Chapter 32
SIX MONTHS LEFT
Twenty-eight unauthorized biographies have been written about my mother’s life. Four full-length documentaries are available to watch. Thousands of hours and pages of interviews and articles.
And not one named the town she’d grown up in. Only “a little mountain holler” or “near Pigeon Forge” or endless variations of the same evasive answer.
If I was going to find out more about the curse, I needed to know where it came from.
But how could I do that if I didn’t even know my mother’s real name?
Judging from my search results, and from her comment about her “real birthday,” I suspected that she’d changed her identity when she first came to Nashville.
So I combed through the records of every town in the mountains, some of them unnamed or unincorporated, as if they existed in a dimension separate from the rest of the world.
I searched birth records for a baby girl with a deceased mother, or with a birth date of July 25, the date of Belle’s death, but I found none.
I searched adoption records for a girl taken in by an aunt and uncle, but there were few adoption records to begin with—there were honestly very few records at all, considering how many people must have lived and died in that region over the decades.
It was clear that recordkeeping, at least back then, had not been a common practice.
If I couldn’t find it online, I would need to consult the only people she had bared herself to—the people who must know her secrets.
A week later, I booked a trip to Nashville under the guise of Christmas shopping to see Hess and the girls.
On the way to the airport, I felt a little funny driving over the flat, dusty roads, as if I wasn’t quite connected to the ground.
At the bar near the gate, I ordered sweet potato fries and a beer, attempting to center myself.
I had always found planes comforting—I liked giving myself over to the journey, cozy in my small compartment, watching the saddest movies I could find and letting the sorrow flow freely.
But as I got in line to board, my heart beat faster and my cheeks flushed.
When I tried to take a step forward, I couldn’t feel my feet against the carpet.
Somehow, I made it to my seat in first class, and for a moment, I was swept along in the tide of activity as the attendant helped stow my bag and asked if I would like a drink.
I ordered a tequila on the rocks with lime and hoped that would be enough to calm my nerves.
But as I sat there waiting for it, studying the interior of the cabin, I imagined the flight attendant shutting and sealing the door, us lifting into the air.
I saw the cabin suddenly plummeting, luggage flying, oxygen masks hanging like loose eyeballs above the seats as the passengers screamed.
Me sitting there in a state of panic, irrevocably trapped.
Us crashing into the parched terrain and dying in a blaze against the red rock.
Blood pulsed in my face, and I struggled to breathe, convinced they weren’t pumping enough oxygen into the cabin. As the final passengers stepped on to the plane, I stood up, grabbed my bag, and asked to leave.
On the drive back home, my hands shook against the steering wheel.
I took an overpass arcing above four layers of highway, and I felt myself leave my body and float up toward the ceiling, no longer in control of the wheel or the pedals, like one of those nightmares where you’re riding in the backseat, and you realize no one is driving the car.
I imagined careening into the van in front of me, shooting through the glass of my windshield, landing splayed on the asphalt.
I took the first exit, pulled over on the side of the road, and called Micah, pretending that the car had broken down. He picked me up, and we had it towed to the shop nearby. When he asked me why I hadn’t gotten on the plane, I told him I wasn’t feeling well.
I pretended to be sick in bed for the next week and called the girls instead.
“What was my mother’s real name?” I asked Hess after we’d indulged in the usual small talk.
“What do you mean? You know Lulabelle was her real name.”
“No, I mean like her real name. The one she was born with.”
Hess was quiet for a moment. “Honey, as far as I know, your mother was born Lulabelle Powers.” She paused. “Why do you ask?”
I could hear the suspicion in her voice, and I remembered the cover story I’d crafted.
“I’m researching Belle’s life. A little side project.
There’s hardly anything real about her out there,” I explained lightheartedly.
“And I realized I know almost nothing about her family, and I’ve had a hard time tracking anything down in the public records.
I thought she might have gone by a different name at one point. ”
Hess exhaled. “Oh, okay. That sounds interesting. But like I said, I’m pretty sure she was born Lulabelle Powers. Maybe they didn’t keep consistent records back then. It was a long time ago.”
“What was the name of the town where she grew up?”
“I don’t think it was a separate town—I think it was part of Pigeon Forge or whatever county that is. I’m sure you’ll find something if you search in that area.”
I couldn’t tell if she was lying or she truly didn’t know.
“I’m also having some trouble with The Cursed Woman piece of her story. She didn’t give many interviews about that album, so I don’t have a lot to go on in terms of her inspiration. I know you aren’t the biggest fan of that one, but did she ever talk to you about it, or…?”
Hess was quiet again. “Rhea, you know I wasn’t around for that, so I can’t help you there.”
“I know, but I thought maybe later she told you—”
“No. She didn’t.” There was a rare edge to her voice, and I decided it wasn’t worth pushing harder.
“Okay, that’s fine, thanks for answering my questions.”
There was a beat of silence. “Honey, do you need me to come there? That bug you have sounds nasty.” I had told her I was too sick to fly. “I could be on a plane in a few hours.”
“Aren’t you recording right now?”
“Yes, but I could take a break. I know you’ve been struggling.”
“You really don’t need to come. It’s just a virus, I promise. And it’s been good to lose myself in this project. Helps me not fixate on… it. Let’s talk again soon. We can figure out plans for Christmas.”
She hesitated, then said, “Well, all right. Bye, dear.”
“Bye.”
My calls with Phoebe and Tima produced the same results, as if they’d decided to say the same exact thing. I wished Martha were still around—she had sensed my mother was hiding something in The Cursed Woman album; she would have told me everything she knew.
My next call was to the office of Mr. Blau.
A few months ago, I had gotten a call from him informing me he was retiring.
While I’d rarely seen him in person over the years, he’d been a constant in my life—mailing me financial statements, calling with requests for the estate, guiding me on major decisions like the purchase of our house and cars.
What I imagined a father might do, without the pesky emotional baggage.
When I called his office, I was hoping they could look at his Belle Powers files for any trace of a real name, birth certificate, or place of birth, but the attorney found nothing.
When I asked for Mr. Blau’s home phone number, I was informed he was suffering from Alzheimer’s, and his family preferred he not talk or visit with anyone who might confuse him.
I had no idea he’d been sick, but it seemed like him, to elegantly make his exit before anyone could see him fall apart.
My final call was to Clayton Redd, whom I hadn’t spoken to since our meeting at the state fair over a decade ago.
Hess gave me his number, but when I tried it, he didn’t answer.
I left a voicemail and waited. A week passed and still no word from him.
So I called again, left another voicemail.
Sent a few texts. No response. I wanted to ask Hess to call him for me, but I was never sure where they stood with one another. They didn’t seem exactly friendly.
In lieu of any other avenue of information, I went searching in the deeper annals of the internet. I always avoided this route in my research unless absolutely necessary, and even then, I only saw it as a source of garbage some people were gullible or deranged enough to believe.
But this time, I went looking for answers.
My mother had been known for two seemingly contradictory things—her emotional vulnerability, and her intense secrecy.
Fans felt like they really knew her, and at the same time, very little was known.
It was why so many rumors swirled online—why did she never show her chest?
What was hiding under her wig? Where did her songs really come from?
How did she really die? The internet was filled with speculation.
But what interested me the most were the subreddits and YouTube videos dedicated to the cult of The Cursed Woman.
These particular fans believed Belle Powers was haunted by a real curse, and the album held clues as to how she would eventually die.
On the cover of the album, my mother held her right arm out to the side, pointing west, indicating the direction of the place where she would meet her end—the West Coast, Santa Barbara, California.
The light on the cover was just at the end of golden hour, but when you flipped it over, the background was of a forest at night, indicating the time of her death.
When “Let Me Out” was played backward, fans swore it sounded like she was saying I will crash into the sea beneath the serpentine rhythm at the beginning of the song.