Me Talk Pretty One Day

“Seriously, though, it helps if you give your instrument a name. What do you think you'll call yours?”

“Maybe I'll call it Oliver,” I said. That was the name of my hamster, and I was used to saying it.

Then again, maybe not.

“Oliver?” Mister Mancini set my guitar on the floor. “Oliver? What the hell kind of name is that? If you’re going to devote yourself to the guitar, you need to name it after a girl, not a guy.”

“Oh, right,” I said. “Joan. I’ll call it…Joan.”

“So tell me about this Joan,” he said. “Is she something pretty special?”

Joan was the name of one of my cousins, but it seemed unwise to share this information. “Oh yeah,” I said, “Joan’s really…great. She’s tall and…” I felt self-conscious using the word tall and struggled to take it back. “She’s small and has brown hair and everything.”

You certainly couldn’t accuse him of being unsupportive. His enthusiasm bordered on mania, yet still it failed to inspire us.

Immediately following the performance a small crowd gathered around my father, congratulating him on his delivery and comic timing.

“Including your father was an excellent idea,” the curator said, handing me my check “The piece really came together once you loosened up and started making fun of yourself.”

Our parents discouraged us from using the titles “ma’am” or “sir” when addressing a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would automatically be disinherited. Mountain Dew was forbidden, and our speech was monitored for the slightest hint of a Raleigh accent. Use the word “y’all,” and before you knew it, you'd find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. […]

We might not have been the wealthiest people in town, but at least we weren’t one of them.

There was no electricity for close to a week. The yard was practically cleared of trees, and rain fell through the dozens of holes punched into the roof. It was a difficult time, but the two of them stuck it out, my brother placing his small, scarred hand on my father's shoulder to say, “Bitch, I'm here to tell you that it's going to be all right. We'll get through this shit, motherfucker, just you wait.”

In the evenings, lacking anything better to do, I used to head east and stare into the windows of the handsome, single-family town houses, wondering what went on in those well-appointed rooms. What would it be like to have not only your own apartment but an entire building in which you could do whatever you wanted? I’d watch a white-haired man slipping out of his back brace and ask myself what he'd done to deserve such a privileged life. Had I been able to swap places with him, I would have done so immediately.

My father has always placed a great deal of importance on his daughters’ physical beauty. It is, to him, their greatest asset, and he monitors their appearance with the intensity of a pimp. What can I say? He was born a long time ago and is convinced that marriage is a woman’s only real shot at happiness.