Chapter 6 #2
“No, honey. You didn’t. Your answer was perfect. She has the right to think however she wants about things, but I wasn’t having her telling me I was a bad parent just because she’d never seen me at the school. She’s obviously new here.”
“I thought I was going to have to call Dad if she made you any madder.”
Mal walked into the room. “How’re the auditions going, buckaroo?”
“Not good.”
“Sorry to hear that. Hey, Lil.”
“Hey. Why are you all dressed up in your blues?”
Devon liked seeing him and his friends in their Buffalo Soldiers outfits.
“We had a Community Service Award ceremony.” He turned back to Devon. “Did anybody show up?”
“Yes. The first person was the girl who won the talent show at the library.”
“The Taylor Swift wannabe?”
Devon nodded.
“At the library she had Taylor’s can’t-dance moves down, but her voice? No way should she have won.”
Devon agreed. “Her mom was with her, and they only came to the audition because they thought Ms. Roni might be here.”
Mal looked confused. “Why?”
His mom answered. “To ask Roni how to get the daughter a record deal.”
“Lord,” Mal said and shook his head. “Folks are delulu.”
Devon continued, “The other people who came just left. The mom made my mom really mad.”
“What happened?”
They took turns telling him the story.
When they finished, he asked, “How fast did she run out of here, Lil?”
“Not fast enough. She stayed just long enough to tell us her son only played spirituals and to call today’s popular gospel music ‘that mess.’”
“She sounds like fun.”
“Is it too late to audition?” a male voice asked. They looked to the doorway and saw a thin older man with gray stubble on his face holding the leash of a scraggly little dog with graying patches on its fur. In fact, the man and dog bore an almost comical resemblance to each other.
“It’s not too late,” Lily said. “Come on in.”
Devon hadn’t envisioned having an adult in the band, but at that point he was open to anyone.
The dog, wet from the rain, shook itself and sent water spraying all over the floor.
Devon wondered if Tamar would insist on him mopping it up, since he was responsible for the room.
But the man took a towel from the duffel he had slung over his shoulder and wiped up the water. “Sorry about that.”
Devon liked him right away. “My name is Devon July, and this is my mom and my grandfather. Do you play an instrument?”
“Sure do. Banjo.” He reached into the duffel and took out an old but well-polished banjo. “Did you know that the banjo originated in Africa?”
“No, I didn’t,” Devon said in reply.
“Well, it did, and American music is all the better for it. I’m Hector Frank, and this here is Ralph. Say hi to the nice people, Ralphie.”
Ralph barked.
“You do know you’re auditioning for a kid’s band?” Lily asked. By the smile on her face, Devon thought she liked Mr. Frank too.
“Ralphie doesn’t care. He’ll sing with anybody.”
They all paused.
Mal asked, “Are you both auditioning?”
“No. Just Ralph.”
Devon’s eyes went wide.
Mal hid his laugh with short coughs.
Lily blinked with surprise.
“He loves to sing. Don’t you, buddy?”
Ralph barked in agreement, and Hector gave him an affectionate pat on the head.
Mal gave up on hiding his grin. “Let’s hear what you got, Ralphie.”
Stunned, Devon looked at Mal as if he’d lost his mind.
Hector began strumming the old American classic “Home on the Range,” then sang the opening verse. When he reached the refrain Home, home on the range, Ralph threw back his head and howled along.
Lily and Mal laughed joyously. Devon found nothing joyous about it. He was not letting a dog be in his band. With that in mind, he interrupted the singing of the second verse by saying politely, “Mr. Frank, I don’t think Ralph is right for my band.”
He stopped strumming. “No?”
“No sir.”
He appeared disappointed. “That’s okay. We thought we’d give it a try.”
“Thank you for coming.”
“Thanks for listening. We appreciate it. Didn’t we, Ralph?”
Ralph barked a cosign.
Hector placed the banjo back into the duffel. “Good luck with the band, Devon. Here’s Ralph’s card in case you change your mind.”
Devon took it and saw that it read Ralph the Singing Dog and listed Mr. Hector as manager. It included a phone number and the domain @.
“Thank you.”
“Nice meeting you all.”
“Same here,” Mal said.
With a parting wave, Hector and Ralph exited.
Mal laughed. “Now that was something.”
Lily agreed. “It truly was.”
Devon looked up at the clock. It was twelve fifteen. Auditions were scheduled to end at noon. “Can we go home now, Mom?”
She turned his way, took in his somber face, and replied with a quiet, “Sure.”
On the ride home, Devon was even more glum than he’d been at the beginning of the day.
“Sorry the auditions didn’t go the way you hoped.”
“Thanks,” he said, his voice mirroring his mood. “Now what do I do?”
“That’s up to you.”
“I really wanted a lot of people to come.”
She looked his way. “I know you did, but if you really want this band to happen, you shouldn’t give up.”
“I guess.” But he didn’t see a way forward. “Zoey said I could come back to the band anytime I want.”
“Are you considering that?”
“No, and I told her no. I don’t want her to win.”
“From my mom seat, it seems like the only person who thinks this is a battle is you, Devon. Zoey isn’t fighting with you.”
“But she is.”
“Not if you look at this honestly and not with your ego. Why should she change the name of her band? Notice the pronoun, baby. Her band. Not Devon’s or Wyatt’s or mine.
Her band. You don’t get to covet someone else’s dream and then stomp your foot like an angry toddler when they don’t let you take it.
Life doesn’t work that way. What’s for Zoey is for her.
How many of your own blessings are you blocking by believing it’s okay to take hers? ”
A part of him knew she was right, and he thought back to his inner conversation about being entitled, but his pride wouldn’t let him acknowledge it; at least, not out loud.
Parts of himself still clung to wanting life to work the way he wanted it to, because it always had when he lived with his grandmother.
He wished she was still alive. During his weekly sessions with Reverend Paula, she said his grief will always be in his heart and for him to place it in a special place so he could move forward to what the future had in store, but he didn’t want to.
He wanted to stay the Devon he’d always been; he didn’t know how to be anyone else, and honestly, he was a little afraid to try.
“I know you’re disappointed, but it’s Pizza Saturday, right? That will cheer you up.”
“I don’t want to go. They’re going to ask me about the auditions.”
“And?”
“What am I supposed to say?”
“The truth. You’re going to have to fess up sooner or later, so why not just get it out of the way and be done?”
“They’re going to laugh.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
They were now in the driveway.
She turned off the engine, and silence filled the interior.
Her next words were spoken gently. “Facing fear is hard, Lord knows it is, but learning how to do it makes you stronger inside. Running away just leaves you anxious and exhausted, baby. I learned that the hard way when I decided to divorce my first husband.”
“Davis’s father?” Davis was her oldest son. He was in his twenties. He and Devon FaceTimed a lot and got along well.
“Yes. I spent months being too scared to confront him about his cheating on me, and the longer I waited, the sadder and more anxious I became. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate, messed up on my job.
I finally had to have a come-to-Jesus moment because I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life that way.
So, I got up one morning, put my fears behind my heart, and kicked him out. ”
Devon had never heard the story before.
“I was happier, baby Davis was happier, and so was my life.”
“But I don’t want to be laughed at.”
“No one does, Devon. We all suffer embarrassment at some point. It’s a part of living. We learn to deal with it, get past it, and move on.” She reached over and softly cupped his cheek. “You will too.”
As her hand fell away, he thought back on all she’d done for and with him in the five years they’d been family. She was patient and loving; tough when she needed to be; but very rarely angry with him, and she wasn’t angry now. Just being his mom.
She asked, “Pizza or angst?”
He still wasn’t ready to face his friends but agreed that getting it over with was pretty much all he had. “Pizza, I guess. I need to change my clothes first, though. Making pizza’s messy.”
“Understood. Let’s go inside, and I’ll drive you and Amari, if he’s here, when you’re ready.” She opened her door.
“Mom?”
She stopped. “Yes?”
“Thanks for everything.”
“You’re welcome. Things will work out. You’ll see.”
Heaven
“Lily’s right,” Rachel said. “Things will work out, but Devon needs to get out of his own way.”
Daisy agreed. “Yes, he does. He should’ve taken the olive branch Zoey offered and been done, but no, with him it’s Pride before the Fall.”
“That conversation he had with himself about The Wizard of Oz may be changing his thinking.”
“We can only hope,” Daisy replied.
“I liked Ralphie,” Lucretia said, smiling.
Her friends chuckled. They’d liked him too.
“I didn’t like either of those moms, though,” Daisy pointed out. “We saw the talent show. The daughter can’t sing, so I doubt there’ll be a recording contract in her future.”
“But you had to admire Lily’s restraint,” Rachel said.
“Absolutely,” Lucretia replied. “How dare that Keene woman step to her that way. As Lily and the young people say on the internet: She must not go here.”
Rachel smiled in response. “She definitely does not.”
“Hopefully, she’ll find out who Lily is and be more respectful in the future.”
“Fingers crossed, or Lily might have to give her one of Zoey’s right crosses.”
Lucretia asked, “Did you two find Tamar’s dream as disturbing as I did?”