Wendy

Lyrics

[Intro]
(a screen door, a kid's voice outside, traffic)
Her name is Melinda Lou.

[Verse 1]
Her name is Melinda Lou. It has always been Melinda.
"Wendy" was what the little ones could manage when they said it,
her brothers and her sisters, and it stuck the way those do,
so her father used the nickname when the restaurant came through.
Nineteen sixty-nine. She was eight years old.
Red pigtails, freckles, a drawing. And then the world.

[Chorus]
Wendy! Wendy! On every sign in America!
Your face — not your face, but a version of your face —
on a roadside, in a drive-through, on a napkin, on a cup,
from the year that you were eight until forever, that's the deal.
Wendy. Wendy. She has said it was a lot.
She has said, in her own words, that it was quite a lot.

[Verse 2]
And she's spoken about this with a generosity
I'm not sure I could manage if it had happened to me:
that she'd have liked to be asked, that at eight you can't consent,
that her father meant it lovingly, and love was what he meant.
Both those things are true and she has held them both for years,
in public, kindly, patiently, to every interviewer.

[Chorus]

[Bridge]
Here's a small thing I keep turning over in my head:
the drawing isn't her. It's a version. It's an ad.
So she walks through the world beside a girl who is and isn't her,
who never ages, never speaks, and never has to answer for it.
She got older. The drawing didn't. That's the whole arrangement.
That's what it is to be a logo while remaining a person.

[Chorus]

[Outro]
(traffic passing)
Melinda Lou.
That's her name. Melinda Lou.