Blood
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Allison Moorer
Cover design by Kerry Rubenstein
Cover image courtesy of the author
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First Edition: October 2019
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Moorer, Allison, author.
Title: Blood: a memoir / Allison Moorer.
Description: First edition. | New York, NY: Da Capo Press, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018057263| ISBN 9780306922688 (hardcover) | ISBN
9780306922671 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Moorer, Allison. | Singers—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC ML420.M575 A3 2019 | DDC 782.42164092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057263
ISBNs: 978-0-306-92268-8 (hardcover), 978-0-306-92267-1 (ebook)
E3-20190927-JV-NF-ORI
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword by Shelby Lynn Moorer
PART I
Laura Lynn Smith Moorer and Vernon Franklin Moorer
PART II
Sissy
PART III
Blood
Thank You
Discover More
About the Author
Praise for Blood
For John Henry
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FOREWORD
Shelby Lynn Moorer
IN ALL MY YEARS trying to write my story I always wondered where Sissy was in it. I had my memories and she had hers, but when I wrote them she was always in the background. Selfishly my words led me to my own renderings. So after reading my stories back to myself I looked for her.
This book she has written telling her side and her memories changed my life.
When she sent me the finished piece I sat down and read about my life through her eyes and voice. I then realized where she had been all of those years. While I was trying to protect Mama and watch our failing parents’ every move, Sissy was there scared, worried, alone, suffering, and I never knew it. She was there hanging back, hanging tough, watching, observing, worrying, testing the waters of her world, waiting. Her child’s voice in these writings and the voice of a woman in pain now showed me where she was and where she is. We were together. And we are here together now, same mementos and memories just different voices; same bumps in the night only on different skin.
This is a remarkable tale and one that exemplifies how two sisters can face the most horrific situations and come out not only surviving them, but finding each other as women now. Sissy is the most amazing woman. My admiration for her is intense and grows daily. Her words changed my admiration and forgiveness of my father into a more realistic scheme, and one I need now in my world. It’s okay if I don’t forgive Daddy for taking our mama away. And it’s okay to feel the pain that is still very real. Her voice has allowed me to open my own buried pain. But the most revealing and important part for me is knowing where my little sister is now. I have found her. She is in my heart safe and sound, forever.
PART I
Laura Lynn Smith Moorer and Vernon Franklin Moorer
Briefcase
I first saw the briefcase on a shelf in the closet to the right of the fireplace in the Frankville house. I always wondered what was in it when I was a little girl, but I never got it down and opened it. I would’ve been called a meddletail for that. Sissy kept it with her for a while, but I became its custodian sometime during my late twenties. I don’t remember exactly when or why.
The briefcase now lives on the top of the bookshelf to the right of my desk. I look up at it from where I sit. It’s brown leather, but obviously not expensive. I stand up, walk across the room, and take a chair from the dining table to use for a step stool. I place it in front of the bookshelf and climb on it to get the briefcase down. The old fireplace smell wafts into my nose, musty and slightly ashy. I set it down on the floor and push the left and right buttons simultaneously. The latches pop open. The briefcase is full of papers—mostly song lyrics—and three reel-to-reel tapes. I shuffle through.
• A scrap of paper from one of those notepads that says “Memo from the desk of…” with Pete Drake’s name and address on it. Pete played the steel guitar on “Lay Lady Lay.” He was also in the publishing game in Nashville when Daddy first tried to get something going with his songs.
• A huge Mother’s Day card in a pink envelope from Sissy to Mama.
• Some of Sissy’s early stabs at songwriting.
• A lyric to a song called “Living in the Sun,” written in Daddy’s hand.
I don’t want no work day job making me a slave,
nor some landlord telling me give me what you save.
• A song list written on yellow legal-pad paper with seventy-six titles on it in Mama’s handwriting.
Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone
Together Again
I’m Leaving It Up to You
Brown Eyed Handsome Man
• A letter of recommendation for Daddy from the principal at Joe M. Gillmore School in Jackson dated July 1, 1972. That was just days after I was born.
• A birthday card to Mama from Sissy and me, and another Mother’s Day card from me dated May 8, 1983.
• The lyric to “A Good Day Coming On,” handwritten by Mama on loose-leaf notebook paper. A letter from Window Music Co. in Nashville mentioning it and two other titles.
• A typed lyric to “Kinfolks,” a song of Daddy’s I don’t recall ever hearing.
• Another letter of recommendation from the principal at Jackson High School dated July 5, 1972. Frank Barbaree. The same man who was principal when Sissy and I went to school in Jackson twelve years later.
• A business card with Huey P. Meaux’s name on it. He was a record producer and a pretty successful one, but went to jail for drugs and child pornography. I’m glad Daddy didn’t take up with him. He did produce “Wasted Days and Wasted Nights,” so he had to have had some redeeming qualities. My second ex-husband says he is the only person who ever got a song back from Huey P. Meaux. Second ex-husband was also once on Meaux’s Crazy Cajun show on KPFT in Houston. It’s a small world, and there are only about two degrees of separat
ion in the music business.
• Lyrics in manila envelopes sent registered mail to Daddy from Daddy. Copyrights.
So many songs. Love songs, traveling songs, longing songs.
These pages tell me more about him than he ever let me see. He loved playing music more than anything else. He had trouble keeping a job. The business cards and contracts tell me he thought he was good enough to make it and he wanted to be acknowledged for his talent. The writing shows me he wasn’t great, only okay, but it is good enough to reveal his gypsy soul, or at least his want of one. Am I to believe he had a tender heart buried underneath the misery he showed the world so much of the time? Of course I am. Of course I do.
These papers are history: his and ours. Verses and choruses, dreams and plans.
Magazines
I can hardly resist putting a shiny, aspirational periodical in my shopping basket when I’m at the store for something else. I wouldn’t be surprised if she spent thousands of dollars on magazines during her life. I know I’ve spent at least that in mine. I have to cull my ever-growing stack of beautifully bound bait wrapped up in fashion, home, music, and literary matters almost constantly.
Mama wanted pretty things. She wanted a life less haunted by a dysfunctional marriage and unfulfilled promise and promises. A life that gave her a car with working headlights, not ones that required her to jiggle the switch so they would come on again after they suddenly went off as we drove down the two-lane, black-as-pitch highway on our thirty-mile drive home at night. A life that gave her a nice house she wasn’t embarrassed to have people see, instead of the one that always seemed to be in disrepair. A life that gave her a husband she could talk to, one without a drinking problem, a mean streak, and a death wish. A life that made her less depressed. Magazines are full of dreams. I don’t know what hers were.
Coffee Cups
I have some pieces from a set of china that belonged to Mama. It isn’t by any means fine, no need to do the “can I see my fingers through it” test on it, but it is pretty—ivory with delicate silver trim and tasteful pink tulips. Most of the set I keep tucked away in the closet with pieces from others I’ve picked up through the years—some from my first marriage, some I’ve found in antique stores. All of it mixes and matches and that’s okay with me. The last time I moved, some of the pieces got broken. I cut my thumb deeply while unpacking them and probably needed some stitches, which, of course, I didn’t get. I bled for hours into paper towels I wrapped around my hand and kept on working on the things I was working on, periodically checking it, distractedly fascinated by how wounds try to close almost as soon as they are made. It healed nicely, though I have a small scar to remind me to be more careful. I take heed in my physical actions less often than I should. I wonder if that’s a trait of orphans.
I keep four teacups from her set in my kitchen cabinet to use for my afternoon or early evening espresso. The cups make me warm from the inside, sort of like the coffee does. When I hold one it feels soft, as soft as her voice was when she would whisper good night and tuck the covers under my chin. I imagine her holding one in her hand and standing in the kitchen with me as we sip and thumb through a magazine or catalog. She reaches up to brush the hair from my brow and we talk about this or that. There are parts of a heart that never heal once they’re broken. There is no glue that will hold.
My Hands/Her Hands
I make my way to the kitchen when I wake in the mornings. It’s usually still dark outside. It doesn’t take long for me to get there, New York City apartments being what most of them are.
I start breakfast for my son and coffee for myself. I put the kettle on to boil. I grind some coffee beans. I rinse the French press from yesterday—I hardly ever wash it properly. I look down at my hands. I’ve never forgotten what hers looked like—almost just like mine. My mama’s hands were sort of wide and her fingers were much shorter, almost exact replicas of her daddy’s. The nail beds were nearly flat. The backs of them had just started to get a few dark spots by the time she died but only a few—she was just forty-one that August, younger than I am now, so she hadn’t had time to get many.
She was younger than I am now.
My own hands look big to me and my fingers are long—artist’s hands, I’ve been told. But there’s something about them that holds the memory of hers, much like my face holds expressions that she would’ve made with her own.
My hands are like hers when I make my son’s breakfast. When I put money for a field trip in his backpack and remember hers, digging around in her purse for our lunch money.
When I wipe his tears.
When I fold his clothes and tie his shoes.
My hands are like hers when I make a list of things to do. She made list after list on sheets of legal-pad paper and would present Sissy and me with one every now and then. I wish I had saved them. Her rules would still apply.
• Your rooms shall be picked up at all times. Toys put away, clothes folded and in their drawers or hanging in the closet.
• There will be no back talking. Any sassing will not be tolerated.
• You will each be assigned chores to do around the house and these shall be completed with no complaining.
• Homework will be done as soon as you get home and finished before supper.
My hands are like hers when I pull thread through a piece of fabric. My hands are like hers when I type these words and do this job.
Brown cowboy hat hanging
on my closet door
Daddy’s hat travels with me from residence to residence just like his briefcase does, and it has for at least twenty years. I kept it, for a while, in a mothproof bag and always stuck it on a shelf in a closet somewhere. I didn’t want it out where I could see it. A few years ago, I decided differently. I hammered a nail into the exterior of the closet door in my bedroom and hung it there. It has become part of the room, but I almost never fail to notice it and think “Daddy’s hat” when I do. Am I foolish to keep hats on my doors and rings on my fingers? Am I a glutton for punishment or a sentimental fool?
It won’t fit on my head all the way. It’s not the black one he wore when he was a teenager that his grandfather Kervin said improved his looks by fifty percent, but instead a brown one with a tall crown, narrow pinch, and a thin grosgrain ribbon band. A taller crown than I like for myself. I have my own collection. He would’ve found it jaunty of me that I’m a regular hat wearer. Mama and Daddy both liked hats and had good hat faces. The kind of faces that hold up even through aging—good, strong jaws and high foreheads. Not that I would know about how they would’ve aged; I’m just imagining.
Some moths got to Daddy’s brown cowboy hat, maybe before it went in the bag—there are a few holes in the felt. Sometimes I take it off the nail and plop it onto my head. I wonder when he wore it because it’s so small. If it’s one of those certain days, I think about his head a little bit longer than other days, and wonder, when he was the exact age I am now, why he had to go and blow it off.
THIS IS MY VERSION OF THE STORY.
It is the only one I can tell.
Tuesday morning, August 12, 1986. It was still dark outside and they were gone, just like that.
Daddy had called the house on Barden Avenue over and over the night before. Mama, in typical fashion, kept answering, though each time the phone rang I tried to talk her out of doing so. She eventually took it off the hook and we all went to bed. I slept on a pallet on the living room floor that night because Mama’s friend Carolyn stayed over out of fear of what Daddy might do.
The air felt dangerous—glitchy and staticky—as if there was electricity running through everything. It had rained all day, but the downpour provided no cooling effect and only made things feel angrier than they already did. Maybe you have to have lived in the deep, thick Southeast to understand what angry air feels like.
Mama seemed worried, and Daddy was desperate. She was trying to talk him down from the ledge again, but even she couldn’t do it this time. Her
side of the conversation dwindled to repetitions of “I know” and “Well, Frank” by the time she gave up. I don’t know what sort of things he said but I can imagine. There wasn’t anything she could’ve done to soothe him but go back to him, to make it like it had been before we left. How it had been before we left wasn’t good.
I woke up and saw him standing in the kitchen. It wasn’t unusual for him to come around in the mornings; he often did after Mama and I moved out of the trailer, but he had never been there quite so early. Daddy had always been one to stay up all night and sleep late into the day, but by that time he was so fraught he couldn’t settle down or quiet his mind enough to let it or his body rest.
I gazed across the room through sleepy, half-open eyes. Daddy leaned against the breakfast table that he’d made a few years earlier. I saw Mama’s right side. She was wearing her winter housecoat, a strange choice for August. The cabinet where she kept the coffeemaker obscured her left side as she made the day’s first pot. Since she had to be at work at 8:30 in the morning, she’d probably decided to just go ahead and start her day since Daddy wasn’t going to let her have any peace. He’d obviously gone to her bedroom window and knocked on it to wake her because I was the closest to both entrances to the house and hadn’t heard him bang on the door.
Her winter housecoat was navy blue velour. She’d had it for years. She used to get home from work, take off her clothes, and swaddle herself in it when it was cool weather. The summer housecoat that she should’ve been wearing was white with yellow and orange flowers. She’d made it out of seersucker in a wrap-dress style, with cap sleeves and orange binding. I didn’t see if she had on shoes. Knowing her, probably not.