Sasee Magazine

Many of my memories are as hazy as the smoke-filled bar where my boyfriend and I took Amanda. We knew the owner, Kathy, and trusted she would ignore the date on Amanda’s ID. She did.

Perched on a bar stool in my black dress that revealed a little too much tanned thigh, I ordered a Bloody Mary for myself and a Coke for Amanda. Craig, my boyfriend, ordered a beer and sat beside me.

Kathy made her rounds and eventually came over to say hi.

“Y’all okay?” she yelled over the band.

“Yep, we’re good,” I answered.

Kathy eyed Amanda as her pink stained lips pressed against the tip of her soda straw.

“Melissa tells me you’re a singer,” Kathy said.

“Kinda,” Amanda glanced in my direction with an “I might have to kill you later” look.

“Well, if you’re interested, the band’s gonna let you do a few numbers with them. Just go over and tell them what you know.”

Amanda slid off the stool and walked towards the stage. I watched her quiet confidence and deliberate movements. She grabbed a microphone and stood next to the band’s lead singer. The music started and Amanda sang harmony on the chorus of “Who Will Save Your Soul.”

I figured she would probably tell them to play that song. We both loved Jewel.

At first, no one really noticed her onstage. The crowd paused their drunken conversations long enough to clap when the song ended, then returned to their tall tales of life in the Inlet.

The lead singer sat down at the bar for a break, and Amanda now stood center stage, the light bouncing off her pink, sparkly tank top and her smile.

A few notes played, and she began, “Crazy, I’m crazy for feeling so lonely…” Silence filled the thick air and, I swear, smoke stopped swirling for at least a minute. Heads turned to meet the owner of the unfamiliar voice.

Amanda didn’t look seventeen, and she certainly didn’t sound like a teenager either. She sang like she had been born on that stage.

Gap-toothed men got out of their seats and approached the stage. “Sing it, baby!” they shouted during pauses. “Who the hell is she?” they asked their friends.

I sat on my bar stool and watched her with awe and a bit of envy. She captivated an audience of adults who were now begging her to keep singing.

But it was time for us to leave. Amanda walked over and took one last sip of her Coke.

“Is that a tear? Why are you crying?” she demanded.

“I don’t know. I’m just really proud of you, I guess.”

“You’re a freak,” she laughed.

On our way out the door, we thanked Kathy for the drinks. Amanda talked about how much fun she’d had and made us promise to take her back sometime.

Amanda continued to sing throughout her last years of high school. She performed the National Anthem at basketball games, and she sang at assemblies. She also joined a Christian group in college and recorded a CD with them. But she never made it back to the stage of Kathy’s smoky bar. She died two years later at the age of nineteen.

Perhaps it’s a strange memory to hold so close to me, taking my underage sister to a grimy bar for her to serenade some loaded townies. But I do hold it close. I grip it so tightly my knuckles ache. It’s my memory – one that I can’t afford to have distorted.

Since Amanda died, many memories have gotten twisted, stories confused and misinterpreted.

“Was it Amanda who broke her wrist on the swing?”

“No. That was me.”

“Didn’t you get homesick at girl scout camp?”

“No. That was Amanda.”

Sometimes I even get things confused when I try to remember the way we were.

Was her favorite color pink or purple?

Did she cry when I hurt my lip or did I cry because she fell?

Sometimes it’s too difficult remembering my life as it was. But forgetting is even harder. Each year, I am slowly released from grief’s grip. And each year, I remember less and less about what it was like to have a little sister. Time does that. It heals – but not without forcing you to sacrifice something in exchange.

Sometimes I really don’t remember the details. But I do remember the night at Kathy’s bar.

When I hear Jewel’s voice on the radio, I close my eyes and remember everything. I picture Amanda’s sparkly tank top and the look of complete happiness on her face. I see the smoke clouds swirling around the heads of the drunken crowd.

I laugh aloud when I think about how infuriated my parents would have been if they knew where I had taken their seventeen-year-old daughter. They would have hated that place – every smoky, sticky, grimy inch of it.

I love it. Not so much the bar – but the night, the memory.