The Porkpie Hat Diaries

Extracts from a much longer piece

I began my life in 1934 in a hot, grey house off Frenchman Street. To begin with, there were just three people who coloured my life, Mama Ella, Uncle Jim and sweet, sweet Marie. Mama Ella wasn't my mama, not really, but she was the huge, strong angel who'd found us, wrapped in a clean cotton sheet, inside a pork pie hat in the back yard. It was one of those evenings when the heat seemed to hang in the air, heavy and close. I had cried when she'd taken me in her arms that first time, but somebody hadn't wanted me, so she took me inside and there it began. I had heard this story a million times, each time she related it she would add little details here and there but, in its bare bones, it was always a love story.

 

 

 Uncle Jim was the other man Mama had decided to love, smaller and quieter than her, but gentle and with a hard love. Uncle Jim liked the dance bands; he'd sit and listen for hours, with just a tap of his foot and a smile. I would sit by his feet and gaze up at him, wondering where he went when the music played; as I grew I learned to disappear there along with him. Two boys: an old one and a young one, each with eyes tight shut, just tapping their feet and smiling.

Sweet Marie was the one who had first called me Red, long before I was able to call myself anything. Mama Ella said it was because the sky was on fire the night they found me, but Marie just said it was her favourite colour. She was four years older than me, and sharp as moonshine. She called Uncle Jim 'Papa', because she'd been there longer, and because Mama Ella was her real Mama. Marie was my best friend. She had toffee skin, black eyes and a laugh that made the world spin faster. She'd get me dizzy then make me climb trees. She'd skin her knee, then run and blame me. She'd pinch my arm, and then scold me for crying. She'd make me bootleg Grapette and coffee buns, and she'd laugh when I acted the fool. And because of all that, Marie was my very best friend.

Like summer, though, everything ends. Mamma Ella grew old and bent, I used to think she must like looking at the ground, but she'd say it was what the clock did to her bones. Eventually she would get bored of looking at the ground, and she'd lie down, and I would never see her again. In the years that followed Uncle Jim seemed to go away to the world with the music in, more and more. Eventually they'd take him away to a place where he'd be 'better off'. I thought he seemed just fine in his world with the music in, and I knew that he just missed his Ella, but they didn't ask my opinion, and I would never see him again either. I was seventeen, when Uncle Jim was taken away. Marie had found a difficult love and moved across town, and although she would write once in a while, I would only ever see her one more time, and not for an age.

 

New York was bigger than anything I had ever seen. I liked the way she made me feel. Small and invisible. She caught in my breath when I laughed and ran down my cheeks in the small hours. Her buildings rose above me like grand gestures, but she had an underbelly of sleaze and obscenity that intrigued me. She reeked of Jazz and late bars, women with questionable sanity, hipsters masquerading as gentlemen, and the undeniable stench of cool. I would spend hours in the early evenings, on a bench or in a bar, just watching her. Her odd little ways, her busy ramblings, her fat ones, thin ones, lonely ones, lost ones, damaged ones, her dreamers, her old romantics, young lovers, lushes and losers. It was 1952, Monk was playing Tony's Club Grandean, and I was about to lose my way.

 

Lily was leaning against a white baby grand when I first saw her. She was wearing a simple black slip but her eyes held attitude. She sang in an odd little way, kind of unhinged, but my eyes wouldn't move from her all evening. Later on she would leave with me, through a back door. I was her ticket to ride, she was my honey trap, after two days she had moved in. I didn't say good bye, I just left.

 

Lily introduced me to all kinds of people, nameless people who would love you one minute, then disappear the next. Our days were spent hiding under sheets, pale and sick with drink. But nights were electric. We were satin dolls, running through streets, soaked in junk. Eighteen Karat stars. Two years went on in that impossible way, and then they just ended. When you are in that place, you cannot see yourself from the outside, and when you finally do, it scares you half to death.

 I arrived in Memphis two days after Elvis played the Overton Park Shell. There was something in the air, and I had the name of a guy who ran a club on Beale Street. As I walked I hardly felt the ground beneath my feet, I had knots in my stomach and a swagger about me. Leaving everything behind in a heartbeat makes you feel like that.  

 

Reviews

[Dkincaid]

Yep, I liked reading this, didn't have to dig in and decipher like some of your other stuff. Keep going, your doing good.

[Vonnette]

I enjoyed reading this. You have a real talent for painting a picture. Not so much for the characters (although what you do say about them tells us a lot), but for the atmosphere. Each scene you described, I felt like I was there looking on. Unique, without being bizarre. I liked the way you described Marie as having "found a difficult love". Four words sum up what could take paragraphs to write. Nice. To the point. I enjoyed this piece very much.

[Samuel Dickens]

"A laugh that made the world spin faster"...I like that.
A very compitent piece of writing, Lorna. You know what you're doing--that is clear. Thank you for sharing it. Sam