Noel

On a sunny June 17, 1989, Noel Norman is born at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama.

She weighs six pounds, three ounces and is healthy from the start. When she is placed in her mother’s arms, they both begin to cry at once. Her father cannot be there for the birth because he is on duty that day; he reaches the hospital a couple of hours after the delivery. Two days later, the Norman family returns home to Bring Spring with its newest member. A week afterward, a small ceremony is held to celebrate the birth. Sandwiches, punch, soft drinks, beer, and barbecue are spread out in the garden. The guests include grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, several friends, and a few neighbors.

Mr. Norman’s fellow police officers are also present; at this point, he is still an ordinary patrolman. A small portion of Bring Spring’s population is there that day. Many of these same people will one day attend the beautiful young woman’s wake at Bodies Funeral Home. During this celebration welcoming her into the world, the guest of honor sleeps almost the entire time. She does not cry and opens her eyes for only a few brief moments. Yet even though her first glances last no more than a few seconds, everyone who witnesses them marvels at her. The celebration held twelve months later, for Noel’s first birthday, is quite different.

This time, the guests can enjoy her cheerfulness, charm, and ease. She proves to be a funny and intelligent little girl. Indeed, she demonstrates that intelligence in 1997, when she and her inseparable friend Rose earn the highest grade in their class for that year’s final science project. Her teacher, Abby, places great hopes in this diligent, hardworking, talented child, convinced she will have a bright future if she can someday attend a good university in Birmingham—something that will never happen. As time passes, Noel loses interest in her studies.

Unaware of what the future holds, Mr. Norman buys his daughter an enormous ice cream to celebrate the high grade on her science project. They eat it near the Bring Spring train station beneath a colorful sunset beyond the tracks. Father and daughter share one of the happiest and most unforgettable moments of their lives. But that lovely moment lies far behind them by 2002, when a now-adolescent Noel Norman has her first kiss. Pressured somewhat by social expectations, she is urged by her classmates to try the lips of Dave Freeman, then a studious boy.

The kiss burns out as quickly as fuel in a flame, taking place on the sidewalk across from Bring Spring Community High School. Both Dave and Noel find the experience pleasant. Noel kisses Dave several more times that year, and he even wins the approval of her parents, but before long the young man retreats into his own shyness. Noel and Dave lose touch when, at a loss over what to do, he disappears into his strange self-imposed isolation. She loses interest in him and samples other lips—ones far more eager for hers.

The young woman experiments like this for months, until a boy named Gabriel goes beyond kissing her and has the nerve to grope her developing breasts in his car. His audacity makes Noel reconsider the social experimentation she has been going through. She sets it aside for a time and almost forgets about it. Her renewed interest in school delights her parents, who have already begun to worry. The Normans feel that all the long hours they devoted to prayer have finally paid off. Their prayers have apparently been heard, thank heaven. This happens just before the school year’s final exams, and Noel passes every one with very good grades.

Afterward, she has plenty of time to enjoy an incredible summer. Near the end of that unforgettable, pleasurable season, Noel returns to social experimentation. For the first time, she kisses a girl: her best friend, Rose. Amid games and absurd dares, the two discover a playful desire that both sets of parents would have condemned as though it were the voice of Satan himself. Twelve months later, the following summer, Noel raises the stakes and ventures a French kiss with Rose.

It is only a matter of time before lips give way to tentative forbidden caresses. The girls readily welcome precisely those acts their parents’ church so vehemently rejects. During the school year that follows, Noel’s earlier emphasis on her studies begins to fade once again. In an inverse of the previous year, her academic performance declines sharply. Her worried parents watch matters worsen as their beloved daughter, beyond their control, begins going to nighttime parties with her friends.

Most often, the groups Noel runs with take her to Electric, Bring Spring’s only nightclub, located on the outskirts of town. Once she discovers nightlife and Electric, Noel is gradually led, in her parents’ eyes, toward utter ruin, and her routines change completely. But Electric is not the only nightclub she visits. She often frequents clubs in neighboring towns, and even in Mobile or Montgomery. At times, she also attends private parties held at the homes of former classmates, friends, or neighbors.

Noel’s parents grow deeply worried about her and decide that, in the name of the Lord, it is time to do something for the young woman. Amen. Mr. Norman redoubles his efforts to know his daughter’s every move. He tries to avoid following her twenty-four hours a day, but is willing to do so if necessary. Now a sergeant, he has police resources at his disposal—enough, in theory, never to lose sight of her. Even so, despite those capabilities, Mr. Norman loses her trail completely on more than one occasion. He feels relieved whenever he sees his daughter return home on her own, long after dawn.

Arguments with her parents soon begin, until Noel threatens to leave home forever. Not long after making that threat, her hormones increasingly in turmoil and the pressure from her parents mounting, the young woman reaches another turning point. Near the spring of 2005, she attends another party, this one at the home of a young man named Jon Macchio. The night is hardly as magical as she had hoped when she decides to have her first complete sexual experience with the host.

She knows Jon Macchio vaguely, from here and there, but he is not part of her trusted circle. She has seen him at foam parties with suds up to his neck, at others enveloped in colored smoke, and a few times at barbecues where there was more cannabis than meat. Whether he is truly known to her or not, Jon is the one with whom the nervous, inexperienced girl has her first sexual intercourse, allowing her growing desire to carry her along. Deceived, Noel trusts Jon when they have sex, even though there are no condoms in sight.

He promises he will not ejaculate inside her, and she believes him, but he breaks that promise. Jon climaxes inside her, toward her fertile womb, and she realizes it at once, terrified. After arguing with him for two hours, Noel returns home devastated, exhausted, and deeply frightened—a state that does not fade over the ensuing days, weeks, or months. Fortune is on her side this time. Jon’s premature ejaculation does not impregnate her, whether through some miracle of fate, divine justice, or the direct work of the Lord. Amen.

Relieved, Noel then enters yet another period of her life. She surrenders entirely to the pleasures and entertainment offered to her, even more than before. She stops attending church with her family on Sundays, for good, and plunges headlong into what they consider perdition. As might be expected, her studies become a neglected shadow of the past. For the first time, her grades are disastrous. She scarcely attends class, and when she does, she ends up drinking or smoking something with classmates, friends, or acquaintances.

Faced with his daughter’s uncontrollable behavior, Mr. Norman—tired of constantly hovering over her to keep her from spiraling further—resolves to assert his authority and change the course of her life by any means necessary. He and his wife lock her against her will in the bedroom where she has slept since childhood. It happens at noon on a Sunday, after she once again comes home intoxicated from alcohol and God knows what other substances. Several hours pass before Noel stops screaming like a spoiled or kidnapped child. They open the door and attempt to have a heated conversation with her.

Her parents are determined not to waste this opportunity, so they also summon Noel’s younger sister, Noah Norman. By the grace of Jesus Christ the Savior, the conversation ends with Noel seeing reason. She decides to return to the righteous path of the Lord, restore her good grades, and attend Sunday Mass with her family once more. Mr. Norman also succeeds in making his daughter understand the need to work. She even agrees to find a job to pay for her excessive spending on entertainment and clothes—expenses that are often exorbitant.

Noel gives in to some extent, though hardly with good grace and certainly not with a pleasant expression. Still, she understands that she cannot continue living a life of excess while all the good people of Bring Spring constantly label, pressure, judge, and point fingers at her. Noel does not care what people say—she never has—but it hurts that her beloved family are the ones who judge and pressure her most, and generally make her life impossible. For now, she accepts the change, at least until she can attain the independence she longs for.

The young woman recovers some of her good grades, although they will never again be as high as before; regaining that standard proves impossible. Even so, she brings home respectable marks until a day near Christmas that same year. On that day, Mr. Duprée offers Noel a job as a waitress at his establishment, Bring Spring’s Foods & Things. Duprée is a personal friend of Mr. Norman, so persuading him to give his little black sheep her first job is not difficult. Noel finds waitressing simple enough, though she feels the pay could be better.

Nevertheless, she earns enough to cover what are now her modest needs outside school. She does not abandon parties and revelry altogether, but she achieves a balance between activities that she lacked before. Her life proceeds much more peacefully until 2007, when she decides to enter Bring Spring’s traditional summer beauty pageant, the Grape Harvest Queen. She competes against several very pretty young women whom she knows by sight, though none are friends. Noel does more than win: her charm, beauty, and special radiance crush her rivals in the judges’ final scoring.

Her victory is reported in local newspapers and on websites associated with the town. Her appeal reaches so far that modeling agencies in Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile try to contact her with offers of advertising work. Her parents, who still remember their little girl’s talent for science, categorically forbid her to accept any of them. They are determined to do whatever it takes to keep her from going astray again. If she pursues modeling, they believe, she is highly likely to return to the dark path from which they had to rescue her.

They are convinced they must encourage her to continue studying, send her to college, and persuade her to choose a respectable career as God intended, whatever that career may be, by the grace of Jesus Christ. Amen. Thank heaven, they ultimately succeed in preventing her from modeling. With great effort, they intercept every call and every offer, disposing of them by every means available. Noel is still a minor, legally bound by a system that denies her the power to make her own decisions.

Months later, when Noel finally comes of age, her parents cross themselves and pray each day that their beloved daughter will not be left at the mercy of her own unpredictable will—or free will. Nothing unusual happens at first, and her parents count themselves fortunate. Seeing that Noel, though now free to do as she pleases, does not leave Bring Spring, accept dubious proposals, or even go out at night fills them with immense pride. It is true that she declines offers, however ominous they may be, no longer frequents Electric as she once did, and willingly attends Mass on some Sundays, though not all.

She continues her studies until she graduates from high school, without abandoning or neglecting her waitressing job. Each night Mr. Norman feels relieved: Noel has returned to the proper path, a true parental feat achieved with his wife, considering that at times they had thought she would never give up her old habits. What Mr. Norman does not know is that these changes are not the result of his stern words or his patrols, nor of her younger sister’s sweet and innocent advice. Still less are they due to the presumptuous psychological pressure exerted by her mother.

What truly keeps Noel in town and on the straight and narrow—secretly, unbeknownst to everyone—is someone outside the family. He is someone she not only likes very much, but who is also good for her, someone who makes her feel genuinely loved and cared for for the first time. Her family knows nothing of him. Not even the vigilant police patrols under Mr. Norman’s command, operating twenty-four hours a day, have discovered where the hell Noel goes after each night out. She seems to vanish into the darkness. No longer having high-school exams to prepare for has freed a great deal of her time, which she now devotes to leisure whenever she is not working.

Every day, the young woman goes to this unknown man’s house. They make love and afterward lie together, one resting upon the other, doing nothing more. It is well known that in towns like Bring Spring there is little to do besides drink, talk about other people, and fornicate. They devote themselves fully to the last of those pursuits. On occasion, they indulge a little in the other two as well. One summer day, after making love, exhilarated and soaked in sweat, Noel has an epiphany: the main wall in the young man’s house absolutely has to be painted salmon, whatever the cost. He agrees without objection, as always willing to indulge her whims.

Over the following days, they paint the wall salmon together and hang a lovely photograph there. In time, Mr. Norman and his family will discover that the mysterious young man is named Robert Allen. On a wild night in 2008 at Electric, while Noel still holds the title of Bring Spring’s most beautiful girl, she dances with her friends in the middle of the floor. Dozens of boys—and men—desire her. One in particular approaches and speaks into her ear.

"Hello, princess of beauty! Your title scarcely does justice to what you are," the young man says in a heated whisper that mists her right ear.

The music thunders across the dance floor. Even so, she hears every word perfectly.

"Not princess. Queen," Noel replies with unabashed pride and an enormous smile.

The young man’s name is Robert Allen, and that is how he introduces himself. That alone—nothing more and nothing less—is enough for something new and unexpected to begin between them. Noel changes markedly as her relationship with Robert grows more serious. She disappears for hours or days, and later for entire weeks. When she stays away from home for three weeks, Mr. Norman feels the urge to assign an officer to watch her. No one ever knows whether he actually does, but somehow her father knows his daughter’s movements. Suspecting that she is under surveillance, Noel becomes angrier with him than ever. She avoids confronting him, but cannot avoid her mother.

The result is her flight to Robert’s house. She remains there until the end of her days. She does not quit her waitressing job, so Mr. Norman can watch her there. He smothers her, pressures her, drives her mad each time she sees a patrol car pass. The people of Bring Spring know all about the young woman’s relationship and the impact it has had on her family. As in every small town, stories weave themselves around and behind her, though none reaches her ears directly. Few know what truly goes on between the couple. The rumors surrounding her worsen after a Texas rancher named Chuck, passing through Bring Spring, is captivated when Noel takes his lunch order.

Utterly besotted, the rancher—whose chauffeured car takes up half the width of the town’s main street—asks for her telephone number with all the courtesy he can muster. She refuses with considerably less courtesy, irritated by everything happening in her life and by having to endure at least five or six men like him every day. Far from giving up, Chuck invites Noel to lunch at one of his penthouses in Houston. Again, she emphatically refuses. The beautiful young woman has enthralled him, so the shrewd businessman raises the stakes: on his third attempt, he offers her an attractive position at one of his companies in Dallas.

The position sounds appealing, the duties apparently straightforward, and the salary—if genuine—is excellent, perhaps beyond her dreams. Although Noel hesitates over this final offer, she ultimately rejects it as well. At last she brings Chuck’s attempts to an end, though not his hopes that she might accept later. Indeed, it is that very proposal that will eventually prompt her to make a final decision. The exemplary student, now buried within the body of a striking woman with a doll-like beauty and matchless charm, decides one morning to leave town for Birmingham. Her plan is to accept one of the many beauty-industry jobs she has been offered.

She confirms every detail by telephone. Apparently, she will work in television, both reporting and hosting a program aimed at young people like her. The pay is ten times what she earns from the lecherous Mr. Duprée. She will leave without telling her parents, her sister, her friends, or Robert—without telling anyone at all. She will go in the early hours of a Monday, when the town wakes more slowly than usual. By the time life begins to stir, she will already be gone. Then the fatal accident occurs, an accident now being investigated in detail because its inconsistencies do not add up.

Why would a young woman with a promising future in the state’s largest city decide to clean her father’s gun the day before she left? It made no sense. She was not even living in that house at the time.

That supposed accident severed her dreams, her hopes, her life. She died trying to cling to existence.