Standing in the Rainbow (20 page)

Uncle Floyd was in the front seat with Ferris and Minnie and as soon as they pulled out Chester, the Scripture-quoting dummy, turned around and looked at her and his eyebrows shot up and down and he said, “Whoo, whoo—well, hello there, good looking.”

Beatrice answered right away, “Well, hello there yourself!”

Mother Smith, Dorothy, Bobby, Anna Lee, and Nurse Ruby Robinson all stood and waved good-bye, moist-eyed. But Beatrice Woods never looked back. She would not have, even if she
could
have seen them. She was too busy concentrating on what was ahead. At last she was out on the road, headed for the wild blue yonder and beyond. Ya-hoo!

Betty Raye had not changed much from the last time they had seen her. She had grown a little taller and wore glasses now. Someone else had obviously picked them out for her. The frames were a bad combination of black plastic and metal rims and were not at all flattering on a teenager. As they walked into the house, Dorothy vowed to herself that the first thing she was going to do was get the poor girl a new pair of glasses.

Even though they would miss Beatrice, everybody was glad that Betty Raye was coming back to stay with them. Especially Anna Lee. She had been sad and moody all summer. Besides being worried about going away in the fall and leaving her family, she was feeling a little abandoned by her two best friends, and for the first time in her life she was lonely. Patsy Marie had started working full-time for her father down at the cleaners and Norma had gotten married. And no matter how much she and Norma vowed that nothing would ever change between them, it had. It was not like the old days, when she could call her night and day and had her to go places with anytime she wanted. Norma was now a married woman and things were different. It was nobody’s fault. Anna Lee still had all the boys in town buzzing around her as usual, but still she was lonesome for a girlfriend to do things with.

And there were other considerations.

On the first night, Anna Lee went into Betty Raye’s room and sat down on the bed and watched her unpack. She said, sincerely, “You just don’t know how grateful I am that you are here. I felt so guilty about going off so far away from Mother and leaving her all alone with just Bobby, I almost backed out of going. But now with you here I know she won’t be so lonesome and worry about me so much.”

Betty Raye was still shy around Anna Lee and mumbled, “Thank you.”

Anna Lee went on. “You know, if you think about it, it’s almost like you’re a younger sister staying behind, isn’t it.” She sighed. “I wish I
had
had a sister. Mother depends so much on me that it’s hard . . . and as long as we are going to be like sisters, I wish you’d think about staying in my room when I leave. It would mean a lot to me if you did.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yes, and I know it would make Mother very happy. She feels funny about you being in this little dinky room. Oh, not that it’s not nice or anything,” she added quickly, “it’s just that if you stay in my room it will be like you really are my sister.” Betty Raye unpacked still another homemade dress. “You know, Betty Raye, I’ll bet you and I are the same size. I’ve got a whole closetful of clothes. I’m not taking most of them, so they will be just hanging there, and you can wear anything you want. I was going to give them away. If you don’t mind hand-me-downs. They’re perfectly good.”

Betty Raye, who had worn hand-me-downs all her life, said, “No, I don’t mind.”

During the next few weeks Anna Lee spent a lot of time with Betty Raye and she made her try on all the clothes in her closet. One day Anna Lee just came right out and asked what she had wanted to ask all along. “Would you let me fool with your hair a little bit?”

By the time Anna Lee had finished “fooling with” Betty Raye’s hair, she had also put a little lipstick and rouge on her. “There, don’t you look better?”

Betty Raye looked in the mirror but could not see a thing without her glasses, and said yes anyway. The next thing Anna Lee did was to paint Betty Raye’s nails bright red. Betty Raye was still too shy to say anything. But who could refuse Anna Lee anything in her pink angora sweater and pink pearls? Betty Raye was putty in her hands.

Every day Anna Lee took her shopping downtown, an event that lasted for hours. Anna Lee was busy shopping at Morgan Brothers department store for her new college wardrobe and she tried on every hat, every pair of shoes, every suit or dress—some twice—before she would decide what she wanted.

Dorothy was happy that Anna Lee and Betty Raye were spending so much time together but after a while she began to be a little concerned for Betty Raye. She told Mother Smith, “She is dragging that poor girl around town like she was that Raggedy Ann doll she used to have.” And she was.

One afternoon Anna Lee said to Betty Raye, “I know you are real religious and all that but would it be a sin for you to go to the movies? Ginger Rogers is from Missouri and I’m just dying to see
Kitty Foyle
again. It wouldn’t hurt you to go just once, would it?”

Betty Raye thought for a moment. “I don’t know. I’ve never been.”

When Dorothy found out, she said, “Now, Anna Lee, I don’t want you to be pushing Betty Raye into doing things she might not want to do.” Anna Lee, who was busy at the moment braiding Betty Raye’s thin brown hair into pigtails, said innocently, “I’m not, Mother. She wants to go, don’t you?”

Betty Raye, sitting at Anna Lee’s dressing table, said, “Yes, ma’am.” The next night Anna Lee took her to see
Kitty Foyle
and she loved it.

That Friday Dorothy drove the two girls over to Poplar Bluff to get Betty Raye some new glasses. When they got home Dorothy said to Mother Smith, “You should have come with us—you would have gotten the biggest kick out of Anna Lee. You would have thought she was Betty Raye’s mother, the way she was carrying on.”

Mother Smith said, “Did she get a new pair?”

“Finally,” said Dorothy, sitting down on the sofa. “They should be here next week. Anna Lee picked them out. Blue plastic with sort of wings on the end. It’s not the pair
I
would have picked but that’s the pair Anna Lee wanted and that’s what she got. Betty Raye is the sweetest girl; she just sat there and let Anna Lee stick every pair of glasses they had in the store on her and she never said a word.”

It was true, Anna Lee was enjoying her newfound project, pushing and pulling at poor Betty Raye, trying to make her into a version of herself. If she had had another few weeks she might have even taught Betty Raye to jitterbug. But the day finally came when she had to leave for nursing school. That night the whole family went down to the train station to see her off. On the way over, Dorothy talked too much and tried her best to be brave, but at the last minute, when Anna Lee, looking so smart and grown up in her brown hound’s-tooth suit and hat to match, climbed on the train and turned around and waved, she could no longer control herself. She put her hand over her mouth to hide a sob and watched the train pull away and she broke down completely. Doc put his arm around her. “Come on, now,” he said, “it’s not for that long. She’ll be back at Christmas.”

“I know,” Dorothy said, “but she just looked so little on that great big train,” and she almost broke down again. She knew she was being silly but she couldn’t help it. It hurt just as much to see her daughter go off as it had on her first day of school twelve years before.

Bobby was also sad to see Anna Lee go but he didn’t know what to say, so he said, “That was a dumb hat she had on.” When they got home Dorothy went to bed, Bobby went to his room and listened to the radio, and Mother Smith helped Betty Raye quietly move her things into Anna Lee’s room as she had promised. Hanging up Betty Raye’s dresses in the closet, Mother Smith said, “Betty Raye, you just don’t know what a godsend you are to Dorothy right now. If you weren’t here, I’d hate to think what she would do. She lost one child and I know how it hurts her to lose another, even if it is just for a short time.”

Doc and Jimmy sat out on the porch and did not say much. But after a long silence Doc finally offered, “I just wish Dorothy wouldn’t act like it was the end of the world. She’ll be back at Christmas, for heaven’s sake.” He then looked at Jimmy and shook his head. “Women . . . the way they carry on, you’d think a few months was ten years.”

“Yeah, they get pretty upset over things, don’t they?”

Both men sat there in the dark and smoked, trying to pretend that they were above such silly emotions as missing Anna Lee. But they weren’t.

Anna Lee had been on the train about two hours when she found the envelope Doc had sneaked into her purse without telling Dorothy. Inside was a brand-new shiny nickel and a short note.

If for any reason you don’t like it up there, call me and I’ll come and get you.

Daddy

Doc did not know it but Jimmy had already slipped a twenty-dollar bill into her coat pocket before she’d left. “A little spending money,” he had said.

Glory, Glory, Clear the Road

T
HE OTHER SET
of parents that had to deal with being separated from their daughter that year was Minnie and Ferris Oatman. From the moment they had driven away and left her behind in Elmwood Springs they had been kept busy, rehearsing songs quietly with Beatrice all the way to Little Rock, and had been traveling ever since. They both missed Betty Raye terribly. Ferris worried that without his daily preaching and Bible readings she might wander off from the Lord and fall prey to the wicked ways of the world. Minnie, on the other hand, was more concerned that Betty Raye fit into her new life and try to be happy. Before she left she told Betty Raye not to pay too much attention to her daddy’s strict Pentecostal ideas. She said this in private.

Ferris would have a fit if he knew she was now wearing lipstick and had gone to a Ginger Rogers movie. But as Minnie said to Betty Raye on the phone, “Baby, what your daddy don’t know ain’t gonna hurt him one whit.”

Their lives had been changing almost as fast as Betty Raye’s, ever since that first night when they arrived in Little Rock for the all-night sing. By the time they got to the auditorium all the other groups were already there, dressed and ready. It was going to be a big night. The Spears, the Happy Goodmans, the Lester-Stamps Quartet, the John Daniels Quartet, the Melody Masters, the Dixie Boys, the Sunny South Quartet—groups from all over the country were backstage visiting before the show, happy to see one another again and catch up on heart attacks and gallbladder operations since they were last together. Also, they compared notes on who was having trouble with the IRS, a constant problem with gospel groups, who, it seems, were always being harassed by the tax people over income taxes.

It was only a half hour before the show started, so Minnie and Beatrice went straight to the dressing room while the boys got ready in the men’s dressing room downstairs. Floyd was in charge of the Oatman sound system and was busy getting it out of the car and ready to set up. The halls were buzzing with excitement, as they always were, and the auditorium was filling with hundreds of people. This all-star affair had the Oatmans in high cotton, as Minnie said. It was not a good night to break in a new member of the group. But it could not be helped. They had taken time to get Betty Raye to Elmwood Springs at least a few weeks before school started and they needed the money. Seventy-five dollars for an all-night sing was the highest they had ever been offered. They were to go on third, after the Dixie Boys. When the time came, Minnie led Beatrice and Honey to the wings and as Beatrice heard all the noise and excitement going on backstage as well as onstage she grabbed Minnie’s arm and squeezed. Minnie patted her hand. “Don’t be scared, darling, I’m right here with you.”

Beatrice said, “Oh, Minnie, I’m not scared—I just can’t wait to get out there.”

After the Dixie Boys had finished their last number, “Many Thrills and Joys Ago,” the audience continued to fill up, a lot of people arriving late because they knew the really good groups did not come out until after intermission. When Hovie Lister came out to announce the Oatmans, a few hundred were still wandering around looking for good seats.

A few looked up when the Oatmans walked out and were surprised to see a dog coming onstage with a little woman in a white dress wearing sunglasses. What was going on, they wondered. Minnie sat down, stared straight ahead like she always did, started tapping her foot, and when the spirit hit her, off she went into their first number, “Glory, Glory, Clear the Road.” Then something unexpected happened that surprised even the Oatmans. The sound coming out of the loudspeakers and wafting high across the auditorium was one they had never heard before.

Minnie knew at
once
they had something special. So did everyone else. Suddenly, the people in the audience that had been moving around shopping for seats stopped and sat down. Soon all the dressing rooms emptied as the other groups backstage started to gather in the wings to listen.

Beatrice singing alone was something. Minnie alone was something. Betty Raye’s voice had been soft and sweet but Beatrice’s clear and powerful soprano blended perfectly with Minnie’s equally powerful tenor. This sound, combined with Ferris’s deep bass and the two boys’ alto voices, was a sensation and set the audience wild. They stood up and clapped and cheered after each number. By the time they had finished their last song, “Sweeter as the Days Go By,” their appearance fee had gone up from $75 to $150, and they would never sing before the intermission again.

As one of the Dixie Boys remarked later, “Them Oatmans got themselves a gold mine in that little blind woman.” While Betty Raye was being given a new look and a new life, the Oatmans were getting a brand-new sound.

The only person who had not been totally amazed at this phenomenon was Minnie. As she always said and believed with all her heart, “God never shuts up one door till He slings open another!”

Jimmy and the Trolley Car Diner

A
FTER
A
NNA
L
EE
left for college, Dorothy was uneasy for a few days, until she received her phone call. Her mother knew she was all right and had arrived safely. Soon Dorothy was back to her old self again, happy to be busy with all the many details of getting Betty Raye enrolled in Elmwood Springs High School, making sure she had all the books and supplies she needed. They had had her tested a few weeks before and, to everyone’s surprise, she scored high enough to be entered as a senior. It really was going to be like having Anna Lee back. They would be going through another senior year all over again, with so many wonderful things to look forward to.