1968—the year when the whole world wanted to blow out of their prisons. Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton and I had been together seven years, with us going on walks every day around the gravel roads near the Opry, where she lived with me. Folks thought we made the cutest old maids, especially when we walked those damn pugs, who I was convinced would outlive us all. We even brought those dogs with us to bingo on Sunday nights at the church hall, with all the other widows.
On our first Christmas, I framed the drawing Rhodie made for me back in 1923—the one with the two black circles and the white space they made when they intercepted. A Venn diagram, as it turns out. I’d kept it in my delicates drawer all those years.
Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton, always heavy on flair, hung it above our bed—where it took on a new, proud meaning. That picture was a prophecy fulfilled, she said, not some shameful part of myself to be avoided.
Eddie talked about moving into the spare room at the Opry, but she never did, which is just as well since Miss Tanya May Rogerton made that her secondary sewing space. Every Christmas Miss Tanya May Rogerton made Eddie two custom-tailored shirts, since it was difficult to find men’s shirts that could fit over her breasts. Miss Debbie tsked every time Eddie unwrapped her gift, but she otherwise held her tongue.
PD stomped on her way to the beginnings of young womanhood, though from behind she still looked like a boy, especially given her continued embrace of the pixie haircut. I wasn’t shocked when the boy she’d asked to her Sadie Hawkins dance had longer hair and softer hands than she did. That’s what modern times do, they flip things 180 degrees and shake them until the old rusty things fall out.
Everyone came to the Opry for my sixty-fifth birthday. What would have made it perfect would’ve been to have the Fiddler there, too, but I suppose he was just a hard lesson I needed to learn. In losing him, though, I gained everyone else by opening up and not repeating the mistakes that had cost me my best friend. Everyone is here at the right time and everything has a reason, or so it seems.
Eddie showed up late to the afternoon party, having gone out to Kitty’s on our suggestion the night before. She looked tired but happy. Miss Debbie was even later, though I have no idea why.
“Nana Dara!” Miss Debbie shouted, throwing open my screen door and sending two of the cats running for their lives. “Birthday girl?”
PD walked in behind her. She was growing so tall—tall enough to have stretch marks on her hipbones, Miss Debbie told me, after long nights of growing pains.
I yelled, “Come on in!”
I couldn’t get the door on account of Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton insisting that I stay seated on the couch so I could be waited on during my birthday.
Everyone milled about while I moved my feet around inside my cushy socks, appreciating the results of a weekly pedicure—my Saturday outing with Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton before we get Mexican food downtown. Bo nodded to me, then walked into the kitchen where he popped open two beers—one for him and one for Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton who, to my constant surprise, loves beer. She followed him in and I could see them whispering about something.
“What are you two cahooting about in there?” I called out.
“Birthday surprises!” she said.
Eddie rubbed her eyes. “Can you pour me some black coffee, strong?”
Miss Debbie raised her eyebrows but couldn’t say anything, seeing as her mouth was full of gin-soaked ice cubes.
“Coffee?” Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton shouted back. “Sure thing, hon. PD, you want some?”
PD, who was trying on a few bits of adulthood, answered, “Coffee? Yes, please.”
Bo came out of the kitchen carrying a homemade birthday cake. I worried that the ashes from the cigarette in his teeth might fall in the cake, but realized that nearly everything in my life had gotten ashes in it at one point or another, so who cares. He looked so handsome with more of his hair now turning white and those deep hazel eyes of his that looked like stones you would find on the beach and keep forever.
Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton started the singing—“Happy Birthday to you!”—while she lit the blue-and-green candles before placing the cake before me on my gold-trimmed TV tray. The cake was a God damn mess. While Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton could make a wedding gown from an apron, she could hardly blanch greens without catching something on fire. On the top on the sunken disaster she’d written: “Happy sixty-fifth, Mrs. Dara!”
I looked up from the edge of my mustard yellow couch. “Mrs.?”
“Mrs. Dara in the way that I am Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton. We will be Mrs. together, even if we can’t be Mrs. together!”
Miss Debbie clicked her tongue. The others all clapped and hooted.
From that day forward, everyone in my family except Miss Debbie called me Mrs. Dara. She never called me Mrs. Dara or sat Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton next to me at her New Year’s party dinners—claiming the cycle of boy-girl-boy-girl that is present at any decent table would then be ruined—but all that said, Miss Debbie bought the lion’s share of her outfits from Mrs. Tanya May Rogerton and gave her genuine hugs when they saw each other, which was more than I’d ever dared to dream.
And truly, it didn’t matter if someone sat between us during Miss Debbie’s New Year’s dinners when I looked out over the table at all those people filling the spaces I didn’t know needed filling forty-five years ago. That’s what life is about—what you choose to fill yourself with. If you choose to fill yourself with heavy, dark secrets—and almost all of them are heavy and dark—there’s not enough room left for much of anything else.
When Huddie died, I knew how I wanted to live. I wanted to find the thing I loved and be open to it and let it carry me past myself—past my own death, even. For him it was his music; for me, it turned out to be my family.
Now, when I die or the aliens come for me—as I believe they surely might—I will live on in the memories of people who knew me—really knew me—and loved me. It seems like this big-boned girl, who started out with two strikes against her, finally figured out what this living thing is all about.