Chapter 12
FOURTEEN YEARS LEFT
The first time I heard my voice on the radio, I was in Hess’s Mustang in the middle of a snowstorm.
I’d convinced the girls to go night skating on the lake in Centennial Park, and we were all piled in the car wearing every item of clothing we owned.
Snow streaked across the windshield as we slid on the icy asphalt, Hess white-knuckling the steering wheel and muttering that she couldn’t believe I’d talked her into this.
I heard a familiar tune coming out of the speaker, and I turned up the knob to the sound of my own voice singing, When we met, you called me pretty little lady.
Hess and I stared at each other, eyes bugged, as we skidded across the road into a ditch.
We all screamed as the car came to a stop, then Phoebe leaned over the backseat, turned the song all the way up, and jumped out of the car.
In the beam of the headlights, she danced by herself in the middle of the street.
Then Tima got out, and Hess and I joined them, and then, finally, Martha.
Hess pulled me into her arms, and we waltzed madly across the asphalt to the beat of the song, nearly slipping a few times, our faces chapped with cold.
The others danced around us, their whoops absorbed by the snowflakes falling thickly on our shoulders.
Cars honked and swerved, but we didn’t move from the street.
I had earned my place here in Nashville. That was my voice on the radio.
A few weeks later, our album hit #1 on the country charts, and I was invited to perform at the Grand Ole Opry with Clayton.
The inside smelled like a church with its old wooden frame, and the freshly washed bodies and fried chicken suppers laid across the laps of the audience.
Phoebe, who was still in charge of my wardrobe, led me down a narrow hallway into the women’s restroom where all the ladies got ready.
It was cheek-stinging winter outside, but in that tiny room, it was hot as a bonfire.
Packed wall to wall with women in slips and curlers, hairspray shot into the air from all angles, an assault of so many different perfumes that it numbed the nostrils.
Phoebe elbowed her way to a space in the corner, pulled out the dress she’d made, and helped me get into it.
It was ivory with a high neck, inspired by Clayton’s grandmother’s wedding photo that hung in the hallway of his house.
The Opry was all about tradition; you were supposed to pretend you were still a country girl singing for church on Sundays.
The label had used our wedding photo as the album cover, so we were leaning into the wedding theme, and people loved it.
At every performance, I came out in a different white dress with my daisy-studded wig. The perpetual bride.
There was no waiting room backstage, so we just hovered in the wing out of view, sweating it out until it was our turn.
Hess kept dabbing around my hairline, sopping up the little beads of sweat.
She didn’t let go of my hand. When they finally called me and Clayton, she squeezed it hard and kissed me on the cheek.
She whispered that she’d be right here, just a few feet away, watching me.
I calmed, and then moved my hand to Clayton’s and walked out to the cheers of the crowd.
I could hear my name out in the chaos of their sound, the roar forming into smooth pearls of “Belle, Belle, Belle.” A row of teenage girls sat at the front wearing matching blonde wigs studded with daisies, and they held their arms up, reaching out to me as we headed to our mics.
Under the hot lights of the stage, I became Belle, smiling and waving at the crowd with all the good nature I had.
The band strummed the first few chords of our duet, and we launched into it, and as always, I became only the music.
And then, in a snap of my fingers, it was over.
Clayton bowed, then said my name and gestured toward me. I curtsied, and the crowd hollered louder, the sound deafening. We exited the stage, and the calamity continued, becoming a chant of my name once again.
“Belle! Belle! Belle!”
One of the producers came over and told me I’d better go out there for an encore or they’d tear the place apart.
I walked out alone onstage, feeling the empty space around me. I’d never performed solo before.
This time when I looked out, I saw that the Opry really was a church.
The audience sat in wooden pews in a circle surrounding the stage, and I was at the center of it, like a preacher come to share the good word.
They wanted me to tell them stories, so they could feel their own heartbreak.
So they could take some solace home with them and feed on it for the week.
I remembered an old murder ballad from the holler. It was one of my favorites because it wasn’t about a man killing a woman, which a lot of them were. It was about my great-great-grandmother, and a curse.
This was the story I wanted to tell.
I strummed my guitar and started to sing:
There was a woman in town who sang so sweet
Her beauty was beyond compare
But one day a bright specter she did meet
There aft she was no longer fair
There was only my voice and the twang of my guitar, and I could feel the richness of the sound in that room, the notes oiled to a high, smooth shine. It traveled out and stroked the ears of each person, like the building itself was an instrument, created for just this purpose.
I watched them close their eyes as the song took them over. The force of their feeling filled my spirit, my body lifting a few inches above the stage, hovering there beneath the stained glass and the beaming faces of the congregation.
Looking back, I realize I hadn’t made it in that moment. No.
I had risen.