Authors: Jennifer Browning
Part II
- Vanessa
1
Vanessa was born into the Great Depression and raised in the rural South –
exactly where
she’d rather not say - which was her way of saying that no force on heaven or earth would drag it out of her. They were poor and
her family
had nearly nothing. She did have one thing that meant a lot to her, a radio that her uncle Ben had given her for her eighth birthday after he’d had a good bet on the horses pay off. Nessa, as her family called her, could hardly get any stations
on the thing
, but that didn’t stop her from trying. She got snippets of news and information here and there. Every once in a while, on a clear and calm night, she could hear music. It was a lifeline to her and she danced those nights away alone in her room.
Her mother disapproved – it was the devil’s music if they didn’t sing it in church, but that didn’t stop Nessa.
Most of the time, if
Nessa’s
mother caught her listening to the radio, she’d get the Bible thrown at her and told to read a few passages.
School was neither valued nor encouraged in her family.
People were drinking themselves to oblivion and drugs were everywhere. People got hurt, even disappeared, over simple arguments and there were never any witnesses. Law enforcement was more of a city concept to the folks around her than a reality.
But through it all,
Nessa’s
mother believed the Bible held all the answers.
Nessa’s
father was what some people might refer to as a hobo. He couldn’t find decent work at home, so he left to work wherever he could find it. For a while he sent home what
money
he could, but then that stopped coming and so did the sporadic letters. He’d either taken up with someone else or died. Those were the harsh realities of life. Without a father around, her older
brother
George had become responsible for a lot of the duties of the house. He was ill-suited for it and being much older than Nessa, he treated her like a non-person.
Aside from the radio,
Nessa’s
best friend Joyce kept her sane. They had secret meeting spots and knew everything that was going on in town. Joyce was a pretty girl and an early bloomer, so she managed to attract the attention of a number of eligible young prospects in town.
Nessa didn’t mind letting Joyce be the butterfly. Boys were
overrated in her humble opinion.
Nessa’s
mother described Joyce as “boy crazy.” On nights when Joyce was having a date with some boy, Nessa would cling to her radio again, hoping to hear some lovely sound. Joyce always came over afterward to talk about the details of her
forays into the dating world. Nessa would share any new music she heard – recreating it from memory and dancing along as if it were playing right then.
Nessa and Jo
yce joined the church choir and youth group hoping there might be some dances or other fun to be had. Kids didn’t have much to look forward to in those days. Joyce dreamed of getting married young and moving as far away as she could manage. Nessa just dreamed of the moving away part.
In the summer of
their
1
6
th
year,
Joyce
got pregnant.
Her father expressed his displeasure with his fists. Joyce’s mother stopped speaking to her; the family couldn’t afford another mouth to feed.
Nessa never knew who the father of the baby was. If she had, she would have made him do the right thing if it meant borrowing her granddaddy’s shotgun to make the point clear. Maybe that’s exactly why Joyce wouldn’t tell her, or anyone else for that matter. She would only say that she’d loved him and the baby was conceived in love and would grow up with love.
By the
end of
that
Fall
, undiagnosed
eclampsia
claimed the lives of both mother and child. The Bible had not prepared
Nessa
for that. The minister told her that Joyce had gone to be with God and that His will was a mystery, but to have faith that He had a plan. As far as Vanessa could see, God had forgotten to make a plan for her.
As if that were not enough to break the spirit of a young girl, her radio also broke. Life had become simply unbearable.
George was no help – telling her that when she was done feeling sorry for
herself
she should think about getting a job.
Thoughts of taking her own life drifted in and out of Vanessa’s mind, but ultimately she realized it was better to die while trying to live than the other way around.
When her mind was made up, nothing could dissuade Nessa. She decided to leave home and never look back.
Joyce would have been proud. Everything Nessa owned fit neatly inside a single grocery bag. Looking at the bag you would think her life was a sad state of affairs. She might look like a poor, plain girl with next to nothing
and most of the time that’s how she felt
, but more than being just poor and plain,
she was determined.
And
while she packed her sad grocery bag,
Nessa
had a strange and unfamiliar feeling. It was a little something like hope. Nessa considered whether she might sell the necklace she’d gotten from church at her confirmation, but figured it probably wasn’t worth much anyway and left it on her bed in case the family might need it. She never found out.
She went to her hiding spot under the porch and pulled out all the money she’d ever
saved up in a jar of coins and crumpled notes
.
She raided Joyce’s hiding spot too since she figured her best friend wouldn’t mind.
When she looked inside the old glass jar,
just like her own,
there were only a few dollars
there. Joyce had spent most of her money
trying to get ready for the baby that had no name yet, the baby whose father couldn’t be troubled to care,
the
baby that Nessa would never meet.
When the bus stopped in Los Angeles, she had nothing left
and had not eaten in days.
S
he was used to
being hungry
and being broke was pretty natural to her too. So when the man approached her at the station cooing “Hey, sweet baby” and offering her
a meal, some new clothes
and a place to stay
, Nessa
knew he was a two headed snake and she laughed and walked away in no particular direction.
He yelled
at
Nessa
angrily, but she considered herself a scrapper and knew she could take him if he
came after
her. Walking led her nowhere. The streets were busy and completely unfamiliar. Like many young runaways, she found an alley and tried to get some sleep.
Within a couple of weeks she had made some friends, several of
whom
were working girls whose boyfriends took a hefty percentage of their profits. The
girls on the street
introduced her to a nice woman who
took
her to a shelter for women and children – Nessa wasn’t sure which one she was supposed to be.
The lady bought her lunch and tried to convince her to go home to her parents. That wasn’t going to happen, but Nessa appreciated the kindness.
Soon enough,
Nessa
got a job
at a place called The Club.
She never heard of places like The Club – where women performed and men watched and drank liquor. There were other activities too, but
Nessa
minded her own business about those.
She
met a lot of girls who had met men
like the one at the bus stop. W
ith dreams of a fine life
they
had f
allen
prey to his charms and ended up doing terrible things in the name of love or money.
Many of them had been badly hurt.
One of those girls
she met
wasn’t even a girl at all, but it didn’t much
matter in the dressing room of The C
lub.
It was a strange and wild family, filled with people who
needed a new home
.
Vanessa would tell you that
in those months before she found The Club,
she tried her hand at
other
jobs, but didn’t like them much.
M
ost of the legitimate jobs wanted proof that she was old enough to work. Nessa didn’t even know if she had a birth certificate.
It was terrible money at first, b
ut Vanessa made the best of it.
She started out serving drinks to the patrons – mostly men – who came to see the show. She spent the slow times backstage learning
dance
routines and making friends. They didn’t treat her like a child, and she didn’t act like one.
She watched carefully to see what riled up the crowd and what left them unimpressed. She visited other establishments and watched their performances, paid attention to the outfits, the music and took notes. Every once in a while, she’d pick a dancer
at The Club
and give her an idea to wow the audience. Before long, all the dancers were coming to her for advice and she performed alongside them.
Under her tutelage, the girls took out the moves that would make a grown man blush and added more material that was new, exciting and different.
She almost single-handedly turned it into a classy joint and over time she and the girls that she took under her wing – some much older than her – became an act that everyone had to see. It wasn’t Vegas, it was bet
ter. The owner of The C
lub took notice.
How could he not? His profits doubled with
Nessa’s
help.
Leonard
Wright
valued Vanessa’s loyalty and her hard work. She became a star performer, a surrogate mother and a stage manager over time. The money followed her success. Vanessa had more than she could hope for and she quickly shunned the drab, shapeless garb of her childhood in favor of bright, happy clothes. It was almost her signature.
When she first was able to afford her own apartment, she decked it out like a rainbow. You’d never find a floor the color of dirt in her home, she decided.
Leonard was doing so well after a decade of Vanessa’s hard work that he began another business, a restaurant this time, which was an immediate success. Vanessa recruited the chef by scouring the culinary academies
looking for a young firecracker
who
would turn Los Angeles on its heels.
Leonard grew fond of Vanessa
, not just for her ability to turn everything into money, but because she was loyal and hardworking. If The Club was a family, Vanessa was the big sister and Leonard was the father.