9
I got to Flint Recording early and walked up and down Seventeenth Avenue thinking about how this was the first time I was going to sing, “Daddy, Don’t Come Home” in public. I felt panic like hungry little dogs nipping at my heels, and I started mentally screaming for Tonilynn to arrive. Finally I saw her crossing the street, wearing a sparkly aqua T-shirt and tight stonewashed jeans tucked into her pink cowboy boots.
I held the door for her, and she passed through wheeling the biggest, reddest Samsonite I’d ever seen, and cradled in her other arm, like a baby, an enormous load of flowers. “Brung you some hydrangeas for the road trip, hon,” she said, her frosted pink lips stretching in a wide smile as she lifted the bouquet.
I was stunned. “Ohhhhh, thank you. Nobody ever gave me flowers before.”
“Sure they did. I’ve personally seen dozens of bouquets lined up every time you have a concert or award ceremony.”
“They all say ‘To Jenny Cloud’ on the little cards. Those people don’t know me.” I felt tears welling.
Tonilynn set the flowers on a table and took my hands in hers. “When we’re all boarded, I’m going to sit down and write a little card, saying, ‘To my dear friend, Jennifer Clodfelter, who is beautiful inside and out.’ ”
I blinked back the tears. Tonilynn loved me despite my flaws and it was a relief just having her with me. Maybe this tour wouldn’t be the disaster I feared.
“Alrighty,” Tonilynn said a bit later, “time to head to our home away from home.”
We hit the sidewalk, striding along in the early morning air, walking the few blocks to the tour bus
“Thanks again for the flowers.”
“Well, all I did was cut them. Aunt Gomer did the planting, the fertilizing, and the weeding. I swan, Jennifer, that woman may not know what she ate for lunch, but she recollects every little thing from her growing-up years! She started in telling me this long, convoluted story about how these hydrangeas are descended from ones on her great-aunt Myrt’s homeplace, and you know how old people are, once she got going on the hydrangeas, that led to her having to tell about how she used to love to play marbles out on the packed dirt of their front yard, and then how on Saturdays, she and her passel of cousins would ride the train into the big city to watch a moving-picture show. She still calls them moving-picture shows! Ha! Then she got going on the gristmill. I don’t hardly know what a gristmill is.” Tonilynn laughed as she wrestled her luggage down a curb, turning the corner where the Eagle came into view.
“Ooooh weee!” Tonilynn stopped so abruptly I almost crashed into her standing there, her mouth open as she stared at the side of my forty-five-foot “Eagle Luxury Entertainment Coach,” which Mike had recently commissioned to be painted with a huge color picture of me from the waist up, holding my Washburn, singing. Next to my giant head were the words JENNY CLOUD, LIVE! Milky-blue clouds airbrushed in the background gave the image an otherworldly look.
“That just beats all I ever saw,” Tonilynn said after a spell. “A bona fide piece of moving art! The artist captured both your tomboy side and your sweet side. I love it. Don’t you love it?”
“Sure,” I said. But for the millionth time that day I felt really unsure. The stage had always ushered her siren call, offered me the promise of her transformative powers. I’d always anticipated her with full faith in a beautiful experience. But today, the fear was overwhelming. I still didn’t know how Mike had convinced me to journey back to that place I had to go in order to write “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” And though I’d rehearsed to a ridiculous degree what to say between numbers, working up a smooth transition from “Blue Mountain Blues” to “Daddy, Don’t Come Home,” trying my best to soften the bad feelings by coating them in vague words I didn’t really want to call lies, still I had a sense of overpowering dread inside me. I was so nervous about tomorrow at the Toyota Center in Houston I could hardly swallow. What if I lose it up there? What if I fall apart and embarrass myself in front of thousands of fans?
Tonilynn hauled her luggage up onto the Eagle. “Soon as we put our things away, I’ll make coffee and we can just sit and visit a spell.”
We had a half hour before Mike and the band were scheduled to arrive, and I was glad to hang out with just Tonilynn and her chattering, get my bearings, and settle in for the week ahead.
Every time I boarded the Eagle for another round of concerts, a part of me was still astonished. To look at the Eagle from the outside, you wouldn’t dream it could hold a kitchen, a lounge with a U-shaped leather sofa, a full bath, and a color satellite TV along with a complete sound system in all ten bunks. For sleeping, on one side of the bus was me, Tonilynn, Mike, my publicist, and the driver, and on the other, my five band members. The band and I shared a lot of mutual love and respect, but we didn’t hang out together. I think they understood I’m the loner type. The rest of my entourage traveled separately.
After a bit I heard Tonilynn calling, “It’s ready, hon!” and I met her in the lounge where she had two mugs waiting. She’d put my hydrangeas in a pitcher full of water.
“That looks pretty,” I said.
“Well, I was gonna bring you some Queen Anne’s lace, too, but I ran out of time because I made Bobby Lee pancakes and bacon.”
“You’re a good mom,” I told her, cradling my warm mug in both palms.
“Lord help me, I try. Poor thing’ll have to deal with Aunt Gomer by himself for a week. I just don’t believe they’re weeds, do you?”
“Huh?”
“The county agent said Queen Anne’s lace is actually a weed, in the carrot family or something. But I think they’re every bit as pretty as a rose. In their own way. I mean, who makes the scientists—or whoever it is that classifies stuff—the end-all-be-all as far as classifying something a flower or a weed?”
“You’re right.” I took a sip of my coffee.
“Hey!” Tonilynn laughed. “Maybe there’s a song in that for you. About a weed being a beautiful flower fit for a queen? Guess I got something from Aunt Gomer, because I just love all kinds of plants, weeds or not.”
“Me too.” I was thinking of the ferns and mosses along the rivers from my childhood, the sycamores along the Cumberland.
“I take that back,” Tonilynn said, a scowl crossing her face. “There’s one plant, well two if you count Poison Ivy, I literally despise!” Her brown eyes narrowed. “I told Bobby Lee just this morning, ‘I’ve a good mind to get the chainsaw and cut that nasty row of catalpa trees down. I don’t know why on earth you have to obsess on those disgusting worms!’ ”
I figured she’d get around to explaining it all, and she did, in her roundabout way.
“I mean it, Jennifer. I told that boy I’ve seen artificial catalpa worms, which look exactly like the real ones he harvests from those nasty catalpa trees. I’ve seen them in the Walmart fishing tackle section. But he claims they got to be live for the catfish to go crazy.”
I recalled Bobby Lee saying the large, juicy worms he harvested from his “worm trees” were like manna to catfish and bream.
“And, oh, my goodness,” Tonilynn sighed, “it’s that time of year when the boy’s literally obsessing. Reckon why the Lord makes men love football and fishing so much?”
I didn’t answer. An obsession with fishing or football was a walk in the park compared to one with drinking and chasing wild women.
“You can’t tell Bobby Lee a thing when it’s football or fishing season, either one,” Tonilynn continued. “But I reckon I ought to call it worm season. Now that the catalpa eggs have hatched and it’s caterpillar stage. And Aunt Gomer!” She blew out a blast of frustration that sounded like “Phwuh!” “That woman makes me spit nails!”
“Why?”
“She encourages him, says to me, ‘Honey, Bobby Lee’s just doing what he loves. He’s not going to tumble into the lake. He’s the best fisherman around here. Can outfish any so-called able-bodied man, blah, blah, blah.’ ” Tonilynn paused for a gulp of her coffee. “See why I get so put out with her? She needs to keep a better eye on my boy. He’s out there at those catalpa trees day and night, determined to beat the wasps that love to eat the disgusting caterpillar worms. Our freezer’s running over with them.”
“He freezes them?” I was on the edge of my seat.
“Mm-hm. Now I admit that part’s amazing. Bobby Lee explained it to me one day. He says it’s something to do with a thing called cryogenics, and the worms are just suspended in the freezer, dormant. He says all he has to do is just tuck the jar near his backside, and before he even gets down to the water, they’re wiggling around like new, absolutely frantic as they search for the leaves that keep ’em alive.”
I could see it in my mind’s eye, and I smiled. “I’d like to see one of those worms.”
Tonilynn laughed. “I wouldn’t touch those nasty things for nothing! Ooey gooey, pale-yellow wormy looking things, with a black spine and a horn on their rear. Bobby Lee says if you leave ’em be, they’ll turn into some kind of sphinx moth. But moths are hardly better than worms or caterpillars, are they?”
I didn’t answer. I liked moths.
“Anyway, back to the host trees for those buggers. Catalpas have got to be the messiest trees ever! Got big old ugly leaves, almost as big as tobacco leaves, and these enormous brown pods that look like cigars and drop off all over the place. The birds open them up for seeds and make a pure mess. I don’t even like the flowers. They’re these whitish-purple blooms that look cheap.”
I was gripping my coffee cup’s handle so tight my fingers were white, watching Tonilynn’s furious face. I didn’t think I’d ever seen her so riled up. “Aunt Gomer says to Bobby Lee, ‘Go get ’em,’ and ‘You’re amazing on those wheels,’ and ‘When you want to do something, there’s nothing can stop you.’ ”
Something in me had the feeling that Tonilynn might be overreacting to Aunt Gomer and maybe just a little jealous of how happy those trees and caterpillars made Bobby Lee.
“Know what, Jennifer?” Tonilynn said after a spell. “I think Aunt Gomer has a mean streak in her she hasn’t turned over to the Lord yet. Whenever I remind her Bobby Lee’s handicapped, she says, ‘Motorcycles don’t crash themselves.’ ” She made her voice sound exactly like Aunt Gomer’s, but despite the mocking, I noticed tears in her eyes.
“Know what I’m terrified of?” Tonilynn asked softly, leaning forward to whisper.
“What?” I whispered back.
“I’m absolutely terrified that Aunt Gomer’s gonna get those nasty creatures out of the freezer and cook ’em up in one of her famous spaghetti casseroles.”
“Ewww!”
“I thought she might have the old-timer’s, but now I’m sure of it.”
I felt the sides of my throat aching. Poor Aunt Gomer.
“I just know she’s gonna get mixed up and cook those worms, and I’m going to be so exhausted from work, I won’t even notice what I’m eating until it’s too late.”
“Surely she can see they’re worms.”
“I don’t know. She’s still spry and able-bodied for the most part, but I’ve noticed that in addition to her mind going, her vision’s growing dim. I’ve seen her squinting at her gardening catalogs, and she’s moved her rocker up not five feet away from the TV to watch her shows. I used to think Aunt Gomer and Bobby Lee were the perfect team.”
Tonilynn blotted a tear from her cheek with a napkin. “Anyway, now I realize more than ever how much Aunt Gomer needs Bobby Lee, and here she is claiming I spoil him! That I’m squelching his happiness, and I ought to kick him out of the nest.”
I watched Tonilynn twirling a little silver cross on her necklace, thinking how capable both Aunt Gomer and Bobby Lee seemed to me. I was sure they’d each one do fine on their own. But I would never say this to Tonilynn.
“It just breaks my heart,” Tonilynn’s voice trembled. “If I ever did kick Bobby Lee out of the nest, he’d die of loneliness. None of his old friends come around anymore. Reckon most of ’em are married and got families to tend to, wives who want ’em home, but still, doesn’t seem right to just totally abandon someone. Seems after they realized Bobby Lee wasn’t gonna get the use of his legs back, they decided they didn’t have no more use for him.” She looked at me, eyes pleading. “I’m doing right by my boy, ain’t I?”
I was thinking Tonilynn would be the one who’d die of loneliness if Bobby Lee moved out. I felt an urge to get up and hug her, but I was nervous because I’d never been the hugging type. Finally, I set my cup down and stood up to go settle on the sofa next to her, reaching my arms out to encircle her, saying, “Of course, you’re doing the right thing.”
Tonilynn smiled through her tears and whispered, “Thank you, hon,” and for one brief moment my heart fluttered with joy.
I figured the joy came from knowing that I was not alone in my human frailty and that I did know how to connect with another human.
The Eagle was a smooth bird, cruising along I-40 and into Little Rock with hardly a lurch or a shimmy. Both Mike and my publicist hovered over their laptops. When we got onto I-440 West toward Texarkana, Tonilynn and I sat watching Braveheart on my laptop. I’d brought the movie to distract myself, to push my angst into one dark corner of my mind. Right before we merged onto I-30 West toward Hot Springs, we stopped to refuel the bus and grab some fountain drinks. “Here’s to knocking ’em dead in Houston!” Tonilynn said, lifting her Diet Coke toward me. “We’ll be in Texas real soon. Yippee!”
“Yippee,” I said, holding my Mountain Dew high, silently willing time to slow down, stop. I found myself short of breath, my heartbeat accelerating as I thought about performing “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.”
We climbed back on the bus and the driver tuned the radio to a local station. Taylor Swift sang “You Belong With Me,” and then came “Lost You Anyway,” by Toby Keith, followed by a surreal clip of me singing “Blue Mountain Blues,” and an advertisement for tomorrow night’s performance, the deejay saying it was sold-out.
“Listen!” Tonilynn reached over to grab my arm. “A total sellout! Old Holt’s ugly mudslinging didn’t hurt your career one teeny bit.”
She turned to me when I didn’t answer. “You hear me? Girl, your success has not faded one smidgen! You got your third consecutive album debuting at number one on Billboard 200 and Billboard Country!” Tonilynn gulped her drink, looked hard at me. “Seriously, Jennifer, sometimes I don’t think you realize what you’ve accomplished. Nashville’s like Hollywood—she chews up and spits out tons of wannabes every single new season.”
Tonilynn was right. I wasn’t grateful enough. Many singers and bands, even ones who got big radio play and had lots of money behind them, faded away fairly quickly. And she was right about Holt too. His accusations hadn’t hurt my career as I’d feared. I guess it was hard to rejoice too much because Holt’s career was in full upswing as well. If vengeance was the Lord’s, like Tonilynn claimed, seemed his songs should be tanking. I mean, come on—a mean, drunk, porn addict? Happily, my feelings for Holt remained in the disgust category. The few times we’d crossed paths, I totally ignored him. Recently I’d been sitting in one of the recording rooms of Flint Recording just staring at some pages in my song notebook, at lyrics about forever love and kisses to die for, and I began to wonder, Why was I such a fool? How could I not have seen the truth about Holt? Could I really have been into a man who brought back ugly memories of someone else I knew? Knowing I’d overcome this hurdle was empowering, but not enough.
“Jennifer, look at me.”
I turned my eyes from the quarter moon I’d been watching out the bus’s window.
“Talk to Tonilynn. Are you okay?”
I didn’t know how to say what I was feeling. I wanted her to pull it out of me, use her supernatural gift. But then it struck me like a lightning bolt, that her asking me was I okay proved her so-called gift was a sham! I squeezed the padded armrests. What was I going to do now?
It was dark when the Eagle pulled onto US-59 toward Houston. Tonilynn was in her pink satin nightgown, a white mask of cold cream on her face. “I’m off to bed now, hon,” she said a bit after eleven. “You get some good rest tonight, hear? Be ready to knock Houston off their feet.”
I was so weary of fighting the memories, so tired of battling them alone. But how could I close my eyes when the concert was less than twenty-four hours away? The awful stage fright was proof I wasn’t going to triumph after all.
“Know how you were saying you didn’t have a friend in this world when you were growing up?” Tonilynn rummaged around in her beauty case for a palette of creamy foundations that don’t melt under stage lights. “Well, it’s put me in mind of that sweet hymn, ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus.’ You know it, don’t you?”
I didn’t feel like talking. Besides being exhausted from a night spent tossing and turning, I had only three hours until I was up onstage, and before my concerts I liked to kind of draw inward, reflect on my song lineup, what I planned to say between numbers, and that sort of thing. Today this preparation was extra heavy on my mind and even heavier on my heart. I shrugged one shoulder, but Tonilynn didn’t take the hint.
“Well,” she said, leaning in and squinting to dab concealer beneath my right eye, “I like to picture this image of Jesus holding my hand like a best friend. In my mind’s eye, you know? I do that whenever I get to feeling scared or down or just plain-out lonely. And let me tell you, he’s got the gentlest hands. Sometimes I can even feel where the nail scars are. I want you to have that too—the assurance that if you put your hand in his, you can walk through fire.”
Tonilynn raised an eyebrow and leaned in closer when I didn’t respond. “Jennifer, I’m feeling a lot of anxiety in you. I want to make sure you have peace. Every single one of us goes through hard trials, you know? We all fall into the pit from time to time. But if you got Jesus holding your hand, you know everything’ll be all right in the end. You know all those ugly things have a purpose.” She squeezed my shoulder. “ ’Course, before I was saved, I couldn’t see how any of the messes in my past would ever work out to make me stronger.”
Tonilynn seemed sure that someone somewhere orchestrated everything to her advantage, the good and the bad. I had to admit it would be nice if some benign higher power could wave a wand over my past and make it all okay. But there were things in my life I knew had no redeeming aspects whatsoever. You could dig them up, analyze them from every angle, and never find a way to use them for good. What a simple soul Tonilynn was! This realization made me feel tender and mad toward her at the same time. It also hit me then, like a knife in the heart, that I’d never have Tonilynn’s peace. I would go on my whole life just like this, running and hurting.
“Hey, hey, what’s this about?” Tonilynn moved to the end of my kneecaps. She set the foundation palette down and took my hands in hers. “Don’t cry. If you got ugly things back there, just commit them to the Lord, and I promise he’ll use them for your good. It may not be right now, or even in the next couple of years, but someday he’ll use them.”
All I could do was shake my head, swallow my tears. Tonilynn let my hands go so she could wrap me in her arms. She pressed my tense body to her, and I buried my face in her shoulder. It felt good to be held as I breathed in her honeysuckle smell, and she murmured comforting words, telling me it would all be fine, that I was a sweet little lamb, and I’d never have to walk through life alone. After a while she pulled away, lifted my chin with her pointer finger, looked at me with pleading eyes. “I think it’s time to tell you a little story about bad things working out good in the end.
I nodded, and she hooked a lacquered fingernail into the collar of her blouse, pulled it away to expose a tattoo inked over her left breast. It was a red and blue heart, like a medical drawing in a textbook, with black wings spreading out on either side and a banner scrolled across the top, stretching to the tips of the wings that said: “Robert Lee Gooch.”
“Janis Joplin was my idol. I thought she was so cool.” Tonilynn let her blouse fall back. “I was fourteen, running around with a bunch of wild kids. We’d skip school, get drunk, and go for rides all over the county. Thought we were invincible. Didn’t give a fig about nothing or nobody.” She shook her head. “If I needed money for beer or cigarettes or dope, I just took whatever I needed, including every last dime from Aunt Gomer’s handbag or the jar of change she saved for the missionaries. At times us kids would be so high we didn’t hardly remember plowing down somebody’s mailbox, trenching their lawn, or worse.
“But we were living for the minute. I got to hanging out so much with one particular group of brothers, three of the Gooch boys, and by and by I fell for Robert. I’d just turned fifteen, thought I knew everything. He was a good bit older, a bad boy, pure wild, and when he started flirting around with me, I thought I was Miss Everything. One day he said ‘Let’s drop out of school and go traveling across country on my motorcycle.’
“I thought that sounded like the best thing in this world. Getting away from a Holy Roller to run with a Rock ’n’ Roller.” Tonilynn chuckled. “Me and Robert took off, free as birds and partying like there was no tomorrow. Well, I got knee-walking drunk one night when we were in Louisiana, and woke up with the tattoo I just showed you.”
She paused to pop the tab on a Diet Coke. “But I wasn’t mature enough to realize actions have consequences, and pretty soon I found out I needed more’n a boy’s idea of love. When I told Robert I was pregnant, you never saw a change in nobody so fast in all your life. Robert claimed he’d never really loved me. Claimed it wasn’t his. Left me in a back alley in Shreveport.
“Sometimes, I look back and shake my head. It was kind of like history repeating itself, you know? How my own father took off?”
I managed a nod.
“Well, anyway, I called Aunt Gomer and she quoted Proverbs 11:22 to me: ‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman without discretion.’ Made me so mad. I cussed and yelled at her, and at God, or my idea of him anyway, until my voice gave out. It just made me determined to be even wilder, and I fell in with an even worse crowd.” Tonilynn paused to tuck a wisp of hair back up into place.
“I got into the big H, you know? Heroin felt like the answer to squashing the awful pain inside me. For a while anyway. I didn’t care if it hurt me, but I probably wouldn’t have done it if somebody told me it could hurt the baby. I’m always thanking God that my Bobby Lee has no side effects from all my stupidness. That’s pure mercy. Thankfully, I got busted for possession, and when I got probation, I managed to kick my habit, got a job at a dry cleaners because by that time I did have a baby to support. But my soul still hurt me, you know? So eventually I started up all over again with cocaine. Getting high as often as I could afford it, which wasn’t too often and which made me start stealing things.
“I was pretty talented, you know? But one day I got busted for shoplifting some jewelry, and sitting in jail the only person I could think of to call was Aunt Gomer. I sure didn’t want to, and part of me, a big part, figured she’d do me like she had before. But she was my last chance. She was my baby’s last chance too. I’d never been a religious person, but I got down on my knees on that cement floor and I said to God that if he could perform a miracle and make Aunt Gomer happy to come get me, then I’d know without a doubt he existed and I would straighten myself out and . . .”
Tonilynn trailed off, gazing into the distance, smiling nostalgically.
“What happened?”
“Man, oh man,” she breathed in an awestruck voice, still staring. “I vomited all over the floor, and then I called Aunt Gomer, and when she said, sweetly, ‘Let me get my handbag and I’ll be there directly,’ I thought I was having a dream, and then, when I realized it was real, I felt this million-pound weight lifting off me and I started screaming, ‘Thank you, Jesus!’ over and over so loud the guards had to restrain me.
“I knew then God was real, and I knew he was powerful when Aunt Gomer didn’t fuss a lick that whole long car ride home. When we got back to Cagle Mountain and I’d gotten myself cleaned up, I found a part-time job at The Beauty Nook, and learned I was a pure natural when it came to both hair and makeup. I felt like the Lord had a plan for me, you know?”
“Hm.”
“I asked him to do a makeover on me. He swept away all the pain and the guilt, and day by day, I found peace with him, also with myself and other people. Now heaven knows I ain’t no saint,” she laughed at her rhyme, “and I still may not be exactly what I should be 100 percent of the time, but I sure ain’t what I used to be.”
She waited for me to respond. When I didn’t, she said, “See? I wanted to wring Aunt Gomer’s neck that first time, when she wouldn’t come rescue me. But looking back, I see it was all part of the Lord’s plan, his timing. I needed to go through all that ugly stuff, to experience pain, so when I finally did get saved I’d be able to use what I learned to help folks. It helps me understand what certain folks are experiencing. I truly believe my purpose here on earth is to beautify not only people’s outsides but also their insides. I love leading them to Jesus so he can wash all their ugly stains away.”
I wouldn’t look at Tonilynn. Did she think her story meant anything to me? I couldn’t help feeling mad about her acting like her faith was this magic wand she could wave to smooth over the bumps and valleys in her past. Though I now felt blameless in the blowup with Holt Cantrell, another ugly stain was my part in Mr. Anglin’s death. Plus, there were plenty of others, most originating with my father. As I started thinking of him, I felt the root of bitterness nestling down farther into the rich soil of a hidden place in the depths of me. “Save your breath,” I told Tonilynn in a cool voice. “I’ve asked God for help more times than I can count, and you know what? My father’s still breathing.”
“Jennifer, Jennifer. This hate you have inside isn’t healthy. When you fantasize evil, you’re giving the enemy ground, and if you don’t get rid of that bitterness it’ll end up destroying you.”
My heart was pounding. I swore under my breath.
“You love your mother, don’t you?” Tonilynn asked softly. “I remember you saying you send her money.”
“It’s really nothing for me to write a check,” I said. “I thought if I sent her enough she wouldn’t be afraid of being homeless or penniless and she’d leave my father. But the fact of the matter is, she didn’t stand up to him when I was growing up, and she doesn’t now.”
“What did you want her to stand up to him about?”
“I don’t care!” I spit the words. “It doesn’t matter anymore!”
“You’re angry at your mother too.”
“Yeah, I am! I don’t understand how she can live like she does. My mother’s choice is spineless acceptance, trudging along, swiping her forehead with the back of her hand and sighing ‘Ahh, well, this is my lot in life and I will endure.’ Problem was, I was forced to endure right along with her.” I looked at Tonilynn, shook my head. “Even as a kid, I realized people could choose their destiny to some extent, that they could transcend what life gave them, and I despised her meekness. I used to tell myself that when I made it big, I’d send her so much money that she’d grow a backbone and see she could reach for better things too. She’d feel brave enough to leave him.”
“Poor baby. You didn’t have it easy.”
I felt tears welling. “I wished my father dead, I hoped and prayed we’d leave him, and then, later . . . I just wanted my mother to lift her head out of the sand and admit what he did to me that night when . . .” Suddenly, every cell in my body shrunk back. I began trembling so hard my teeth chattered.
Tonilynn dropped to her knees on the floor at my feet. There was such radiant love in her eyes, I thought I might feel some presence, a glimpse into another world. But it wasn’t enough for me to reveal the worst.
“Oh, darlin’,” she cooed. “It hurts when a mother doesn’t support your dream, doesn’t it?”
“She didn’t encourage my singing, that’s true,” I said in a tight voice. “But I could let that go, if she’d just . . . I mean, I’ve tried to talk to her about some other things. Some things that are very painful to . . . but . . . she just denies . . .” I felt like an angry child, and I liked it. I reached down deep and yelled, “A mother is supposed to be that one person in the world who loves you, who protects you! And she didn’t protect me!”
Tonilynn jumped and rocked back with wide eyes. At last, she cleared her throat, “Let’s just ask the Lord to help you dig up all that ugly stuff. Okay?”
“What if I don’t want to dig some of it up?”
“If you don’t look at it eye-to-eye, then you sure can’t forgive it and be free of it.”
What a stupid comment! I knew there’d never be a day I could forgive my father! Didn’t Tonilynn know that to forgive him would be the same as saying it didn’t matter?
I took a long, deep breath, gathered all my courage and walked out onstage to smile at that sea of faces, to absorb their energy and anticipation for a nice long minute before strumming a rich G-chord, leaning into the microphone, and saying, “Good evening, Houston.” Wild hoots, whistles, and cheers began to erupt, to crest, and at last to wind down, giving me plenty of time to study my crowd. There were the usual swaying Stetson hats and glinting belt buckles, the various colorful bandannas being waved or fastened jauntily around necks, lots of plaid Western shirts with blue jeans, and short flirty skirts paired with cowgirl boots.
Glancing beyond, I could see the sun hunkered low in the west, the sky streaked with purple and pink at the horizon. Bright stage lights above me and to my back and sides lit me up in a warm, familiar way. My stage manager motioned my cue from the wings to begin and my voice surprised me as it vaulted out, “All right! Thank you very much! Thank you from the bottom of my heart for that nice, big, warm welcome. You always hear about Texas being the state with the big heart, and I know it’s true!” More whistles and cheers. “And now it’s time for us to take a trip together. A trip to the Georgia mountains!”
Behind me a drum, a rhythm guitar, and a piano bloomed into the beginnings of “Blue Mountain Blues.” I knew the song like the back of my hand, and it was good to have a slow, easy ballad that I could sing in a high tenor to lead off.
When I was a young girl, no more than eleven, I found a place to wind my summer days away, place like heaven. Rocky rills, and soaring hills, creekbeds flowing through trees. But I’m far away now and visit you only in my dreams.
Blue Mountain Blues, I’m missin’ you.
Blue Mountain Blues, it’s true.
When I reached the chorus, I was carried away on the wings of the music. I actually felt the soft moss on the banks of the creek beneath my feet, the water licking my ankles.
The audience began swaying as I sang the chorus three times to end the song, growing softer and softer. Some fans had eyes closed, lips moving along to the words.
I segued into “Gimme Some Sugar, Sugar,” and I could feel it working its way into the crowd, lighting them up with this warm, golden buzz. Thrilled, I leaned out and threw double-kisses. I was alive up onstage, like no other place.
I kicked off into “I’m Leavin’ Only Footprints” and “Walking the Wildwood,” then “River Time,” “Spooky Moon,” and “Smoke Over the Hills,” a soft, mournful waltz with a fiddle that sounded like tears floating in the air. And finally, a silly tune with a rocking beat called “Old Spice and Vitalis,” about an elderly Romeo I met when I sang at a nursing home.
Everyone was smiling by the end of that song. Finally it was time. “Now I’m gonna do a brand-new song for you,” I said, feeling the electric buzz of the microphone on my lips in a surreal way. “Never sung it in public before. About a time when I was still in high school. You all know that time in our lives is hard enough as it is. Right?” I paused and saw a sea of heads nodding, heard random “Amens” and “Sure enoughs.”
“Yes, we’re all exceptionally vulnerable then, and I wanted a song that would say to you young people, ‘Don’t let anybody kill your dreams. Don’t let anybody tell you that you can’t do something if it’s in your heart to do it.’ ” My fingers trembled as I strummed up and down the fret for my usual pause before each song. All of a sudden my pick wasn’t feeling like an extension of my fingers anymore. My eyelids and my throat began to ache from holding back tears, and I was so exhausted from my performance, I didn’t have much reserve left to fight the crippling cocktail of emotions—the anger and the hatred, sure, but also shame and despair. I stood up there on that stage disappointed with myself for feeling those things when I’d vowed to suck it up. If I fell apart in front of everybody, if my fans knew the truth—how pathetic and broken I really was—then it was all going to be over.
I could see the anticipation on everyone’s face, and I began strumming the wistful, melancholy opening bars of “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” There was nothing to do but suck it up and dive in.
I come in from school, and Mama says ‘He’s home’
I don’t know what’s waiting for me yet
But my heart feels like a stone.
Mama says, ‘He loves you, you’re his daughter,’
But I know the man sure don’t walk on water.
I sung him my song, and it didn’t take long,
’Til he’d stomped on my dream,
Him and his friend, Jim Beam.
My tears wet the night,
and I knew it wasn’t right,
I wanted to say, I wanted to say,
‘Daddy, don’t come home.
I’d rather be alone.
Just walk out that door, ’cause I can’t take it no more.’
I sang on through the high, lonesome sound of the chorus, falling helplessly into the second verse. The faces I could see were totally into it, empathizing with the pain of this young girl, and I gripped my guitar even tighter, stomped my boot, worked hard to sing like it was somebody else’s song, steeling myself to stay in control. But the feelings I’d recently unearthed to write the song were too fresh, and before I knew it I was right back there in that awful time, my dreams newly crushed like a muscadine on the highway.
A young woman in the front row wearing a strapless top and tight jeans was crying so hard her eyeliner ran down into her lips. I wondered if she had a father like mine, and I fought my impulse to pull her up onstage and give her a big hug. Then the floodgates really opened, and my voice got a really tearful twang as I poured out my soul in a vibrato born from pain. Things got even worse as the emotion crescendoed through another stanza. I wanted to run offstage and hide.
Miraculously, just as I thought I was on the vergeof dying, I managed to switch myself to the tough, resilient Jenny Cloud, and I belted out the chorus one more time, adding a rollicking guitar lick between it and the final verse. Swiveling my hips, I tapped out the rhythm with the toe of one boot in a kind of hillbilly stomp, and bringing the song around to its last rousing chorus—I’d rather be alone. Just walk out that door, ’cause I can’t take it no more.
Taking a bow, I leaned into the microphone and said, “Good night, Houston. I love you all!” I pressed both palms to my lips and blew kisses to the crowd. A tidal wave of applause from twenty thousand fans splashed my face with spray before engulfing me.
Aboard the Eagle, Tonilynn sat in the kitchen in her satin nightgown, cold cream slathered on her face. “You were sensational, hon! Care for a little girl talk before bed?” She smiled and gestured at a Diet Coke on the table. I shook my head and walked past her to my bunk, climbed up on my mattress and lay there. I wanted more than anything to fall down into the sweet abyss of sleep, drift in a deep blackness of no thoughts. But it was not to be. I watched a mental replay of my performance, especially the face of the girl on the front row as I sang “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” Her connection to my pain had been real.
“Pizza, the breakfast of superstars.” Tonilynn smiled as she shook the plastic cup of thousand island salad dressing she’d requested on-the-side all over her salad. “Mike says the buzz is fantastic about last night’s performance.” She tore off a chunk of crusty French bread and slathered it with butter.
At 11:40 in the morning, Frank’s Pizza was fairly crowded. I sat there, my old baseball cap pulled low, a piece of untouched pepperoni pizza on my plate. I sure didn’t feel like a superstar. I felt like a pathetic, divided, and tortured soul who adored her career and hated it at the same time. Music was my gift, but it was also my curse, a huge, itchy mosquito bite between my shoulder blades I couldn’t ever seem to get scratched to satisfaction.
And fame? Fame could be tough in country music circles, where the legitimacy of a new star was scrutinized like a newborn baby’s face. Folks were saying I didn’t deserve to shine so quickly and so brightly because I hadn’t “served my time” by spending a decade singing in bars. It irked me to hear things like, “Jenny Cloud had it handed to her on a silver platter” and “That girl was just in the right place at the right time. She got lucky.”
The ability to write songs and a good voice were gifts, yes, but if my critics only knew the compost heap they sprouted in! I sat there, trying to think what it was I needed. I needed peace. I needed sky and water. I needed the Cumberland River.
“Hon? You okay? Please answer me, Jennifer. Oh, Jesus, help this child . . .”
It took me a minute to realize Tonilynn’s soft voice was calling to me. I blinked, sat up straight. “Sorry. Listen, I’m not feeling too good. I’m going back to the Eagle and lie down.”
I stood, but Tonilynn grabbed my wrist. “Don’t go.”
I sat back down.
“What’s the matter, hon?”
“I’m just . . . I hate my life.”
“Silly!” Tonilynn laughed, threw a napkin at me. “You’re just exhausted. We’ll get you tucked into your bunk nice and early tonight and you’ll be fine. Now eat.”
“I’m not hungry, but I’ll wait until you’re done.”
Tonilynn dipped a crouton in dressing and ate it. “Remember what we were talking about day before yesterday? Folks would kill to be where you are.”
I played with the sweetener packets while her words rattled in my head like marbles in a cigar box. At last, I got a great big gulp of air down into my lungs. “I know, Tonilynn. I’m truly grateful for all that Mike and the folks at Flint have done for me. And I love the music, the singing, and my fans. But I never realized how hard it was going to be.” My hands were shaking and I twined them together in my lap. “When I sang ‘Daddy, Don’t Come Home’ last night, I lost it up onstage. That’s never happened to me before, Tonilynn.” I felt my heart accelerating. “I can’t sing about my dysfunctional childhood anymore.”
“I know it takes guts to sing about that stuff you’ve shared with me.”
I just shook my head. There was so much Tonilynn didn’t know about what lay beneath and between the lines. I thought about what the writers at Flint Studios worked up for my upcoming CD cover; “The music calls Jenny Cloud home. She gives us an intimate peek into the dark corners, the heartache she witnessed in childhood.”
My career had been spawned on lyrics about fear and tears, on dysfunction, and Mike’s goal was still to sell me as a wounded artist. But I wasn’t a totally unwilling participant, was I? The stuff my management team came up with was not just media hype they made up to sell records.
Tonilynn pushed her empty plate back. She dug in her purse, applied fresh lipstick, then reached across for my hand. “Hon, I know I sound like a broken record, but what you need to do is just ask Jesus to help you dig up all those hurts, that bad stuff, once and for all, and deal with it.”
It made me queasy thinking we were going to get into this discussion yet again, and I pulled my hand away. “I know I sound like a broken record, too, but I don’t want to dig it up. I’m not going to.”
“It’s the only way to healing, Jennifer.” Tonilynn’s brown eyes went soft with concern. “Having a father like you did, do, you probably can’t relate to a loving heavenly Father, but believe me, God cares and he understands our hurt. He used my hurts as a way of ministering to others when I finally looked them in the eye, and he can use yours. Pull up whatever it is that’s still buried and use it to write a song.”
I thought, fleetingly, of that girl on the front row with black mascara running into her mouth as I sang “Daddy, Don’t Come Home.” There was definitely a connection, and maybe my lyrics had empowered her to make some change. That was good. But what about me? Without peace, what was anything else worth?
“Well, I don’t care,” I said. “I don’t care if I ever sing again.”
“You’re fibbing.” Tonilynn shook her head, smiling. “I see you when you come off that stage, hon, and you’ve got a glow like Moses when he came down the mountain. He was so full of the glory he had to wear a veil over it so folks wouldn’t get blinded.”
I shrugged, but Tonilynn wouldn’t let it go. “You brought down the house last night! Mike says they’re playing ‘Daddy, Don’t Come Home’ all over the place. Speaking of that one, I don’t believe I’ve heard you talk about the story behind it.”
My stomach lurched. “No more stories about the stories behind the songs. They’re too real.”
“But it’s got to be real for an audience to feel it! Surely you know that by now. Nobody gets to be a multiplatinum recording artist just by singing pretty. Your songs were hard won, Jennifer, and they’re your gifts to this broken world. Your beautiful gifts.”
“Well,” I said, getting to my feet again, “it doesn’t feel beautiful to me. Feels like a black hole sucking my soul in, and I’m quitting.”
“You can’t.” Tonilynn reached across to grab my hand and pulled me back into my seat. “I know some things may be hard, but what would we do without Jenny Cloud? You’re touching people! The world would be so much poorer without your songs. You’ve got to understand, hon, in God’s economy, nothing we experience in this earthly life is wasted! Please let him pour his love out on hurting, vulnerable people through you. He can make something beautiful and good come out of your ugliest experiences, if you’ll just let him! I’m begging you, just ask him to help you dig it all up! You have a message and a mission with your music.”
It bothered me when Tonilynn started going on and on about this religious stuff like I agreed with her, like we were some little private God-club. I took the first bite of my pizza, but it was sawdust in my mouth.
“I didn’t even finish high school, Jennifer.” Tonilynn shook her head. “But the Lord helped me get my beauty degree, and while I’m beautifying the outsides of my clients, I share my journey and let him take care of their insides. I’m like one of those full-service gas stations we used to have.”
Tonilynn paused, and when I didn’t respond it didn’t dampen her zeal.
“Sometimes I think about having my tattoos removed, but then I think, no, these are my battle scars. They’re a road map of my testimony. See? People can use their pain, Jennifer Anne Clodfelter, and your songs about what you’ve been through are powerful. Combine that with your incredible voice and your looks and the way you can hold an audience in the palm of your hand, and there ain’t nobody who can’t say you don’t have all the perfect ingredients for what I like to call a divinely appointed mission!
“I’m constantly praying for you, and I know you can triumph if you’ll just reach out and grab hold of his hand.”
I sat there, blocking out Tonilynn’s voice. When you started listening to someone like her, so persuasive in her simple way, you forgot what it cost. You forgot you were trading pieces of yourself for friendship. I needed some thinking time before I did something I’d regret.