Ghost Town

It’s a small venue off of one of our main streets in town called Nettleton. The long stretch of street is flanked by quant stores and shopping areas. There is a bookstore, a toddler’s clothes store and a map store. There’s even a retro shop where the remaining hippies in this yuppie town gather and sell their goods that they have built, sewn or painted. During the day the street of Nettleton is a busy place. People bustle back and forth shopping, laughing, slamming car doors and ringing doorbells as they enter the shops. Every store has come to life in the strip with the exception of one; it is nestled in between the map store and a candle shop. It sits with white walls and a naked cement floor, sleepily winding the day away. The windows are empty. Compared to the surrounding stores, it gives the building the illusion of having an eye gouged out. One article of decoration graces its door. Instinctively my eyes pass over the small old English lettering. The white coloring of the letters contrast against the shadows that lurk inside. I read it and take it in with a grain of salt and go about my day.
When the sun slips down behind the flat horizon of the Arkansas farmland, and the moon comes up, the street of Nettleton sings a different song. The stores that were once lit up with the hustle of the day now sleep silently, all still except for one. The familiar white walls are lit with dim lights and candles with dancing flames that cause shadows to chase each other restlessly on the ceiling.
A strange buzz of excitement fills the air in and around the area as I step out of my car in the dark parking lot. I’ve parked down by the hippy store in hopes that I can just slip in the back unnoticed. I toss my Burberry scarf over my shoulder as my breath turns to fog. I am immediately recognized and noticed, and I realize to my dismay that invisible is the last thing I’ll be tonight. I ease in and they part, making way for me, acting like they don’t want to touch me. I’m ashamed to find myself relieved that my showing up here appalls them. I have come here tonight to watch an old friend’s band play. I was not here for anyone else than him and his band. I glance around at the crowd they have drawn, soaking in every detail.
They are all looking at me now. They give me the kind of looks that I associate with contempt and disdain. They look at me like they feel sorry for me. By nature my head drops down and I stare at my feet as I consider leaving. I’m wearing my favorite pair of shoes, black Nine West pumps but oh how I hate them right now. I can almost feel my feet burning though them, wishing I didn’t wear them. I swallow my intimidation and look back up. I find the same expression on some of their faces, but the majority of them have turned away, already bored of the thought of me. When I think no one is looking, I quietly make my way closer to the stage by edging up against the wall.
The room is packed shoulder to shoulder with the mixed group of people. They’re anywhere from 14 years old to their later 20s. They seem to churn and boil against each other with their own agendas as they move to and fro. The air is hot and stuffy like it has been breathed too many times and the sweet mixture of wine and sweat intertwined with cigarette smoke hangs in the air, with the occasional gust of cheap perfume floating by, as well.
So I stand against the wall and watch. Their black clothes don’t fit them. Either they drape to the floor in ropey frays or they hug their white hips too tight. T-shirts pop up over midriffs revealing bright tattoos of mushrooms, butterflies, cartoon characters or the ever so popular Celtic cross. The girls look aged beyond their years with black eye shadow and inky dark dyed hair. I see blue lipstick and purple hair. Boys wear spike on their wrists and things that resemble dog colors around the necks. Fingernails are painted black and almost every boy and girl has a big black X drawn on the backsides of their hands. They wear four or five inches worth of bracelets on each arm and chains hang around their necks. Some wear more than others. I wondered if this was a status thing.
They had piercings. Lots of them. Everywhere. The boys wore earrings that purposely split open the lobes of their ears. Belly button rings were shown off with cut off shirts. Spikes protruded through chins and bars stuck out of eyebrows and lips. I give my pearls a gentle tug. What was I thinking coming here? I noted their skin was so fair, as if they never saw the light of day. I found myself somehow hoping that in the mix of things, perhaps my fake tan would not show up under the candlelight. Or my pearls.
Their arms hung lifelessly at their sides under slouched backbones. I straightened my back even more as if it would somehow magically make them want to correct their posture as well. It didn’t work. I edge up against the wall even more trying to stay out of everyone’s way.
They all look the same to me but I understand this is the way they choose to state their independence. They want so badly to stand out as individuals, so they express it by wearing black and coloring their eyes black with eyeliner. I found it intriguing.
There was one girl I noticed in particular. Perhaps it was because she was taller than the others. She had a long slender figure and beautiful hands with long fingers. She wore the black clothes well. She wore them with her chin up and a smile on her face. Her auburn hair tumbled down her back in curls and her dark green eyes shown in the candlelight like emeralds. She moved gracefully in a dignified manner. She wore her jewelry like the other girls did, thick and black except for one Care Bear slap bracelet she wore on her right wrist. Bright and pink. The black clothes didn’t do it justice. I hadn’t realized I was studying her until our eyes met and her smile faded into curious pursing of her lips. My eyes assume their nervous position of starring at my shoes.
As if on cue, the lights dim almost like a last call for smokers to stop mingling in the night air and push into the small room. I slowly pull my colorful scarf off of my neck and stuff it into my purse, as if that will make me fit in better. Simultaneously, the black lights are turned on. The walls that were once so white hours ago are now illuminated in colorful graffiti. Invisible to the naked eye, under the black light, neon blues yellows pinks and reds emerge from the wall. They form words with detailed curls and sharp edges. They were sad words: destruction, ruin, devastation. Carefully sketched creatures appear, some have glowing bulblike eyes, others peered through paranoid slits. Individual scales have been carefully drawn and colored with different glow pens. Demons lurked in corners, curling their talons around scribbled poetry that went on for yards at a time. Gargoyles were perched above the door with hands outreached as if they were collecting the people walking in. On the wall opposite from the three-foot pentagram a detailed crucifix was drawn. Individual colors brought out blood sweat and tears on Jesus’ chest, then pooled more towards the floor in an ocean with even more monsters swimming around in neon hues.
The rumble of the first bass strums scare me-I had been so enthralled in the wall art that I hadn’t noticed the band come on stage. The drummer does a count off by whacking his sticks together and the music begins. I feel my lungs vibrating inside my chest with the different sways of the bass and angry beats of the drums.
The audience has gone wild. They are screaming and have begun dancing to keep rhythm with the music. The room is now phenomenally crowded and they pulsate in one steady movement like a whole. A few of them form a circle in the center of the room that reminds me of a wigwam and they begin something that has the same ring as an ancient African tribal dance: one person stands in the center and the others begin circling him as he flails his arms and legs about in no particular form or fashion. Another person will push into the center of the circle and throw the first dancer out and so on. As time progressed the ones that made up the circle began dancing-tossing their heads to and fro, shoving each other around.
I am fine standing in my corner watching them. Then without warning one of them trips out of the dancing circle and swings into me. I fall to the floor before I even know what hit me. My breath is knocked out of my chest and now I am frightened. The boy who hit me lies next to me. He snarls and stands up, dusting himself off and walks away without offering to help me up. I pick myself up and the tall girl stares at me as I smooth my hair down and tuck it behind my ears.
Yes they all looked at me now. They looked at me the way I looked at them: unable to understand why I would choose to live the way I do. I represented everything they hated about society. The SUV, the RAZR phone, the gaudy rings and designer bag. Heaven forbid my high heels. I was on their territory and I realized I hadn’t come in with enough respect for it. I had simply waltzed in like I always do. It was time to go.
I turned on my heel for the door. It was so crowded. I felt rude pushing my way out but I didn’t care. It’s hot now. Beads of sweat form on my forehead and I still push for the door. I remember a time when I was little. I had dove into a dark lake and I was on my way back up. I could see the sun wobbling on the surface of the water, I was clawing my way up for air and for that one second I thought I would drown-but with one more pull of my arms and with all that was in me, I surfaced. My sweaty palm slapped against the cold glass of the door, immediately forming a fog. My eyes are drawn once more to the old English words that are now just inches from my palm: Ghost Town.
I push the door open and emerge into the cool night air. Clean. They were what they chose to be. I found the title of the venue quite fitting. Ghost Town. They were something I knew I was too afraid to ever try to understand.

A Good Name

“I remember the first time I met your mother,” my grandmother shook her head as she spoke causing her grand pearls to click against each other on her aged neck. “Your father brought her home one weekend and as soon as they left I turned to my sister, Sybil, and I said to her, ‘Sybil, that woman is not like us and she’s certainly up to no good with my son’. That’s what I told Sybil.” She brought her hand to her mouth, heavy laden with a chunky gold ring topped off with a diamond. “We Roberts’ don’t associate with her kind.”

The Christmas tree lay perfectly in the glistening snow. The pieces of broken glass ornaments sparkled under the white moon and the smell of fresh pine permeated the cold December air from the broken needles and branches the tree had attained in the process of it’s removal from our dining room.  I was an eight year old then, standing on the porch with my head cocked, studying the discarded tree. Inside I could still hear my mother ranting and raving. My father slipped out the door, a gust of heat swept over me from our warm home. He let out a sigh and shoved his hands into his pockets as he stepped beside me and studied the tree with his head tilted to the side, as well.

“Dad…”

“Yes?”

“Why did mommy throw the tree into the yard?”

I looked up at my towering father; his crisp Polo shirt had lines down the arms where they had been starched. I could see his mind turning as he chose his words carefully and squirmed his lips around before he spoke.

“Your mother…thought we had too many trees in the house already,” he nodded, satisfied with his comment. It was true. We had four. Christmas was a time to overdo everything and we, the Roberts family, were spectacular at overdoing Christmas. We were known for having the most beautifully decorated house on the block and our Christmas parties were known all about town for being the best. Lavish decorations were strewn throughout the house and somehow, every year, there was a new Christmas tree in a room that did not have one the year before. The lucky room this year was the dining room.

“But why did she throw it off the porch? Christmas trees go at the end of the driveway for the garbage man to pick up.” I rattled off rules like this constantly. I was such an orderly child with a complex for tidiness and punctuality. Anyone breaking any rule of society or prim and properness would throw me into a complete hissy.

“Your mother…” my father thought long and hard again then polished his sentence off with the best conclusion that still, to this very day, sums up my mother. “Your mother isn’t like us, Carrie. So don’t try to define her.”

Holidays could always be counted on to bring about a royal fit in my house. For example, the thanksgiving dinner table was split up into teams. On the right side, was team Carl. Dad’s family. They were clean cut, fit, and stylish. I remember anytime I ever answered the door and found “Team Carl” standing there, I was greeted by a wave of strong perfumes from London, red lipstick, and folding money was always stuffed into my pockets before mom could see and disapprove.

Then there was the left side: Team Karen. Team Karen had unkempt hair and had different clunker cars every six months that were lovingly named. They were obese and brought candy rather than money for me that was pulled out of purses when Dad wasn’t looking. They were more of the story-telling kind, unlike the politic-debating Team Carl. Their clothes were ordinary and they always smelled like the food they had brought over that was baked from secret family recipes dating back to the American Revolution.

My mother had been raised in a poor family and received no formal education outside of high school. My father, on the other hand, had been raised in an upper class wealthy family and had attended college and Pharmacy School. School for me was a mix of the two worlds; mom raised me to live in the moment in high school, that the peak of life lied in those halls that were filled with cheerleaders and football players gossiping and riding around in big trucks on the weekend. My father had raised me to not care about what was going on socially in that school because, “After all, you’ll be out of there and on your way to college in no time! They won’t matter. They’ll be pumping your gas.” He encouraged me to volunteer, become active in school-based clubs and build a college résumé. “A good name is to be desired rather than great riches,” he would always tell me. To my mother’s dismay, I was never the homecoming queen, but I did graduate with honors as the president of our senior class and was inducted into the National Honors Society among many other organizations and activities. By the time I started filling out application for college, I didn’t have enough room to state my achievements and extracurricular activities.

My father had always made it a point to socially groom me for life. He put me in ballroom dancing classes, etiquette classes and golfing tournaments. Mom frequently quoted him from the day of my birth. She would curl up her lip and sit up straight poking her pinky finger in the air like an aristocrat and let the words tumble out of her mouth slowly and with a proper British sounding accent, “Your father. Your father looked me in the eyes on the day of your birth and said, ‘Karen, this little girl will have a silver spoon in her mouth in everything she does!’” She made a mockery of him and his spoiling ways.

Looking back, I don’t see how my parents ever married. My mother was a woman with a fetish for pink flamingos as yard decorations. Her idea of a good time included playing pool or bowling while drinking canned beer. My father was a man who had an obsession with nice cars and clean Polo shirts. His idea of a good time consisted of playing tennis at the country club and going for a Sunday afternoon drive in his convertible. While my mother spoke with a deep southern draw and used curse words to garnish her sentences, my father had a concise way of articulately pronouncing every word perfectly and every sentence was always grammatically correct.

For as long as I can remember, my father has woken up every morning at the crack of dawn and put on a suit and pleased people. I was raised, trained and sent off to college to get a degree so I could do the same thing: put on a suit and make money and be a people pleaser. But something unexpected came out of my raising. Something that dad had nothing to do with. I liked to draw. I was quite good at it. I won ribbons in art competitions for my art portraying feminism in a broken world. While mom didn’t buy me bows for my hair and teach me how to apply makeup correctly, she did fill my art drawer with paints and inks from other countries. Paper and wax for Bahtik art could always be found and she would never forget to pick up a canvas on her way home from grocery shopping. 

If my father shaped me socially, my mother certainly shaped me artistically. She taught me to question people and intentions. Dad taught me to shake hands and kiss babies. It’s in this that I realize I am what I am: a product of a socially unaware mother who would run through a department store cursing up a storm in a bewildered panic and a classy father who enjoyed the fruits of capitalism and hard work. The social class friction between my family members made me who I am today. I’ve looked at life from both sides and have picked my “team” to play. I find I also developed the ability to show courage in the face of  “the other side”, because my mother acquainted me with how hard life can actually be for some individuals.

They say college brings out the best and the worst in people. With this statement I agree. Growing up and receiving such mixed signals about where I was to fit in socially, I was truly curious to see where I would land when my parents flung me out of the house and into another town on a college campus. I remember a time during my freshman year when I had a choice to either roll out of bed in my pajamas and go to class or wake up an hour earlier for a shower and fresh clothes. I made the choice to take on the appearance of a lady and continued to do so until I was known as the “girl that always wears high heels to class”.

Years later I sit across from my mother at a dinner table. She props herself up on her arm over a glass of red wine and eyes me suspiciously. Out of nervous instinct I fidget with the pearls that hang around my neck and tuck my hair neatly behind my ears. The perfectionist in me longs to reach across and fix my mother’s distraught hair, too. In such dim light, perhaps people won’t see how tangled it is. I refrain. Silence. Tension is palpable as we wait for Dad to come back from greeting his friends he spotted when we were seated. I glance across the white clothed tables and flickering candles reflecting off of crystal glasses, and just on the other side of the restaurant I see him.  He strokes his hand smoothly over his silk tie and slips his other hand in his pants pocket to jingle his change as he speaks. I look back to my mother. She slouches lifelessly, still staring at me. I’m disappointed in the fact that I clearly bore my mother.

“You know, Carrie. I raised you and taught you everything I know. But you still turned out to be just like the man I married.” She sat back in her chair and examined me.

“Well, he is my father.” I laughed nervously back at her.

She looked down at her napkin and fumbled with it for a moment, pursing her lips in thought. After another pull of awkward silence she looked back up at me and let out, “I don’t mean to offend you, but I think you should know I don’t particularly like people like you. I make it a point to avoid people like you every day. How did that happen?”

“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

“Somewhere between the sports car, the pearls, the sorority letters constantly plastered on your chest and poofed hair you turned into...” she stopped. Long pause. Violins ironically chimed in the background from the band towards the back of the restaurant.

“What?” I’m interested to know my new label.

“Your father’s mother.” She nodded at me as she said it. She looked at me with pity written all over her face. She looked at me as if I was trapped. Slowly going down with the ship. I wondered if that was the same look she had been getting from me all of these years.

What may have appeared as an embarrassed blush to my mother was a proud glow on the inside. Mission accomplished. I was a real Roberts at last.