TELEVISION / Angel on Wheels / Jessica Hudson
Image © ABC
In 1976, Farrah Fawcett wore a red swimsuit and became a star. In the famous poster used to promote Charlie’s Angels, Fawcett is a halo of blond curls, bronzed cheeks, and a stack of white teeth. Her right nipple pushes against the thin material of her one-piece. A silver trinket dangles against her cleavage, bordered by her upper arm and hairless thigh. Curls frolic above her eyes, spin over her shoulders, cozy into the palm of her hand.
*
In the fourth grade, Tatum invites me to my first solo sleepover. Tatum is new to our school, having recently moved to St. Louis from Florida. Unlike my hair, which is a mix of forgettable browns and constantly ponytailed to avoid frizz, Tatum’s hair hangs stick-straight and blond to her shoulders as if it’s been spun into silk by the coastal sun. Tatum’s bedroom is smaller than mine, but she has a new pair of roller blades, whereas I use my sister’s hand-me-downs. Before dinner, while it’s still light outside, we roll-step around her driveway, one of us walking alongside the other so we won’t go too fast. Even the slight angle of the pale concrete sets my heart pounding. I don’t know how to stop.
*
When my dad took me to the roller rink, I would always blade and he would skate. He’d start out with me at a refined pace (I dread the ugly tumble, bruised knee, slow awkward rise), and he always returned to me again after. But at some point in between, he’d take a few glorious spins by himself, wheeling and dipping between couples and parents, avoiding a child’s flailing arms, waving to another seasoned skater, then he’d dash backwards, bend low over his knees, and swoop upright again. Like a swan’s palmate feet flapping beneath the water, his wheels moved him across the seamless laser-lit lake. Lip-singing to Lil Mama’s “Lip Gloss,” my dad would fly.
*
In 1976, my dad skipped the Homecoming dance to practice playing Billy Joel tunes by ear in the freshman house living room. My mom, fresh-faced and bathrobed, heard him playing and perched in the stairwell to listen. As the story goes, she shifted into sight, he invited her to come down, and the next forty-odd years lead to me texting them both on my 28th birthday to ask for their memories of the original Charlie’s Angels. They respond with more texts than I usually receive in a month, Farrah Fawcett slipped between their teenage memories and Ryan O’Neal.
*
According to my potholed pre-teen memory, Tatum didn’t have a mother. Whether she was divorced or dead, neither I nor my own parents remember. At any rate, I only recall Tatum’s dad. And the wheels spinning beneath my feet, the concrete rising up to meet my tailbone, her dad above me, asking, “Did ya hurt yer butt?” I shake my head, my tailbone throbbing. He helps me stand with car grease on his hands. Back in Tatum’s room, we pitch our ten-year-old voices low like his and giggle did ya hurt yer butt until dinnertime.
*
Farrah Fawcett was an Angel for just one year, but her silhouette stayed in the intro, gun held high against a fiery red background. Fawcett played Jill Munroe, Charlie’s blond angel. In Episode 10, Jill makes a quick getaway on her skateboard. Type “farrah fawcett skateboard” into Google Images and you can scroll for days through her dark-washed bootleg jeans, white Nikes, red sweatshirt rolled up to her elbows, hair awash in sunlight and street wind. Dozens and dozens of Fawcetts skateboarding down an empty asphalt road. Like her hair, she just keeps going.
*
Before Tatum and I go to sleep, we hop into our long-sleeved pajamas, pop a bag of popcorn, and watch, at Tatum’s recommendation, the newly-released movie, Charlie’s Angels. Watching three gun-wielding women dress in sexy costumes and kung-fu bad guys is an eye-opening ride into unknown territory for me. I don’t tell Tatum that I’m not even allowed to say the word sexy in my house. My mom frowns when I tell her about the Angels, then calls Tatum’s dad. I never go to Tatum’s house or watch Charlie’s Angels again.
*
A black-and-white behind-the-scenes photo from Episode 12, “Angels on Wheels,” shows Fawcett in a roller derby rink, leaning forward, hands on knees, smiling at the camera. Two white stripes run up her left leg, accentuating the curve of her hip. Tall striped socks melt into her white skates. She doesn’t look tired. Fawcett doesn’t photograph tired. Like Fawcett, Jill knows when to pose and when to skate.
*
Months later, my dad is tasked with helping me find a birthday present for Tatum an hour before driving me to her birthday party at the ice-skating rink. A brisk walk through Target leads to a puzzle, maybe? No, I am more the puzzling type than Tatum. What about a coloring book and a new box of markers? Or one of those plastic briefcases with the rainbow-unicorn on the cover that opens to reveal rows of shiny markers and color-coded colored pencils and a round hole for the matching unicorn pencil sharpener? Whatever we buy, we buy it fast, stuff it in the birthday gift bag that Mom (thinking ahead, as usual) handed to me before we left. Forty-five minutes later, I’m forking confetti cake, slipping into a pair of skates, gliding onto the ice. Dad places the lopsided bag on the gift table. Tatum’s dad reminds her to say thank you after she opens it.
*
In 1979, my parents got married and Farrah Fawcett met Ryan O'Neal. Farrah and Ryan quickly became the hot celebrity couple of the decade. They were the perfect couple: Ryan with his acclaimed smolder and Farrah with her swimsuit poster. “All the girls swooned over him,” Mom texts me. In 1974, Ryan’s daughter won Best Supporting Actress for acting with him in the father-daughter comedy Paper Moon. She remains the youngest person to win an Oscar—“and the Academy Award goes to . . .”—ten years old, hair stick-straight and blond—“Tatum O’Neal!”
*
One day after lunch, Tatum starts crying in study hall, seated at the desktop beside me. When I lean over and whisper what’s wrong, she points to her screen and whimpers, “Heath Ledger died.” I’m not sure who that handsome boy is, so I don’t say anything, just nod with what I hope is a sympathetic expression. She once accused me of having no feelings because I didn’t cry at the end of A Walk to Remember. Here we are again, three years later. Tatum turns to her computer, and beyond that moment, her tear-streaked profile, I have no memory of her. She and her dad returned to Florida at the end of that year, and I never saw her again. Though every now and then, when I pass a tan straight-haired woman at Target, her blond hair sun-silked, I think, just for an instant, there’s Tatum.
Jessica Hudson (she/her) received her Creative Writing MFA from Northern Michigan University and currently reads for Frontier Poetry and Tupelo Press. Her work has been published in several literary magazines, and her first poetry chapbook is forthcoming from Nightingale & Sparrow Press. Jessica lives in Albuquerque, NM with an experimental artist and a black cat. www.jessicarwhudson.wixsite.com/poet