Chapter 38
“Twat Shop,” Ruby said into the telephone receiver.
“Ruby!” I marched into the hall.
She’d already hung it up. “They didn’t hear me, they were already yapping.”
I’d reminded the girls several times that we shared a party line with two other families and that one long riiing meant somebody was telephoning the Rices, a ring-riiing-ring meant somebody was telephoning the Wickers, and only a ring-ring-riiing meant somebody was telephoning us, which could be somebody telephoning to book a fornication but might also be somebody telephoning Frances or Mrs. Tartt or Mrs. Heidelberg finally returning my telephone call.
No matter how many times I told the girls not to answer the telephone unless it was for us, they still answered the dang telephone.
Life with prostitutes and a party line teemed with the unknown.
After such a terrific weekend, we now had money set aside for things like groceries, laundry soap, Virginia’s tests, more widows to replace the multitude they’d already gone through, and, hallelujah, a private telephone line.
“Thank God,” Esmeralda purred. “Grown men like to make appointments but not if the whole neighborhood’s listening.”
Charlie’d told them they could start soliciting men now, not just boys from the college, as long as they didn’t do it in Oxford.
They were to drive out to places like Taylor and Abbeville and Water Valley and, while they were at it, buy every condom they could find.
Virginia insisted we test them all first for leaks.
“One tiny hole turns into a bigger one and before you know it, you’ve got gonorrhea, syphilis, and you’re pregnant,” Virginia said. In a game of worst-case scenario, Virginia could beat my mother. “But you still have to be sure and check all of them, Flossy, even the freshmen.”
“For what, tooth decay?” Flossy said. “I bet 99 percent of those kids last night were Marys. Probably pubertied yesterday.”
At the kitchen sink, Flossy pried open a silver tin with 3 Merry Widows, Agnes-Mabel-Beckie embossed on the front, and attached one to the sink spout.
She filled it with water like a balloon, and sure enough, every ten or so she’d sing, “Got another springer!” and Virginia would drop the leaky thing in the waste can.
Charlie came down the back stairs carrying a full basket of sheets. She was halfway to the washroom when Flossy said, “Bad news, Charles, I got the curse this morning. Count me out a few days.”
“But—no, we just got busy!” Charlie said.
“You knew one a us was gonna pop eventually,” Flossy said.
“TEA. You all need tea,” Charlie said and set the basket down and went and flung open the cabinet.
She pulled out the little brown bags of raspberry leaves and blue cohosh.
Mashing herbs with the mortar and pestle, she whispered a prayer to Mother Mary—my God, the things she said to that poor saint.
“I’ll mark it on your menstruation log,” Virginia said. “You’re actually a little early.”
Flossy made a face. “Why you gotta use those doctor words? It’s called the curse, look it up. Even the Bible says so.” She scratched long red streaks down her neck.
“Couldn’t you still sell specialties?” Charlie asked. “You wouldn’t have to take time off—”
The streaks up Flossy’s neck flushed pinker. “Hey. I am a proper prostitute, Charlie, not a hooker on the street, and I’d appreciate it if you treated me as such. It’s two days off, minimum, for the curse, once a month. Look it up in the handbook if you don’t believe me.”
“Fine. But we better not lose anybody else,” Charlie said.
That afternoon at the kitchen table, Virginia cut cotton bandages she’d swiped from the hospital into long strips.
She rolled them up, wrapped them in mesh, then tied them tight with a cotton string—the string trick she’d learned from some of the nurses.
“Thirty-five hundred days is how long the average woman bleeds in a lifetime. Women have been making these for thousands of years and yet some man owns the patent for them.”
Sunday was a much-needed day off and by Monday morning I felt almost rested. It was gorgeous out, seventy-two degrees with sun peeking through the clouds. When I asked if anybody needed anything in town, Esmeralda offered to drive me.
We went to Western Union first. “I’d like to wire this to the Port Gibson office, please,” I told the man and passed sixty dollars through the window, over half my earnings, still wrinkled and sweaty from damp fists.
It was such a relief to finally be sending money home I couldn’t stop smiling.
I sent a tenner that said they should send twenty to the tax office, that was bound to convince them we were good for the rest, give ten to the store, which should shut this Cousin Ida’s mouth up, and keep the rest to live on.
While the clerk typed it up, a girl Meg’s age in a blue pinafore dress skipped past the store window, grabbing the hand of her mama.
Reminders of why we were doing this sprang out of thin air. It brightened my vision.
Next, I sent Frances twenty dollars down in Gulfport.
She’d sent me a telegram this morning saying: STAYING AT SANDPIPER BOARDINGHOUSE.
SEND MORE MONEY. Three more dang words left and she couldn’t manage to put in a please?
I reminded myself to be grateful. As much as I wanted her to find that scoundrel Rory and try to get some of Mrs. Tartt’s things back, I didn’t want her to find him just yet.
After that, Esmeralda and I decided to go pick up hamburgers to bring home for everybody since I hadn’t cooked anything for lunch.
Esmeralda said the best place she knew was over by the campus.
She pulled up and I ran in and ordered eight hamburgers to “take away” and two Co-Colas to drink while we waited.
I told the man I’d return the bottles in a little while.
“Here ya go,” I said to Esmeralda, sliding back into the car. As we took swigs from our bottles, a college boy walked by and nodded politely to me through my open window. But when he saw Esmeralda, he got so lost in her face, he tripped on the sidewalk. She was that beautiful.
“Can I ask you something, Es? If you don’t mind.” She nodded. “Why didn’t Priscilla hire you?”
Esmeralda thought this over. She had the longest, darkest eyelashes and she smiled, but it looked like she was tasting a bitter plum. “I guess she was looking for somebody younger.”
I didn’t want to ask how old Esmeralda was, I assumed she was in her mid-thirties, maybe approaching forty, but if she was, those extra years certainly didn’t hurt.
I thought of the look she’d given Charlie on the front steps when she’d come to the house the second time.
Go ahead, decide if I’m worth it. Maybe she’d meant her age.
How I wished I hadn’t just stood there and watched that.
“What does it matter, I’m leaving for Paris anyway.” Quieter, she said, “My lover’s there now, waiting on me.” The way she’d said it, digging deep, it sounded mandatory she get to him.
“Does he know you’re in this business?” I asked. It seemed hard to believe.
“Yeah.” I heard the ache.
“And he really … doesn’t mind?”
“No. She does not.”
It took me a second to hear what she’d said. I was shocked—and then embarrassed that I was shocked.
“What about you?” she asked. “You got somebody waiting on you?” She tilted her head, concerned, not like she was teasing me but like she really wanted to make sure of it. “The one you went to church with?”
“Other way around. He asked me to wait on him while he gets a divorce.”
“Don’t you wait on him too long,” she said and her giant cat-eyes narrowed. “Don’t let him do you thataway. You tell him you’re worth more than that and if you won’t, there’s at least five of us at the house that’ll tell him for you.”
“Thanks, Es.” I smiled, embarrassed. I hadn’t expected that kind of defense.
“I know I haven’t known you long, but we all know what you’re doing for Charlie.” She leaned her head back. “There aren’t many people like you in this business, Birdie. We all say it, even Ruby. We’re damn lucky to have you.”
The good news was that, on Tuesday morning, a man climbed up our telephone pole and switched us from a party line to a private one.
The bad news was that Bell wouldn’t take the Tartts’ name off the listing or change the number—43—unless there were new owners at the address, so I could still enjoy the anticipation of a call coming from Pripp or Mary Pepper and Ruby answering it, Speak it, fuck face.
At least Mrs. Heidelberg would be able to reach us if she wanted to.
We’d been open for eleven days and while I doubted that first busy weekend could ever be topped, a fair number of grown men started to show up.
While they were fewer in number, they tended to be bigger spenders than the college boys, often booking an hour or more instead of the regular thirty minutes.
According to the girls, some men couldn’t afford not to stay a full hour (unlike the college boys, who had what the girls called “shortcomings”), and the grown men tipped the girls too.
One traveling salesman booked a record three hours with Ruby for twenty-seven dollars, though part of that was spent with him trying to sell her an electric vacuum cleaner.
I couldn’t seem to get accustomed to the late nights.
I was always tired and it got harder to get out of bed in the mornings.
I started milking the cow after the club closed at one or two in the morning so I didn’t have to drag myself out of bed at dawn.
She seemed to like the music and her milk dropped easily at night.
She especially liked when Mr. Binny and His Band of Brothers played “The Saint Louis Blues,” and she would moo along with it making the customers chuckle.