Janna, an averagely tall white woman from Charles Town, South Carolina where tobacco was still a gold crop and the average family size is seven. Even though, in a small town like this, everyone knew each other by acquaintances, they only kept to their immediate family. She was raised like her five brothers, Billy, Nate, Matt, Joel and Zackary and two sisters Kelly and Shania which was at home. Her father worked as a plumber, always wearing overalls and a white striped conductors hat. On hot days, which were common on the east coast, he didn’t wear an undershirt and let the straps of the denim overalls grip to the sweat that glistened his meaty shoulders. Janna had the same brown, curly rats nest hair like her mothers who left them peacefully nine years back. She had her fathers square jaw that helped while sweating in the humid climate, so the sweat rolled off your face besides jogging down your neck to your breasts. Janna was raised to wear t-shirts, mostly a practice kept up by her father since her brothers were all order then the females. Hand me downs were a necessity in Charles Town where the children our plentiful but the imports were scarce. All the kids, still called that by their aunts and uncles, were all old enough to rightfully move out of the house especially with Kelly’s babe son Caleb and Joel’s baby mama moving in last month but it was a ritual, a rite of passage that needed to be stuck with to support the community.
The town only had one central plaza where the community would come on weekends and shop. There was Mrs. Theresa’s clothing store that would have blouses with flower prints, hats, and other female accessories like shoes. Then there was the Sporting Good store that was the main cause of attraction for the males. They could purchase there guns, camouflage gear, overalls and all the other attire a man would need in the town which usually accounted to less. Ripped jeans, holey shirts and sleeveless shirts were beginning to become the norm. It showed that the town was loosing money since their cash crop was loosing value in a market that has hit it’s peak. Tobacco was already on the fence and about to be tipped off. Health officials deem it unsafe and unhealthy, lobbyists are fighting for it to be banned in any public place and states are making it more expensive to purchase such “luxuries.” All the clothes stores as of recently starting to accept owned materials just like Salvation Army because it was such a needed commodity in a town with a population of 3,300. Then there was the gas station that has been run by the same family for seventy five years and they still had serviced pumps where attendants would pump your gas, check your tire and wash your windows. A lot of those little things that you see in 50’s sitcoms still exist not because it was economically feasible or the town folk really needed them but they were a signature to the style of the town.
Then there were the rival bars. Three of them all separated by a street corner. One was for the old, sport fans that drank beer around the counter reminiscing about games that they have attended or watch at this bar. No one hardly went here unless they were invited by the drunkards that went every day during the baseball season and on Sundays for football. If you went without an invitation then you would be watched up and down the whole time at the bar by the steady fans and asked menial questions such as “your favorite sports team” or “favorite player” and if you answered wrong you would be soothed out of the bar into the corner. But don’t worry because across the street was the newly re-furbished bar that went by the name of “Southern Hospitality” even though the name was “Al’s Bar.” This is where the out of town folk came to get there beer. They had 5 different ale’s on tap and would suit to your needs without you moving a muscle. People watched sports here but usually they were off and the drunks just got drunker throughout the night. This was for the casual southern drinker because down the street was where the actual drunks, the aggravators and the bar flies drank and that was the “Rusty Hook.”
Janna worked at the Rusty Hook since she was 16. She started off first with the ability to clean tables, serve food which was like any bar food (hot dogs, pizza, hamburgers), and take money back and forth. This place was known for it’s craziness. Some sort of fight either between two men who would start arguing over a game, a politician, or better yet which one that girl in the corner was looking at. Then the females fought over men, over drinks and most importantly, who looked better. Finally there was the relationship fights that broke out because some husband bought another a girl a drink or a girlfriend was leaning on a guy trying to tell which colors his eyes were. Actual blood splatter was on the wooden walls of the Hook’s interior which was celebrated over. If a person got their shit kicked out of them they would either come back the next night and try to bring a posse which consisted of distant cousins or they would just go down to one of the other bars for a few weeks until their ignorance was settled.
When Janna turned 18 she became a bartender, not for her ability at working or cleaning but for his voluptuous breasts that brought a lot of middle aged men in which were good for not only business but for the rest of the bar. The more people that could actually afford there drinks then the more the bar could give away for free. Janna worked there for four years until one of these middle aged men that everyone casually accepted came in and offered her a job out of the county. They didn’t tell her why, she thought because she was a helluva waitress and a bartender too but it was because of her frame. Her face was easily southern and some would call her a Belle. This is what brought in Yankees when they came down for their vacations to celebrate in the year round heat. They wanted to see what all the southerners were talking about when they visited the north for fishing and hunting. It was a game of cat and mouse, who had the prettier females, and usually the south had the breasts but the north had the faces and the frame. The scout from Atlanta didn’t so much like her face but the other two would bring in a lot of familiar customers back in the city. He offered her the job and since Janna never even thought about leaving anymore, something that used to be a common thought but ever since she became a bartender she was more interested in relaxing. But nevertheless she accepted the job that night over a few drinks after the bar closed down.
It was a hard thing to break to her father who became practically mute after his husband died. He just worked with a stressed posture and a wrinkled face. He gave up drinking but would just smoke when he got home and sit on his blue rocking chair next to his wives white one. He was starting to look like those eighty year olds that just woke up and sat in the sun with their lemonade and waved to everyone noticeable that passed there house. Her father just looked at her and bowed his head. Not in shame but with a proud glare. She was the 7th youngest but the first to get out and that almost brought a tear to his eyes but he went back to his rocking and watched the blue sky fall into night.
She packed up all her things which didn’t account for much because it was hard to clarify with the family what was hers and what wasn’t. Some of the hand me downs she got to take but the other she had to leave for the nieces and nephews they were all expecting in the future. They all didn’t seem to care about her leaving. It was that cold shoulder you got with your family when you decided your fate without their acknowledgment. They didn’t take it the wrong way but since you didn’t ask for the help or the opinion, they weren’t going to tell you how they felt or even try to help you out by cutting some corners. Since she made the decisions, she should support herself from the ground up which flustered Janna who was used to the re-used clothing and not going shopping except for food. But she was ready and took the first bus she could to Atlanta.
***
Janna just recently moved from Charles Town, South Carolina to Atlanta, Georgia for a bartending gig that she got offered while working at the local “Rusty Hook” back home. She still laid in her bed, exhausted, from last night where she didn’t get out of “La Frenche Noir” until 5 in the morning. She kept her patch worked quilt that her grandmother made all of her children’s children when they moved on and out of there kinship. She grasped the cotton edges with her red fingers which were sore from twisting off bottle caps, clenching bottles so she didn’t break a glass while she was still new and couldn’t decide if she was either anxious for tonight or home sick. It was her first night off in nine days and she was trying to plan a get together with the people she has met so far. Janna wanted to throw a party like the ones back home where everyone knew each other, were the same age and went to the same house. Faces never changed and nobody new would every join their inner circles unless a guy that was in it got a girlfriend or vice versa. People left faster then relationships sparked because the ideology in small towns was that you needed to get away and live in a city. But it couldn’t be like that here. Everything Janna grew up with, her nourishment, began to fade when she realized that her party couldn’t be like that in her one bedroom apartment on the third floor in a complex of twenty. She had a balcony that could only fit five uncomfortably.
Her phone which she nervously checked, waiting for a message or a phone call either from her friends or her family. She wasn’t expecting any of her family members to show up even though she did invite them. It was difficult to relocate from her youth but she realized it would be extremely harder to just visit such a strange world. Her phone said 6 o’clock. She was expecting people soon but no one has contacted her since last night at the bar. Janna worred that they wouldn’t show up because of the day, a tuesday, or the set time which was seven. Back home drinking commenced just before the sun set so the next day wouldn’t be wasted with intolerance. But after working at this new bar she realized that city drinking was different. People drank all day long. You had your regulars who would come when the bar opened, your unusuals who would come before their trains to take them back to suburbia, and you had your night crawlers who came out a little before midnight.
She eventually got up, unrobing from the clasped quilt that surrounded her, showing off her pink, work, tank top from the previous night. It was a little off colored from it’s first days, being soaked with not only your sweat but the sweat that flung off drunks while dancing and asking for more and more booze and then the liquor that got spilled on your when you screwed up pouring and it splashed off the rocks and soaked into your clothes or the times that fiends would want more and slam there last drink on the table nearly shattering the glass and the table with the same action. When she got up from her bed she realized something on her door, an usual hole in the top middle of the white paneled door. She went over to the peep hole and took her right eye and checked what was on the other side. She would grip it between her thumb and fore finger and glance through but all she could see was her translucent lines from her pesky hair that kept coming out from that tucked position behind her ears. She would then try to adjust it to see if it was working properly. A gadget that she wasn’t quite used to having. Back home all you needed was a front porch and a series of rocking chairs to survey the area of familiarity but in this high rise, you had buzzers that went off at all times of the day to keep people out or to let your friends in then an assorment of locks, one’s that twisted with a finger press, others that were connected to chains and then one’s you needed a key for. The security just begged unsuspected dwellers to rob the places so they could feel the sense of accomplishment equivalent to the victims long days of work.
As the feeling in her gut began gripping her and practically pulling her down like the cat fights she got into with her sister Kelly while she wouldn’t do her homework or do her fair share of work. Janna realized she needed a breath of fresh air out on her balcony. Walking only a few steps, she was already at the doors. This place was a small and hopefully big enough to suit her guests.
***
I need such fresh air that brings the oxygen down my throat and will push away all the fears. My stomach is in knots, no one is showing up to my party, and my family hasn’t contacted me since my retreat from Charles Town. I open my back door, white with a metal cage to the wooden deck. When I finally reached my awning, I realized that the last thing I needed was air. Atlanta smells different then the air I was used to. Back home where tobacco left a smog of a rust, perfumed aroma that drifted throughout the town and it would keep recycling it so it never actually left but multiplied. But this air smells like, well hundreds of things in one. It’s a bitter, trepid scent and it’s making me sneeze. From the wafts of garbage bags abandoned in the alleys and exhaust fumes spread out by cars, train, trucks, dump trucks, and buses. Then it always smells like metal is burning and the sound of them rubbing together always echoes.
I decide to look up at the stars and count them one by one but none were above me. I quickly wondered if Charles Town was the only town to get the stars. It’s the only place I remember seeing them but I could see some sprinkles of light shine through the black clouds that stretch over our sky. Maybe I could see them if I was a little higher I thought. I could possibly out wit the plum that engulfs the sky because at my level all I can see is a red sherbet light in the background and above me is just black. I haven’t been up to the roof yet neither. The highest place I have ever been is on Uncle Wades barn to play on when I was still a teenager before he passed like mama with the disease. It affected the family like a lost job. Her side of the family got hit hard by it, the degenerative muscle epidemic that plagued us blue collared workers so as we worked, we seek pain at the end of the work day. Thats why we all drink and smoke, as I was told.
Before I left my apartment, I checked the peep hole once more. I stared through the glass for quite some time wondering if it was a direct feed of the hallway or an illusion. No one is coming or going, it’s just vacant. A guy finally appeared walking up the stairs, a white man in a gray suit was un-buttoning his work attire until he approached the room next to mine and opened it and vanished. I proceeded to open the door, after making sure the peep hole worked. The hallways were lemon yellowed with auburn wood siding. I passed five or six other apartments, 312,313,314,315, and mine was 316 and then past the stairs was the elevator. I was scared, the last time and the only time I took foot in one of these vertical boxes was when I visited my mama on her final day in the Memorial Hospital a few miles away from home. Dad pressed the buttons for us adolescents. We were still too young to really take in what was happening. We were upset because Mama was leaving us for good but we never acknowledged what would happen to the family after, without a beneficiary. Dad couldn’t take care of eight of us so he gave us up to the rest of us. The siblings all had to work for our ourselves while dad just kept a house above us. We took care of the food, the cleaning, the learning and whatever else a family needs that you wouldn’t know about until setting foot out of your own.
As I stepped across, leaving the safety of the red, crimson carpet into the suspended box it started to close, automatically, almost biting my left arm off that was dragging behind me. I looked at all the circle buttons from B to twenty. I pressed the top one hoping it would take me to my destination. The button glowed in the dim light and the elevator seemed to shift before jolting up, nearly putting my stomach in my throat. The elevator seemed like it kept going up, way to far, but I heard it brake for a little bit and felt the rumble through my knees and then a loud ding. The door opened and the roof top opened in front of my eyes. The skyscrapers popped up and all the lights were still shining. I looked up and still couldn’t see the stars but found something else to dwell on. The lights from the buildings were blurring into the night and the reflections were hanging onto the darkness. It felt like the light was making the clouds separate but behind that veil was still another black sheet. It reminded me of back home when I would go to the lake with my mother when I was still ten years old and it was the only time I would see her without the family. It was just me and her and she would tell me how I looked just like her and my father. She would brush my hair with her fingers after working with them for the last ten hours. The street lights at the beach would shine on the lake, making it look like a sheet of glass. We would then skip stones on the lake and the ripples would make it look like the lake was going to open up to us. It was strange because both days, in the morning, they were clear days but nature only breaks when it’s enclosed.
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