Judith Anne Seaman
I Stayed Long EnoughIt’s been an eventful year. First, my mother won the Wesson Cooking Oil Bake-Out for her Almond Sponge Roll and got to meet Florence Henderson, the Brady Bunch mother, at the Willowbrook Mall. Then I got accepted early at Douglass College. That was nice. But I don’t think anything will ever match the day my sister Rhonda went on “Divorce, TV Style” to get out of her marriage without paying legal fees.

I was home wallowing in misery that day, dragging out the last infectious particle of a flu virus, too ill to do my homework and too weak to go downstairs and watch TV. Mom came home early from her bookkeeping job at Halabi Persian Rugs in Paterson and I could barely roll over to tell her my tale of woe as she got my bathrobe from the closet and helped me to the couch.

Channel Eleven has movies on at four o’clock. We still had some time until one started.

“I don’t want anything trashy, Bea. If it’s trashy, I’m not watching it,” she said.
Mom’s idea of trashy is anything that doesn’t star Rock Hudson and Doris Day. I’ve tried to tell her on numerous occasions that Rock was gay but she won’t hear of it.

Mom went to the kitchen and made her usual clanging racket doing whatever she does in there. The kitchen is her territory and I’m fine with that. When she came out, she was carrying two of her best aluminum canapé trays (Mom loves her trays) set with teacups and napkins, and little dishes with small squares of toast and jam.

“I made you chamomile,” she said.  “Is it your stomach?”

“No,” I moaned.

“The casserole’s heating up,” she said.

“I’m not hungry.”

Mom bent down to take her shoes off and rub the bunions on her feet. I’ve convinced myself that if I don’t so much as look at her bunions, I’ll have a better shot at not getting them.

“Divorce, TV Style” was still on and just as Mom got settled on the couch, Rhonda appeared before us on the screen.

“There’s Rhonda,” she said, sounding very confused.

We watched in stunned silence as Rhonda yelled at Frankie from across a wooden table. I looked over at Mom and wondered how yet another ‘Rhonda drama’, as I called them, would turn out.

“Did you know she wanted a divorce?” Mom asked me.

“No, Mom,” I said quietly.

“She could have gone to Uncle Morrie.”

I looked over at her.

“Isn’t he an accountant?”

After the car commercial and the toothpaste ad and the station break advertising the news at seven, the judge told Rhonda and Frankie they’d never amount to anything and then said something else about a blueprint on their foreheads that was determining their futures.

Mom said stuff like that too, especially around the time Rhonda was in junior high and starting in on all that bad behavior. There was Joey Kaminski, Danny Kook, Bobby Gorski for starters, although what happened with Joey Kaminski stands out like it was yesterday. Him following her home from school, making those sounds with his lips, kissing and smacking, and all the while Rhonda acting like she hardly noticed or cared. I watched with fascination. Mom seemed to notice too, because even when she was dead tired from work, she’d march right up to our bedroom and not hesitate to offer her views on the matter.

‘Rhonda, boys will never respect you.’

‘Wait until your father hears about this.’

‘You don’t have a shot in you know where to make anything out of yourself, young lady.’

One day I came home late from school and found my sister and Joey Kaminski behind our house. It was dark already and, out back, the yellow light was shining down on the both of them like they were stars, the only ones in the universe. The back of our house was my refuge, my own private place. I always spent a few minutes out there before going inside if it wasn’t too cold. I loved that time, when we had just turned the clocks back and the wind would rustle against the drying leaves. I’d listen to the muted sounds of other families in their kitchens or taking out their garbage and wonder where I fit in the world.

But there they were. Joey had his hands on my sister’s hips. Her blouse was unbuttoned at the top and draped around her shoulders. I turned and ran down the block where Rhonda found me a little later, hiding behind someone else’s house, shivering. She pulled me up, bent my arm back and basically said she’d kill me if I ever uttered a word about it. She didn’t say ‘utter’. It was more like, ‘if you open your trap about this, I’m gonna kill you.’

Which I didn’t, but Mom found out anyway, although it didn’t seem to matter all that much, what with my father moving out. I wondered if Mom had given up on Rhonda. I guess I was hoping she had, so she would start in on me.

Mom went upstairs after putting my dinner on the coffee table. I watched as the camera followed my sister out of the courtroom. They stuck the lens right up into her face, mascara running down her cheeks, nose dripping. Her heel got caught as she was getting off the escalator. She screamed and, lucky for her, it broke away from her shoe. The cameraman panned down to the heel getting mangled by the iron slats. Humiliated, my sister hobbled through the revolving doors to the outside. I yelled obscenities at the cameraman and threw tuna noodle casserole at the screen and then spent the next half hour cleaning tiny pieces of mushrooms and wet noodles out of every crevice of the set under the glaring eye of my mother. If I could have rung that guy’s neck, I would have.

It was about eleven when I heard Rhonda’s keys jangling against our front door.

“Did Mom see?” she blurted, as she came inside.

“Yup.”

“Is she mad?”

“What do you think?”

“Is that Rhonda?” Mom called from her bedroom.

I don’t remember what was said next or who said it.  The whole room was suddenly washed in a bright white light and Rhonda hurried down to the basement. I looked out our living room window and saw Frankie leaning against his Chevy, cool as Luke, cigarette smoke rising through the headlights. It was a misty blue-gray scene, straight out of a James Dean movie, and just at that moment I wished I liked Frankie. I wished I looked like Rhonda with her lavender eye shadow and glitter-moussed hair so he would choose me. ‘Give Rhonda up and take me instead,’ I thought, trying out that idea, or maybe just the words, for size. Because honestly, I never liked Frankie. I never thought he cared about my sister, who she was or how she felt about things.

Rhonda came back upstairs carrying a couple of A&P bags filled with stuff. A black leather belt and an aerosol can of deodorant fell to the ground as she dumped them by Frankie’s feet.

“You can’t do this,” Frankie called out as Rhonda walked away. It was clear to me that Frankie knew he didn’t have much of a chance. He must have been feeling pretty desperate ‘cause seconds later the voice of Tammy Wynette called out to my sister from the cheap little speaker in Frankie’s ’78 Chevy Monza.

Tammy had always been my sister’s idol. Rhonda got married at seventeen just like Tammy. She was going to have three girls and become a beautician, and then a country singer, like Tammy. When Rhonda was in high school, she would spend every morning singing the words to “Stand By Your Man” into her toothbrush. I would see her when I barged into the bathroom before school, Rhonda singing and making faces, looking at herself in the mirror. I thought it was pretty weird because Essex County is a far cry from Nashville and what we have in our town is Polish people and I’m sure they have no idea where Tennessee is, let alone what country music sounds like.

Frankie kept saying ‘Honey’ and ‘Baby, don’t go,’ and next thing I knew he and Rhonda disappeared out back. I went upstairs and watched them from my bedroom window as they stood under the yellow light, holding each other for what seemed like eternity.

 

It was still dark when I woke up. Rhonda was gone. I went downstairs and stood in front of her closet. A short black skirt was hanging half-off its hanger, a lacy tank top lay wrinkled on the floor among dust balls and high-heeled shoes, unpaired, lying every which way. Long loopy earrings ripped into tiny pieces lay huddled in corners, as if Rhonda threw them thoughtlessly in the air, or maybe, on second thought, angrily.

I picked up a red furry scarf and wrapped it around my shoulders. It was something Rhonda would have done. I heard someone. For a second I thought it was her and ran to see. Did she come back? But the first thing I saw was my mother’s feet, swollen, jammed into black pumps, her bunions pushing out from each one.

“What are you doing down here?” she asked

“Nothing.”

 “What were you looking for”, her voice rising to a high-pitched scream.

“Nothing!”

I rolled the scarf into a small furry ball and tightened my grip around it.

“Give me that,” she demanded.

“Why?”

“Because I said so. She’s gone. Your sister’s a nobody and you’re not going to have her to look up to anymore.”

With that, she pulled the balled up scarf from my grip and charged upstairs. She was opening the back door as I caught her. I didn’t even know what I grabbed onto as I lunged for the scarf. She tripped and fell next to Rhonda and Frankie’s empty beer bottles. One by one they tipped toward her, each one hitting the next like dominoes. I picked one up and held it high over her head.

“Beatrice!” she screamed.

I felt like smashing her for each and every time she yelled at Rhonda. When she yelled at her for staying out late and coming home all disheveled. When she marched into school and dumped the cigarettes from Rhonda’s backpack onto the floor in front of her class. It wasn’t that I was defending my sister. I wanted my share of attention! Wasn’t I part of this family?

I don’t know why but all of a sudden I realized that Rhonda was never coming home again. I put the bottle down, back with the others, and left.

 

It wasn’t much of a station and at this time of night they only had a booth outside where a guy sold tickets and stuff you might want on the bus like candy and cigarettes. Rhonda was rummaging in her bag. She had washed off all her make-up.

“I have it here somewhere,” she was saying.

“Here,” I said, digging out a dollar bill from my jeans pocket. I was desperate for her to see how much she needed me, for her to stay.

“What are you doing here?” Rhonda asked.

“Where are you going?”

“As far from here as possible.”

“How will you pay for things?”
“Ever hear of a job? Well, that’s how I’ll pay for things.”

“But Rhonda …”

“What! Mom hates me. I can’t live with Frankie anymore. What do you want from me?”

“Not to go…” I whispered.

“I stayed long enough.”

“Please, Rhonda …”

“What? You want to keep watching me screw things up? You get a charge out of that? You writing some paper about me, or something? I see you jotting things down in that little book of yours. It’s about me, and all the fucked up things I do. Right?”

“No! Why would you say that?”

Just then the bus driver called out.

“We’re leaving. Let’s go, young lady.”

“I gotta go,” she said, her voice catching on the last word. She looked scared.
“Come with me.”

“What?”

“You know about that place. You can help me find it.”

“I only heard of it, Rhonda. Nashville’s a big city. Where would we stay? I have school tomorrow. You don’t even have enough money for a pack of gum.”

Rhonda pulled out a shiny orange and blue Master Card from her bag. When they got it in the mail, Frankie told me there was a seven hundred and fifty dollar limit on it. He wanted to use it for the baby, when they had one. But right now all Rhonda could think about was getting to the Grand Ole Opry.

“I can’t go,” I said.

“Just help me get settled.”

Rhonda looked back at the driver then at me, pleading.

“Okay,” I said, “but only for a day or two.”

And just like that we were buying another ticket for Nashville. It cost thirty dollars and Rhonda charged it, signing her name, Mrs. Frank Jones, on the charge slip.

The bus pulled away from the curb. It was close to midnight. There were tiny overhead lights above each seat and people started clicking them on. Rhonda pulled out her               country music magazine and leaned back.

“I don’t have anything,” I said.

“What?”

“I didn’t plan on this trip. I don’t have anything to read.”

Rhonda shrugged and said she was sorry.

We were sitting in the second row and I turned around to see the other passengers. It didn’t seem like anyone had planned this trip. Mostly, people were looking out at the dark. Or maybe at their own reflections and wondering what on earth they were doing there.

I stepped over Rhonda.

“Where are you going?”

“I have to go to the bathroom.”

There was a line and I was bored. First I wondered if the kid in front of me was a boy or a girl. That kept me busy for forty-five seconds. Then he turned around.

“You going to Memphis?” he asked me.

“No, Nashville.”

He asked me why, as if that were the last place on earth anyone would want to visit.

“My sister loves Tammy Wynette.”

“Tell her to go to Memphis. It’s much cooler.”

“Oh, absolutely. We’ll change our plans right now.”

He rolled his eyes and turned around.

“Okay, why’s it cooler?” I asked.

“Elvis, man!”

He turned out to be an okay kid. He’d been to Nashville before and told me about a youth hostel for four dollars a day.

 

The woman at the front desk gave us a key and pointed down the hall where there was a room with four cots. The key didn’t fit but the door wasn’t even locked. The other girls were sleeping. Rhonda tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the backpacks they were using as pillows. The mattresses were thin with gray stripes. I lay down and felt the metal coils beneath me.

On our second morning there I told my sister I wanted to leave. I called Mom from the pay phone downstairs. After the initial yelling, she sounded kind of happy to hear from me.

“Frankie’s been by every night since you left. He wants to know where Rhonda is.”

“Oh.”

“I’m sure he’ll be by tonight.”

I was silent.

“What should I say?”

“Say you don’t know, Mom.”

“Okay.”

She was quiet for a moment.

“Can you come home?”

“Sure, Mom.”

I went back to sleep for a while and woke up remembering the guitar book Rhonda bought when she was in high school and how she begged me to teach her to play a song.

I looked over at her. She was flipping through Country Music Magazine. I wanted to tell her how I was forever measuring my life against hers and always coming up short.

“Hey, let’s get some food and go see the Grand Ole Opry,” I said instead.

“Yeah?”

“Sure.”

We got there late but managed to get a couple of cheap tickets from a scalper. The night was all Rhonda’s, and I took it in through her eyes. The enormous stage with backdrops advertising products we had never heard of, biscuits and medicated powder, old people passing down cups of hot coffee, a guy on stage telling us when to clap. All this, plus the line-up. Names we never heard of. Some we thought we had. I kept looking over at my sister. It wasn’t hard to tell what she was seeing and I sat on that bench, praying like never before, that she would get just that.

When it was over we trekked back to the bus station where Rhonda paid for my ticket, once again signing her name on the charge slip. I noticed a rack of picture postcards and bought a bunch, then stood in the bathroom stall writing letters to my mother from her. There was a progression from ‘I’m working as a waitress’ to ‘I had an audition’ to the last and best one, ‘I sang at the Grand Ole Opry.’

Rhonda walked me to the bus and just as I was about to get on, I pulled the postcards from my pocket and shoved them at her.

“Send these to Mom,” I said, and then hugged her and wished her good luck.

 

It’s been a few months now. The days are getting longer. I’m tired of sitting on the front steps waiting for the mailman to deliver those postcards. He never does. I’m tired of lying to Mom about telephone calls she missed from Rhonda, of hoping that Rhonda’s been discovered by one of those talent agents. I wanted so badly for Mom, the judge, for everyone to have been wrong about her. But I don’t know anymore. Maybe Rhonda got back on a Greyhound bus to Jersey and is living somewhere around here, hiding from us. Maybe that blueprint on her forehead is more like a maze she can’t get out of. But that thought scares the hell out of me because if Rhonda has a blueprint on her forehead, I guess I do, too.