz.

NADINE WASHINGTON

Everything about Nadine Washington was big. She was the tallest person in our fifth grade class. She was the tallest person in all of St. Columba's Elementary school. Her voice was the loudest in the schoolyard and her arms, her legs, her hands and her hair were massive. Even with your eyes closed, you could sense when Nadine was around. Her presence was overpowering. And if she was walking toward you, it was like a herd of buffalo heading your way. You'd feel the rumbling under your feet and in a panic, you'd run to avoid the stampede.

Everyone made fun of Nadine, except me. She was the only person the class bully, Earl Atkins, would stop teasing me to go after. I liked her for that. And I felt sorry for Nadine and her bigness, and the anger she felt about the unfairness of it all.

Aside from her weight, her height and her large limbs, Nadine was the darkest person at school. I think she was the darkest person I had ever seen, with skin tones at St. Columba's ranging from vanilla to caramel, caramel to mocha, mocha to chocolate, and chocolate to… Nadine. It was a time when it wasn't so wonderful to be dark.

St. Columba's schoolyard was a large, gray cement rectangle, caged in by a Cyclone fence. At lunch, different cliques of girls sat on green wooden benches that lined the perimeter, gossiping about boys and trading lunches. I didn't belong to any one clique. Actually, I didn't belong to any clique. But this one time, for the first time, I was sitting with the popular girls. See, I had been sitting alone and they came over and told me to move, so I wasn't really with them, but… if you drove by in a car and looked into the yard, you might think I was.

In a grand gesture of sucking up, I offered them my lunch to pillage. I had made it myself and it had all my favorites: a tuna sandwich, with separately wrapped lettuce and tomato, so the bread wouldn't get soggy; Laura Scudder's barbeque potato chips, which I was about to smash up into delicious crumbly pieces and sprinkle onto my tuna; and two pink Hostess Snowballs, which I routinely ate in ritualistic fashion starting with the creamy white center, then peeling off the pink marshmallowy coconut layer, and finishing up with the chocolate cakey middle. They grabbed my bag and tossed me back some mystery meat sandwich which I ate, taking tiny bites and pretending to enjoy it while trying to control the gagging.

I sat there and listened to the popular girls talk. I laughed at their jokes, acknowledging their comments with interjections of approval. Then, the ground began to vibrate. Everyone looked up and saw Nadine bounding toward us from across the yard. Nadine's large legs were equally thick at the knee, calf and ankle, making them look more like tree trunks than human limbs. As she approached, one of the girls joked, "Look at Nadine's fat legs." We all laughed and in my eagerness to belong I added, "Yeah, black just like her face!" The laughter stopped. What the hell was I saying? In an attempt to cover, I faked a coughing fit then mumbled something about a food allergy. But it didn't work. Everyone was staring at me, then at Nadine. When I saw her face I knew she had heard what I said. In one second, everything about her seemed to shrink. Her big, wide-toothed grin disappeared, her full lips sucked inwardly like pulled by some great implosive force. Her whole face shriveled up into a pained, dried-apple doll expression. She spun around like a tornado and whirled back across the yard and into the school, crying… loudly. "That wasn't very nice, Bernadette," one of the popular girls said. "You made fun of her too," I answered. "That's different," she said as she shoved the rest of my pink Snowball into her mouth.

Sister Mary Catherine let Nadine go home early that day, then she took me aside for a talk. She was solemn. She sat in her heavy oak principal's chair, swaddled up in black and white nun clothes. Her fingers fidgeted with the wooden beads of a long, black rosary that was attached to her side. She stared at me and spoke slowly, careful to enunciate each word as if doing so would drive the words deeper into my brain. Her white face was flushed and became redder as she spoke. She began. "Bernadette, Nadine is sensitive about her color. You should never call someone black." As bad as I felt about the whole thing, I didn't want to be in trouble. I immediately went on the defensive explaining that Nadine's legs were black, and what I said wasn't really an insult as much as an honest observation. She wasn't buying it. We were still Negroes then. I was a Negro too but I was a 'good' color of brown and Nadine wasn't. Black wasn't beautiful yet. Black was an insult.

Nadine skipped school the next day too. That made me feel worse. Everyone in my class was mad at me for what I said to her. Sure, it was okay for them to call her a cow, or King Kong or joke about her every day of her life, but I had crossed that invisible color line.

When Nadine finally came back to school, she didn't talk to me anymore. Everyone was nice to her for a while. I was happy that at least some good had come from it. Then, all the kids fell back into old patterns and Nadine became the butt of jokes again.

At the end of an unforgiving year, we had our class picnic. I sat in the bleachers watching my classmates play baseball. Nadine was up. She picked up the largest wooden bat and took a few practice swings. I clenched my teeth together to prevent any spontaneous remark from slipping out. There was no way I was going to be responsible for another black on black crime. Earl Atkins pitched the ball. It sped by Nadine a little on the inside, just below her waist. It was a bad pitch. I saw that, but Nadine didn't. Her hands tightened around the bat and her face tensed up. Her whole body twisted with all its mighty force and spun around swinging the bat, slicing through the air. The ball whizzed by. Nadine caught up in the velocity of the spin continued around in a circle, clouds of dust rose up from her feet and then… she let go of the bat.

It flew, slow motion, in lopsided circles across the field, across the bleachers, right toward me. I went through the process of seeing the bat, registering the picture, thinking about the implied danger and concluding the need to take action. As my brain screamed at my muscles to move, I learned that the velocity of a thrown bat was far greater than the speed of my mental processes. The thick side of the spinning bat made full contact with the side of my head and I dropped, out of the conscious world to blackness.

When I woke up I was lying down on the bleachers, looking up at nuns and the entire fifth grade class. Someone was yelling for ice. I was embarrassed and quickly tried to sit up. My head hurt but I lied and said I was okay. Disappointed, everyone dispersed, except for the nuns and Nadine Washington. She was holding my hand and crying huge, wet tears that splashed onto my arm. Nadine said she was sorry. I started crying too and said I was sorry.

I was sorry I had called her black.

I was sorry being black was bad.

I was sorry I had sat in an unprotected section of the bleachers.

And I was sorry that I had to learn the hard way, that the hurt you give out... always comes back to you.

I'll always remember that.

You don't have to hit me in the head with a baseball bat.

THE BRA

The summer between the seventh and eighth grades, all the girls in my class developed breasts. Except me. I noticed it and all the boys in the eighth grade noticed it… the absence of a bra through my thin white Catholic school uniform blouse. They could all see the outline of an undershirt against my brown skin and my flat-as-a-board chest which was a testament to a summer spent without a visit from the puberty fairy. I had grown two inches taller and now, even more resembled a stick figure.

Every day that first week of school, the boys teased me unmercifully, asking what happened to my tits. It took me by such surprise that I didn’t know how to respond. I had never really thought much about getting breasts except the dread of experiencing that obligatory trip to Hink’s department store and standing in a dressing room, naked above the waist, while being measured for a bra by a wrinkled old saleswoman with cold hands. I had gone with my mother when she took my sister. The whole idea was paralyzing. I wasn’t comfortable with my body. I came from a family that wasn’t comfortable with their bodies. No one ever got naked in front of anyone else. My sister and I shared a room since birth and we had never seen each other naked. How was I supposed to let a stranger look at and touch my just-beginning-to-bud breasts?

I went home and cried. I didn’t belong. I wasn’t like the other girls. I was a freak and everyone knew it. The thought of returning to school filled me with dread and there was no one to share this with. I couldn’t possibly tell my mother. She wasn’t the kind of mother you talked to. I had tried once. It was in the sixth grade when she proved to me that she wasn’t good at handling sexual-type things. They had just installed a Kotex machine in the girl’s bathroom. Laura Gardner and I were the only girls in our class who didn’t know what a Kotex was. We spent the whole day speculating about it before concluding that it must have something to do with breasts.

I went home that night, seeking out my mother for some answers. She quickly became nervous and evasive. As I pushed, she became more distressed until my father finally took me into their bedroom, reached up on the high shelf in the closet, pulled out a white cotton sanitary napkin and showed it to me. This was a Kotex. He didn’t tell me what it was for. I didn’t ask. I had seen a Kotex and that was all I cared about. The other girls had nothing on me.

So, it was up to me to solve my bra problem myself. I came up with a plan. My sister, who was three years older, had a few bras but wore them in a regular rotation so it would be impossible for me to take one without her noticing. But she was also already wearing stockings and owned several garter belts to hold them up. She only wore those when she dressed up or on Sundays for church. The next morning, I went into my sister's drawer and took one of her garter belts. It had a wide white band of cotton with four rubber and metal buckles that hung down to attach to the stockings. I hooked the two opposite buckles together fashioning a type of shoulder strap, turned the garter belt upside down and slipped my arms through the straps. Hooking it closed around me, I had created a “bra.” My very first bra. Although the place where the buckles were joined was a bulky knot at the top of my shoulders and a little uncomfortable, it looked like a bra to me and would hopefully to the eighth grade class too. I put on my white uniform shirt and looked at myself in the mirror. I could see the haltered outline of my “bra” through the sheer fabric. My heart raced. This would work. I covered up with my uniform sweater and went to school.

I was anxious the whole morning but waited for the perfect moment to reveal myself. Usually everyone kept their sweaters on in the morning. I sat nervously hoping no one would notice the extra bumpy something on the tip of my shoulders. As we settled down to work and the temperature of the room rose, one by one people started taking off their sweaters. This was it… Show time! I slowly slipped off my sweater, placed it on the back of my chair and leaned forward in my desk.

The first whispers came from Earl Adler who sat behind me. He had made torturing me his career at St. Columba’s dating back to the first grade when he gave me some contraband gum and once I was chewing it, forced me to swallow it by threatening to tell the nuns. Maybe not a big deal to some, but I had never swallowed gum before and had been warned against it repeatedly by my mother who swore it would stick inside me, clog up my stomach and kill me dead. Everything always killed you dead.

Hearing Earl’s all too familiar laugh, I turned around and saw that everyone was looking at me. I turned back and sat up proudly sticking out my tit-less chest.

At lunchtime, the guys teased me again. “Bernadette’s wearing a bra!” “Yes!” This is the same way they had teased the other girls. I felt giddy and weightless and the most supreme joy and pride. I was just like the other girls. I had a bra too.

I continued to sneak my sister’s garter belt for the next two weeks until the boys’ interest in female under-apparel waned. Then I went back again to wearing my sleeveless ‘Lollipop’ undershirts with the little cloth bow in the front. I was unafraid to take off my sweater because I now had complete “bra confidence.” I knew, and they all knew, I had a bra, whether I chose to wear it or not.

I REMEMBER GRASS

A loud lawnmower noisily chops up the grass in its path as a white dog barks.
He doesn’t like it either.
The mailbox clatters as it vibrates.
The earth rumbles and my brain quivers.
Everything is shaking when the Mexican gardener comes.
See?
Si si!
I hear him Espanol-ing to his fence.
“The noisier I work, the faster I work. Then I’m off to someone else’s yard

to make their white dog bark.”

I miss the scraping of the rake.
Its slow repetitive metallic lullaby that meant daddy was outside working and I was safe.
Today’s child rock-a-byes to Pepe’s diesel blower and dreams of
Staccato jungle gyms and native roots.
There’s no safety in the smell of gasoline.

A lawn is such a beautiful plaything.
It is fun’s potential amplified and alive.
It was my job to water it.
Underground sprinkling systems had not yet taken over our home’s petty cash.
I earned my green from the green that grew.
I filled glass jars with its bugs
And I never
Ever
Guessed
It would be replaced

with

Gravel.

THE JOSHUA TREE

I am an old home.
I am a new home.
Run to me and hide.
I will let you crawl beneath my skin until you die.
I will watch with pride as you give birth to your young.
I will feed you and protect you from the rain.
I will gather love from the heaven and the earth for you.
I will be here forever.
Changing,
Yet remaining the same.
Rest in me!

UNCLE PAUL

“YELLOW MATTER CUSTARD… DRIPPING FROM A DEAD DOG’S EYE”

I love that.

It’s the most vivid and disgusting musical lyric.

I love the Beatles. My Uncle Paul bought me my first Beatles’ album. He’s my mother’s only brother, her baby brother. She and her sisters doted on him. They believed he was going to be someone special. I was six years old and I believed so too.

Uncle Paul lived with my grandmother in a small apartment in Berkeley. My mother took my sister and me to visit every weekend. Their apartment was always warm. If it was warm outside, it was warmer inside because the heater was on. My grandmother liked it that way and if you didn’t like it you could leave.

The whole place smelled, but not in a bad way. It was a combination of last night’s dinner and this morning’s breakfast. It smelled homey, and told me that there’d always be food.

The rooms were dark and full of stacks of clutter; newspapers, clothes, boxes. All too important to throw away and not important enough to keep dusted.

In the front of the apartment was a sun porch; all windows with white lace curtains. It was the only bright room and where my sister and I played. It was also Uncle Paul’s studio. He was going to be a famous artist and sell his paintings for thousands of dollars.

The sun porch smelled like oil paint. In the corner was a large easel with his latest masterpiece-in-progress. I thought it was beautiful. It was an ocean scene. He had painted yellow sand and bluish-gray waves breaking on the beach. He hadn’t painted the sky yet and the white canvas was a shocking contrast to the serenity of the rest of the picture.

My grandmother yelled out from the kitchen; warned us not to touch our uncle’s painting. We yelled back that we wouldn’t. Immediately I reached up and touched a wave. It was wet and left a blue spot on my finger. I rubbed some of it off with my thumb and smeared the rest on a pile of nearby Berkeley Gazettes. I put on my innocent face and walked away, as far as possible from the scene of my crime.

Next time we visited the painting sat on its easel just where it had before. The sky was still undone and the white canvas was starting to yellow. Dust had settled on the sand and ocean. My grandmother left the room and I put my finger on the wave again. This time it was hard and sharp and left no trace of paint.

Uncle Paul came home and I asked him when he was going to finish the painting. He smiled at me and said, “Soon… soon.” We both stared at the blank sky.

A few weeks later the paints, the easel and the painting were gone. I snooped around and found the painting stuffed behind a pile of old clothes. I pulled it out. The sky was still empty yellow canvas. I took it to the kitchen where my grandmother stood at the stove stirring something in a pot. I asked her why Uncle Paul hadn’t finished the picture. She grabbed the painting from me and yelled, “You shouldn’t be snooping through other people’s things.” I followed her into the other room and she put it back behind the pile of clothes. I told her I would finish painting it. But she didn’t answer. She just went back to her stirring.

When Uncle Paul came home, he was carrying a black leather bag. He told us he decided he was going to be a doctor and make thousands of dollars. He was excited about his new career so I forgot about the painting and got excited too. He opened the black bag, pulled out a stethoscope and listened to our hearts. I was sure he was going to make a great doctor because as he listened, he looked at his watch then told us how many times per minute our hearts were beating. It was going to be fun to have a doctor in the family.

A month later, Uncle Paul decided he was going into the construction business. He bought himself a beige leather tool belt and a whole box of tools. He was going to build apartments and get rich from all the rent. I thought that was a good idea but wondered why he had decided not to become a doctor. Later, I found his black bag hidden under the most recent mountain of clutter. My grandmother wouldn’t let me have that either.

Shortly after the dust began to settle on the beige leather tool belt, Uncle Paul disappeared. No one knew where he was. My mother and her sisters would talk about him in disappointed whispers. When he finally showed up he said he had found religion. He was attending a church in San Francisco with a charismatic minister who was speaking God’s word in a new and special way. He seemed happy, like he’d finally found peace. But then he dropped out of the church a month before the Reverend Jim Jones moved them all to Guyana.

The last time I saw Uncle Paul, he was devising a system that was going to help him win the lottery. It was a chart full of numbers in vertical columns, intersecting numbers in horizontal rows. There were arrows and dates and stars, red ink and black ink. He began explaining the chart to me. I didn’t understand but pretended to anyway. I got swept up in his enthusiasm, how his eyes twinkled as he grinned with pride. He was certain his calculations were going to pick the winning numbers. I wished him luck and hugged him goodbye.

Five years later my Uncle Paul won $80,000 in the California State Lottery.

Six months earlier he had thrown away his chart.

He won on a Quick Pick.

MISSISSIPPI

I’ve always loved swimming pools. I love the clear blue water that fills them and reflects kaleidoscopic beams of sunlight in its ripples. When I was little, my ultimate fantasy was having a swimming pool. Throughout my childhood I had the same recurring dream about them. A swimming pool would magically appear in our front yard, on the strip of grass that grew between the sidewalk and the street. I would run to its edge and dive in, but I was never able to penetrate the surface of the water. I’d lie there on top and struggle to go deeper, into the water, but with no success. I’d wake up tired and frustrated.

The summer I was seven years old, my parents packed up our yellow Chevrolet Bel Air and drove us across country to visit relatives in Mississippi. Both my mother and father grew up in Canton; a small town out in the country, near Jackson, the state capital. They had escaped in the forties and moved to Berkeley. And for that alone, I will forever be grateful.

Cars didn’t have air conditioning in those days. If it was hot, you opened the windows. Speeding down the highway in the South, we’d get all varieties of strange insects whizzing through the open windows past our faces and smacking into the inside back window. My sister and I would scream, become hysterical and hustle to crawl into the front seat. Agitated by all the commotion, my father would stop the car and Mommy would pull that ever-present tissue out of her bra, get in the backseat and squish the buggy guts out of the stunned whatever it was. That was the routine.

We’d drive for hours at a time in the thick Mississippi heat. My sister and I would sit in the back seat playing cards, singing songs, and fighting. It was the typical sibling battle over space, which usually ended after my parents started yelling and the invisible boundary line dividing the seat was drawn. But no child can resist the temptation of a forbidden zone. Tiny toes teased and trespassed that line, causing more hysterics and even more yelling from the front seat.

As the sun set, the long day of driving would start to wear on my father. He’d squirm in his seat and rub at his neck. My mother watched carefully and provided emotional driving support by engaging him in meaningless conversation and offering things to drink. Then she suggested we stop at a motel. That word ‘motel’ was all I needed to hear. I jumped into action and began scanning the landscape for the perfect motel for us to stop at. That meant, swimming pool! I didn’t care about phones, TV’s, or how much it cost. I just wanted a motel that had a big cement hole with lots of pretty blue chlorinated water.

We came upon a motel with a flashing vacancy sign, beneath it were those words “swimming pool.” My father pulled off the road and into their driveway. I was eager to run and see the pool, but my mother held me back and said we needed to wait. My father got out and stretched, a big man stretch. The back of his shirt was all wet with perspiration. I could tell he was also going to be a lot happier once he got into that swimming pool too.

I turned away, anxious, straining to see behind the white fence that separated me from my pool. I imagined I’d be splashing in that water very soon. I’d dive in, like I’d learned in swimming class, swim underwater for a while looking for treasure on the bottom, come back up for air and go back down again. The car door opened. My father got in and started the engine. He gave my mother a somber look then turned to us, “They’ve got no vacancies,” he said. Then he added with a smile, “They forgot to turn their sign off.” We pulled out onto the empty Mississippi highway and continued down the road. I looked back at the motel and saw that the sign still flashed “vacancy.” Those silly people, I thought, they still had forgotten to turn it off.

We stopped at a few more motels with no luck. My sister and I searched even harder now for neon motel signs with the words ‘vacancy’ and ‘swimming pool’. When we’d spot one, we’d scream, “Daddy, there’s one! There’s a motel with a swimming pool!” He’d slow down a bit, then just keep driving and say, “Oops, you didn’t tell me in time.”

We stared out into the darkness toward the sides of the road; me watching the right side, my sister watching the left. I pressed my face against the cool glass, fogging it with my breath, drawing smiles, then wiping them off with my hand. We’d see those magic words again and shout, “Daddy, over there! There’s a motel with a swimming pool!” But now he didn’t even slow down. He’d just repeat, “Oh! You didn’t tell me in time. You’ve got to tell me earlier.” The sky got blacker and my sister and I tired of looking for motels and not being fast enough to tell my father. .

As we drove further into the night, Daddy suddenly became enthusiastic. He turned to us and told us he had a great idea. We were going to camp out. My mother agreed it would be fun. My sister asked if we’d sleep in a tent and make a campfire, but he said no. We were going to do a different kind of camping. He pulled the car over onto the graveled shoulder of the road and stopped.

This is where we were going to camp, here, in the car. It seemed strange but I was too tired to question it. My mother rummaged through the brown paper bag at her feet that she filled at every grocery stop and pulled out small cans of Vienna sausages. She opened them, placed one of the pale stunted pieces of meat onto a saltine cracker and handed it to me. I hated Vienna sausages, they smelled awful and the texture was suspiciously un-meaty. But we were camping, this was camping food, so I ate it. We laughed and ate our Vienna sausage camping dinner and when we were finished, they didn’t even make us brush our teeth.

I laid down next to my sister in the back seat. The imaginary boundary line was for the moment forgotten. My mother covered us with my father’s green wool army blanket and I stared at the stars through the back seat window. “Can we stay at a motel with a swimming pool tomorrow?” I asked. My father answered yes, as long as we’d tell him in time to stop. I believed him. I promised myself to try harder to see a motel in time.

As my mother and father whispered in the front seat, I began to drift off. I gazed up once more and saw a shooting star. Star light, star bright… I made a wish. Stars were magic. So I knew for sure that we’d be staying somewhere with a swimming pool really soon.

But, we never did stay in a motel with a swimming pool.
It was Mississippi, in the 1950’s, and we were Black.
No one would let us stay in their motel.
And all the hurt, rage and frustration my parents felt, they kept inside.
They had grown up in this world and wanted their children to know something better.
They shielded us from the prejudice by making a game and an adventure out of it.
They allowed us to believe there was hope, when there was none.
They protected our spirit.
And for that, I will always love them.

WHEN THE MUSIC’S OVER

Bebe really liked The Doors. More than I did. I had bought their single “Light My Fire,” but hadn’t everybody. It was only the number one song for weeks and they played it on the radio at least three times every hour. So, taking Bebe to their concert for her birthday was a perfect present. After all, she was my best friend, and it wouldn’t hurt to get her a present that I could enjoy too.

It was going to be my first paid concert. Growing up in Berkeley I was a bit spoiled. There were bands giving free concerts every weekend at every park. The idea of actually paying to see a band play was a new one. But I cracked open the piggy bank and bought us tickets for the afternoon show. I figured that would be best, and as 15 year olds, we’d get the least amount of hassle from our parents. My mother lived in constant fear of something bad happening. And she truly believed that bad things only happened at night. As a result, our family lived a sort of reverse vampire existence; only venturing out in the light of day, and always returning to the locked-in safety of home before night. “Be home before dark,” was my mother’s mantra. She believed that perverts never did their nasty deeds in the joyful luminescence of the sun.

We took the city bus to the Berkeley Community Theater. It was attached to the dreaded Berkeley High School, a school that at fourteen, I had feared having to attend worse than the thought of a hundred eternities in hell. Having gone through eight years of Catholic school, I had been thoroughly brainwashed by the nuns who insisted that only very bad kids went to public schools. I was sure attending public school meant certain death. I couldn’t even imagine the doubly horrendous atrocities that would’ve occurred if I were to ever find myself in a public school after dark. I remember crying all night long after taking my high school admittance exams, fearing failure and worrying about my tortuous existence among the evil delinquents that lurked in the shadowy hallways of Berkeley High. But my tears were misdirected. I was accepted into the safe and saintly bosom of Presentation High, a Catholic all-girls school, where I spent the next four years in a different kind of hell, trudging through the slush of female nastiness, peer group pressure, scholastic evisceration and social debilitation.

We walked toward the theater. A long line of people snaked down the street, around the building and up the stairs that led to the theater’s entrance. We stood at the end of the line. There was a buzz, an excitement, an enthusiasm that seemed to grow the closer we got to the entrance. “What was the big deal?” I thought. We were just going to see some band. I’d seen plenty of bands before. How was this any different? A petite girl with flowers intertwined in her long black hair stood in front of us sobbing uncontrollably. I asked if she was okay. She looked at me as if I was from another planet. “I’m going to see Jiiiimm!” she cried. “Oh,” I replied sheepishly, then exchanged mocking looks and giggles with Bebe. I mean, I liked music too, but it didn’t make sense that someone would get so emotional over some singer in a band.

Once inside, we made our way to our seats, right smack dab to the left of center stage toward the front. I was surprised how good they were. I hadn’t gotten them particularly early or paid extra for them. But Bebe thought I had, so I let her think it. The theater was packed and vibrating with an electric energy. I found myself becoming excited. The lights dimmed, and everyone settled down.

I don’t remember if there was an opening act.
It doesn’t matter.
After Jim Morrison stepped onto the stage, nothing else existed, on the planet.

He was unlike any performer I had ever seen.
I’d seen cute guys in bands but, Jim Morrison was… beautiful.
And it wasn’t just the way he looked, it was the way he was. He just stood there. Not trying to rouse us up or entertain us. Just being.
His hair hung softly around his face.
His loose, white, buttonless shirt made him seem safe.
His black leather pants made him seem dangerous.
He took my breath away.

Jim sang, eyes closed, slowly. His raspy voice vibrating someplace deep inside of me. At times, he’d look out, acknowledging us, then as if gently taking our hand, he’d lead us back with him into some other-worldly place of poetry, sensuality and exotic melodies. He leaned sleepily on the microphone stand as he sang, whispering lyrics softly through perfect lips, then… growling, leaping around the stage as if possessed. It was the most hypnotic thing I had ever seen in my life. At fifteen, I knew nothing of sex, but seeing Jim Morrison was sexuality’s first awakening. I wanted to touch him. I wanted to hold onto him and never let go. His whole being had grabbed onto my soul. I was completely under his spell.

He walked off the stage as the band finished playing their last song. The lights came up and the auditorium shook as people stomped the floor, screamed and clapped for an encore. A frenzied mass of hysterical girls ran to the stage. Near the front, I saw the girl with the long black hair. She was screaming too, holding her hands to her head and shaking as the flowers fell from her hair. She wasn’t odd now.
I understood.
I wanted to cry too, weep uncontrollably because of some all-consuming longing I was feeling yet didn’t understand. The lights dimmed again and the band returned to the stage.
Then Jim.
He stood. Motionless. Silent. The band began to play what would become my soul’s sacred anthem. “When The Music’s Over.” I desperately wanted to be in front of the stage like those other girls, close to Jim, letting him see me, drinking him in. But I couldn’t move. “We want the world and we want it… now? Now! NOoow!” I left my body. The world could’ve ended right then. It wouldn’t have mattered.

The song ended and Jim left the stage. Everyone screamed for more, another encore, but none came. Girls tried to climb onto the stage, girls had fallen limply into lumps of sobbing flesh. Then there was me. I sat in my seat paralyzed. Frozen. Staring. It wasn’t over, it couldn’t be over. I wasn’t finished. My world had cracked open and it all was new now. I needed more.

Bebe nudged me. “Let’s go,” she said. What?! Was she crazy? Was she immune to the spell that had been cast over us all? She wanted to leave? How could we go home now after what we had just witnessed? I didn’t even know who I was anymore.

The lights came up and people slowly started to file out of the room. I felt awful. It couldn’t be over. How could I just hop back on the 72M bus, back to my parents’ house, back to acting like everything was the same?

Outside, the scattered sun assaulted me, trying to snap me out of my reverie, bring me back to what used to serve as reality. This is the end? I refused to accept it. It couldn’t end like this. I had to have more. I grabbed Bebe’s arm and dragged her along as I ran to the side of the theater, to the back door. A large, no-nonsense-looking security guard stood there. A group of concert-goers had gathered in front of him. We all stood wishful, just waiting for something to happen.

Bebe started to complain. She had no idea why we were standing there. I looked at her incredulously. We weren’t on the same wavelength anymore. I moved toward the others who knew. We waited.

The stage door opened and a thin man in suit talked to the security guard. He pointed to the group of people I was standing near. The guard waved his hand and the group proceeded to enter the theater. I followed. Once inside, I turned to look back and caught a glimpse of a confused Bebe standing outside as the door slammed shut. I hesitated for a second, thinking I should go back to retrieve her, then turned away.

I crossed the threshold and gloriously stepped into the backstage world. Survival mechanism took over. I bee-lined over to the people I had entered with and joined in as they talked about the show. I looked around. No one was coming after me. No one knew I didn’t belong there. Only then did I notice that standing among us was the Doors organ player, Ray Manzarek. My new group were friends of his. I stood with the ‘friends of Manzarek’ all the while continuing to scan the room. Then I saw Him.

Jim Morrison was standing off to the side. All alone.
He was leaning against the side a doorway. He looked melancholy and detached.

Without a word, I abandoned my new friends and moved toward Jim as if pulled by some invisible force. I stood right in front of him and he smiled. Part of me left my body again and hovered somewhere overhead. I had no idea what to say. I just stood there in my teenaged gawkiness, then blurted out, “Can I shake your hand?” A pretty lame request, but at fifteen, it was all I knew to do. He smiled and said yes, straightening himself up to free his right hand. He took my hand in his and we shook. He laughed. His hand was warm and soft. What now, I thought?
“Uh, can I have your autograph?”
“Sure,” he said.
I fumbled through my purse and pulled out a pen and my homework notepad. I flipped through the notepad looking for an empty page. I looked up at him again. He smiled and seemed amused by my awkwardness. I found a blank page and handed it to him. As he took it, he asked my name. I didn’t understand why he wanted to know my name. It confused me. I had never asked anyone for an autograph before. “Bernadette,” I said. He wrote my name on the paper, and then over it, he wrote Jim. No best wishes, no thanks, no insincere greeting. Just our names touching, his on mine, connected forever in my homework notepad.

“Are you coming to the show tonight?” Jim asked. What show? I didn’t remember there was another show that evening. I was confused by his question, his tone, and confused by what I was feeling. I didn’t know what to say to him. My mother’s voice played in my head, “Be home before dark.” I blurted out “No,” and instantly regretted it. Why did I say that? Was he inviting me? “Was Jim Morrison asking me out?” What about Bebe waiting outside for me? It was too much. I couldn’t handle any more. I told Jim Morrison, the lead singer of the Doors, that I had to go. He said bye and I backed away from him. I’d gone as far as I could with him. I was ready to go home.

When I got outside Bebe was still standing there looking lost. She battered me with a million questions about what had happened but I couldn’t answer. I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t talk. I wanted to hold it all inside and savor every detail. The entire bus ride home, she complained about me leaving her outside. I could hear her faintly in the distance but my head was still filled with the music, the sound of his voice, my hand was still warm from his touch. I held it to my face. Jim Morrison had touched me and there was no forgetting that.

For months after the Doors concert, I spent my nights sitting in the living room next to my mother’s stereo console, listening to “The Doors,” burning incense, staring into strobe candles and thinking about Jim. I spent my days in school alternately staring at the autograph, then out the window while I replayed my Jim Morrison encounter. I fantasized about what might’ve happened if I’d stayed for the night concert.

It was in Mrs. Sherrill’s fifth period French class where for the first time, I allowed the autograph to be passed around. All the girls were impressed that I actually met him, talked to him and touched him. Mrs. Sherrill was unaware of the Morrison mania going on behind her as she scribbled French phrases on the blackboard. I stared at the autograph again. His name was written on top of mine. It had to mean something. It was sexual. I stared out the window and imagined kissing him. Why didn’t I kiss Jim Morrison instead of just shaking his hand? I had never kissed any boy but he could’ve been the first. I sighed with longing for lost opportunity.

When I came back from my daydream, I looked down at the autograph and shrieked. With the pen in my hand, I had unconsciously doodled all over Jim’s autograph. How could I do such a stupid thing! Now, there was my name, his name over it, and a bunch of loopy squiggles all over the paper.

My first time in Paris, I went to Pere LaChaise cemetery to see Jim Morrison’s grave. It was raining, but still the gravesite was surrounded by distraught youths. They had never met him, never touched him, they weren’t even alive when that concert at Berkeley Community Theater took place. I approached his grave and the magic and sadness welled up in me. I knelt down near his tombstone. The memories rushed in; how he had smiled at me, how he’d asked my name, the autograph. Then, with that same hand that he shook, that had felt warm for days afterwards, I reached down and touched his grave.

“The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain
The time you ran was too insane
We'll meet again, we'll meet again”