Remembering Pearlie May Timberlake

Pearlie May Timberlake was my best friend in school before the Jehovah’s Witnesses got a grip on her and eventually made her shun me. 

Pearlie May was born in Louisiana, a bayou girl, supposedly adopted by her blonde-haired blue-eyed mother, who was also from Louisiana. But things didn’t quite add up. For example, why did she retain her last name if she was adopted? There seems to be no record of her birth, or later marriage. 

From time to time I’ve searched for her on the internet but always come up empty. And now all searches revert to Justin Timberlake. Ugh. She was probably a bayou or a Cajun child, despite the apparent Englishness of her last name. 

Pearlie May’s younger brother, John Estes, resembled his fair mother, but Pearlie May’s beauty was incandescent, she was also a dark horse. Literally. She had skin the color of old honey and unruly hair that always needed tending to. She used frozen orange juice cans as curlers to achieve that smooth big hair look. 

Her mother used Pearlie as a house slave. It was almost as if she needed to break Pearlie’s self-resolve with threats and beatings from her stepfather who used a leather belt on Pearlie May more than once. She lived in dread fear of her punitive mother. 

Pearlie May’s stepfather, who was no better, was from Peru—I never even knew his name, but he was a classic Inca, he had many gold teeth, and wore a gold llama medallion around his neck. He spoke Quechua and Spanish, as well as English, and rarely spoke of Peru. But there were Peruvian artifacts in the house. I know nothing of how he even got to the United States, or how he met Pearlie May’s mother. I don’t even know her name, other than it once was Mrs. Estes.

Their young daughter, Lisa, was a little princess who could do no wrong. Pearlie was not only stuck with all the drudgeries of housework, she was also stuck with babysitting Lisa who somehow knew of her privileged position in the family hierarchy, used it to blackmail Pearlie May. 

Pearlie’s parents thought I was a bad influence on her, but really it was the other way around. She was a wild child, who was into alcohol and little white pills at the time. 

They were an odd couple, united by a cultic religion. They were banquet waiters at a fancy San Francisco hotel, so they were never around on weekends. We would crank up the stereo full blast and dance like no one was watching. No one was watching, of course, LOL. Except the neighbors Barbara and Mike Scott who didn’t care. 

They raised chinchillas for the fur trade in a little detached garage, who were very sensitive creatures and would easily die of fright. Apparently rock music wasn’t on their easy listening menu, nor was Man of La Mancha or Exodus and they all died of fright. I hated the little bastards, and was glad when they all died off from disease. Pearlie May got blamed for that too. 

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Estes, but Pearlie May’s mother was a long way from home. Her brilliant blue eyes were as cross-eyed as their Siamese cat and her Louisiana accent took some getting used to. Her son, John came to live with them one summer, and was promptly banished to the detached garage down the hill that once housed the chinchillas. John and Mr. Peru didn’t see eye to eye. 

I guess John’s father, who lived in LA, was done with him because he came back soon afterwards like a homing yo-yo. I was madly in love with him, it was the era of Summer of Love, and he was my first kiss, and everything else. Then I was done with him, he was too fickle, but that’s another story. John didn’t have a Louisiana accent, so he must’ve lived in LA most of his life, which suggests Mrs. Estes came to California with Pearlie May in tow.

Pearlie May was my constant friend since at least 7th grade. We had a deep history. I even went to a few meetings to placated the religious elders. That worked for a while, but I was recalcitrant and had no interest or intention in becoming a Jehovah’s Witness. 

I was devastated when she was finally forced to shun me for real or be excommunicated herself from the group. They were big on the sins of tainted flesh, and felt I was a bad influence on her, when reality, she was a bad influence on me. It became clear that I wasn’t worth saving. So the Jehovah’s Witnesses “outed” me, everyone had to pretend I was invisible, they’d turn their backs on me whenever they saw me. 

They also made her break off her relationship with Tino, we called him Rudolf Valentino because he was that gorgeous. I don’t know why she didn’t just rebel. The entire world was in the throes of rebellion, throwing off the shackles of the past. 

Anyway, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were getting ready to face the end of the world, so their sights were pretty well set. Pearlie May cried, begged me to join, saying she wanted me to be saved too, as I was her best friend. Who would she hang out with in the Promised Land? I wanted to be saved too so that I could see John as well. But it didn’t happen like that. The world didn’t end in 1974. 

She set her sights on a neighbor boy from the church, Abe Razonsky, who eventually became a minister. Last I heard she married him, and went off to do missionary work saving heathen souls in Africa or some dark place in the jungles of the mind. I wonder if she ever thinks of me, or did she also banish me from her mind as well?

FWIW, I did attempt to write a fictionalized account of Pearlie May for a playwriting class back in 2000, but I didn’t really know that much about her, despite our being best friends. What I do know is that it left a big hole in my psyche when we parted. She was somewhat fictionalized in these two pieces. I couldn’t bear to change her name though. Mating Games, Promised Land (monologue)