Start at Chapter One if you’re new.
When you’re talented like your mother was as a child, the other kids get neglected, Barbara tells me over the phone.
Other kids like her brother? I ask.
Yeah, he resented how much attention she got, she confesses.
This makes me think of that midnight vignette where my seven-year-old mother is dancing on the table for my grandpa’s friends. I replay the scene in my mind and insert her brother, Bobby, Jr., standing in his bedroom doorway, seething with jealousy as he watched his father dote on Heidi in the night.
And it strikes me as odd that all that attention went to her since my grandma’s barrenness made Bobby, the firstborn, the long-awaited child. Plus, he was a he in a pre-feminism world. So what was the problem with him, then? Was he a shy, dour child? Or super strong-willed and rebellious? I know he wasn’t ugly or deformed; in fact, he was quite handsome. He had asthma, which kept him from being an athlete like his father. So could that be the reason she was preferred? I wonder these things, but I know that even at 90-something she still lacks the self-awareness to open up the truth.
Heidi just did everything—ballet, piano, baton twirling. You name it. She was adorable and she loved attention, Barbara gushes, and I cringe at the favoritism still seeping out of her voice this many decades later.
Heidi loved the attention so much that when she was nine years old she wanted to enter a local beauty competition for little girls called The Little Miss Cotton Pageant. Hundreds of girls made their bids each year, so to be chosen as a contestant at all was a huge honor. She succeeded and made the cut. Then, at the finale, she twirled her baton in a plaid pinafore, freckles, and a smile that made the judges swoon so that on her very first attempt she won the damn thing. The local newspaper called her 1967’s “pint-sized goodwill ambassador for the local cotton associations,” and her prize package included a parade ride in a stretch car alongside the adult Miss Cotton Queen, a new all-cotton wardrobe, a $100 savings bond, and, best of all, a trip to Six Flags.
If I put myself in her pretty little shoes, she’s just playing her part in the family system. For some reason, her brother isn’t favored. Her older sister is mentally handicapped (probably autistic, but they didn’t have that diagnosis back then). Her father delights in putting her on display. And her mother tries to correct her own sense of neglect by fawning on her. In the Hayes family, Heidi’s job description is crystal clear and it reads “Chief Golden Child.” Did she enjoy the role? Hell yes. Who wouldn’t? It came with a lot of perks, even if it meant that her brother took out his rage on her and later poisoned himself with it.
This glow of hers, her “chosen-ness,” it seemed to follow her everywhere, even into sacred spaces where it took the shape of prophecy. Like when she was baptized as a teenager and afterward the minister announced to the entire congregation that she seemed to “shine with the Holy Spirit.” I’m sure he had no idea that this innocent observation carried a lethal metaphor, one that fused her lopsided family system and spiritual identity. But that it did.
This was the girl who became the woman that my father married, who became the woman that was my mother.
***
I’m nine or ten, seated in El Paso’s Convention Center at a round table covered with white linens. Forks and knives clink on plates, servers whiz around refilling glasses of iced tea and coffee. I’ve barely touched my chicken breast I’m so nervous for her.
Her hair is coiffed and sprayed to perfection, and her eye shadow is heavy. She sips her coffee, no creamer tonight because it coats the throat and she’s about to sing in her bid to win this local manifestation of Star Search.
I look at my brother who keeps yanking at his tie and wiggling in his seat, then my father who seems calm, eats heartily and makes small talk with the man to his right.
I don’t know how he does that, stays so unaffected and casual.
Because everything’s on the line.
She wants this so badly, to be a star again. The longing for it is coursing through her veins. I see or imagine it, glugging through the pulse points on her wrists and neck.
I sit in my itchy dress crossing and uncrossing my legs, praying that time will pass as slowly as possible, hoping to put off the moment they call her name. I’m not sure I can bear it, her in that sapphire dress belting out Kathy Trocolli’s “Stubborn Love.” To fling her heart out there so brazenly when it could be crushed…
My sweaty palms clench the cloth napkin into a wad and I eyeball the emergency exit doors.
She has to win so nothing is shattered. One song well-sung and well-received--it’s critical to our survival.
Now the dining clamor fades and the lights dim.
I’ve got cotton mouth knowing how soon she’ll be on stage. Just two more contestants and then it’s her turn.
My side cramps and I think I might have to run to the restroom.
What I wouldn’t give to go back to our den where I sit on the old, lumpy couch and watch her surrender to the piano. Can’t it be just us two together, worshiping her? Why does she insist on widening the circle of praise? She’s tried this many times with my dad and he doesn’t take to it like I wish he would. His lack of enthusiasm stings, so to imagine that feeling multiplied here, coming from all these eyes…
The spotlight is sinister and invasive, shining on the stage like a threat.
Little Miss Cotton All Grown Up walks to it and takes the mic.
The track stalls a second and as she waits she slips into that practiced smile of hers.
The music rolls and her voice is full of power.
The phrasing is right through the verses, chorus, bridge.
The emotion comes through her stance, her hands, her open chest.
It’s Your stubborn love That never lets go of me I don’t understand How You can stayyyy....
She sings through the final notes, the ending breathless and poignant, and there’s thunderous applause and I drop the napkin in my lap and finally breathe.
We’ve made it to the other side without shame or disaster. The relief is palpable and salvific and when they stop clapping I take a huge bite of the untouched New York cheesecake that’s been sitting in front of me for a good while.
And then she loses. No cash prize, no recording contract, no ticket to fame. Just second place to a performer I can’t even remember. Her consolation prize is the hope that the song she sang about Jesus’ love possibly “ministered” to someone listening.
That night after I wrap my arms around her taffeta waist and she boops my little chin, she stays at a hotel downtown all alone while Jake, Dad, and I returned to a Star-less house that feels as if all the air has been sucked out of it.
She never spoke with me about that night, but I’m certain that’s when it came unraveled in her, the central storyline that she was special. From there onward she had to reclaim it, maybe not in competitions and awards but in some form of adoration akin to them. She had to get her identity back, and that required a man who saw her that way, too. And that man wasn’t my father any longer.
Hi
I’m Melinda Mcfadden a high school friend of your moms and spoke to her frequently before she had the stroke. We used to spend time together skateboarding, and singing. Making up stories of how we were going to be on television and move to California. I loved your mom so much. I had that moment when god told me to look out that she is still alive somewhere. I told my husband I was thinking about her again and wondering where she was. Then I got the note that she passed. I told myself she is still alive somewhere in gods plan. What a present she was for me. I have bought a giuitar and trying to learn because of her. Hugs sweet girl she was beautiful. I adored her ….