Gumdrop

By the end of summer after I turned eighteen, I had saved enough money to purchase our horse trailer from Mom. I hitched it behind the fifteen-year-old Rambler sedan that my grandfather had given me. Then I packed up my stuff, loaded my horses, and hit the road. The time to finally join Bunny’s gospel band was at hand.
Even in its heyday, my Rambler was no towing vehicle. I, however, was clueless about its limitations. Worse yet, I had never in my life pulled a horse trailer. On the highway, the trailer swayed repeatedly, fishtailing behind the car because of its excessive weight. Each time the trailer shifted from one side of the car to the other, the rambler shifted with it. To maintain control, I gripped the steering wheel so hard that my hands began cramping. I looked down at them and gritted my teeth, realizing how accurately “white knuckled” described great fear.
When tractor trailers sped by, their crosswinds nearly swept me off the road. I braked to about twenty miles an hour and kept my eyes glued ahead. At this rate, the trip was going to take forever. I could not get it out of my mind that my best friends were traveling behind me, and it would be my fault if anything happened to them.
Thankfully, we all survived. Following Bunny’s instructions, I settled my horses at a farm owned by a friend of hers who had offered to care for them in exchange for being able to ride them occasionally. Thereafter I rarely saw my horses because Bunny required each member of her band to commit a great deal of time to practicing for singing engagements in addition to holding a full time job. Had I known I would not see my horses, I would have kissed them good-bye, but at that moment, it was the gospel group that filled my thoughts.
I detached the trailer, jumped back into the car, and reached over to the passenger seat for the scrap of paper on which I had scribbled directions to the Milledgeville Motel. Milledgeville sounded like a pretty Podunk place. Although it had been the original state capitol, the town now had only one remaining claim to fame - the State hospital for the insane. As optimistic as I was about the gospel band, I entertained doubts that our music was going to put the town back on the map.
The motel was easy to locate and I parked directly in front of Room 13. Even without checking in at the office, I felt certain I had found the correct room because I could hear the chords of a familiar song behind the door. The group was practicing Keep on Walking. Their playing sounded a bit rougher than on the tape Bunny had sent me. I paused for a moment to let my nerves calm down, quite thankful that I wouldn’t have to be perfect to fit in. But I couldn’t get my hands to quit shaking. I wished I had had a chance to shower before I made my grand entry. A strong aroma of horses, nerves, and sweat lingered on my clothes. It was too late to care. I knocked.
Bunny herself opened the door and hugged me warmly. “Praise God, you got here safely. Come meet the rest of the girls.”
Three girls were spread out around the rather bleak, cheaply paneled motel room. For lack of chairs, each one sat on a corner of the two double beds. Almost in unison, they declared, “Praise God you are here.”
Their chorus set the room spinning around me. I had never felt comfortable with Pentecostal dialogue. Even knowing they expected me to affirm their greeting by repeating, “Praise God,” I choked. They stared at me, awaiting my response before any conversational exchange could begin. A prolonged silence insured that my first words would sound awkward and foreign.
For once Bunny’s take-charge personality came to my rescue. She tightened her arm around me and turned me toward the closest girl, a tall blonde girl with a guitar propped in her lap. “This is Lennie. I discovered her right here in a Milledgeville church. She made the rest of the choir sound like first graders. She sings harmony.”
Lennie made a concerted effort to be more polite than I had been, “Glad y’all made it.”
I had lived in Tennessee and perhaps retained a bit of a southern accent myself, but I had never, ever before heard a thicker, more sugary drawl. Lennie managed to give the word “y’all” at least three syllables while her inflection covered nearly an entire octave. She responded to my unmistakable surprise with a smile that showed unnaturally straight teeth, big dimples, and a good heart.
Bunny turned me a quarter of a turn to another tall girl holding a guitar. “This is Darlene, but we call her Gumdrop because she’s sooo sweet.”
There is a good chance that my mouth dropped when I faced Gumdrop. She was so very lovely; she made the rest of us appear oversized, awkward, and dumpy. She had huge brown eyes and dark curly eyelashes, the likes of which I had never before seen except on a hand-painted China doll. Her natural beauty resounded with the innocence of childhood, perhaps because she had short little pigtails sticking out above her ears, and her skin was as dark as night.
As far as I could remember this was the first time I had ever been in the same room with a black person, much less spoken with one. My mind flashed back to my brother and I ending our petty, childhood standoffs with the rhyme, “Eeny meeny miney moe, catch a nigger by the toe, if he hollers let him go, out goes y-o-u.”
My grandfather, hearing our exchange, had pulled his car over on the shoulder of the road, turned back toward us and while wagging his finger yelled, “Don’t you ever say that again, you could be shot!”
We had no idea who was going to shoot at us, but from then on we ended our spats by catching a tiger. I never forgot Grandpa’s warning that I had better be careful how I spoke about black people, and I wasn’t at all sure what to say to one, especially one named Gumdrop.
Gumdrop seemed equally shy and barely spoke above a whisper. It wasn’t until later that I realized what a sharp, sarcastic, and delightful sense of humor she possessed.
Another quarter turn and I faced the biggest girl in the room. Lots of light brown wavy hair and a full face made her features appear tiny and sharp. She seemed rather closed, like no matter what she said, she would not reveal much about herself.
“This is Beverly. She has the voice of an angel. I picked her out of the spring revival in Atlanta where she was singing with Gumdrop.” Beverly just nodded.
“Where’s that new guitar of yours? Let’s get down to some music.” With that, Bunny dismissed me from the room. I retraced my steps to the parking lot and retrieved my twelve-string from the back seat of the Rambler. I thought again as I retraced my steps how much I needed a shower.
Back in the room I sat down on the only vacant corner at the end of the beds. Bunny was already waiting at the keyboard. The tension in the room was thick enough to cut with a butter knife, but holding my guitar in my lap made me feel better. The weight of it was familiar and my fingers knew exactly where to go. I would have been petrified to stand up and audition with voice alone, but once Bunny chose a song and I strummed a few chords, I relaxed into the music. We were all relieved to find that we sounded tolerably good together, and the need for small talk evaporated. We played and sang until well past the hour when the other motel guests would have wanted to sleep.
Before we could turn in for the night we had to pack up an amplifier, drum set, keyboard, and three guitars. The duffle bags and suitcases that were piled in the center of the beds while we practiced were shifted to the table and the corners of the room. Once the luggage opened up, female apparel materialized everywhere.
Privacy and modesty, especially important to Pentecostal people, dictated that the bathroom be used by only one person at a time. Being new, I went last. The relief I felt to use the toilet and the shower was overwhelming. When I stepped out of the bathroom, the girls were still milling around. I suspected that they were waiting to be sure that I got rid of the equine aroma before any of them agreed to sleep next to me.
Once it was resolved that I would bunk with Gumdrop and Lennie, I quickly homesteaded an outside slot on the mattress. We were all relieved that Gumdrop didn’t seem to mind getting stuck in the middle. I made myself as small and straight as I could and worked so hard to adhere to the edge of the mattress that I could not fall asleep. Besides, the drapes in the room were rather inadequate so the light from the red and blue neon motel sign permeated the room with a purplish hue that changed every few seconds when the yellow color of the “Vacancy” sign was added to the palate.
As I lay on the edge of the bed my body was still vibrating from the long drive and the tension of arriving. I had finally come to a haven where I felt wanted. Talking to Bunny no longer had to be a secret.
Once the sound of heavy breathing assured me that everyone was asleep, I propped myself on my elbow, intending to get a better look at the band. My gaze stopped abruptly with Gumdrop. Her mouth was open slightly so her white teeth reflected the weird array of colors that invaded our room. Far more surprising, however, were two crescent shaped mirrors created by the failure of her eyelids to fully cover the whites of her eyes. Gumdrop herself had disappeared in the shadows leaving only three eerie little kaleidoscopes of changing color.