Chapter 29
Birdie
It wasn’t quite an earthquake that shook me, but it did feel like I was on some sort of wild, unreasonable ride.
The argument with Charlie had left me very angry, which climbed to a state of red-hot fury before dropping into a spiral of terrifying disappointment, leaving me plain ole sick to my stomach—for my family, for Mrs. Tartt and Frances, for Charlie, for Meg. The list of lives wrecked was long.
Yesterday, before I’d run into Garnett at the post office, I came across Charlie’s ledger.
Still furious, I’d thumbed through it, not able to stop myself.
The numbers had practically sparkled on the page.
The biggest earnings came from what she called Tricks, and while I didn’t have to wonder what those were, I saw they ranged from four dollars and fifty cents up to fifteen dollars apiece.
What in the world did a woman have to do to earn that?
After Tricks, there was also the income from the Upfronts; then came Room she was usually such a force.
To make things even worse, she had on the stained yellow dress again.
“What’re you wearing that old dress for?” I asked. She had plenty of Mrs. Tartt’s dresses, plus the weather had turned hot again, the cooler weather blown away to some other place.
Charlie turned away and said, “We’re leaving.”
Seconds later, Flossy came clomping out onto the porch.
Deep lines ran down the sides of her mouth.
“Bag’s all packed, Charles.” She had on a pink dress, similar to the last though somehow different.
It hit just above her bluish knees like it was from a decade ago, and two of the buttons running down the front hung by a thread, not unlike herself.
“I see that look,” Flossy said, narrowing her eyes on me. “Don’t you look at me different now you know what I do for a living. I ain’t no different than the gal you was nice to when I arrived and you asked do I like my eggs fried or scrambled.”
“Where you going?” I asked.
“Where you think? Back to the Sicko. With a stop in Byhalia.”
I turned to Charlie. “Charlie, what are you planning to do?”
Charlie’s mouth was tied tight and stubborn. “I’m just going to ask Meg’s—the woman who’s raising her if I can speak to my daughter. That’s all.” She looked down at the haggard dress and said in a small voice, “I just want to make sure Meg recognizes me.”
Out front a car horn bleated twice. “Come on, Charles,” Flossy said. “Priscilla’s ain’t getting any closer.”
“Wait,” I said. It took me a second to say it, another second to believe I was saying it.
“I’m willing to … discuss working the front—meaning the dance club only.
But I want nothing to do with the … the upstairs business, alright?
” I’d convinced my conscience that I’d just have to do what every other normal woman did and not see what I didn’t want to see.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been able to accomplish this even once in my life, but I would just have to learn.
Charlie glanced out at the backyard, considering it, and finally she said, “Fine.” As if she was the one having to settle here. She didn’t seem sufficiently surprised by my change of heart either, which irked me even more.
“Before we decide anything, I’m gonna need two promises from you, Charlie. First of all, you have to promise not to lie to me again. You got that?”
“Alright. I promise,” she said. I waited, thinking there might be a thank you or some sort of gratitude coming. There was not. The taxi honked its horn again.
“And you have to promise me you won’t go to Byhalia … not yet. I’ll find another way to get in touch with Meg’s parents.” It’d been less than a week since I’d written them, just before Frances and Mrs. Tartt left, so they hadn’t had enough time to write back.
Charlie dug her nails into her thigh, through the yellow dress. This one was harder for her to give up. I didn’t know what was the right thing to do, but Charlie showing up there and wrecking Meg’s world was not it.
“Charlie, it’ll only confuse Meg, and it’s too risky—what if they tell Garnett that Meg’s real mother came to see her?
” That would put in motion a whole ’nother set of problems I couldn’t even fathom.
And I did not dare tell Charlie that Garnett wanted to take Meg back, because I knew when I did, she would be in that taxicab ordering him to make tracks, and she would try to snatch Meg from the Heidelbergs and get charged with kidnapping and never set another free foot in those blood-stained heels again.
“You promise me? You’ll find a way to talk to those people?” Her voice had gone high.
“You bet I will.”
“Alright,” she whispered, clutching her scarred wrist. “But you have to promise me you’ll let me run the business my way.”
“Fine. Just tell me how it works so I know how it works, but then I don’t want to know how it’s working, alright?” Against my better bookkeeper’s judgment, I added, “I’ll take my share of the dime dances and selling legal cold drinks and cigarettes, but that is it.”
Charlie shook her head. “If you’re in this, you’re taking your whole share. It’s what we agreed.”
“We agreed we were starting a dance club.”
“I can’t trust somebody who’s not in all the way,” Charlie said. Chin up, she crossed her arms, looking just like Meg did when she had an opinion.
“You want to talk about trust—” But I squeezed my eyes shut and held my tongue and just said, “Fine.” Much as I wanted to make other demands, I left it at this for the time being.
“School starts in a week—we’ve got to start hiring now.
” Charlie’s lights were fully lit again.
In fifteen minutes, she’d gone from pitch-dark to electrified.
I, however, was terrified and still angry about what was about to happen, and planted myself behind the sink, while she and Flossy sat six feet away at the kitchen table.
We were down to, more or less, potatoes, carrots, turnips, onions, hoop cheese, a can of anchovies, and potted ham.
I started turning the noisy crank on the flour sifter to make a crust for some sort of deranged potpie.
All while trying to work out the mechanics of running a front for a brothel while turning my back on one.
It felt like trying to swim without getting wet.
“What if you sent a telegram to the girls at Priscilla’s,” Charlie said, “and told them it’s a good house?”
“A good house?” Flossy said, looking around her.
“Please, give me the address of such a place. Look, it ain’t easy getting outta Priscilla’s.
I was lucky, or I thought I was. Which brings me to mention, all I eaten since I got here is hard-boiled eggs and pickles. I want real food. I demand a hot dish.”
“I’m working on it,” I said and kept turning the crank. With the humidity this high, I had to bang the side of the flour sifter after every third turn so the flour would drop—turn, turn, turn, bang. I just wanted to learn the basic information I needed to run my side of things and not a speck else.
“This ain’t 1920 no more, ya know,” Flossy said. “You want half-decent girls, you need to have the amenities—radio, a telephone, actual furn-i-ture.” She picked a cigarette out of a box of Luckies with her pink fingernails.
“They’re hooking us up on a party line tomorrow,” I said. “And don’t smoke in here, please.”
“You make a appointment on a party line, you’ll be making your next appointment with the judge,” Flossy said.
“We’ll get a private line after we collect the upfront fees from the rest of the girls,” Charlie said. “But we can’t collect until we actually hire some.”
“Speaking of,” Flossy said, the unlit cigarette bobbing in her mouth, “lotsa girls ain’t gonna pay a five-dollar upfront.
Nowadays, it’s two and a half bucks to start, two and a half after the wallets show up—” She nodded up at me.
“That’s customers to you, greeny, and be sure and get us a proper premiere girl,” she told Charlie.
Back to me: “That’s the real good-looking one.
” She raised her palm in the air. “Thank you, I must decline, but if you can land us a fox, it’ll really drive the biz. ”
“I’m not worried about a premiere girl, first we need bodies. What about Jojo’s in Memphis?”
“Busted, and mosta Jojo’s girls got a fondness for the needle.”
I sifted faster—turn, turn, turn, bang. I wasn’t exactly sure what the needle meant except probably something awful and very worthy of changing my mind about all this.