Chapter 45 #2
While we ate, Flossy and Ruby played a game of whist with the twins.
At first I thought the twins were real good at it until I realized they were cheating.
Coughing and sniffing signals with cards tucked under their legs.
I wondered when the others would catch on.
Charlie had the appointment book out, though mostly she was staring off at the crape myrtles.
She’d been deathly quiet all day and I knew it was because of Meg.
Even though she had the money to take care of her, there was no guarantee she’d be able to get her back. She looked sick, gaunt.
“Golly jeez, it’s getting chilly,” Flossy said. Sitting cross-legged, she pulled Frances’s bathrobe tighter. That October wind was brisk. “So what’s everbody’s plan after this? Dr. Twat, what will you do when your favorite prostitute patients ain’t here to catch something?”
Virginia looked up from her textbook. “Work at the hospital and for Kleinkamp until I hear back from med schools. If I get into Woman’s Med up in Pennsylvania, there’s a hospital there that’ll hire second years, but I still need to earn the first year’s tuition.
” She chewed the end of her pencil. “Birdie, think your sister needs to get checked for gonorrhea?”
“Sadly, she does not,” I said.
“What about you, Es?” Flossy asked. “Going straight to Paris to get Frenchy with the frogs?”
“I’m driving to Memphis first,” Esmeralda said.
“There’s a fella there who wants to buy that fancy car of mine for a good price.
Then I have to get back down south to New Orleans by Monday morning before the ship leaves.
Otherwise, I’ll have to leave out of New York.
And in a few weeks, I’ll be in Paris with my girl.
” She stretched her long legs out on the quilt.
She was wearing the pale silky pantsuit again. I wanted one for myself.
“Your girl in this business?” Virginia asked.
“No, my girl’s a singer in the clubs.” Esmeralda smiled, her cheeks shimmering.
“She is the cat’s meow over there. If you gals ever heard her sing, she’d turn all y’all’s asses lavender.
” Esmeralda closed her eyes, showing the neat black line of Cleopatra kohl on her lids.
She opened them and looked at me. “What are your plans for the future, Birdie? That big fella coming for you?”
I nodded. I couldn’t believe the future was only two days away. “I have to go home to the Delta for a while.” Saying that sounded like an ending. It sounded like death. But it wasn’t. “I’ll be coming back up here to see him … and I’m thinking about setting up my own business.”
“You need girls?” Dixie asked.
“Not that kind of business, Dixie.” But what an idea. “Bookkeeping services, for businesses around here.”
“What about you, Flossy? You think you’ll still go up to North Dakota?” Virginia asked.
I looked at Flossy. I didn’t know this plan had become real. Flossy examined her hands, which were veiny and yellow. “I thought I’d give it another try. Then me and Rube are getting a place in Chicago, ain’t we, Rube? See can we get us some Capone types.”
“We got a good thing going here,” Ruby said in a strangely high voice. “Why the hell we gotta shut down?” I thought I saw her lip actually quiver as she tossed a card in the pile.
“You gettin’ sentimental on me, Rube?” Flossy asked and squeezed her arm.
Ruby looked away. “No. I just don’t like what you said before.”
“What did she say?” I asked.
Flossy laid her hand of cards down and leaned back. “I been getting this feeling. That Chicago’s my last ride.”
“You mean, you’re gonna retire?” I asked.
“No, it’s bigger than that. It’s just a hunch, and it’s alright, I made my peace with it.
” Flossy nodded to herself, watching leaves drift down from the pecan tree.
I didn’t like that either. “Hey, it’s been a hell of a ride.
” She sat up and played a card and winked at Ruby, her card partner, with a see what I just played there? look.
Dixie rearranged her legs, coughed twice, and a few minutes later the twins won the game.
“Jeez Louise,” Flossy laughed, “what do you two, share a brain or something?”
“Brain damage is more like it,” Ruby muttered and threw down her cards.
“There she is,” Flossy said.
“If we are, you are,” Dixie said, looking straight at Ruby. It was rare but I guess she figured she better get it in while she could. “Try and tell me which one a us here ain’t damaged?”
There were looks around the quilt, like we were measuring it in each other, even Charlie. I’d always thought I was the most damaged person in the room until I’d lived with five prostitutes and a madam. Ruby reached over and snatched a ten of clubs out from under Dixie’s leg.
“You stupid geeks been cheating this whole time?” But instead of threatening to shove the card down Dixie’s throat, Ruby just laughed.
Not head back laughter, like the first busy night when she’d danced so much, she forgot what she was here for, more of a chuckle.
“Maybe y’all ain’t as stupid as you look,” she said and stood up and went in the house, leaving her dirty plate behind for me to take in.
She still scared the daylights out of me.
“Charles, what’s your plan from here?” Flossy asked.
Charlie didn’t look glum like Ruby had; it was deeper, almost bottom of the well. I thought about when she’d stood, so obstinate, on the back porch that day, chin out, telling me how things would be run—that sureness looked like it was slipping through her fingers.
“Next week … I’m driving north to go talk to some people. I’ll stay in Memphis while I wait to see if it works out, and then hopefully I’ll be taking the train …” She pointed a thumb to the left.
“Anywhere but? I know the town,” Esmeralda said. “How you getting up there?”
“Mr. Binny said he’d drive me.”
“Maybe I can make you a better offer?” Esmeralda asked.
Afterward, as Charlie washed dishes, I listened to what that offer was.
Charlie would drive Esmeralda’s Pierce-Arrow up to Byhalia then on to Memphis to the man who wanted to buy it for a good price.
She’d collect the money and wire it to Esmeralda in France, keeping a small fee for herself.
“He won’t give you any trouble about the money,” Esmeralda had said.
“But don’t fall for him. He’s tall, very dark, and handsome. ”
“What do you plan to say when you get to Byhalia?” I asked Charlie.
She turned the tap off. There came a point where desperation didn’t take no for an answer, but I wanted Charlie to handle this wisely.
“I’ll try and reason with the Heidelbergs,” she said.
“Tell them who I am and what happened and I’ll ask them to let me talk to Meg, and once they see the way she is with me …
” Her chin quivered, but she took a deep breath and reeled her heartache back in.
Charlie was the strongest person I’d ever known.
I looped my arm through hers. “And if they refuse, I’ll hire a lawyer in Memphis and try to go through the courts. ”
I nodded my approval. Her words were thick with defeat. “There’s no other way to do it, Charlie.”
Charlie’d more or less collected herself when Esmeralda came back into the kitchen, her silky pants swishing around her. “Don’t forget, drive slow on your way to Memphis, make sure you don’t get stopped by the cops. If they see the registration papers, they’ll think the car’s stolen.”
“Is the car stolen?” I asked.
Esmeralda frowned at me for asking this.
“No, it’s not. But if the police ask to see the registration, they’ll know Charlie’s not me.
Most of the time they don’t even believe I’m me.
But they might still give you trouble when they see it’s registered to a Negro.
They hate a colored person owning a car that nice. So drive careful and drive slow.”
“I’ll watch out,” Charlie told her.
Esmeralda must’ve seen the surprise on my face. If we’d been caught … if she’d been caught … I was speechless. We still had two nights to go.
Her look wasn’t unkind, it was more sympathetic that I was so naive. “In case I don’t get the chance to tell you, it’s been an absolute pleasure working with you, Birdie.” She set a hand on my shoulder.
“You too, Esmeralda. More than you know.”
She swished out and I looked at Charlie, my heart beating faster.
“You didn’t know,” Charlie said. It was not a question.
“Does … everybody know but me?”
Charlie nodded. “We assumed you knew.”
Naturally I’d been the last to know. I stared down at the checkered floor and it all made sense—the way Mr. Binny had looked at Esmeralda that first night. How terrified she’d been when she found out Charlie hadn’t made a deal with the sheriff.
“If we had gotten busted, Es could’ve been—” I didn’t want to finish that sentence, it scared me too much for her and for us. “What about Priscilla? Did she know?”
“That’s why Es came back here. Priscilla was afraid the car was stolen and it would bring the cops around, so she found the registration papers and saw it was registered to a Negro. She told Es she’d only pay her a third what she paid the other girls. Es wouldn’t take it.”
“Why would Es risk working in a white crib? When she said there was a colored house here that was a lot nicer?”
“They wouldn’t have her. They were too scared. They told her she looked too white.”
Charlie left me in the kitchen, and I let that sink in.
Beautiful Esmeralda, unwelcome in the state she was born and raised in.
No wonder she was moving to Paris. This world made no sense, and yet I had the same thought I’d been having more and more often: This slapped-together band of misfits made me feel, for the first time, that I truly belonged.
How the hell, I wondered, did I ever get so lucky?