Blueberry Hill: a Sister's Story(7)

Whoever they were they obviously didn’t have a mama breathing down their neck, because Donna didn’t usually come in until three or four in the morning.

By fall Donna had enough money to buy a car; not a brand new one but way better than what I drove. Back then she lived a life most young girls wouldn’t dare to dream of. She had money, a great car, a lineup of guys wanting to date her, and more friends than you could count.

But the problem with flying through life at such a breakneck speed is you forget that sooner or later you’ll need to slam on the brakes.

Less than six months after she got that car, Donna moved out of Mama and Daddy’s house and into an apartment she shared with four other girls. It wasn’t even a real apartment. It was the basement of an old house in Lodi where the owner had put up enough wallboard for two bedrooms and a kitchen. It didn’t matter that they had to go through the furnace room to get to where they slept, Donna had her freedom and that’s what she wanted.

Mama cried for days after Donna left. “Living like that, she’ll get her fool self killed,” Mama said sobbing. Although she had no way of knowing it at the time, she wasn’t all that far from the truth.

~

I don’t suppose anyone will ever know what really happened in Virginia, but it changed Donna. She was gone six months, but she came home with years of learning. She hadn’t just survived she’d thrived and was ready to take on the world. Her new friends were people who thought as she thought. Like her, they were looking for a good time. They were older than her, but with Donna you couldn’t tell if she was sixteen or thirty-six. So their way of life became hers. She matched them drink for drink and smoke for smoke.





Guy with a Guitar




It’s one thing to be fearless and yet another to throw caution to the wind, which is what Donna did the night she met Charlie. The next morning she woke with stars in her eyes.

“He’s in a band, and he’s the lead singer,” she told me. She went on about how he’d eyed her throughout the evening and slipped her a note saying where he’d be playing the next night.

~

“Let’s go,” she says. “It’ll be a blast!”

Although I’m not by nature a club person, I have to admit Donna’s excitement reels me in. “Okay.”

That night we get dressed up and leave the house at ten-thirty.

“This is kind of late to be going out, isn’t it?” I say.

“Late?” Donna gives me a sideways look of disbelief. “You look desperate if you get there before eleven.”

“Oh, okay.”

The club we go to is in Brooklyn. It’s little more than a hole in the wall, a narrow brick building with three steps leading down and loud music coming up.

“This is the place?” I ask. Already I’m thinking this is a bad idea.

She nods. “Cool, huh?”

I follow her inside and stay close behind. This is a place where I feel neither comfortable nor safe, but Donna loves it so I try to love it with her.

We stand off to the side and order drinks. For a while we listen to the music; then when the band takes a break this short guy with an oversized nose starts walking toward us.

Donna pokes an elbow in my rib. “This is the guy,” she whispers.

At first I think she’s kidding, but she’s not.

“Hey, Charlie,” she says.

He sticks his arm out, flattens his hand against the wall, and leans into Donna. “I figured you’d be here.”

I’m amazed that this is the guy my beautiful, cool, with-it sister is crazy about. I don’t get it, but she obviously likes him so I say nothing.

Before he heads back to the bandstand, Charlie says, “When we close up, we’re getting together at Mike’s. You want to come?”

I say no. Donna says yes, and she’s driving.

We don’t get home until five o’clock that morning. I am weary to the bone, but Donna is the happiest I’ve ever seen her.

Now I look back and wonder: if I had refused to go, would she have gone anyway? If she hadn’t gone, would they still have connected in some other time and place? There is great wisdom in hindsight, but even hindsight has its blind spots. And this, I suppose, is one of them.

~

As it turned out, Charlie was not the party boy Donna described. He was a brutish man with a callous way of thinking and a nose that overshadowed his face.

“Be careful,” I told my sister, “he reeks of trouble.”

“Careful is for people who are afraid of life,” she answered.

Five months later Donna was pregnant and they got married. They didn’t have a white-gown, invite-all-your-friends ceremony but a courthouse quickie. For Donna that was enough. Beneath the crusty exterior beat the heart of a wild woman ready to settle down.

Having a baby, that’s what changed her. The baby, and the fact that she’d actually fallen in love with a man who loved himself far more than he loved her.

Seven months after the wedding, their son was born. She named the boy after his daddy, but within the year she and Charlie got divorced. He’d left her for a new groupie who followed the band from place to place. A younger groupie. One who didn’t come with a baby attached.

Donna never cried. Not once. You could almost see through the hole in her heart, but she covered it with a breastplate of resolution.