Blackbird Read online

  “She’s fine,” he said, just a little too quickly. I didn’t quite know where it came from, but something told me Leslie wasn’t exactly fine. Not fine at all. I wasn’t sure if it was something in Todd’s face, or his posture, or his voice, or the way he started fiddling with his pinky ring, turning it this way and that on his finger. Or what. It was just there, somehow.

  That same something also told me now was not the time to pursue the matter. So I simply said, “I hope you’re futzing around with that ring because you’re about to give it to me.” It got a smile. That ring never left Todd’s finger, that I knew of. Leslie gave it to him. It’s a beautiful piece, sterling silver with a big, shiny black opal, and I coveted it so openly that it had become sort of a running gag between Todd and me.

  “I’ll leave it to ya in my will,” Todd said. Then he treated us to yet another vigorous hair-flip, and said, “Later, guys.”

  “Later, Todd,” I said. Efrem kind of snorted. I watched Todd walk down to the doors, taking that incredible blue-denim behind with him. I’m telling you, talent or no talent, that walk was an art form unto itself.

  “Well, I, for one, fail to fathom why you would even deign to speak to such as that,” Efrem said in his very Katharine Hepburn attitude he likes to use when he’s feeling particularly snotty.

  “He’s a nice guy,” I said. I briefly considered adding something to the effect of, “Besides, it is my fervent desire to relieve Todd Waterson of his trousers” – but I didn’t. About thirteen times a day I’d be that close to coming right out and saying something like that to Efrem. I was almost sure he knew, anyway; most days, I would have bet dollars to doorknobs that Efrem felt the same way about guys as I did. But for some reason, I always stopped just short of turning to Efrem and spilling the beans once and for all. I don’t always make the wisest choices in life.

  “He’s a mongoloid.”

  “He’s a nice guy, Efrem, and not everybody can be the celebrated wit you are.”

  “Too true,” Efrem said. “Too true.” I swear, sometimes Efrem could be the most amazing snot. After a moment, he said, “Nervous about the auditions?”

  “I dunno. A little nervous, I guess.” I was a little nervous. God knows why. It wasn’t as if I really gave a damn about the play. And I harbored no illusions about my chances of getting cast. It was just the sort of thing that made me nervous. Auditions, midterms and finals, interviews with my guidance counsellor. Any situation where there’s any kind of pressure on, and I get this rapid little tremor right in the center of my chest, along with an uncomfortable overfull feeling, like gas. I had it right then. And I knew I’d continue to have it all day, right through the auditions. I was definitely a little nervous.

  “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 modicum 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.

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nbsp; 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.

  “I don’t know whats the matter,” it read, “but Id realy like to help.”

  Have I mentioned that Cherie is just about the worst English student who ever lived? Consistent D’s on her tests, hasn’t a clue about punctuation. Not that she’s stupid, mind you; she simply has no written-language skills.

  “Anything I can do Ill do,” the letter continued. Cherie’s particularly bad with apostrophes. “Just tell me what I can do.”

  Then came the part that really killed me:

/>   “I offer you my love,” it said, and the handwriting seemed to get even more jumpy than usual as she wrote, “I offer you my body, if that be your need.”

  That’s when I knew I had to tell her.

  I got myself to her English class early, and placed the letter on her desk. I had corrected the spelling and punctuation, and written on the bottom, “We have to talk.”

  When I told her, her face took on a very sad look, but just for a moment. “Are you sure?” she said. She sighed a little and said, “Just my luck, huh?” Than she took my arm like she always did, almost as if nothing at all had happened. And the subject very seldom came up again.

  “Excited about the auditions?” Cherie asked.

  “I haven’t got a chance,” I said – it was becoming a reflex.

  “Don’t say that,” she said, her voice almost raising to ordinary conversational volume.

  “All right, I won’t say that.” I raised a surrendering hand. “I sure would love to get my teeth into that Romeo and Juliet scene, though.”

  The only thing in Hooray for Love that was even worth the bother was the first-act curtain scene, which was the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet. I’ve always like the play, loved the Zeffirelli movie, and I would have given both my chest hairs to play that scene. “Unfortunately, that would be about the last thing they’d let me do here.”

  “You don’t know that.” Cherie was about to really give me a talking to, I think, when Skipper came in – carrying his guitar, natch. In this town, everybody and his dog has a guitar; even I have one. As Skipper entered, Cherie squeezed my arm a little harder, almost a reflex.

  Skipper was wearing this ancient plaid wool shirt that he wears nearly every day of his life – it has this Playboy-bunny patch sewn to the left shoulder. He had his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, the shirt completely unbuttoned, with a tank top underneath. And I wanted to kiss his neck so bad. He tossed an eyebrow-flash up to where we were sitting and smiled, showing the two slightly over-sized canine teeth that made him look like a friendly vampire whenever he smiled.