Chapter 42
Birdie
“You ever heard that saying, ‘sweating like a whore in church’?” Flossy asked.
“Yes, Flossy,” I said.
“I find that saying irritating,” she said. “Like it’s news to us types we’re going to hell? Which don’t even make sense ’cause if we know we’re going to hell, why would we bother going to church?”
“I ain’t going to hell and I ain’t going to church,” Ruby said.
“Can we enjoy this beautiful day, please?” I asked.
It was the fourth day of October and so gorgeous out that me, Ruby, and Flossy had carried our coffee cups out to the backyard.
Birds were singing and zipping around; sun dappled the dance floor.
It was cool enough that I draped a sweater around my shoulders.
I’d milked the cow at two o’clock this morning, and had slept till one in the afternoon.
Picador and Polly had already come and gone.
With more one- and two-hour appointments, business was very good, with fewer sheets to wash.
I picked up yesterday’s newspaper with the headline “Thousands Come to Town to Root for the Red-and-Blue Football Team.”
Underneath a drawing of a football, I saw that Garnett Pittman had also made the front page again, less than a week after Priscilla’s arrest. “Mrs. Welty Pittman Lunches at Gov. Mansion and Issues Statement.” I despised reading anything that witch had to say but I did it anyway.
“As newly elected president of the Anti-Vice League”—Lord, we know—“I feel it is my responsibility to warn the people of Mississippi that filth is living right under our noses, and I am sorry to say, it is mostly in women. Sinfulness, disease, and promiscuity—”
Mostly in women? She was a traitor to her own kind.
“—leading to more illegitimate children with severe imbecility. We all remember when so many of our brave soldiers overseas were lured in and denigrated by the diseased and dirty in the Great War. I propose Mississippi reinforce a ‘stop-and-arrest’ policy of any woman who behaves or speaks in a promiscuous manner. An act which, I remind you, is already legal under the American Plan.”
Good Lord. No more trips to town for the girls.
Today was Wednesday. We only had to make it four more nights and then this business would disappear into thin air.
And so would I. I hadn’t heard from Jack after my damning letter, though to be fair he’d probably only received it yesterday or the day before.
My hopes were low, though, and I was trying to keep my mind off it or I might not get out of bed.
A motorcar was churning up the road—prolly the ice delivery. I got up to see through the arched opening in the hedge—was that Mr. Binny’s taxicab, easing around the curve? Huh. Maybe he’d left something behind.
With Priscilla’s closed, we were now, as Charlie’d put it, the only game in town.
The girls had advertised so much on campus and in the surrounding towns that Esmeralda said her tires were wearing thin.
Virginia claimed that except for the seminary students, there might not be a college boy left whose sweaty hand hadn’t had a card put in it.
Every sheet in the house was clean; there were hundreds of widows up under the kitchen sink.
(Virginia had found a storage closet full of them at the hospital, and I wondered how many babies would be born in this county because we’d taken all the rubbers.) Even after we’d raised our rates, and decided to start opening an hour earlier, we were nearly fully booked for the next four days.
This wasn’t only because of Priscilla’s closing, no sir.
Just down the road, the town of Oxford was practically tap-dancing in anticipation of what was coming.
According to the newspaper, decades upon decades of Ole Miss graduates would descend on the town, starting today.
Considering the university had been open since 1848, that was a lot of alumni, men mostly, young and old, here to visit their alma mater. Homecoming, they called it.
I watched Mr. Binny’s taxi ease to a stop in front of the house. He slowly climbed out of the front and opened the back door and helped a woman out—wait now … wait just a minute.
“Flossy, Ruby—you go upstairs and tell the others to stay up there!”
I dashed up the porch steps and into the kitchen, where Charlie was at the sink. “They’re home!”
Charlie stared at me, a rubber in her hand filled like a water balloon. She let it go and it burbled into the sink.
“Make sure the girls do not come downstairs,” I said, “and call the Colonial Hotel and book two rooms for this weekend and for God’s sake put the damn johnnies away!”
I dashed, almost stumbling, out the front door, slamming it behind me, and walked fast as I could down the brick path, trying not to trip on my long white nightgown.
What am I s’posed to say? Will they see it on my face?
Mrs. Tartt and Frances were shuffling through the gate.
They looked like the biblically sore and the weary.
Frances’s cream-colored dress was wrinkled to high hell, and her hair lay flat against her left cheek like she’d slept on it.
A few steps ahead of her, Mrs. Tartt was so thin now her pale blue traveling suit hung sadly from her shoulders.
Mr. Binny, unloading the last suitcase and hatboxes, had his grumpy bottom lip out, as if to say he understood this was not the plan and he sincerely regretted being any part of this calamity.
“Welcome home,” I said. It sounded like a croak. “What a surprise. Lemme—lemme get that for you.” I took the train case from Mrs. Tartt and positioned myself in front of her to give Charlie time to clean up any evidence. “How was your trip, Mrs. Tartt?” I asked.
“Awful. I can’t talk about it,” Frances said. “All the decent hotels in Biloxi were too expensive, so I had to stay in some fleabag with a cold tap.”
“Why didn’t you call first or send me a telegram? Like we talked about?” I tried to sound lighthearted, but it came out strained.
“I tried,” Frances said. “Last night and this morning, and nobody answered.” Exactly when everybody was either sporting or sleeping.
“I’m just happy to be home at last,” Mrs. Tartt said. She walked a tired arc around me and so did Frances, lugging her own heavy train case with both hands.
“Did I tell you I had to share a bathroom with a strange, hairy man?” Frances said. “And do you know what he wore in the hallway?”
“No. Mrs. Tartt, you know, with the boarders here, I really think you’d be more comfortable staying at a—”
“Nothing. He wore nothing,” Frances said.
Charlie came out of the house and hurried down the steps to meet us. “Oh, Charlie,” Mrs. Tartt said, “what a long journey we’ve had.”
“Welcome home, Mrs. Tartt,” Charlie said warmly, and, “Frances.” As I followed behind them, my wrecked brain half expected the side door to open because she’d said the password.
Charlie sidled up to me and whispered, “Every room in town’s booked solid.
Put them in the attic and come meet me in the kitchen.
” She took the hatboxes from Mr. Binny and went ahead of us into the house, leaving the front door open for us.
I’d swear I could feel my heart sweating as we went up the front steps. Pushing hard on the rail, Mrs. Tartt coughed deeply when she reached the top. She seemed wilted all the way down to her soul. Mr. Binny set the suitcases down inside, and he was gone like his pants were on fire.
In the echoey hallway, Mrs. Tartt said, “Heavens, I cannot wait to lie down in my own bed.”
I felt so guilty, so terrified, that my head ached, and I realized I’d been clenching my jaw hard as I could. “I need to tell you something. Mrs. Tartt.” I took a deep breath. “We took in a few more boarders than we expected to, so … the good news is that means more money for you—”
“Have you made enough to pay the mortgage?”
I couldn’t tell her how much she’d made yet, for fear it would lead to the question of how.
I had no blooming idea how we’d explain that she’d made six hundred sixty-seven dollars selling dime dances and renting rooms to a few boarders, but I couldn’t worry about that now.
We also weren’t telling them or anyone outside the house that we’d be closing shop after Saturday night.
The logic was logical: If you didn’t know we were open, you shouldn’t know we were closed.
“We’re not sure yet, exactly, but there’s some other news. I’m sorry, Mrs. Tartt, but we rented out your bedrooms.”
“My room? Who said you could do that?” Frances whined.
“I did. Unfortunately, Mrs. Tartt, all the hotels are full for homecoming, so is there a friend you’d like to stay with in town, or … or maybe you’d like to take a trip to Memphis?” Even better. “Stay in a nice hotel up there, the fancy one with the ducks?”
“Aren’t there any rooms for us to stay in here?” Mrs. Tartt asked. She looked around the wide empty hall of her endless house.
“Only the nursery rooms up in the attic—and I know you don’t want to stay up there.” I shook my head and frowned. Attic bad, very bad choice.
“Heavens.” Mrs. Tartt furrowed her brow.
She had deep marionette lines coming down from her mouth, an old stain of red lipstick approximately on her lips.
“Nobody’s stayed up there since Marthadelle waited on us and sat Rory.
But”—she looked at Frances, who still sagged at the news of her room given away—“I suppose we could try it. Frances?”
“I don’t care, I just want to sleep,” Frances said. “I’ve been traveling since yesterday morning.”
“I see.”
“Poor Frances’s train didn’t arrive in Jackson until three o’clock this morning,” Mrs. Tartt said. “She had to sleep in the station until our train to Oxford.”
“I see.”
Carrying both their train cases, I followed them up the stairs. When we reached the second floor, all the bedroom doors were closed—thank you, God—and Mrs. Tartt gazed over at hers. “Would it be very rude if we didn’t do introductions just yet?”