THE CHOIR

Tessa Woody

Northern Kentucky University

Forget the Glitter and Grow Up

Glitter eyeshadow was smudged across our eyelids, accented by accidental mascara marks. Hairspray over-sprayed, tightening the skin at the edge of our hair line. The curls were still warm on our shoulders. My best friend and I had always gotten ready for middle-school dances together. The seventh-grade Thanksgiving dance was no exception. For this dance, I had real cowgirl boots, straight outta Nashville. They were embroidered thick black leather. A wave pattern curled up the ankle. The click of the heels made me feel unstoppable. I paired them with my mom’s cowgirl hat, its crown adorned with a lapis lazuli. My white and black sparkly dress was the least interesting part of my outfit.

My best friend didn’t fall short, in fact, she always seemed like she was several steps ahead of me. She got her hips and chest before I did. She understood how to put the bra on both backwards and upside-down first: clasp it, and then pull it around the front and flip it up-right. Genius. She knew how to put eyeliner on and what YouTube videos to watch to learn how to do the rest. I trusted her more than I did myself to not poke my eye. She wore blue, a color made for her. Although, by the looks of it, her dress wasn’t any less itchy. The more the sparkle, the more the itch. It was worth it. She didn’t complain about the pinchy heels. She knew not to rub her eyes because she remembered she had make-up on. She knew how to talk to people. She could befriend anyone, no matter the clique. We posed for pictures, our parents waving hands left and right from behind cheap digital cameras. Move closer! Forwards! Backwards! Serious smiles, duck lips, and bunny ears. Dad stepped in unwillingly, but not without dragging Mom in with him. In a rush, pictures ended as soon as they began. With my parents gone, her mom wanted to take some individual pictures. I was happy to get behind the camera. Her mom was aggravated, though she often was that way. This time it was because she had called down the stairs for her son several times. He had moved into the basement after going through rehab. My friend was happy to have her brother back home. They all truly just wanted to help him get through this. They were not the family to shun for mistakes, because they all had made their own. They weren’t fake. There were no rugs to sweep under. I had always struggled connecting all the branches of her family tree. Her brother was actually her uncle. Her grandmother had adopted her when she was a

baby because her mom was in jail. So, her grandmother became her mom, her uncle became her brother, and her aunt became her sister. They all acted like siblings, and as a little kid, nothing seemed off to me about this. My friend was an aunt in elementary school. I swear, she was born to be an aunt. She’s always been good at it. All of her nieces and nephews clung to her like a sister, and eventually, like a mother. This was just her family. Love and hate harmonized, dancing the waltz through the floorboards. Her mother stood at the top of the stairs and yelled his name for what seemed like the tenth time. He had to be home, because his shoes were still by the dog bowl in the corner. I had a pit in my stomach. Continued silence. Flashing camera lights were traded for the ambulance’s red, white, and blue. The bruises around his eyes and in the crooks of his arms were blacker than the winter night outside. He was so cold. The covered gurney rattled out the door. I could do nothing to stop her from crying in a ball on the floor over a bible. So, I just sat with my hand on her back. Her sobs became rhythmic, and my heart pounded to the beat. My eyes dried because I forgot to blink. There were no tears, just fear. In that moment, I was forced to forget the glitter and grow up, because her brother wasn’t the only brother lost in battle. There is no mercy for loved ones in an epidemic.

Eight Years

My sister and I were rowdy girls when we were 4 and 5. We were always rough housing, rolling around on a blanket over the carpeted floor. The rug burns on our knees were as red as our flushed faces. During one particular wrestling match at our grandparents’s house, my uncle came up from the basement to sit on the couch. The TV was running, but it didn’t have our attention. It was strange to see him out of his room. Some of my earliest memories, younger than 5, were of him arriving home late at night with pizza or White Castle. He always brought a bunch of food, enough for him and an army. I used to hear him practicing on his drum set. He loved heavy metal, and he put his soul into music. I had never seen him play, but my parents would tell you to this day that some of their favorite concerts were his. All of these super early memories were short, and mostly just sensory detail. But it was enough to know who Uncle was. But these days, the house was quieter. He brought home food less. In fact, I stopped noticing when he came in at all. The only way we knew he was home was because he came up to get food or drink on Sunday mornings. That is if we didn’t go to church, which rarely happened in my younger years. Today was one of the only days the silence was broken. He was sitting with us in the living room. It felt like I hadn’t seen him in years, though it was most likely only a couple weeks or a month. His hair was a mess, dark circles rimmed his eyes,

and his bones seemed more prominent. We didn’t really acknowledge him and the wrestling match continued. When my sister kicked the box fan over, it started a chain reaction. A violent chill came over him, which caused him to spill his drink. He jumped up and screamed at my sister. If she hadn’t bumped the fan, he wouldn’t have gotten cold and spilled his drink on his lap. Our jaws dropped. My sister’s eyes began to swim in tears. He stormed off after yelling. Nothing was normal. Uncle never screamed at us. I hugged my sister and told her it wasn’t her fault. I was often the one to speak up when the screaming and the yelling was unjust. Over the years, my parents had to tell me several times, “Tessa, you’re right, but he’s your (insert your superior male elder here). You can’t talk back.” I was taught to respect my elders. My teachers, family, and friends would most likely agree, but when I was in that house, it was a whole different story. Someone was always yelling. I think this is why I also felt I had a duty to be there every weekend. Now, I’m glad I didn’t stand up to my uncle. I had no idea what he was going through, and I wouldn’t understand for a while. I knew his behavior wasn’t normal, and that was all I could understand. This not-normal feeling would grow and grow until it burst, leaving chaos behind. The silence was broken one last time in that same year. Like last time, my sister and I were wrestling again in the living room. The screaming began on the second floor. This was unusual because it normally started on the first floor and was aimed at my grandmother. It didn’t matter who it was, everyone had a bone to pick with her. But this time, my grandmother was in the kitchen. We could hear Uncle and Papaw screaming at eachother. We watched as the fight moved down the narrow stairs and into the foyer. My uncle put his hand on the doorknob and my grandfather towered over him. Spit flew from my grandfather’s mouth. The screaming didn’t sound much like words. But my uncle held his scruffy chin up. It was about money. That’s all I could decipher at the time. The door slammed. The windchimes above the door rattled like the angels on judgment day. The next time I saw my uncle’s face was on Channel 12 news at 11 p.m. After leaving the house, my uncle robbed two banks that day, one in Kentucky and one in Ohio. He needed money for his next fix, and he couldn’t steal from his father anymore. My mother later told me that Uncle stole from Papaw a lot, but I had just never seen the altercations until now. He had to do two different amounts of time in jail for each state. I didn’t see him for eight years.

Under the Tablecloth

His oldest son was born bitter, it seems. He had, and has, every right to be. As a kid, my cousin was my friend and my bully. But I never took the bullying as an

offense. I saw him. I knew why he would lash out. I felt more sympathy for him than I did anger. I fought to be his friend. I wanted to be cool like him. He was a big kid. He was five years older than me, so I had a lot of catching up to do. I often watched him play video games. It’s from him that I got my love for this pastime. The few times he handed me the controller and let me play, I swear, I heard angel music. The controller glowed golden like a relic from Indiana Jones. It was the sign of trust and friendship I wanted. Too bad for him, I was, and I am, terrible at video games. I messed up every save he had. One winter afternoon during my elementary school winter break, we decided to play a game of hide-and-seek during a visit to our grandparents house. We both hid underneath the dining-room table. My sister was it, as she often was. We whispered to each other for a while because my sister was looking in all the wrong places and the tablecloth was long. My cousin, shaded in the dim light under the table, looked at me with steady eyes and said, “When I’m a dad, I’m going to be there. I’m going to be a good dad.” It was completely out of the blue. The sudden switch startled me a bit. But I realized we were finally in a place where he felt safe and he trusted me. The weight of everything on both his dad’s shoulders, and his own, became clear to me. My little heart broke for both of them. “I know you will,” is the only thing I could think to say. He became a dad in 2013. He was seventeen. I didn’t know the child’s mom too well, but I know she didn’t get the best chance to be a mom. She overdosed this year, during the pandemic, so she didn’t get a proper funeral. My cousin said that every time he looks into his son’s eyes, he sees her. When I asked him If I could write about him he just said, “Do a good piece. I’m tired of losing people to this shit. It makes me sick.” I hope I did.

A Generation Too Late

Northern Kentucky Hates Heroin came to my high school one morning to educate us on the effects of heroin. It’s through education that Kentucky claims to have had some success in slowing the rate of heroin use and in getting overdosedeaths down. Even my school, the number-one public school in all of Kentucky, blue ribbon and everything, was not immune to the epidemic. In this prestigious school, everyone is perfect, and if they aren’t, they pay to have it covered up. But the stories still get murmured in the corners of the cafeteria and the back of the library. I have stories to tell, but they are stories I am not supposed to know. The assembly was solemn. A student in our grade had lost a brother to heroin. His family organized the assembly. The student, the family, and other members of Northern Kentucky Hates Heroin, told stories of loved ones they lost. The speakers held back tears. The auditorium chair became itchy and hot. My throat burned.

It was so silent, you could feel the pain vibrating in the air. I glanced around to see the faces of my fellow classmates in the crowd. Their chairs must have been itchy too. Their throats must have burned like mine. I wondered if I was the only one counting the fuzzballs on the carpet. I wondered how many got lost in that trance that sucked them into the memories of the ambulance lights or the slam of the door for the last time. Did they make promises under tablecloths too? The saddest thing was not the stories the speakers told. It was not the tears they shed. It was the fact that this assembly was too late for most. Every night, the blue and red channel 12 news banner told us of the climbing numbers, and the safe places to get rid of used needles. Senior year, my government teacher brought in both our state senator and our state representative to speak to the class. Two white men gave a presentation to about a dozen pairs of dull eyes. Then, they opened up for questions. Many rose quickly to ask personal questions or why pot wasn’t legal yet. I waited. The song in my chest grew. I raised my hand. “What do you plan to do about the heroin epidemic?” I asked. The room became silent. Silent like the silent that follows heroin in all situations. They both exchanged nervous glances, telepathically deciding to give me the scripted answer. They suddenly seemed shy. They did the easiest thing a politician can do: pass the blame. The oldest one answered, and I will paraphrase: The Federal Government has several levels of categorizing drugs. Marijuana and heroin are on the same level. This needs to be changed first before they can do anything. Sadly, northern Kentucky is so different from the rest of the state. Some counties are still dry, because alcohol is still controversial amongst diehard Southern Baptists. How could a few counties hope to do anything when the rest of the state and the federal government was the problem? It took two generations to switch the narrative. My father was born in 1971, the year Nixon declared the war on drugs. My mother was born the year before. Eventually, the public started to realize that the war on drugs was not on drugs, but instead, on its victims. The victims raised their fists and declared their children will not be taken too. But there is no mercy for loved ones in an epidemic. The speakers of the assembly were preaching to the choir. The choir harmonized their sobs. It could be heard from the other side of the school, past the administration’s office, outside the doors, through the parking lot, down the streets that pump blood into the heart of Northern Kentucky, to the courts in Frankfort, and up to the highest powers in the United States. They pretended to listen. They passed blame around like a ticking bomb. They couldn’t hold a tune if they tried. They did nothing.