Chapter 35 #4
I thought the accountant’s terrified face imparted it best: This is a very inefficient prostitute operation.
Not even the prostitutes looked like they wanted to go upstairs and do it anymore.
It was so unprovocative that when Ruby tickled her boy’s neck, he slapped at it, saying he thought it was “a mosquita.” Charlie’s mouth was a flat, grim line and I faced the road.
It was just too embarrassing to watch this disaster happening.
We needed to come up with a completely different front.
Maybe Flossy’d been right, that a Bible-selling business was a better idea than this, and why not, I was already going to hell for this—but then, it did work.
Sort of. I looked back and Ruby’d strong-armed the tall stiff-armed boy, or his shirt anyway.
Drug him by the sleeve into the darkness on the other side of the house, to the side door.
Maybe fearing being left alone to this terrible music, the Brylcreem boy and Trixie skittered after them.
I imagined Ruby at the side door, hissing the password, “Frances,” and Charlie, who’d rushed inside, opening it.
And then Mr. Binny’s funeral song ended, and his players laid their instruments down, and we waited.
The other girls went back to reading Frances’s old Good Housekeeping magazines.
Half an hour later, the boys came out. They walked past me, heads down, hands stuffed in front pockets. The whole thing felt awfully anticlimactic, though I was aware that was a strange way to put it. We did not get any more customers after that.
“Polly,” I said. She was pushing a baby carriage out of City Grocery, wearing her white uniform.
“Miss Birdie, how you doing?” she said and smiled. In the pram, I saw a tiny white baby fast asleep.
“I’m alright, how about you? You found work?”
“Yes ma’am, the Lamars give me a day here and there, but I’m still looking for full-time. Miss Birdie, we been wondering, how Miss Viktoria doing? We try and call the house, but the telephone been cut off.”
“Things are … not so good,” I said. I wondered if she’d heard about the club from Mr. Binny, but she hadn’t seemed to. “She and Frances went to stay with her sister down in Jackson.”
“No sign a Mr. Rory yet?”
“Not yet,” I said. “How’s Picador doing?”
She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “She still Picador, but she alright. She ain’t had this kinda time on her hands in a while.”
“So she hasn’t found work yet?” I asked.
“She been looking but,” she shook her head and sighed, “nobody wanna hire a colored woman that old,” she said, and I wanted to cry. “It don’t make it any easier with a mouth like Picador’s. The Tartts was used to it, but to somebody new, it sho do sound fresh.”
“That’s my favorite part about Picador.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said, smiling. “Miss Viktoria’s too. When you hear from her, you tell her I said hello?”
I told her I would and if I heard of any kind of work, I’d sure let them know.
As I approached city hall, I had to slow down so I didn’t run smack into Dr. Pittman, who was coming out. I waited as he walked in the other direction and then I went into the post office.
“You got some things in the outta-town box,” Mrs. Nutt said, and at first I thought, Jack, but it couldn’t be; he’d only left for Jackson yesterday. She handed me a letter with Frances’s handwriting on it and another one from home.
“While I got you … you know this lady?” She slid over a box marked Dead Letters with a single envelope in it addressed to Mrs. Charlie Lefleur.
The globe light over my head seemed to brighten a bit.
I hesitated—should I say I didn’t? Would I give Charlie away if I accepted it?
But then Mrs. Nutt said, “I done ast everbody that come in here today. Somebody suggested maybe she’s one a them boarders the Tartts got out at Idlewilde. ”
So people knew about that. I thought about Welty Pittman walking out before me and prayed she hadn’t asked him. “Actually, I think do know her,” I said and quickly took it and stuck it in my pocket. “I’ll find her and give it to her.”
“Thanks, Birdie, and don’t tell the guv’ment,” Mrs. Nutt said, which she always said since it was supposedly illegal to give somebody another person’s mail.
When I was out of sight, I squinted at Charlie’s letter from under my sun hat.
It was from the Department of Education, Los Angeles, California.
Maybe Mrs. Nutt hadn’t asked Welty Pittman because she’d been waiting on me to come in.
Or maybe Welty’d had other business in city hall and hadn’t even been to the post office.
If he had seen it, there was nothing I could do about it now except worry, and my dance card was already chock-full of that.
I took out Frances’s letter and read it on the walk home.
Except for a telegram saying they’d arrived almost two weeks ago, I hadn’t heard squat from her.
She wrote that they’d looked up, down, across hill and valley in Jackson and there’d been no sign of Rory.
That the Jimmy fellow at the shoe store’d been no help either.
Birdie, you wouldn’t believe how quick money goes here.
They won’t so much as give you a paper cup of water without charging you two stingy cents for it!
We’re already down to only three little dollars, which means we’ll have to head back home soon
I looked up at the Percy mansion ahead. “Soon”? What did that mean, “soon”? As in this pot of water will be boiling soon or “soon” as in compared to the rest of us, Meemaw will be dead soon? I turned the letter over …
unless you could send us a little more money to keep looking for him?
Where in the world had all their money gone to so fast?
They’d had thirty dollars when they’d left here.
Last night’s two customers had brought in nine dollars and forty cents, and when we split that with the girls and paid Mr. Binny and divided the rest among three partners, it came to one dollar and thirteen cents I’d risked my life’s freedom for.
So no, I could not send more money, Frances.
I wasn’t even sure we could pay for groceries soon.
In Even Worse News was a letter from Mama, which I assumed had to be worse because it was from her.
Dear Birdie,
Are you alright? Why haven’t we heard from you or Frances? When in the world are you coming home? Do you think you might be wearing out your welcome?
Half a dozen more questions later, I finally arrived at Birdie, I have some bad news.
Oh, Mama. I sighed. Of course you do.
Mr. Parkins hired somebody else to do the books at the store. He said what with his angina getting worse, Mrs. Parkins has to stay home and see after him, and the store can’t run itself.
I wasn’t surprised but hired who? Who would work there for as little as I did? Like Mama’d heard me:
Her name is Ida and she’s a cousin of some kind and not from around here. I tell you, she has plumb took over the place. She will tell anybody comes in how too many customers aren’t paying their tabs and it took her three nights without sleep to get the books straightened out.
Oh, come on, I could’ve done those books and gotten home in time to listen to The Lone Ranger on the radio before supper.
Now she has put up a sign on every wall that says “No Credit Given Over Twenty-Five Cents,” and this morning I watched her turn away colored Arthur AND the poor sharecropper family still living on the Tate property.
Ida let me charge some coffee and flour out of consideration that you’d worked there like you did but said she will need to cut us off if we don’t settle our bill soon.
We owe twelve dollars and forty-five cents. She had it typed up on a paper even!
I stopped reading and blinked in the bright sun—I’d lost my job. It wasn’t much, but it was what we’d had to get by on.
I found Charlie on the back porch, furiously sweeping away dirt that hardly existed. “This came for you,” I said and handed her the letter.
She took it and her eyes widened. “They were supposed to address it to Idlewilde, not to me personally.” She opened it.
“What is it?”
She skimmed it and took a beat to answer. “I registered Meg for sixth grade.” She frowned. Tears filled her brown eyes, so rare on Charlie.
“Charlie … do you even have a plan?”
“Yes.” She stuck her chin up at me. Her eyes were red, and she swatted back a tear.
“What is it?”
“I’m going to make enough money to support my child, and then I’m going up there and getting her.”
I sighed. It came from my soul. “Well, I think your plan stinks, Charlie.” It was basically kidnapping. And if Welty could manage to keep Garnett’s hands off Meg, Meg might very well be better off with the Heidelbergs. Charlie showing up there could ruin that.
Charlie didn’t say anything, just went back to sweeping.
That evening, from my telephone table, I watched a red-hued sunset stretch over the green unkempt fields across the road. Surely someone would venture out our way on this lovely pink evening.
And yet that night cost us money. Mr. Binny came to play; the customers did not. Not a single one.
Rain. Of the many things we feared showing up here, we’d forgotten to dread rain.
It started late Tuesday night, a steady downpour that made me sleep like the dead.
When I woke up early Wednesday morning, I wasn’t sure what the sound even was.
It had only rained here twice, and not for long, since that day I’d arrived in mid-July.
As I milked the cow in the downpour, she shuddered in relief.
Charlie looked ready to faint, though. Not that we’d been expecting crowds at the club that night, but I doubted anyone would make the trip up sloppy Lamar Boulevard in this mess.