Chapter 37 #4
“Looks like somebody been cleaning this here kitchen,” Picador said. She eyed the closed door to the little bedsit where Charlie’d finally gone to bed. Polly gently elbowed her.
I knew Mrs. Tartt did not want them to think they’d been replaced. “Charlie’s staying in there, you’ll meet her. She helps out around the house in exchange for rent, but she’s not a housekeeper.” Which didn’t look like it suited Picador altogether.
But Polly said, “We just glad for the work, Miss Birdie.”
They followed me to the washroom, where the tub was full of sheets soaking and beside it was the mountain, almost as high as Picador was tall.
“How many boarders y’all got staying up in here?” Picador said. “Where they all sleeping, the roof?”
“We got a little behind,” I said.
“You sho did.”
“We don’t mind,” Polly said. “We’n stay late as you need tonight.”
“Actually … we’re gonna need them done by five o’clock today. Because of the dance club, it opens at six and it wouldn’t look good to have bedsheets hanging in the yard. Just do what you can, I’m sure it’ll be fine.”
Polly took a deep doubtful breath. “We do our best.”
“Thank you, and no need to go upstairs. I want to let the boarders sleep in.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Polly said.
They set to work scrubbing off all the terrible things that’d happened on the sheets.
At ten o’clock, there was still not a sound from upstairs.
Just in case, I carried a tray of coffee and fixings and plenty of biscuits and set it at the top of the stairs in the hall.
I made another pot of coffee and offered some to Picador.
She frowned at me, and for a second it was like no time had passed.
When I came down from checking on the girls a second time, Charlie’d gotten up.
She’d already introduced herself to Picador and Polly and she was rummaging up under the sink, saying she was sure there was more bluing under there.
Everything seemed fine. The house was full of the familiar smell of Fels-Naptha laundry soap and the sound of Picador cranking the noisy mangle to wring out the sheets.
It was a hungry, water-squeezing contraption with spring-loaded rollers so powerful you had to be careful they didn’t suck in your fingers and pinch them off.
Polly then hauled the sheets out to the clothesline, the screen door popping closed so many times I quit hearing it as I tried to keep my eyes open.
At the table, Charlie sewed up cigarette burns and rips in the cheap sheets.
“Them sheets gone take a while to dry even with us ironing ’em,” Polly said. “You sure you don’t want us to come in tomorrow?”
I hated to say no, but: “I’m sorry, it’s just for today.” I couldn’t keep the girls upstairs two days in a row. “Do what you can and we’ll finish the rest.”
“Yes ma’am. We appreciate you bringing us in.”
I wanted so badly to go to bed, just for an hour, but I wouldn’t let myself.
My head ached. Staring deep into a pot of boiling eggs, I’d started to wonder, Would it be so bad if they knew?
But I couldn’t bring myself to put them in such a treacherous position.
They’d sweated for the Tartts for twenty-five years.
“You sho you don’t want us in the mawning?” It was Picador asking this time. “Ain’t no twenty-nine sheets gone be wash, dry, and iron in one day.”
“I’m sorry, it’s—just do what you can.”
Picador gave me a steady look, arms crossed. She said, “Yes, ma’am,” and went back outside. I took the pot of eggs off the fire, rinsed and peeled the eggs, and then allowed myself to sit at the kitchen table and rest my head on my arms for just a moment.
When I opened my eyes—how long had it been?
Five minutes? Twenty?—Virginia was coming up out of the cellar in her white coat—I hadn’t even known she was here—and then Esmeralda walked through the kitchen.
Thank the Lord it was just her—she looked more like an ordinary than I did.
Esmeralda looked at Picador and Polly and Picador and Polly looked at Esmeralda and they all nodded a silent hello, and Esmeralda went down to the cellar with Virginia following after her.
And still, it all seemed fine.
I actually felt somewhat smart for bringing them in—helped them, helped us—but to be safe I went upstairs to tell the rest again do not come downstairs.
And I had just about made it, too, when I heard Picador say real clear to Polly at the sink, “They done turn Miss Viktoria’s into a cathouse and think we don’t know. ”
Dang it. My blood dropped a good thirty degrees. Picador’d sounded a little stung that we hadn’t told her. I went back down and in the doorway, I gazed past the back of them at Charlie, who’d looked up from her sewing.
“Ast me, they gone need help tomorrow. Them sheets just gone get dirty again.”
“Sho nuff,” Polly said.
No one spoke for a few very long seconds.
“How about … Birdie and I discuss it. And we’ll let you know very soon?” Charlie said.
“’Atta be fine,” Picador said and turned around and went out the back door. Polly nearbout ran out after her.
“Did you tell them, Charlie?” I asked. “Did you?”
“No, I did not,” Charlie said. And then she added the thing: “Told you so.”
“Thanks, Charlie.” I was embarrassed. I felt like my mother’d found out. “What do you think they’re gonna do?”
“If we can afford them, keep coming back, I hope.” She handed me two corners of the sheet she’d mended.
I took the corners, mad, at myself mostly. “What do you think gave us away? Virginia? All the sheets? You think they found a widow stuck in the sheets?” We’d checked for those.
“I honestly don’t know,” Charlie said as we stretched the clean sheet out between us and she walked her corners to me. I saw her glance over at the cellar door.
“You think they knew before they even got here?” I asked.
She shrugged again. “They might’ve. Or maybe you’re not as good a liar as you think you are.”
“I never said I was.” And I went upstairs because there was no reason now not to get some dang sleep.
At two thirty that morning, the eight of us pulled back our chairs and sat down for the supper we’d skipped tonight or last night or whenever that time was.
Virginia’d stayed, fixing drinks and changing sheets between johns to make extra money.
After two late nights in a row, I was dry mouthed, dizzy with exhaustion, and starving.
Everybody’d skinned their work clothes and scrubbed off the film of drunk boys and greedy hands sticky with bourbon and vomit and worse and changed into what Flossy and Ruby called their “own-ers.” They were the precious clothes the men had never touched.
At my telephone table tonight, I’d been called “darlin’,” “sweetlips,” “she’ll do,” and “useless” when an ossified boy accepted that I wasn’t a prostitute and he’d have to wait his turn.
After a Goliath-sized, corn-fed animal had sat on my lap like a chair and another boy had had to drag him off me, I considered getting the rolling pin from the kitchen.
But what did I think I was gonna do, whack a boy in the head?
Roll him flat like a crust? Then I remembered—the cattle prod pole Meemaw’d stuck in my suitcase.
I came back with it, went strolling past the sitter and zapped him in the side.
He yelped like a girl, and I told him, “That was the low setting, buddy.” If he sat on me again, I’d turn it on high.
Napkins tucked in the necks of our nightgowns, I said grace while the rest erupted in laughter over something.
And then the table went quiet as we ate our plates of macaroni noodles I’d boiled in milk and baked with cheese and butter and crispy chopped bacon.
Flossy said she’d never tried “Eye-talian food” but she thought “they might be onto something.” I doubted this dish was ever Italian.
Dixie asked where Italy even was and Ruby told her, “In New York, stupid.” Afterward, wilting and full, we all smoked cigarettes right at the table, even me.
The consensus was we’d gotten real lucky, what with the warning in the newspaper and on the weekend of the big fraternity bacchanal no less—and we still had Saturday night to go.
There was so much money in the house now, it felt dangerous, so Charlie and I had locked ourselves in Rory’s study and counted it out on the floor.
When it was all doled out, in the last two nights, each partner’d made just over a hundred dollars each.
I’d come here looking for only two hundred fifty bucks to pay the taxes and get by on till spring.
At this rate, I could walk out of here in days with what I needed.
I wasn’t sure what was more attractive: what I’d avoid by leaving or what I stood to make by staying. Neither felt right.
When the girls straggled upstairs to bed, Charlie followed me out on the back porch.
The air was crisp and cool—when had that happened?
The strings of gold lanterns were still lit, and a single blue necktie lay flattened on the dance floor.
We sat on the steps and shared one more cigarette from the for-sale can.
I passed it back to her, and, as if to no one, Charlie said, “I’m running a whorehouse so I can be Meg’s mother again.”
“That’s just now occurring to you?”
“It’s just—it doesn’t sound good, does it? A mother who’d do something like that?” Brows up, she looked stunned by her own question, staring ahead at her favorite crape myrtle tree. She had to be exhausted. But then she whispered, “What if Meg loves this woman more than she loves me?”
“You’re not replaceable, Charlie. You’re her mother.”
“What if—I make all this money and the family won’t let me have her back?”
“That’s … a possibility,” I said. I’d sword I’d be honest from now on.
“I want to make a plan to get her—it’s time to make a plan,” she said, and I could hear the begging in her voice.
“Concentrate on making money, Charlie, that’s the plan. So if you can get Meg back … you can take her far away from here.” All the way to Cal-i-for-nia, here we come!, the state with blue swimming pools and “the Specific Ocean,” Meg had accidentally called it, and we’d both laughed.
Charlie hugged her stomach and nodded. She looked miserable. “Somewhere where I never have to be in this damn business again.”