Chapter 35 #2
“This one took me a while, but it’s done,” she said and winked, which I’d never seen Charlie do before.
She unbuttoned the back for me and I stepped into it, and then I pulled on somebody’s rayon stockings that already smelled a little like feet, and Esmeralda handed me a pair of her expensive-looking black high-heeled oxfords.
Esmeralda beamed when she looked me over, her cheeks full, like she couldn’t have waited another day to share the heels and her handiwork with me.
“Now look at yourself,” Esmeralda said and turned me around.
I went closer to the mirror. This was much better than what Frances had done.
My brown, usually lank hair—it looked like more.
My eyebrows were slightly arched now, and whatever Esmeralda had rubbed on my skin made it not nearly so ruddy or splotched, and there they were—cheekbones.
The lipstick was much bolder than what I’d borrowed from Frances a few times, and I had the sudden urge to wipe it off—I didn’t want to look like I was “trying.” Wasn’t that what Frances had said when I’d tried on the Devil’s Delight lipstick—why try?
“Why’re y’all doing this for me?” I asked. I looked away from myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t help smiling. I hadn’t had close women friends since high school, before they’d all gone off and gotten married.
“Oh, I been wanting to do this a long time,” Flossy said.
But this didn’t feel like they were trying to fix me or like Frances who, even though she’d called me “sex-y,” only took an interest in my looks so I wouldn’t embarrass her. They seemed to simply want me to look like a better version of myself.
I’d spent most of my life marinating in other people’s lives: engagements, marriages, no divorces but a few left behinds, some comebacks, too many illnesses and accidents.
Babies born, babies lost. So much death, so much life.
I listened to all sorts of noisy opinions—Delta storytellers were well-known exaggerators and told tales rich as the soil.
I certainly had my own. But it crossed my mind, as I rode to church that morning, that maybe I hadn’t been living life so much as watching life in Footely.
I didn’t have to wonder much what’d enlightened me—in a few weeks, I’d fallen in love with a married man, had my eyebrows plucked, started a dance club when my sister was out of town, and was getting dropped off at church by five prostitutes.
If all that hadn’t woken me up, probably nothing would.
“This is good—stop right here,” I said and got out on a rare deserted corner without a church in sight.
As I straightened Esmeralda’s black brimmed hat, Ruby leaned out the car window. “Hey! Hitch them titties up like I taught you to!” I hitched them as taught, and the ladies drove away.
I walked in the shade of the old oak trees to First Christ Methodist as thirteen church bells rang from all directions, a gentle reminder of what kind of town we were living in.
Standing on the edge of the crowd out front, I felt strange being here without Frances or Mrs. Tartt.
I reckoned life went on without us, even when our worlds seemed to be coming to an end.
I saw Mrs. Tartt’s friend Mary Pepper, and of course Garnett Pittman with her constipated smile.
People were standing around her, both women and men, and as I got closer, I heard, “Congratulations, Garnett! This is some real big news.” Lord, what did she win now?
“The state AVL is so fortunate to have your leadership. Imagine, a president from our very own Oxford.”
So she’d done it. Garnett was the new president of the Anti-Vice League, and not just a local chapter but the main branch overseeing the entire state of Mississippi.
From what I’d read, they weren’t just anti everything we were doing up the road, including merely staying open after eight p.m.; they were also opposed to miscegenation, the public mixing of races, and something called the tainting of “a pure Christian population,” whatever that was.
Dear Lord, if she knew about the dance club.
Next to Garnett, her husband, Dr. Pittman, stared off, looking unusually unwrinkled in a dark suit.
I could just about hear Garnett telling him, Your assigned assignment is do not embarrass me today.
As the minister approached Garnett, I watched Dr. Pittman turn and look right at his wife.
His brows drew together slightly, and he seemed to be asking himself, My God, what have you become?
He shook the minister’s hand with a tired smile. Had I really seen that?
“Why Birdie, don’t you look all gussied up today,” Pripp said.
Gussied? Was that like hussied? I touched my made-up face and saw that other eyes were on me as well. They went too far and I look like a—
“That is just the cutest dress you got on with those magnolias all over it. Where’d you get that, Neilson’s? Did you get it at the markdown sale at Neilson’s?”
“I’m not sure …” I said. I didn’t think anyone had ever asked me where I’d bought something before.
“Birdie, can I ask you something?” Pripp came closer and whispered, “is Frances doing alright?”
I wasn’t sure what had gotten out, but Pripp sounded, surprisingly, like she genuinely cared. I knew Frances could use a friend right now, a telephone call, a letter from somebody who’d stick by her after this Rory mess was over.
“She’s having a hard time, Pripp.”
“Is it sumpin’ going on with her and Rory?
I heard he got let go at the bank, and then it seemed odd how Frances just up and left town like that.
” Pripp had laid a heavy white hand on my arm, and I sensed it, it was almost a smell.
She didn’t care about Frances; she was looking for gossip she could spread over this nice town like a sticky jam.
“She and Rory are fine,” I lied. Then lower, so she’d know it was juicy, “Frances is too nice to say so, Pripp”—her lips parted in anticipation—“but she actually left to get away from people like you.”
She looked me up and down, hating my dress now, and walked off in a huff.
Just as the bells started ringing for people to go inside, I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. What a relief to see somebody I trusted.
“Hi, Jack,” I said.
“Hi … Birdie.” And then I had the delight of watching him drink me in.
He took my hand, and a lady named Laurie P-something I faintly remembered from the Orphan walked by with her husband, saying, “Don’t they make a good-looking couple!
” If I could remember her last name, I’d send her a thank-you note for that.
Among the last ones inside, we sat in the back pew of the church.
The minister spoke about love and kindness, repeating John 15 a second time, and then again: “Love each other as I have loved you.” This is a good church, I thought, despite people like Garnett and Pripp.
In fact, Oxford really is a good town. For the Lord’s Prayer, Jack took my hand and said it with me.
While I wished Mrs. Tartt was here for this sermon, I thanked the Lord Jesus she was not here considering what we were doing in her house.
For an hour I felt grateful and I felt hopeful.
We filed outside to see that a rainstorm might finally be coming.
Since I was more than happy to skip the ass-kissing show starring Garnett Pittman, we trotted the two blocks to the square as fat raindrops started to fall.
We made it up the wooden stairs before the rain could ruin Es’s beautiful hat and shoes, and he led me to a door marked No. 3.
It was a simple white room with a waxed dark wood floor.
A single bed that his feet probably hung off of was in the corner.
There was a lovely pair of French windows with a drawn white curtain, a table, and a chair, as in one.
I was sure he had to duck to go through the arched doorway to the little washroom, but overall it was clean and smelled like laundry soap and slightly damp sheets.
“I’m sorry there’s no drawing room in number 3.
” He took his suit jacket off, hung it on a hook, and loosened his tie.
He filled two glasses of water from the tap and set them on the table.
I’d never been in a man’s apartment before—I’d never been in an apartment before.
I stood there holding Frances’s black pocketbook.
He sat on the end of the bed that faced the French windows, and the mattress springs groaned.
I sat next to him on the bed. It was warm in here, almost hot. I wondered if he slept without clothes on in this bed I was sitting on. Then I was nervous he knew I’d thought that. “Want me to pull the fried chicken out?” I asked. He’d told me he’d picked some up yesterday.
“Sure.” But he laughed and pulled me back, so we were both lying down on his bed, facing each other.
He kissed me, and while I started out with nice intentions, real soon it was nothing my mother or sister would approve of.
We could hear the rain tapping the pavement outside.
I slid my hand against the back of his neck up into his blond hair, and I could feel all six feet four, maybe five, of him pressing against me through the thin dress.
It was like we were trying to swallow the other one up, and this went on for many minutes until—
“Why’d you stop?” he asked.
I wanted a moment to appreciate this. His smooth, tan skin, with traces of lipstick around his mouth. I touched the scar on his cheek, half a thin question mark. “Where’d this come from?”
“Horse,” he said and pulled me back and we kissed like teenagers again.