Chapter 38 #4
Esmeralda smiled and rubbed her neck. Her neck, with a few creases in front, was the only thing about her that did not look ageless.
“Let’s just say my first job was in Storyville, ten years before they shut it down.
” Storyville was the infamous brothel district in New Orleans but I didn’t know when it was closed.
“Back then, folks used goat chitlins instead of johnnies. Anybody else old enough to remember those? Men used to keep them in a little silver box.”
“Golly I hated those,” Flossy said. “The stench.”
“Swell way to catch something,” Virginia said.
Ruby narrowed her little green eyes on Esmeralda. “Storyville shut down, what, fifteen, sixteen years ago … That makes you fifty? Jesus, you’re near old as Granny Nan!”
“Ruby!” Charlie barked at her. Ruby shut up but made big eyes at Flossy.
Esmeralda just laughed though, and hard too, wiping her eyes.
“What can I say? I’m old as hell. I’m the same age as my grandmother when she died.
” Even her self-deprecation was charming.
“How old were you two when you started?” she asked the twins.
“Because you seem awfully young for something like this.”
“Fourteen,” Dixie said. She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear, showing her long, thin face.
“Where was your mom and pop at?” Flossy asked.
Trixie shrugged. “We lost ’em nine, ten years ago.” She didn’t look sad about it.
“How?” Virginia asked. She always wanted to know how people died.
“However it is mamas and daddies get lost, I reckon,” Trixie said. “One minute they was on the corner of Ricket and Fort P, next they was gone.”
There was a sad silence. They’d been left like, what, garbage? Next to me, I could practically feel Charlie thinking about Meg.
“How’d you get in the biz?” Flossy asked.
“Fella in the circus found us and he started working us on our backs. Few months ago, he caught us trying to leave him and he got real mad, so he went and collected him one a them fruit spoons? With the cutting edge to it? Held Dixie down and tried to pry her eyes out with it.”
I glanced at the faint curved scar around Dixie’s left eye. “He was rude,” was all Dixie said.
“How’d you get away?” Flossy asked.
“I slit his throat,” Trixie said. “But he kept twitching so Dixie hit him in the head with the fire poker till his brains come out. You gonna eat the rest a that cake?”
“You go ahead, doll,” Flossy said and pushed her half-eaten plate to her.
A week and a half left felt even longer now.
“What about you, Ruby?” Virginia asked. “When did you start doing this?” She had a pencil in her hand, looking like she might mark this on Ruby’s chart later.
Ruby blew out a long smoke trail. “Started Christmas before last. Right after my husband died.”
So Ruby had been doing this less time than anybody? Flossy, looking just as surprised, leaned up and asked, “Somebody mar-ried you?”
“Yeah, la-di-da. Why I moved in with Granny Nan.”
“You never told me that,” Flossy said. “What happened to him?”
“I told you, he died, you fish twat.”
“You kill him?” Flossy asked.
“Dammit, why does everybody ask me that?”
As usual, Virginia asked, “How’d he die?”
“Flu or something,” Ruby said, sounding pretty blue about it. “So I dug a hole out back and put him in it and went to work for Granny Nan. She’d been running her crib since ’fore I was born. Where I met that one.” She chinned over to Flossy.
“I stepped out on Priscilla for a little while there, figured I’d try something new,” Flossy said. “I left some things at Granny’s ’cause a you, Rube.”
“Smile at my customer, gonna lose some teeth,” Ruby said.
“Ruby did that to you?” Trixie asked. Flossy nodded, wincing.
“I used to have sort of a bad temper,” Ruby said.
“Well … temper, habit,” Flossy said. “Six of one, half a dozen of the other. But we got you through it, didn’t we, Rube?” Flossy gazed at her friend, almost lovingly, and poked her in the arm.
“You did, Floss.” Ruby moved her right arm down to her lap like she didn’t want us to see the old dark needle scars there. I had never seen Ruby so … human before.
“What about you, Charlie?” Virginia asked, the pencil between her fingers. “You ever work that side of this business?”
“Shit, Charlie ain’t done this a day in her life,” Ruby said and crushed her cigarette out on the cake plate with the ashtray sitting right there. “She just makes rules up and takes half our money.”
Charlie considered the question. She folded a cloth napkin on the table in half, then quarters.
“I was about seventeen,” Charlie said. “I had a baby to take care of.”
Flossy sighed and said, “Didn’t we all.”
“You have children?” I asked Flossy. Have, had, I wasn’t sure how to put it.
Flossy nodded and smiled. “His name’s Daniel, he’s thirteen.” She looked at Esmeralda, across the table. “What’s your girl’s name again, Es?”
“Cassandra Joy,” she said.
“Such a pretty name,” Flossy said.
I looked between them. “Do you ever get to … see them?” I asked.
Flossy and Esmeralda swapped glances like maybe they didn’t want to have to explain this to an ordinary. Or maybe they were afraid that I would judge them.
“Danny lives up in Dakota with my sis. She don’t let me see him since he was small.” She propped her elbows on the table and covered her mouth with her fist.
“I’m so sorry, Flossy.” I wished I was sitting beside her.
She dropped her hands but pressed her lips together over her teeth.
Finally she said, “I been learning a long time to let him go. Sometimes it’s best to do that.
” She nodded but furrowed her forehead together like she was concentrating.
“Accept he’ll be better off with someone else and let him live a regular life. ”
The ache in her voice had muscle, sinew. The light in the room faded to a cloudy gray and Flossy swallowed hard. The lesson hung like lead in the air.
Esmeralda stood up quickly and said in a strained voice, “Looks like rain.” She left the room and Flossy followed her out. Charlie’s jaw was tight, obstinate. Charlie did not subscribe to Flossy’s outlook on children. It was why we were here. For her, the next week and a half was for Meg.
Sometime before dawn, I woke to the sound of a motor.
I’d always been a heavy sleeper until I opened a brothel.
Though the sleeping porch faced the backyard, at the right angle, it caught lights from the road.
The headlamps slid across the screens and stopped a few feet from my bed, two pale yellow electric eyes staring back at me.
It took about fifteen seconds before I was up and tiptoeing downstairs and into the library, feeling my way through the dense darkness.
I peeked out a slit in the curtains. The car had swung around so it faced the house, lights shining on us for a moment before the driver snapped them off.
It was almost pitch-black out, but when my eyes adjusted, I could just make out the silhouette of the person in the driver’s seat.
“Somebody in here?”
My heart leapt into my mouth. “Just me, Es. There’s a car out front. Probably a customer trying to see if we’re open.” Esmeralda came and stood behind me and peered through the drapes.
“Well I sure don’t want a customer at this hour,” she said.
That wasn’t a college kid out there. Virginia’d told us that students weren’t allowed to have automobiles on campus.
The way the motor shifted up, then down, idling, it sounded like an older model.
Would the sheriff’s car have an emblem of some kind on it?
I wasn’t sure, not that we could see that in the dark.
“Maybe I should just … let Charlie know.”
I’d hoped Esmeralda would disagree with me, but she was already padding toward the hall, her silky beige robe swishing around her.
The light was on in the washroom, so it was easy to see. I tapped on Charlie’s door, and after a few seconds, Esmeralda opened it and whispered, “Charlie.” Charlie shot up in bed, grabbing her neck like we’d come to kill her.
“It’s just us,” I whispered. “There’s a car outside—I think it’s the same one from the other night.” Charlie got out of bed wearing her long white nightgown.
“Did you ever make an arrangement with the sheriff?” Esmeralda said.
Charlie walked past us into the kitchen.
“Charlie. Did you make a deal or not?” Esmeralda followed her into the dining room and then the front sitting room.
Charlie shook her head.
“So … we’re just sitting ducks, waiting to get arrested?” Esmeralda whispered. “The madam makes a deal with the sheriff, that’s how it works, Charlie.” My heart started pounding, hearing Esmeralda’s panic. “You need to talk to him before we get busted, not after when it’s too late—”
“If that was the sheriff, he’d be knocking on the door right now,” Charlie snapped. She seemed much too calm, and I wondered if it was an act. How could she know who was out there?
“I’m not working here without some sort of arrangement,” Esmeralda said. She hugged herself in the pale robe, in the dim light. “I cannot go to jail, Charlie. I am this close to getting out of Mississippi for good. If you don’t do something, I’m walking. I will leave tonight.”
“I’ll deal with it,” I said. Somebody had to do this, and it couldn’t be Charlie.
“I’ll go to the sheriff’s office in the morning and see what I can find out—” Charlie tried to interrupt me, but I put my hand out to silence her.
“And if he doesn’t know anything, I’ll just tell him we started a little dance business in the backyard.
To make money for Mrs. Tartt. If he sees boys coming out this way at night, it’s for that. ”
“And if he does suspect something?” Esmeralda asked.
A wash of disbelief, one I’d felt many times since we’d opened, slid across my scalp. How had these words become a part of my vocabulary? “Then I reckon I’ll be spending the night in the jailhouse.”