Old friends, new faces by Harmoni McGlothlin
Three months ago, with pride tucked neatly in my front pocket and my heart taking refuge in my big toe, I made the long journey home. Three thousand miles and two sleepless days and the highway narrowed, exposing scenery saturated with living things ranging from blood-sucking insects to the occasional roadside alligator. The sun-heavy day aimed fat raindrops at my windshield at about the same time that the air started to reek of home. Seemed like a natural enough homecoming, considering it also rained the day I left. Then again, it might be an unfair comparison since it rains nearly every day in southwest Florida, where a “drought” refers to a week without rain. There was no wind, no cloud cover, just the overbearing sunshine and the swollen drops steaming the pavement.
Leona was so close I could almost feel the shade of her house, the heat of her gaze, even ten miles away. My rusted Pontiac became crowded with many versions of the same ghost. I took a giant bite of Alice’s magic mushroom and began shrinking, smaller and smaller.
Now the size of a thimble, I examined the first Leona lounging inn my tattered passenger seat. She was The Original version, composed in blaring Technicolor. She was tall, sleek and ornate in her movements, with all that black hair trailing behind her as she sailed from task to task. I could see my once small hands moving toward the spangle earrings tinkling at her lobes, eyeing the rings playing the light from her long fingers. Her face was dancing with laughter, tossing a constant smile over her shoulder or letting it trickle into the rise and fall of her voice. She was the world’s most beloved and feared bartender who told wild stories about rowdy drunks while she counted out her tips late at night. If it weren’t for the sheer magnetism of this Leona, maybe the ghosts of the rest wouldn’t raise a white-hot boiling in my guts.
Leona The Original was a level woman, easy going even if her sense of humor sometimes bordered on being cruel. There was always an edge of control, though, always a concealed strength that could leap into the light at any moment. Leona incited a certain amount of fear in nearly everyone. She was never the victim of an impolite grocery store clerk or an angry bill collector, a rude neighbor or an out-of-control drunk. She wasn’t so much disarming as she was just, well, powerful. She didn’t have to raise her voice, let alone her fist, for most people to simply back down. It was her steely blue eyes, the steadiness of them, the clear warning shots they fired. You don’t want to go there, not with me, they said to everyone she met.
From the passenger’s seat, this ghost beamed at me like we shared a secret. “You can never go home, you know,” she said with laughter before her form dissolved.
I took my time, riding the brake pedal along crooked streets, plucking at the rain-soaked details, mostly the same regardless of the years between. Boat motors and fishing line, faded toys and plants that seemed to have fried in their cracked pots; the same junk strewn across the same old sun-scorched lawns. Most of the little cottages bore the pathetic stamp of poverty and neglect: peeling paint, broken shutters, abandoned rocking chairs stranded on front porches. As I came off the narrow road that wound its way onto the island, a group of kids wearing more mud than hand-me-down clothes, splashed happily in a rain filled pothole. After them, no one was out in the downpour. For all anyone knew, this could have been a ghost town in a spaghetti western. You could almost hear the lone whistle of high noon, except it was obliterated by the sound of the rain pummeling so many tin roofs like rounds from a machine gun. Clint Eastwood meets Rambo on a desert Isle. Gilligan would be beside himself.
Early on, Leona started spending weekends out with friends. She’d come home in the middle of the night laughing and falling down every few steps or so. She’d get me out of bed to dance through the living room with her, her hair flying in circles and her arms reaching to turn me. She’d put on an old album and try to teach me the twist. There was a tightness in my chest on those nights, a mixture of fear and sadness. Later the partying spread into the weekdays and, after awhile, I began to wish she’d wake me up to listen to the grainy strummings of the Beatles again. I began to long for the attention, the laughter, the me of it all. Eventually, Leona didn’t put makeup on in the mornings or slip her rings onto her fingers. Her only ornament became the bottle of Smirnoff attached to her hand. She trailed cigarette smoke instead of smiles and silken hair. Her voice rose more often than it fell. This Leona was usually found passed out on the couch. The world outside her window turned without her participation. Mail still arrived in her mailbox but she didn’t bother bringing it into the house until the mailman came to the door to tell her it was spilling over onto the ground. Bills still accumulated but Leona wouldn’t pay them until one day, she woke up and found the house dark, or the phone out of order, bags of trash on the curb tickled by maggots. Her friends made it as far as the doorstep but Leona was in the shower when they came, taking a nap, or sick with the flu. I woke myself up in the mornings, dressed in whatever was clean (or cleanest), and left for second grade without breakfast or a kiss goodbye. Leona smiled sleepily at me when I came home, saying, “Hey, Kiddo, want to watch the soaps?”
This Leona now took up residence in my backseat, whispering in my ear, “The Keys are nice this time of year. Why don’t you just keep driving?”
Regardless of me and my brake pedal, the nine unpaved roads that made up the whole of Goodville gave way to Mangrove Court and The House of Yanklewitz. The ghosts dissolved reluctantly from my car as I ate the other half of the magic mushroom, and returned to something closer to my normal size.
The main difference between this house and the neighbors’ was the ancient Poinciana tree in the front yard. It was a tall, lean tree, with millions of delicate leaves and papery orange flowers. Its height was double that of the house but its branches made a great arch that shaded and shrouded the house neatly. As a child, the old tree seemed whimsical, like living in an elaborate fort. As an adult, the fantasy shriveled, and I figured the tree did an excellent job disguising the shambles of the house itself. The faded lime storm-shutters were rusted off the hinges and banging in the breeze moving in off the gulf. A web of fine cracks sprawled up the front window, caused by one of Leona’s notorious temper tantrums twenty years ago.
“You cock-sucking-son-of-a-bitch!” Leona shrieked in my mind, accompanied by the sound of cracking glass and accentuated by a man’s indistinct pleading. Ah, the music of childhood. Shall we dance, then?
The rusted Cadillac, regardless of my cross-country prayers, was parked on the brown lawn like a monument to some dry joke. Getting out of my own car, looking up into the rain, I said, “Thanks a lot. Your sense of humor is rich,” to God, maybe, or to anyone else who might’ve been eavesdropping.
I hadn’t lived with Leona since I was fifteen, twelve long, Leona-free, years. Now here I was in the humming shade of her doorstep carrying a soggy cardboard box and shouldering a red duffle bag. My long, loose skirt was beaten flat against my thighs while I waited. Under the sticky saturation, I sagged, twitching at the mosquitoes landing on my face and bare shoulders. I had the clear sense that Leona was inches away, laughing under her breath from the other side of the peephole. I rapped the door hard, swinging the duffle bag onto my back for the moment, managing the box with just the one arm.
Reluctantly, the door groaned open on its rusted hinges and Leona, larger than life, loomed in its bowed frame. Her scowl-etched features weren’t surprising. I was a little startled, though, by the fact that her jet-black hair, pulled into a brutal bun at the back of her head, now sported thick white steaks framing her face. Leona’s deep set blue eyes, like sparkling gems enfolded in soft flesh, were duller than they used to be and her eyelids were heavier than they ought to be. She wasn’t old, Leona, but she sure looked tired.
“The cat comes back,” she breathed in an even tone, eyeing me remotely. You could always count on a cucumber reaction from Leona. And here I was, expecting a Hallmark moment, waiting for the shriek of joy and the vise grip hug. Not happening, Kiddo.
Now I was standing before yet another Leona. This was a worn version that, if not for the high-held head and squared-off shoulders, might have seemed to any random schmuck the sight of defeat. But I knew better. I’d seen Leona at the height of her glory and then at the bottom of the bucket. I’d seen all the versions that ebbed in between these waves.
In the silent moment passing, I became painfully aware of myself; my old tie-dyed skirt was so worn that my skin shone through in a few spots. The strawberry colored dreadlocks hanging long down my back and rear, laced through with beads, smelled faintly of mildew and patchouli oil. The gleam of my unwashed face highlighted a rash of pimples breaking out on my forehead- two days in a car (without air conditioning, in September) would do that to anyone’s complexion, thank-you-very-much. Then there was the truth, crouching in my thundering pulse, trying to avoid Leona’s steady gaze. She seemed to be plucking at the thing with her eyes, prying into what she couldn’t know but probably did from just a glance. There was a reason I was standing on her doorstep, soaking and miserable, and something like shame masquerading as pride made me want to hide that reason under her doormat and briskly wipe my feet on it. The words, I finally became you, Leona, prodded my tongue only to meet my teeth.
I shifted the weight of the duffle bag upon my back, the rain still coming straight down through my matted hair and into my stinging eyes. My beating heart made a hot lump in my throat as I opened my mouth to say something, anything, to stop her inspection of me and to somehow blast that knowing smirk from her plum-colored lips.
My eyes found my feet as I finally said, “Surprise, it’s me,” in a tone that I hoped was as cool as her gaze. “It’s been a while.”
“It’s been well over a year since you even called, Claire,” shot Leona quickly though her tone was still eerily even and her hands incredibly still.
“Right. I know.” My phone wasn’t ringing off the hook, either, Leona. The beat up Berkies hugging my toes became so engrossing that I couldn’t tear my gaze from them. Reduced to five-years-old in a blink, I thought with dread burning in my wet cheeks. “I suck. Right, I know…but… Leona? It’s raining on me.”
Leona’s eyes glinted with the hint of a bitter smile as she turned her back on me and mumbled, “Well, come on in, then. Be my guest.”
I followed her, bringing in a glistening puddle of water to drip all over the cracking tiles in the narrow entryway. Leona disappeared into the living room but I didn’t follow her. I shivered a little, never mind the rain outside was sticky hot. I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to see the old living room. I didn’t want to have a hot meal at her table and I did not want her to ask, “So, what happened?” in a tone that smacked of comedy. I looked back at the door, wondering if it was too late. I could take another hunk of magic mushroom, walk right back out beneath the crack, and take up residence with the insects in the bougainvillea. Leona, I figured, would be neither disappointed nor surprised. It wouldn’t be the first time I bailed.
Leona reappeared, holding two dingy towels. She handed me one and threw the other at the puddle around my feet. Then she leaned against the entryway wall and surveyed me once more. She was enjoying this, making my skin crawl with her eyes alone. I started toweling off and slowly raised my eyes to meet hers, fighting for some crumb of control.
“So, I was in the neighborhood,” I laughed dryly. “And thought I might drop by.”
“You drove that jalopy of yours three thousand miles without as much as a phone call?” Her eyes narrowed. “What, California didn’t want your ass anymore?”
“That pretty much sums it up,” I said smoothly with a tilting smile that I thought must have gone over well because, just for an instant, her posture sagged.
“That’s pretty fucking presumptuous.”
“So, can I crash?”
“Can you crash?”
Now I’d done it; her rigid shoulders fell and her eyes widened. The little horned devil on my shoulder leapt with glee, a triumphant fist slicing the air.
“Just for a while? To try to regroup, you know? Wrap my mind around things?”
Leona snapped back into her usual form, her eyes granite and her mouth iron. “What, exactly, do you need to wrap your mind around? You’re thirty years old, for christsakes!”
“I’m twenty-seven.” Thirty? That was a low blow. Maybe the bitch’s brain had vodka rot.
“And?!”
“And I need a place to crash,” I laughed but I was nervous and the laugh gave me away. “So, how about it? For old times sake?”
Leona rolled her eyes and turned away again, into the living room, saying stiffly, “Put your crap in your old room. It hasn’t changed much except that Harold keeps his magazine collection in there now. You two can sort that out, I guess.”
I thought of Harold with a stab of what felt like guilt but the feeling fled as I entered the living room. This must be what it’s like to be a ghost. There, to my right, the same old nineteen-fifties sofa with its gaudy yellow flowers and nearly-neon green leafs. The old coffee table was still there only now it was polished and only a full jar of Mallow Cream and a liter bottle of Pepsi sat on its nicked surface.
“God,” I said, more to myself than to Leona. “Nothing’s changed.”
Leona cleared her throat. “Plenty has changed.” She straightened her neat little suit, checked her manicured nails, and looked at me with an invitation in her heavy eyes. I declined.
I remembered, instead, the Eager-To-Please Leona. Head over heels for some new guy, the muscle bound cop with his shit-eating grin, then the lean social worker with the Aquanet hair, a few rebounders in the middle. This Leona always took two steps over the line. She wore too much perfume. Her lipstick was a shade brighter than she normally wore. Her hands trembled slightly, seemed to be forever reaching for the vodka bottle that (for the time being) was nowhere to be seen. Her laughter rose a few decibels above natural, giving her a high pitched neigh like a Humane Society mare, something constantly afraid and desperate.
The More-Determined Leona came round between light and dark periods and took charge of what needed to be managed, dug herself out of debt more than once, and dug her heels in to hold onto the little bit of the “good life” she had left. This Leona was always the shocker of jaw-dropping proportions. Months passed with her taking up drunken residence on the couch until, without the slightest warning, I would come home from school one day to a clean house. The laundry would be done, the bathroom reeking of Clorox, the kitchen simmering with the pungent aroma of fried food. I’d find Leona, fresh and clean, dressed in her best, looking, for all the world, as if this were her natural state. She sat with the stacks of bills and her check book, trying to make heads and tails of her balances, until she could sigh with relief. This Leona baked cookies and packed me neat little lunches with all my favorites. Her eyes said, “I’m sorry,” and her PBJ’s said, “You forgive me, right?”
The one constant was this High-Headed-Square-Shouldered Leona who’d stomp you beneath the thick heel of her black pumps long before you ever had the chance to think the word “defeat.” Her shadow prevailed upon this new Leona as she surveyed me surveying the room. There seemed to be little left of all her predecessors.
I wondered what Leona The Original must have been like. Who was she at, say, seventeen? What did she dream for her future self? Had she wanted a career? A perfect little house with a white picket fence? An adoring husband? Had she wanted children?
God, this was where it was all born, this house and this woman. This was my mother and looking into her piercing eyes I felt that fact hit my stomach like lead. I groped in my pocket for the other half of that magic mushroom but it was long gone.
