Chapter 35 #5
Charlie did what she usually did to stave off panic.
She started scrubbing things—walls, floors, countertops, the trim above the doors.
Every bedsheet whether it needed it or not (most unfortunately did not).
Since she couldn’t hang them outside, she ran clotheslines through the front sitting room, from picture hook to curtain rod, draping wet linens over them. “This is hell,” Charlie said.
After lunch, she backed into the dining room, carrying a tray of cups, announcing, “Teatime, everyone.”
Teatime was the worst time, and in this business that was saying something.
I followed her, carrying a five-layer caramel cake I’d made out of flat boredom.
It was gorgeous. Charlie lined up the jelly jars on the card tables, each with three inches of warm yellow liquid.
A midwife in Freedmen Town mixed the herbs up for her—ground raspberry leaf, prickly ash, blue cohosh, and yam—and it tasted like dime-store perfume boiled with hot cabbage and cigarette ash.
Supposedly the concoction would keep the girls from bleeding or at least make them bleed lighter.
There was silence as cups were thrown back, followed by soft gagging sounds.
“My God, how can something that smells this awful taste even worse?” Esmeralda said, and she never complained.
“Like Flossy after a Saturday night,” Ruby said.
Only Charlie was exempt, thanks to her trip to the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, but me and Virginia had to drink it too, since, according to Flossy, “if one a us starts, the whole house starts. It’s one a the mysteries a being female.
” Virginia claimed that, while the tea probably wouldn’t work in so short a time, she never underestimated the colored midwives.
They serviced women all around the county and they’d saved a lot of women’s lives, colored and white.
She drank the midwives’ tea out of solidarity, with them and with us.
Virginia came in just about every day to “keep an eye on her patients.” I thoroughly enjoyed having her around even if, without any customers, there wasn’t much point.
When she didn’t have to rush back for a hospital shift, she’d sit in the dining room and study from a book called Gynecological Procedure, which she was doing now.
“And listen to this,” she said to the table, out of the blue, no preamble.
“For a female exhibiting fainting, fluid retention, irritability, and impulsive sexual desire, the diagnosis is very likely a case of female hysteria and if left untreated the patient will have a tendency to cause trouble for others.” She glared up at her audience, nostrils flared, offended as an old aunt by a short skirt.
“Can you believe this nonsense?” When no one answered her, she raised a finger.
“Well just wait, because there’s more: The most effective treatment to alleviate the condition is to perform masturbation on the female patient, to be administered by a qualified physician.
” Virginia leaned back and crossed her arms. “So they’re saying if a woman pays a man to do it, he’s ‘qualified,’ but if a man pays a woman to do it, she’s a whore.
I swear this book makes me want to absolutely scream. ”
“Makes me want to go see the doctor,” Flossy said, and Ruby snickered.
“Who wants caramel cake?” I said. I’d just sliced eight pieces onto Picador’s blue-and-white dessert plates.
“Anyone? Dixie?” No one took a plate except for me.
I tasted mine and it was divine, the caramel creamy with a touch of salt.
I’d added almond extract to the cake and more vanilla to the icing than the recipe called for.
Most at the table were busy desecrating Frances’s calling cards.
There seemed to be an endless supply of them, a sign of how often Frances anticipated handing her name to people who already good and well knew it.
Charlie was writing details in her perfect Palmer method, while on separate slips of paper Ruby was scribbling messages in first-grade block letters.
They reminded me of the fortunes you got in the little Oriental cakes we used to get at the county fair.
FIRST FIVE GET A SPISHAL PRIZE, Ruby wrote. I doubted it was a cookie.
GESS WHY WEDNESDAYS THE BEST NIGHT AT THE CHARLIE CLUB?
“How’s that for a name?” Ruby held it up for Charlie to see.
“We can’t call it that,” Charlie said. “Think of another one.”
“Fine, we’ll call it the Ruby Slipper Club then,” Ruby said.
“Fine,” Charlie said.
“We’re not naming our house after this stinkin’ quiff,” Flossy said.
This wasn’t the second or even the third time we’d discussed this.
Besides the aforementioned Charlie Club and Ruby Slipper Club, the names the girls had come up with were: the Twat Club, the No Customer Club, the Tart Club, the Cheap-Ass Ain’t Got No Furniture Club, the Supperless Club, because last night they’d had to spread the pimento cheese on the bread themselves, the Sorriest Strangest Club I Ever Worked In Club and the Calamity Club.
If these were really the choices, I suppose I’d choose the last.
Ruby lit a cigarette; we were at the table, after all. “How ’bout we just call it the See You Next Tuesday Club.” For a second, no one spoke. Then Flossy laughed, high and staccato.
“I don’t get it,” Dixie said, frowning.
“Spell it, geek, if you even can,” Ruby said.
“I like it,” Flossy announced. “The See You Next Tuesday Club is now open for business.”
Even Virginia had to hide a smile, but she was blinking like the word stung her eyes.
“Can y’all at least try the cake I made?” I said, pushing a plate to Ruby. Her approval was harder to earn, so I valued it more. I didn’t care that it’d taken me three hours to make; time we were rich in, but sugar and vanilla were precious ingredients when you were broke.
Ruby took a bite, then a second. “Hell, shit, and fire, this is a damn good cake.”
“Thank you, Ruby.” I’d made a three-cussword cake. You took your compliments where you could get them. Finally, the rest took plates and started eating.
“Esmeralda, why don’t you and the twins try giving out more cards on campus today,” Charlie said.
Esmeralda leaned over to see through the window. It was absolutely pouring out. “It looks like soup out there.”
“If we ain’t careful, the wrong people are gonna notice this card shit, Charles. We need something better and quick,” Flossy said. “Tell ’em what you told me, Virginia.”
At the far end, Virginia looked at Charlie at the head.
She seemed reluctant to say it. “The frats are driving all the pledges up to Priscilla’s starting tonight.
Though maybe not in this weather. They do it every year, and it’ll go on through the weekend before classes get serious on Monday. ” It sounded like an apology.
“Well, a damn card ain’t gonna convince the boys to come here instead a Priscilla’s,” Ruby said. “Know what I heard she’s got up there?”
“What’s she got?” Trixie asked.
“She’s got the—hell, I don’t know what the thing’s called.”
“I’ll tell ya what she’s got.” Flossy doled out her fingers, one by one. “She got furniture that don’t smell like a dead cat, she don’t make ya dance one minimum, her music don’t sound like Granny Nan’s funeral, and she’s got the thing, the whatsit.”
Ruby nodded. “You put a nickel in it and it plays your song.”
Mouth full of cake, Virginia said, “Priscilla’s got a Selectophone?”
“And a private telephone line,” Esmeralda said.
“Does she let the girls use it?” Dixie asked.
“Yeah but she charges double the rate,” Flossy said.
“She sells all the liquors too, not just brown, and she’s got twice as many girls as we do,” Esmeralda said.
“She also cheats them out of their pay,” Charlie said. “Tell them that part, Flossy.” She wasn’t liking this talk and neither was I, but I figured if she didn’t let them talk here, they’d just do it behind her back in their rooms.
“Oh she’s a cheater alright and a sicko, but she knows how to get the biz,” Flossy said.
“Know what I think?” Ruby said, leaning back on the legs of her chair, which I’d told her not to do. “I think we oughta pack up our shit and move the See You Next Tuesday Club to Priscilla’s where we can make some real dough.” She laughed, a low rumble, but didn’t sound like she was joking.
Charlie was burning holes into Ruby. Very clearly, she said, “I hear you say that again and I’ll call you a goddamn taxi myself.” And she got up and left the dining room.
Later that afternoon, there was a rap on the front door. A boy in a brown suit and flat cap, dripping wet with rain, said, “Telegram for Birdie Calhoun.” He handed it to me. He looked about nineteen with wire glasses and an Ole Miss pin on his collar.
“Hey, hold on a sec.” He probably thought he was getting a tip, but I came back and handed him one of Charlie’s cards.
He looked at it. “I think I heard a this place …” he said, looking around the porch.
I nodded—that was good, it meant the word was getting out, even if it wasn’t bringing them in.
I smiled in the way that didn’t show the gap between my teeth.
I felt creepy. “Closer than Priscilla’s.
Be sure and bring money,” I said and shut the door on him.
I leaned against it and tore open the envelope, hoping it was from Jack but praying it wasn’t from Frances saying coming home “soon” actually meant coming home soon.
TELEPHONE RELEE HOTEL AT 900 TOMORROW STOP VERY IMPORTANT WE HAVE NEWS ABOUT RORY STOP
She’d already gone over the ten-word limit so why didn’t she just say what the dang news was? Now I had to get through the next sixteen-some hours worrying about it.