Sheryl and I Sing ‘The Rose’ at the Talent Show
Kind Writers Literary Magazine Contest Runner-Up/January 2023
For my oldest friend, Maureen
The eighth grade talent show had arrived, excitement shivering through each of our classes leading up to Friday go-time. There would be kids playing the piano and guitar, kids break dancing, kids reciting poems. My best friend since Kindergarten, Sheryl, wanted to surprise her mom with her favorite song, an old 1970s tune called “The Rose,” originally performed by someone called Better Midler. I never heard of the song or Bette Midler, but I agreed to collaborate, since Sheryl was too scared to sing by herself. The song began, ‘Some say love…it is a river…’ Not being the most popular girls, it probably wasn’t the best idea to sing about love. We should have chosen an act that had more social mobility, like writing and acting out a one act play or something. Each time we stood up at the podium to practice, the sounds of our classmates giggling, hushed by old Mrs. Crenshaw, the music teacher and director of the show, made my stomach flip a little.
***
The night of the show we prepared at my house, donning matching dresses we bought for the occasion at JC Penny, navy A-lines with matching white Keds sneakers. We watched a Youtube video that showed us how to apply our dark lipsticks, mascara, and black eyeliner. My mother made us each a cloth red rose to attach to our left shoulders, pinning them on herself.
‘You two look like the Andrews Sisters or something!’ she said. Part of being young is having no idea what adults are talking about half the time. She seemed really happy, though, so I just said, ‘Thanks, Mom.’
At the school gym, Sheryl and I went to the bathroom to deal with my already intensifying sweating problem. Even though I laid the antiperspirant on thick, large wet circles emerged from under my arms, gaining headway with each passing moment. Known in our class as Sweat Stain Salinger, I’d grown a tough resistance to ridicule. Still, Sheryl and I had no choice but to take strong anti-sweat measures before things got worse, blow drying the pits of my dress with the bathroom’s hand drier while I hid half-dressed in a stall. A faint smell of deodorant and body odor wafted in the air as Sheryl reached over the door to hand me paper towels to wedge under my arms. Damage control completed, we headed out to line up for the show.
Once we made it to the wooden podium and looked into the blurry abyss of classmates, teachers, and parents on the gym bleachers, I glanced at Sheryl’s normally comforting face but found a kind of lifeless expression highlighted by her fogged up glasses. Someone shouted, ‘Sweat Stain!’ much to the amusement of the crowd. I took a deep breath, the music started on cue and we began to sing, ‘Some say love…’ I wish I could say I saw friendly faces of friends, but I didn’t. Everything looked swirly. Our mouths were busy opening and closing, pushing out lyrics, when Sheryl’s right hand wandered from hanging by the side of her body to the podium, then to the paper before us. Inexplicably, she started tearing at it, tugging and ripping with her right hand as she held it straight with her left. At first the tearing seemed unimportant, until she began eating into the lyrics themselves, when we were only halfway through our song. Small tear by small tear, the words disappeared before our eyes, and though we had practiced a hundred times, our fledgling security began sliding away with the slowly eroding lyrics.
The giggles began in my shoulders, which shook, at first gently and then with more gusto, sending my entire torso into waves of convulsions, the laughter rising up in my chest, up my throat to my mouth, swallowing the song and erupting. In an awful chain reaction, Sheryl started to giggling too, the wet and shredded page pressed under her hand. I don’t know who ran first, but in a second, we bolted from the stage while a torrent of hilarity burst from the audience, drowning out poor Mr. Evans’ plodding away on the piano. We entered the bathroom panting, my sweat stains dripped down to my waist. Our laughter switched instantaneously to tears. Anger steamed out of my ears.
‘That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever done! Why did I agree to this?’ I said, kicking the wall.
‘It was totally my fault,’ Sheryl said. ‘I’m the one who ripped the paper.’
We inched our backs down the bathroom wall and bawled into the rough paper towels yanked in despair from the dispenser. We could already hear some kid playing Pachelbel’s Canon. The bathroom door opened and I sprung from my crouch, readying myself for a quick exit.
‘C’mon,’ I said. But there stood old Mrs. Crenshaw.
‘You girls were FABULOUS,’ she overstated, standing uncomfortably in her already tight pencil skirt, ‘That is my favorite song. Ever,’ she pulled old, used tissues out of a pocket and handed them to us.
‘We totally blew it,’ Sheryl said, still crying.
‘You know I once saw Sammy Davis Junior -Sammy. Davis. Junior. - in Atlantic City mess up a song and have to start over. Sammy Davis Junior.’
I glanced at Sheryl to verify that she too had no idea who Mrs. Crenshaw was talking about, but offered a small smile.
“I printed out new lyrics. I think you girls should get back out there.”
Unsure, but feeling the freedom of people who have nothing to lose, we straightened our slouched bodies, cleaned up our smudged eyes, and headed out, holding hands as we sang ‘The Rose’ to completion, Sheryl and I high-fived and bowed. The crowd went wild. We didn’t know if they were supporting or heckling us, but we really didn’t care.
