Wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night? With my voice?

Wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night? With my voice?

Complete torture. I would choose hanging by the ends of my hair a month of Sundays over listening to my voice mail greeting. It doesn’t help when husband says, “That’s incredibly goofy, Jamie.”

Of course it’s goofy, no way to sugarcoat a cat fight in a helium chamber. That’s why when first wading into writing waters; I panicked upon hearing that young writers need to find “their voice.”

Deidre Knight noted author, agent and dear next door neighbor confided, “Just write, Jamie. Keep writing and it will find you.”

 What could I do with pedestrian? I needed the soulful power of Aretha Franklin, the edgy androgynous strength of Annie Lennox.

I needed, “It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day…”

Bobbie Gentry. I wanted the voice pulsing from my fingertips to drip everything sultry, raspy and mysterious like Bobbie Gentry’s voice entwined with her guitar.

NOTHING dripped from my keyboard (except maybe honey and peanut butter from my morning bagel). Now, I did play a mean zither in Ms. Osby’s fourth grade music. At least I had that going for me. But a clean hammer-on, pulling-off zither solo can’t make up the absence of a sassy voice or somber one, a voice of darkest tragedy or intelligent chatty chaos.

Funny how quiet a voice can get. Staying locked inside, held captive by wicked stepsisters standing at the keyhole, whispering, “You’re dull.” Or far worse, “You’re impossibly average.”  A voice drowned out by a party of characters vying for the title of “Miss Voice of Jamie Miles” a poor splintered soul with no idea if she ever had, lost or left behind such a thing in white plastic on the self-checkout carousel at Ingles.

But following Deidre’s wisdom, I kept writing. One by one, almost imperceptibly, the imposters slipped out of the room; the chatter ceased.

When the silence parted; there she sat.

I guess “she” had been there all the time; silently lining the cafeteria wall in the midst of those clever, flirty, dramatic souls at some middle school dance. She prayed someone would notice her – though preferably not Jimmy with CNPD (Compulsive Nose Picking Disorder). Mute and plastered against the lunch trays like a doomed flower up on Choctaw Ridge, she waited to be plucked and dropped into the muddy water.

No, there was no muddy river, no dramatic freefall from the Tallahatchie Bridge and thank goodness, no Jimmy. My voice just appeared and attempted some funky, foolish dance, but it was her dance. And she so loved dancing that one day my voice grabbed the microphone and began to…sing.

 And you know, she wasn’t half bad.

 Okay, she was dreadful; but it didn’t matter. For the first time singing — just felt so good.