Chapter 13
TEN YEARS LEFT
The next few years were a blur.
We went on tour for the album, hitting all the Southern cities. Then it was time to make another one. The cycle repeated over and over. Album, tour. Album, tour. The only way to mark time was the changing of the seasons out the window.
Clayton curated every part of my life, and it was a beautiful one. I wanted for nothing.
He hired Hess as a fake assistant for me, and she left Mom’s and moved into the house. A room was set up for her in my wing, but she never touched that bed. We lived perpetually a few feet from one another. At any moment of the day, I could reach out and feel her warm skin against my palm.
She stayed up with me when I couldn’t stand to sleep, afraid of wasting precious moments.
The music that came to me at night were strange, slanted tunes.
Hess called them my night songs, and I had a whole drawer of them.
I encouraged her to keep working on her music career, but she struggled to write songs on her own, and over time, that dream seemed to recede into the background for her.
We also stopped calling ourselves sisters, and no one asked questions. I no longer worried that someone would find me and lock me up.
Now that I was Clayton’s wife, it was like everything I’d ever said and done had been wiped clean.
One morning during the recording of our fourth album, I awoke with the words ten years floating in my mind, as if they’d drifted in from somewhere else.
I realized it was my birthday. The real birthday that belonged to the demon child, that no one in this life knew about.
Ten years.
I have just ten years left.
I was usually good at pushing the thoughts away; I was so busy that it was easy to forget about everything else but the chaos of the moment.
But that morning, those two words refused to leave.
Hess stirred next to me, sensing my distress, and I told her I was fine when she asked. She was always watching me, looking for something she could make better. An uneasy feeling crept in, and I retreated downstairs to see if food would help.
Clayton was sitting at the breakfast table, fresh as a daisy in his starched suit, and he grimaced slightly when he saw my sorry state. Hair askew, bags under my eyes, still in the men’s pajamas I liked to sleep in.
I sat down and the cook, Annie, served me a butter pecan diet shake in a fancy glass.
I swear to God, that stuff tasted like sweet mud.
I eyed Clayton’s eggs and bacon across the table with murderous jealousy.
He was trying to get ahead of my metabolism, convinced it’d never keep up with my eating habits now that I was getting older. Twenty-three, and already an old crone.
When I first moved in, Annie made me these incredible feasts that I scarfed down like a mad king.
She loved it—cooks love to see people eat their food.
Then Clayton put his foot down. I’m sure he knew Hess was sneaking Krystal burgers into the house at night, but I figured he’d stay quiet until my measurements changed.
Then the real smackdown would come. My hillbilly scrawn was part of my look, and I couldn’t risk losing it.
“We’ve talked about this,” he said, gesturing at my disheveled appearance.
“But no one is here ’cept for you and Annie, and she don’t mind.” I looked over at Annie, who gave me the smallest wink.
“It’s ‘ex-cept’ and ‘doesn’t mind.’ And I do mind. As should you. If you’re not going to respect yourself, how can you expect anyone else to?”
I huffed, feeling too edgy for one of his lectures.
“We do not get to choose how we come into this world, but we choose how we present ourselves. Anyone can become a person of status if they put in the effort. Honestly, show some class.”
I had loved this idea of Clayton’s, that I could be anyone I wanted no matter my upbringing, and whenever he was around, I usually made sure to have my hair done, my makeup tidy, my outfit spotless.
Even when he wasn’t there, I could hear him scolding me for looking like a dirty hillbilly with no sense.
But today it made me want to curl into a ball.
Upstairs, I took a scalding shower and inhaled the steam.
That uneasy feeling strengthened, thrashing around like a wild cat in my lungs.
I knew what it was. It was that feeling I’d had back home and in the shed, like I was trapped and couldn’t escape, or maybe there was something trapped inside me that needed to get out.
In my closet, Clayton had laid out a powder-blue skirt suit, sensible pumps, and pearl earrings for me to wear to the studio that morning.
I’d have liked to try a psychedelic minidress or a pair of jeans, but he was real particular about my look.
The label didn’t want anyone thinking we were engaging in free love.
We were still good Christians singing about good values, never mind that Clayton didn’t give a damn about those values.
It was all about giving the people what they wanted.
Hess rolled pantyhose up each of my legs, caressing my calves as she did. I tried to pull her closer to me, but she said we couldn’t. I’d get wrinkled and then we’d be late, and we knew how Clayton would react. It would ruin the whole day.
Outside, we got into the backseat of one of Clayton’s Cadillacs with my hired driver sitting up front.
I still had no idea how to drive; Clayton said when you were a star, you paid people for things like that.
So I had Beau. Clayton gave him an itinerary every morning, and he took me and Hess wherever I was supposed to go.
A few hours later, I was in the booth singing a new song into the microphone.
Clayton had co-written it with one of his regular songwriters, Dick Rhine.
Another version of the same song they’d been reinventing over and over for each album, about my man doing me wrong and me hurting over it. This one was called “The Last Time.”
You said you’d change
You said you’d stop
But now you gone and strayed
I know I’ve said it
But I really mean it
This is the last time
I injected my voice with a bluesy sadness like I had with all the others, and as the words drawled from my throat, I realized I felt nothing inside. It was a fake sadness, like a candy flavor. There was nothing aching in my chest like when I sang one of my own songs.
I’d never been in love with a man, much less so in love that I’d put up with that kind of shit. I didn’t know that kind of desperation. With all the sadness I’d stored up over the years, it seemed strange that I’d have to fake it.
I got through the recording, but later I asked Clayton if I could show him a new song I’d written.
Whenever I wasn’t working, I was writing songs.
Music still drifted down to me at all hours of the day.
I knew they weren’t all winners, but I could tell when one hit a chord.
There was something addictive about the sound; I wanted to taste it in my mouth and swallow it down again and again.
I had this new one I’d worked on with Tima, one of my night songs, that was like steak against the teeth: thick, juicy, and silky in the middle.
I played the song for Clayton on my guitar and sang some rough lyrics about the hunger we all feel for a person who’s left us, that aches in the bones.
Hunger is the pain of something that’s no longer there.
The words worked perfectly with the rich melody, and it was a more complex sound than what they usually gave me. The heartbreak went deeper.
When I was done, I told him Tima and I wanted to do it as a duet. He’d seen Tima perform, and he knew how talented she was. We were lucky she was willing to record with me.
“You really got something there.” He picked up a guitar and played the melody back.
I started to play the rest of it with him, but he put his hand up.
“No, not that. Just this.” He played only a few bars of the melody, the real tender part at the center of it.
“Dick just sent me some lyrics that might work.
He closed his eyes and started to sing along with the melody:
God, send me a good woman
So I can be a good man
God, send me a good woman
So I can live your plan
We’d done this dance before. He’d take a piece of my song, the real tender kitten heart that would make it a hit, and then he’d change everything around it, including the words. They became these creatures I didn’t recognize, with my little kitten hearts beating in their chests.
I could just see it. I’d open the album cover and find “written by Clayton Redd and Dick Rhine” underneath the song. The first time it happened, I asked Clayton about it, and he told me that was just the way they did it, because of contracts.
Not this time, buddy. I could feel the fire stoking in me. He was gonna harvest that little kitten heart over my cold, dead body.
“No.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“That’s not what the song is about. I like the one Tima and I wrote, and I want to sing it with her.”
He paused. “Lou, I like what you wrote as well. I think it’s clever and ambitious. But you can’t honestly think we’d be able to do that song. That’s not what our fans or the label expect from us.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. I’d heard it all before.
“Besides. You know we can’t have Tima on the record.”
“Why the hell not?”
He gave me a look like he shouldn’t have to say it, but I didn’t give him the satisfaction. I jutted my chin, spurring him on.
“Don’t play dumb with me. What would people think? And we couldn’t tour with her—half the venues we play wouldn’t let a Black woman onstage.”
“I don’t give a damn what they think. And if that’s the truth, we shouldn’t be playing those venues. You know I can’t stand people who act like they’re better than others. It makes no goddamn sense.” He was such a coward. It made my blood boil.
“Come on, Lou, the label would have a fit.”