How the Soul Sings

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

            After my whole dreamt-up love affair with Daniel, I had declared an all-out war on boys. I armed myself by overfilling my bra; stuffing it with old, rolled up tube socks from my brother’s dresser, crop-tops and halter tops, now that the weather was warmer, and of course, Daisy Duke’s, before there was a Daisy Duke. I started plucking my brows and substituting Vaseline for lip gloss and occasionally sampling some of my aunt’s Avon when she wasn’t looking. I was determined to make them notice me and see me for more than some scrawny little girl, especially Daniel.

Sadly, God modeled me after my mother. I had a boyish figure, like Twiggy. No hips to speak of, no tush to sway at the boys as I walk by and only a couple of mosquito bites to call boobs; hence, the socks. Though, that didn’t stop me from declaring at the breakfast table to my mother that I think that I needed some new bras, in front of Daniel, of course. But he just rolled his eyes.

That summer that I was thirteen, I started making an effort to ride my bike more often into town, to the pool. I begged my mother for a bikini, but all she’d agree to was the top and some swim trunks. That still didn’t stop me from making it a point to ride past Daniel every time that I could in that bikini top and my cutoffs, when I left for town. I’d stop about a half mile down the road to put my t-shirt on, of course, so that I wouldn’t be burnt to a crisp by the time I got to the pool. There were boys there, too, mind you, that I wanted to impress. I was kinda hoping that I’d be able to snag one and convince him to ride his bike with me, on back to the farm and maybe make Daniel a little jealous. But of course, that didn’t happen, either. It ended up being the other way around…

I came home late one afternoon from a day spent at the pool, AGAIN, to find some girl with wavy fawn hair laughing while sitting next to Daniel on the front porch. Her name was Laura and Daniel had met her at the VA Hospital while doing physical therapy. She was a leggy nurse with curves and the whole-nine and had driven all the way out here from Enid just to see him and I hated her.

I walked passed them, pretending not to see her with Daniel and then saw a set of leg braces and crutches leaning up against the wall, just outside the front parlor when I went inside the house.

“Oh my goodness! Isn’t it great?” My aunt greeted me. “Daniel’s been working on how to stand with crutches and those braces, to support his legs and to help him walk. Laura, the nurse out there, that you saw on the porch, she brought ‘em up here so that Daniel could practice using them at home. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Just awesome.”

I really was happy that Daniel was going to somehow walk again. It was great, practically a miracle and Grandma Evee was just beside herself at the news. But I was hurt and angry, mostly with myself, that it wasn’t me that was helping him do it and it wasn’t me who was giving him his legs back. I was heartbroken that I didn’t have anything to offer him. 

I could tell right off the bat that Laura was more than just some random, friendly, supportive nurse that Daniel just happened upon, just by how relaxed she and Daniel were around one another. Laura was visiting, OFTEN and would lean in whenever Daniel was talking. Daniel made her laugh and that irked me because it seemed like he was going out of his way to do so. He never tried to make me laugh. He also told her things that he never told me. Then one day, I saw him reach for one of her hands right out of her lap and she didn’t stop him. They were sitting across from each other and had been chatting away, all afternoon long, never a moment of silence between them, never growing bored with the other. I hated it, ALL of it. So I decided to try and break up their little porch party by putting on one of Daisy’s records that she had left behind. I chose ‘All Along the Watchtower’ by Jimi Hendrix. It was the loudest, most serious song I could think of at the time and I put it up as high as I could. I stood behind the open window to the parlor that faced the front porch and waited to see the results. The only thing that broke up was my heart, seeing them kiss. I ripped the needle off that record, broadcasting a loud screeching noise that rang out practically across the entire farm and ran out the backdoor past the veranda and the garden and out into the back pasture until I couldn’t breathe anymore, then I cried. 

I never wanted to feel that way again.

            I knew that I would have to eventually drag my butt back home, but I was nearly embarrassed to do so. Daniel’s relationship with Laura just reconfirmed that he would never think of me in that way and all the attempts I made to get him to change his mind only made a fool out of me.

In the days that came, I made every effort possible to keep myself busy and away from Daniel. I didn’t want to have to face him any more than necessary. I even took on extra chores, just so I could be out of sight. And in doing this, I started to learn more from my mother about how all the goat and sheep stuff was made.  I got to see the pride in her eyes that she took from making quality things. Eventually my mother would start selling the wool from the sheep and make extra money for the farm.

Then came the day that Daniel moved out to go shack up with Laura in Enid. They had decided that it was a good idea because then he’d be closer to the VA Hospital. My mother thought it was a great thing because it was another step closer for Daniel regaining back a normal life. Of course, my aunt, being the conservative that she was, had a hard time with it and refused to watch him drive off with his truck all loaded up with all of his stuff. I think my aunt was mostly against him moving out not so much because of what it implied, but because it meant saying ‘good-bye’ to him again and left her with no one to take care of. All that was left behind in his room was his bed and that damn bullet, still hanging in the jar from the ceiling. The day he moved out, I went and ripped it down and smashed the jar into a handful of big, jagged pieces, all over his bedroom floor. That broken jar symbolized my heart and my spirit at the time. And it changed me.

I became more cynical and quiet; I rarely smiled. It was like the sun no longer shined over me. Everyone just chalked it up to me missing Daniel and my brother, combined with the normal growing pains of being a teen girl. I even added in more emphasis and exaggeration to the lines of the Shakespeare plays that Evee made me always read, really drawing out the drama in them. The words were somehow speaking to me then, and I just let all of my anger and sorrow ring out through them. The emotion dripped from my lips and flowed through my voice, almost as if I were acting out the plays in a one-woman show. I even earned applause and a ‘bravo’ one time.

And I gave up on boys. I quit stuffing my bra, quietly putting back my brother’s socks where they belonged. I still wore the occasional crop-top and cutoff shorts, but I had come to the conclusion that I no longer gave a crap about whether or not they noticed me and figured that this was way too much effort to get them to notice me. They either took me as I was, or they could take a long walk off a short pier. I guess you could say that Daniel jaded me in some way. And as quickly as he and Laura took off, I was expecting there to be wedding invitations in the mail any day.

They visited once a week, usually for Sunday supper. Laura always drove them up to the farm in her Rambler. Momma and Aunt Loraine talked to them like they were any other adult couple, now and it annoyed the hell outta me. Before her, Daniel and I were seen as equals around here, someone’s offspring, to be acknowledged and addressed the same way. I couldn’t help but wonder if they were having sex, yet and if he wore a condom or if she was on the pill. Or were they throwing caution to the wind and would eventually end up with a baby, out of wedlock. Oh God, my aunt would have just loved that. That part made me grin. Daniel caught me smiling ear to ear with that thought and smiled back. Silly fool, he thought that I was happy for them, just smiling back and the chitter chatter of how wonderful life was for them, as they reported it to our mothers.

Of course, as I predicted, six months later, Daniel made a trip up to the farm on his own one day, in the middle of the week, to talk to my aunt about marrying Laura. She came downstairs with her jewelry box and pulled out a ring for him; it was a family heirloom. An old gold and silver ring with tiny sapphires and diamonds alternating in the band on each side of a large, square cut diamond that sat in the center. I used to play with that ring when I was little, trying it on and pretending that I was royalty. I used to hope that one day it would be mine, along with the ruby one she also had. It stung seeing my aunt pass along my ring to him, for HER. Secretly, I hoped that the whole thing would blow up and that he would come back home, but not so that I could have another chance with him, but to flaunt at him that he had been better off staying home and taking a sure thing. Ok, you could say that I was a little neurotic. I may have been only thirteen, but I was a woman scorned.