Orphea Proud Read online

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS

  BEFORE WE WERE FREE

  Julia Alvarez

  FINDING OUR WAY

  René Saldaña, Jr.

  SHABANU: DAUGHTER OF THE WIND

  Suzanne Fisher Staples

  GATHERING BLUE

  Lois Lowry

  ISHI, LAST OF HIS TRIBE

  Theodora Kroeber

  ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS

  Scott O’Dell

  THE LAST SNAKE RUNNER

  Kimberley Griffiths Little

  OVERBOARD

  Elizabeth Fama

  Published by Laurel-Leaf

  an imprint of Random House Children’s Books

  a division of Random House, Inc.

  New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2004 by Sharon Dennis Wyeth

  All rights reserved.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Delacorte Press, New York, in 2004. This edition published by arrangement with Delacorte Press.

  Laurel-Leaf and colophon are registered trademarks of

  Random House, Inc.

  www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at www.randomhouse.com/teachers

  RL: 6.0

  eISBN: 978-0-307-81597-2

  v3.1

  For Georgia

  Acknowledgments

  Sincere thanks to my editor, Michelle Poploff, for her keen insight and extraordinary patience. I also appreciate assistant editor Joe Cooper’s input. The optimism and friendship of my agent, Robin Rue, were of inestimable value as always. There are others who lent me support during this project, either through reading various versions of the manuscript or through discussion of its themes: Harriet Weitzner, psychologist Thelma Markowitz, Mimi Leahey, Eiko Otake, Bonnie Reed, Amber Reed, Dr. M. Jerry Weiss, Nancy Plain, Dr. Diane Klein, and P-Flag of North Jersey. My husband, Sims, is the steady flame in my life. My daughter, Georgia, continues to inspire me.

  “It’s your movie.”

  That’s what Lissa would say.

  Meaning, it’s my life and I should be the one to control it.

  But what if on a perfect snow day, you just don’t think about what will happen when you make love with your best friend while your asshole brother is downstairs in the kitchen with a glass to the ceiling, listening for every whisper, every squeak in the bed? There’s no control then—because love isn’t about control.

  Love is the one place where we have to lose it.

  Hot ice

  Taboo to the touch

  A fire in the cold

  That was us

  Contents

  Cover

  Also Available from Laurel-Leaf Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Showtime

  Mom

  Lissa

  Green

  Unacceptable

  Sunflower

  Crazy

  Footsteps

  Intermission

  Secrets

  Aunts

  Grimes

  “P” is For—

  The Gig

  Puzzle

  Fame

  Saved

  About the Author

  Showtime

  “Don’t look back.”

  That’s what they told me.

  So I won’t turn around, even though I’m itching to. I want to see what that skinny little pale dude up on the ladder is painting behind my back. But I can’t, because I have to look at you. You’re the audience, after all. And I’m the performer. Raynor Grimes, the guy up on the ladder, well, he’s part of the performance, too, but he doesn’t talk, he paints, which means he keeps his eyes on his gargantuan canvas, while I keep my eyes on you. Without you none of us would be here, not me or Ray or Mr. Icarus Digits, the owner of this club, or Marilyn Chin, your waitress this evening who plays the electric bass and whose eyes look like they’re bleeding on account of her burgundy mascara.

  Welcome to our show!—which we’ve kind of nicknamed Not a Rodeo, for reasons I’ll tell you later.

  I’m Orphea Proud.

  For those of you who’ve never been here, welcome to Club Nirvana!—a former meat warehouse. Some people say it stinks here. Once upon a time slabs of beef did hang from the ceiling. During the day, the place is dank, a nondescript square carved out of shitty concrete with the faint smell of pig’s entrails. But at night, the space transforms. When I step inside this club before the show, the walls hug me. The people here are my little family. I bump my butt up onto the stage and Icky Digits waves at me from the light booth. If it weren’t for Icky, I’d be sitting in a diner staring at an egg yolk, thinking it’s a sunflower. When I get here in the evening, I see Raynor Grimes, too. Ray always arrives before I do, even though we live together. He scurries on over to mix his paints in private. Sometimes if I sneak in early, I spy. This evening I spotted a thin layer of ethereal blue. And I thought, oh yeah what a backdrop! Maybe tonight Ray’s painting will be all me—study of a big-booty poet against a pale blue sky.

  I said that the people at Club Nirvana are like my family. In fact Raynor and I are blood related. Something I didn’t know when I first met him on top of a mountain down in Virginia. You’re wondering how a vanilla boy with straw-colored hair could be kin to a coffee girl like me? Sure you are. Not only that, he’s so skinny, his shoulder blades stick through his shirt like angel’s wings—whereas I have meat on my bones. Never know who might be in your family, ain’t it the truth?

  Who else can I tell you about? Your waitress and my good friend Marilyn Chin! Besides playing bass and having a thing for burgundy mascara, Marilyn reads tea leaves. After the show, she’ll read yours if you ask her. I warn you, though, her readings can be puzzling. When Ray and I first came to Queens, New York, to do our show and stay with her and Icky, Marilyn read mine.

  “You are in grave danger of being devoured.”

  “Devoured by what?”

  “Words. They will eat you like maggots.”

  “So, is there any way I can avoid this horrendous fate?”

  “Sure,” Marilyn said. “Make a raft of them.”

  Hmm, a raft of words.… Maybe you can figure that one out.

  Next up—Mr. Icarus Digits! He wasn’t always a club owner. He used to cook short-order in a diner in the town in Pennsylvania where I grew up. The diner had an open-mike night on Fridays. I started going when I was twelve and never missed a Friday after that. Being able to hear poets and musicians was like opening the iron bars of my prison. I was living with my brother, Rupert, and his wife in a house where I found it hard to breathe. But on Friday nights at the diner, I could throw open the doors inside myself and let poetry and music whistle through me while I felt all kinds of stuff; delicious stuff and scary stuff and parts of myself that I had not yet come to love. Another reason I was drawn to the diner was that I was already into writing poetry myself. But when I first went to the open-mike night, I just listened. One day, Icky Digits spotted me from behind the counter where he was cooking and encouraged me to get up and perform. My friend Lissa was there to encourage me, too, or I should say she nagged me. My first performance at the mike was the beginning of something taking shape inside me; a sense that I’d be a poet for the rest of my life and maybe even a performer. Icky Digits was right there with me, helping to make it possible, just like he’s made it possible for me and Ray to put on our show at Club Nirvana thes
e past few weeks. Want to hear something awesome about Icky Digits? He has no fingerprints. He won’t tell me why. Maybe he tossed too much hot stuff at the grill or got too close to some lights. He’s obsessed with theatrical lighting—he won’t mind me saying that. He likes me bathed in pink. But sometimes he’ll switch to red or blue. So expect me to keep changing colors. And look out—he’s been known to throw a spotlight on the audience. Icky has one other interest, t’ai chi, which he practices every morning, advancing like a slow wind through the loft. Ray and I just ignore him and go on eating our cereal. Marilyn usually misses out on Icky’s t’ai chi routine, because she takes such a long time in the bathroom.

  So, that’s the gang at Club Nirvana. Did I leave anyone out?

  Yeah … You.

  You’re a very sexy audience. I love the way you laugh. I bet you can dance on the ceiling and eat pretzels off the floor with one hand tied behind you. Admit it—you’re an adrenaline junkie, undulating hysteria about to explode, waiting to be discovered. You’re not cynical, are you? Please tell me you’re not. But if you are, I guess it’s okay. I’ve had my moments, too. But it’s hard to be cynical when you’re telling a love story. And that’s what I’m about to do.

  Words rule, baby

  Don’t let no one tell you otherwise

  Lest it be a skinny painter

  You don’t buy that tale about a tree

  How it sprung through the cracks from a seed?

  If you do, you’re a fool

  ’Cause the word came first, then that thing with bark and leaves

  A cow was C-O-W ’fore it could say Moo

  And L-O-V-E? A luscious kiss upon earth’s tongue, waiting for the

  Moment to lick and say out loud what we feel in our hearts

  The heat of mama’s hand upon your brow

  The firm grip of a friend when you are falling

  The javelin energy of lust let loose to make or break you

  But first and last, it was all a word

  MOM

  Okay, you guys—

  In the beginning, there was MOM.

  Are you with me?

  Mom’s name was Nadine.

  Nadine reached out for every snotty-nosed, scab-kneed part of me. I had a permanent home on her lap. For hours I would lay my cheek in the curve of her shoulder, sniffing at her neck. Her hair was a crown of a thousand black braids to wind my fingers through. She wore an orange silk skirt permanently stained with the chocolate signature of my kiss. Once when I was three, I hugged her around the legs and pressed my mouth to her knee after eating an ice cream cone and Nadine refused to send the skirt to the dry cleaners, so that the imprint of my kiss would always be there.

  My mom had a voice as soft as fleece that made you feel warm all over when she spoke to you. But after dinner in the evening when my father and his shadow, my half-grown brother Rupert, would go out on business to the church, my mom would sing along with the radio. She liked the “classics.” I can hear her singing “Natural Woman” with Aretha, her voice soaring high and steely above the sound of running water at the sink and the clanking pots and pans.

  Nadine was a natural singer, but she’d always dreamed of voice lessons. When the choir director at Daddy’s church found out, he and Nadine got into cahoots. She sneaked off to his house on Saturday afternoons on her way from the grocery store, carrying me with her. The choir director had a funny little goatee sprouting out of the middle of his chin. His name was John. I remember how he would take his place on a shiny black bench while Nadine stood facing him, her body leaning into the side of the open grand piano, bags of groceries at her feet. Sheltering me in the crook of her arm, she propped me up next to her so that my behind rested on a precipice above the strings of the instrument. Beneath the shadow of the piano’s lid, John’s tawny fingers skittered up and down the keyboard, as he led Nadine through her scales. The sound vibrated up my spine. And when my mother hugged me close, and I laid my hand on her throat, I felt the rush of a magic river. Since my ear was next to her chest, I could also hear her heartbeat and the sharp intake of her breathing. After the warm-up exercises, she would sing another kind of classic, a famous aria from the opera Carmen.

  “L’amour, l’amour …” Of course, I didn’t know what she was singing about at the time, but there was aching in her voice.

  If Daddy had known about those lessons, he would have been mad. My father ruled with an iron hand. I was forced to sit for hours at the table in front of a bowl of peas, even after the sight of them made me throw up. So, if you ask me to dinner, don’t serve peas. Once when my big brother Rupert was late for his nine o’clock curfew in high school, Daddy switched him with his belt. Though Rupert didn’t cry, I was terrified. So when Daddy walked in unexpectedly one day, while Nadine was singing “Natural Woman” along to the radio, and snatched the plug out of the wall and threw the radio into the sink, I hid under the table. But Nadine was so brave. She picked the radio up out of the sink and dried it off without batting an eyelash. Then she actually laughed.

  “Are you trying to get through to me, Apollo?”

  Daddy still looked angry. Nadine threw her arms around his waist. She gave him a big fat kiss. “You’re such a mean ol’ man. Don’t know why I married you.”

  “Because I’m the biggest, baddest preacher in these parts.” He didn’t look angry anymore. Guess that fat kiss did it. He tugged Nadine’s hair. “But how’s it look having the preacher’s wife be so reckless?”

  “You ain’t seen reckless,” Nadine teased. “I’m only singing to the radio, enjoying myself. And look how you scared little Orphea.”

  Nadine smiled in my direction, but Daddy kept his eyes fixed on her face. “Save that pretty voice for Sunday,” he warned. “Next thing I know, you’ll be sneaking off to a dance club.”

  Nadine shook her hips. “Would that be such a crime?” My mom had attitude. As far as I know, she didn’t sneak off to a club. But every Saturday we did sneak off to John’s for her voice lesson. One of Daddy’s rules was that she couldn’t wear lipstick, but Nadine wore it then. Lipstick the color of candy apples—I’ve scoured drugstores for the shade. She also wore black kohl on the bottom lids of her eyes. She’d smile at me in the mirror when she was made up. Then off we’d go to the store to throw the groceries into the cart, then hop back into the car and race over to John’s to sing the role of Carmen—with no one in the audience but the piano player and the child in the crook of her arm.

  When Nadine sang Carmen, her face lit up so. If Daddy could have seen her, there’s no way he could have stayed mad. But he never did catch her singing at John’s. He died before he had the chance. One Sunday he fell out of his pulpit and that was the end of him.

  “Heart attack.” I heard Rupert say it. He was talking to someone on the phone. Our father had a heart attack. Rupert was already in college. He helped Nadine make the telephone calls. Nadine wasn’t his mother. She was only mine. But Daddy belonged to us both. But now he had a heart attack. I was only seven. I didn’t know what it meant. My memory of the funeral was sitting next to Nadine at church in an ocean of people. My stomach was queasy, I remember. I asked where Daddy was, a few weeks after he’d gone. The thought of him disappearing was impossible. He was too tall.

  “Where did Daddy go?”

  “Heaven,” Nadine whispered.

  “Where’s that?”

  “In the air.”

  That sounded right to me. “In the air” was where Daddy had always seemed to be, at least on Sundays, towering above from the pulpit. It was my favorite view of him, because on Sundays when he preached I saw him from the front. At home during the week, I mainly saw only the back of him. His straight back as he walked out the front door of our house on Sherman Court, a very nice house purchased for him with the help of the congregation but which Nadine got to keep. Our house—with a porch and an old-fashioned parlor in place of a living room and lots of bedrooms on the second floor. He and Rupert were always leaving for someplace
important, not always the church, sometimes the car wash. But on Sundays when he preached, I saw Daddy’s face, its thick gray eyebrows and burning eyes. I saw his long arms waving while his voice boomed down, warning the people to be good or else be sorry. And then one day he went to Heaven, to be permanently in the air.

  At the end of that year Rupert graduated. Nadine and I went to see him wearing his cap and gown. He had a girlfriend named Ruby hanging on his arm. She was wearing a blue dress with white flowers. When she said hello, instead of looking at us, she looked at her pale yellow shoes.

  Rupert got in Nadine’s face right away. “Why are you here?”

  “The school mailed an announcement.”

  “That would have been meant for my father.”

  She smiled. “We’re your family, too. You graduated with honors. We’re proud of you.”

  “You ain’t my family,” he snapped. “But since you’re here, you might as well sit down. You’ll have to hold her on your lap, though. The other seat is for Ruby.”

  On the ride home from Rupert’s school, Nadine got a headache that nothing would help. She woke up with it for months after. As far as I know she never went to a doctor, even though it meant she had to stop reading to me at night. She said the words seemed double. So I read instead, choosing the book she liked best, an easy-to-read one about a duck named Ping. She smiled while I read. She smiled a lot. Her very last smile that I remember was the following spring, on a day when we went to a fair. She let me go up on the Ferris wheel all by myself. She was afraid it would make her dizzy. So I got on alone. I felt as if I were flying. I also felt very grown-up. We’d lied to the Ferris wheel guy and said I was ten; I was tall for my age. But when I reached the tippy-top, I felt eight years old and real short. I began to panic. I looked down at the crowd. I saw Mom immediately. Her eyes were on me and she was smiling. Right away I felt calm. Soon after the fair, Nadine went to the hospital. After that she went into the ground.…