The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 31

A ll day, we worked to flatten out the dance floor. It was supposed to be a twenty-by-twenty-five-foot wooden platform that sat a few inches above the grass, mounted on metal footings with metal rails and brackets. There were no assembly instructions to be found, but it’d come from Sears, Roebuck back when Woodrow Wilson was still president. Instead of guessing where the assortment of screws and bolts fit, I measured and dug twelve holes—four for the corners with one on the center of each side and four to support the middle—and did it my way.

“Alright, drop the post in,” I said, holding the bucket of mortar over the hole as Charlie threaded a post through a hefty bracket. Then she held the heavy thing straight, her face bright as an apple, while I dumped mortar in the hole. When we’d set three sides, we started laying the splintery boards back onto the frame, turning huge screws on the rails to tighten it. Since half a dozen boards were warped, I just hammered them down to fit into the crossties. It was definitely no longer the “new portable dance platform kit from Sears, Roebuck & Co.” This thing might still be here in the year 2000.

Flossy “helped.” She sat on the back porch steps with a plank of dance floor across her lap, supposedly sanding down the splinters so I could repaint the boards black. “Lotta trouble just for a front. A sign saying Bibles for Sale works real dandy, ya know.”

The sun seemed to be screaming down at us. Sweat was running down my face, my back, it was hard to breathe. The realization of what I’d committed to here kept swallowing me and spitting me out. Had I lost my mind? What if Jack drove out here—what if Frances and Mrs. Tartt came home early? I’d heard nothing from them except that they’d arrived in Jackson safely, but how stupid I was to fear them when what I ought to be worried about was the blooming sheriff coming out.

I’d almost had it with the heat and I’d banged my thumb twice with the sweaty, slippery hammer. I told Flossy, “Well I’m running a legitimate business out here. Just so you know. So at least one of us doesn’t get sent to a dang penitentiary.”

“Nuh-uh. We go, you go. It’s called ‘accessory to the crime,’” Flossy said. “I wouldn’t get too shook up about it, doll, it’s just a little vacation time in the jailhouse.”

“ Why would you ever choose to do this for a living, Flossy?”

Flossy pushed her lips out, thinking it over while she ran the sandpaper left and right over the board across her lap. “Sometimes you choose it, sometimes it chooses you.” She blew off the dust and scowled at her now chipped pink fingernails, then went back to sanding. “My uncle Roy’s the one got me started in this biz. He was raising me and my sis after our parents died. One morning he says over breakfast, ‘One a youse stays in school, one a youse goes to work for McPolly, so decide now, who’s it gonna be?’ I couldn’t let my little sister go work there, she was too young.”

“How old was she?” I asked, pressing my aching lower back.

“Eleven.”

“How old were you?” I asked.

“Twelve.”

I shivered. Jesus.

At twelve I’d been running through cotton fields and nursing sick animals while Frances stared at herself in the mirror. Meg was almost that age, which Charlie must’ve been thinking too because, with a sick look, she turned her gaze over to the crape myrtle tree where she’d laid her forehead a few days ago. I knew Meg never completely left Charlie’s mind but these reminders were like needles in her spine.

“What’re ya gonna do, cry about it, at my age?” Flossy said and went back to sanding the board.

We worked all the next morning and by the afternoon, we finished setting up the dance floor. Charlie and Flossy had the tall ladder out and were stringing the gold lantern lights up in the trees while I worked on my hands and knees, wiping sawdust off the boards so I could repaint them. From deep inside the hollow house, I heard the telephone ringing. I sat up to listen, as I had several times today. But this time it was two shorts and a long. I got up and jogged inside to answer it.

“Long distance calling,” Silva said and patched the call through.

“Is this the residence of Birdie Calhoun?” It was an older woman speaking. Her voice was stern, almost deep. I braced my body, fearing we were in trouble already.

“Yes, ma’am, this is Birdie Calhoun.”

“This is Mrs. Isabelle Heidelberg, in Byhalia, returning your call. My son Tom and his wife adopted Meg.”

“Yes—you’re calling about Meg, yes.” I cleared my throat. “I’m with the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. I was calling to check in about Meg—and I have some other questions to ask … if you wouldn’t mind. How is she doing?” I cleared my throat again. This lying felt like putting on too-small shoes, the words awkward and painful.

“Meg is—I must say, she’s doing fine . In fact, she’s one mighty lucky little girl. Cottonwood Plantation’s bound to be quite a step up for her.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Miss Calhoun, you must bear with me because I’m not sure I understand,” Mrs. Heidelberg continued. “I was under the impression that my son and his wife were adopting a baby from an agency in Memphis. The Tennessee Children’s Home Society, run by Mrs. Georgia Tann. When I got your message saying you were from Oxford … I was quite confused. Does your organization have anything to do with the Georgia Tann agency in Memphis?”

“Um … no,” I said. “Meg came from the Lafayette County Orphan Asylum. In Oxford.”

“This is all just …” She sounded exasperated. “I don’t imagine your county orphanage screens their children as Georgia Tann does, do you?”

“Screens them?” I thought about the long list of children the orphanage did not accept—what should I tell her, they didn’t take lepers?

“Are you selective at all? Or is this just the kind of place where a person can pick up any old urchin for free?”

“Well? You have to pay five dollars to adopt a girl and show proof you have twenty-five dollars to your name—”

She groaned. “I can’t believe this, more lies …” Through the receiver, I could hear papers ruffling.

I was confused myself about what was going on here, but I was starting to get a picture. I felt like I needed to stick up for Meg somehow. “But there is a process you have to go through,” I said. “And an inspector and a very strict chairlady—and rules. Many, many rules.”

“What can you tell me about Meg, Miss Calhoun? Because we don’t know this girl from Adam. Who are her people? Where did she even come from?”

“She came from very intelligent, respectable … educated parents … who happened to fall on hard times like so many these days.”

She waited. “That’s all you can tell me about her?”

That was all I was willing to tell her. “As I’m sure you already know, Meg is very smart. And she’s been raised well, with good manners. Meg’s a good girl .”

I could hear her breathing into the receiver, mulling this over. “She is bright, that I know. My son Tom has certainly grown fond of her. But Miss Calhoun, a girl Meg’s age was not what I had in mind, we’d agreed on an infant who’d been screened for her pedigree from a proper, respectable agency. Meg is a good girl, but I don’t think she belongs in this family. To be honest, I think I better recommend my son return her.”

My words stuck in my throat. “I—no—Mrs. Heidelberg, please. Before you … make that decision, you should know, the orphanage is not a good place. The girls … they get punished, and they don’t get enough to eat … and if they don’t get adopted, they get sent off to work—it’s not their fault—”

“Which is exactly why I sent them to the Georgia Tann agency to get an infant, Miss Calhoun!” Her voice had turned shrill again. “Not a malnourished eleven-year-old urchin we don’t even have a history on. All I know about Meg is that the girl knows a cake fork from a fruit fork!”

In the background I could hear her tapping something on a table, a ring or a fountain pen, like she was ready to end this telephone call, maybe go dress somebody else down. I was about to say how Meg deserved a future, when out of the blue, she said, “This orphanage you work for, is it by chance run by a Mrs. Garnett Pittman? Who I keep reading about in the newspaper?”

My mouth turned dry. But how could I lie about something so factual? “I—yes—but I’m in charge of the welfare inquiry for Meg. You don’t need to speak to Mrs. Pittman about this.”

“Mrs. Pittman’s not someone I know personally, but I do know her husband, Dr. Welty Pittman. He came out to the house to see to my grandson not long ago. Perhaps he can help straighten this out.”

This was not better . “Please, don’t trouble the doctor with this. If you’ll just give me a little time I’m sure I can provide you with some background on Meg—”

“I don’t think this should wait. The longer we keep the girl, the more difficult it will be to return her. This needs to be addressed right away. Thank you for your time, Miss Calhoun. Goodbye.” She hung up.

I stood with my mouth open, holding the receiver. Here I thought I’d done something good, to prevent something terrible, and instead I’d pulled the damn fire alarm.

For the rest of the afternoon, I painted the dance floor. Thank God Charlie was still up on the ladder stringing lights while I faced straight down into hell or she might see the look of horror on my face. It didn’t take me long to grasp what had happened.

Best I could tell, Meg’s parents had lied to Mrs. Heidelberg and instead of getting a baby with a “pedigree,” they’d chosen a county urchin instead. Why they’d done that I do not know. Nor did I know what would happen if Mrs. Heidelberg brought Welty into it.

Crawling around on my hands and knees in the hot September sun, I tried to think through the best and worst scenarios. Mrs. Heidelberg had said she “knew” Dr. Pittman—but if she called him up, what could Welty possibly tell her about Meg’s people? Most certainly not that he was Meg’s father. More likely, that Meg had been abandoned because her mother was in the nuthouse, and Mrs. Heidelberg would return this five-dollar urchin right into Garnett’s hands. And then Meg would disappear into that work program like she’d fallen down a well …

But hadn’t she also said that her son was fond of Meg and that the longer Meg stayed, the harder it would be to return her—presumably because they were growing attached to her? I knew how quickly Meg could get under your skin. So maybe there was some hope after all. Though not enough hope to tell Charlie yet.

I stood back and studied the dance floor, shiny and wet with the first coat of black paint. This certainly put it into perspective, why I’d agreed to this calamitous, depraved idea. If Charlie got the chance to get Meg back, she better have enough money to take her far away from here.

The next day, I left a message with the Heidelbergs’ maid asking Mrs. Heidelberg to please telephone me back. My plan was to tell her I’d requested Meg’s family history from the records department in Jackson and to please be patient before any decision was made about returning the child. I prayed it would buy Meg and me some precious time.

By Thursday, the advertisement for the “cat call” had run in newspapers in three counties. Though she’d said to keep expectations at “diddly squat,” Flossy’d also sent telegrams to girls up in Sweetwater and Memphis and down in Natchez. Interviews were today, due to start on the front porch in two hours. Charlie’d asked me to be there, and I’d told her I would, but that all I’d be asking these women was, Can you dance? I certainly didn’t know what the qualifications were for a—the term I preferred was sporting girl , because it brought to mind a young woman with a sensible haircut in a starchy white dress who won athletic contests, though I knew hitting a tennis ball or swinging a club was not these girls’ sport.

I made eggs and biscuits for breakfast for myself and Charlie. Flossy wasn’t awake yet. At the kitchen table, Charlie crossed herself Catholic and whispered a prayer up to Mother Mary. I listened in gall. Asking the mother of Jesus to bless your prostitution operation and “bring us hardworking girls today,” I had to give it to Charlie, that was some faith.

Upstairs, I was moving my things I’d been keeping in the yellow room into the hall closet, since one of the new boarders would be moving in, when I heard a rumble out front. I peered out the bedroom window down at the road. A motorcar with a long black nose, a flat black top, and a fender curving high over the front wheel was pulling up. This can’t be good. A woman with dark hair got out of the driver’s side and started up the walk. I hammered down the stairs, calling, “Charlie, someone’s here,” as the woman tapped the knocker. Was it an early interview or, dear God, one of Mrs. Tartt’s or Frances’s friends? I opened the door.

“Hello,” I said.

The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties, with short, dark hair set in perfect croquignole waves. She wore a lovely, silky green dress that wasn’t low-cut or tight like Flossy’s, though it was slim like the style. She put out a white-gloved hand. “Hello,” she said and I shook it.

“I saw in the paper you’re doing some hiring, so I thought I’d stop by and say hello.”

She had catlike brown eyes and high cheekbones. Her olive skin gave her an exotic look, maybe she was Spanish or European. She was beautiful. I’d expected them to look like Flossy, like a bargain buy at a yard sale at four o’clock. But this woman—I felt like I should offer her coffee or to polish her car. “You’re a little early.” I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say.

Charlie came up the hall still buttoning her dress. When she saw the woman, she slowed down and actually took a deep breath. “Hello, I’m Charlie.”

“Esmeralda, so pleased to meet you.” Charlie shook her gloved hand.

“Are you currently with a house?” Charlie asked. She sounded a little stiff, maybe to sound like a madam. Or trying to make up for the fact that she was barefooted. And she’d buttoned her dress wrong.

“Not currently, no. I was actually on my way to look at some other establishments when I saw your ad in the paper.” Esmeralda smiled, showing a delicate gap between her front teeth. “I must say, I’ve never seen anything like your advertisement before.” She laughed and it was husky and rolled off easy.

“What other establishments?” Charlie asked.

“Oh, just a few places here and there.” Esmeralda looked up at the haint-blue porch ceiling, taking the house in. She slipped her white gloves off, one finger at a time. I saw her nails were painted beige, half-moon style like in the magazines, not the cuticles, not the tips. Like Flossy’s but definitely not like Flossy’s. Charlie tucked her own nail-bitten hand into her dress pocket.

“We’re offering a fair cut,” Charlie said. “Fifty percent, three dollars a week for board, five for the upfront, and you get to keep your own gratuities.”

“That does sound fair,” Esmeralda said. “Almost like the old Basin Street days in New Orleans. Times are a little different now.”

“That they are,” Charlie said, and they shared a nod.

“Would it be an imposition if I asked to use your powder room?” Esmeralda asked. “I beg your pardon, but I’ve been on the road awhile.”

Charlie stood silent a moment. But then she said, “Of course, but so you know, the house isn’t in tip-top shape yet. We’re still waiting on some things to come in.”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine.”

Charlie showed her into the grand hall, which I didn’t think looked so bad; at least there was a telephone on a little scratched-up table now. I figured no matter what she was actually here to do, she sure would be good for my front. She could pass as a beautiful dance teacher giving proper waltz instructions to the gentlemen at the college.

Walking down the hall, she glanced left at the sitting room with the settee covered by a bedspread, a brown rug with the hole in it, then right at the library full of piles of junk—I should’ve closed the door—past bare walls with squares of unfaded paint, into the little gold lavatory under the main stairs.

“We need her,” Charlie whispered.

“Nobody would suspect her,” I said.

Two minutes later, Esmeralda emerged. “Thank you for your time.” She added, “You’re out of paper and the lightbulb’s out.” And she walked straight out and down the front porch steps without another word and got back into her beautiful car.

Charlie shut the door after her and said, “We didn’t need her anyway. We need dependable girls who won’t walk off just because the damn house looks shabby.”

The three of us sat squeezed behind the card table I’d set up on the front porch. I’d set it up to the left of the front door and Flossy was nearest the rail, Charlie was in the middle, and I was closest to the door. In the yard, in the shade of the pecan tree, six women were waiting on folding chairs I’d set up. I was definitely nervous. It was still hard for me to believe these women had actually shown up here for an advertisement that said cat call . And yet, of course they showed up, people were desperate for jobs, they’d answer anything in the situations, which made me more nervous. Who knew who’d show up here today to interview for our backyard brothel? From the porch, I couldn’t really say if they looked like Esmeralda or Eleanor Roosevelt, but unless he had on a dress, at least none looked like the sheriff.

Flossy poured herself a glass of water from the pitcher. She was wearing her usual pink dress and had applied two bright spots of rouge on the apples of her cheeks. “Don’t say I didn’t warn ya,” she said. “Some pretty strange types prolly showed up here.”

“Stranger than we’ve got already?” I asked, but I couldn’t stop my smile. Flossy flashed her teeth at me with an ain’tchoo funny look.

“Now look, we gotta be selective,” Flossy said. “No half-raters, no dogs, no grannies. We need lookers or we’ll end up with a dollar-a-girl house and fifty-cent men.”

“We just need hard workers,” Charlie said. She wore a beige cotton dress with red piping, ironed to such a cracker-like crispness it reminded me of Frances. “They don’t have to be knockouts, but they have to be over eighteen.”

“Doll, we’ll be lucky if they’re below forty-five,” Flossy said. “And no darkies. I got no problem with it, but this ain’t Mahogany Hall and we ain’t after octomaroons. Cops don’t take to a mixed sporting house, shut you down faster than you can sneeze out your twat.”

“All I ask is that they can dance a little,” I said.

“Sure, Bird. You ask that,” Flossy said. “Alright, ladies, let’s get this whorehouse started.”

I’d only ever hired one person before, John Morton, the fifteen-year-old stock boy at the Foote, who got paid more than me because he was male and probably because he didn’t look content . Why pay someone any more than you had to, when you knew they’d never leave? Other than that, this was new. Charlie frowned at me for bouncing my nervous knee under the table, and I stopped. But then it started right up again.

Flossy leaned over the rail and yelled, “First girl’s up,” and three of the six women quickly rose from their chairs. A woman, I’d say she was forty-five, in a dark skirt and white blouse with a bow, beat the other two to the stairs. Her brown hair was set in a stiff circle around her face, which was powdered white, and she wore red lipstick on her very thin lips. She’s perfect , I thought. No one would ever suspect she was a prostitute.

She tucked her skirt under her rear before she sat down. “Good morning, I’m Mrs. Withers, please call me Joan.” She kept her black pocketbook in her lap and set the newspaper ad, folded and creased into a neat packet, on the card table.

“Thank you for coming, Joan,” Charlie said and offered her a glass of water from the pitcher, which she kindly refused. “Please, tell us a little about yourself.” Charlie sounded professional and forthright. We all had a lot riding on today.

“Start with the age,” Flossy said, looking the woman over.

“Well, I’m forty-one. You’ll see I have my own car.” Joan glanced over at the road.

“You got experience?” Flossy asked. “And working the hosiery counter at Kress don’t count.”

“Oh yes, I’ve been doing this kind of work for twenty years now. I’m married—”

“I mean experience doing it for mon-nee ,” Flossy said, pointing at the woman’s gold wedding ring. “Not for free.”

The woman frowned. “Why would anyone do this for free?”

“Exactly. Charlie, you may continue.”

“Here’s how it works,” Charlie said. “It’s five dollars for the upfront—half now, half after the first night. The house takes 50 percent. Rooms and meals run three dollars a week—”

The woman held her hand up and out, almost as far as a crossing guard would. “I don’t need a place to live, just a place to work.”

Charlie nodded. “There’ll be no needles, no tar, no dope, no getting drunk. Anybody caught rolling a customer is out.”

“And the house is gonna get you tested for syph and the clap.” Flossy winked at her. “Not all the houses do that, ya know.”

“This is only short-term,” Charlie added. “We’ll be open and closed in a month.”

The woman looked at Charlie, then Flossy, then me, her creamy white face expressionless.

“Now tell me about this getup you got on,” Flossy said. “That the secretary look you going for?”

The woman frowned and puckered her lips, deepening the creases around her mouth. “ Yes. ” She tapped her finger twice on the square of newspaper she’d set on the table, which Charlie looked at, but I couldn’t read from here—

Charlie stood up abruptly. “I beg your pardon, Joan,” she said, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

The woman stared at us and stood up, and I leaned forward to see the newspaper ad. It was folded around a posting that said Secretary for Hire , just above our ad that said Cat Call .

“I believe … you’re looking for 150 North Lamar,” Charlie said, “the offices of Stevens and Billups.”

The secretary squinted at the advertisement and picked it up. She backed away from us, warily. I didn’t think she knew what this was, only that something was very wrong with her being here. “Thank you for your time,” she said and hurried off the porch, to her old black Ford parked out front.

Good God, what a way to start.

“It’s alright, it was just a mixup,” Charlie whispered.

Flossy gave us both the told ya look and called, “ Next. ”

She had a slight mustache. Short and heavy hipped, she had a very large chest that was stuffed into a red dress with a sweetheart neckline, cinched tight at the waist by a black belt. Her auburn hair corkscrewed out from under her cloche hat, also red, which she wore pulled down low just above her eyes. She had a hand on her hip and was not smiling.

“Big damn house y’all got out here,” she said, strolling around the porch in clopping red heels, going up to the front windows and peering inside. Already, I did not like this woman, but I couldn’t even say why yet.

“Please, sit down and tell us about yourself,” Charlie said.

“I’ll sit when I’m ready,” she said, keeping a good ten feet between us. Charlie looked over at Flossy like she wasn’t sure what to make of this one.

“You want a job, siddown and take off the hat ,” Flossy told her.

The woman glared at Flossy. Then she did come forward and took the hat off, releasing a wild plume of curls, red but paid for. Her hazel eyes were small and mean with thin brows drawn on high with a pencil. I’d say she was not yet twenty-five. And despite it all, strangely not that bad looking.

“Crimey, I knew it ,” Flossy said. “NEXT!”

“You shut your manhole, Flossy Stolivsky, or I’ll be removin’ whatever teeth you got left.”

“Try it and I’ll punch you in those big titties, Ruby Slipper. Why you here anyways? Ain’t you still doin’ dirty work for your old Granny Nan?”

“No. Ain’t you still begging for knee work up at Priscilla’s?”

“I quit Priscilla. I got choices now.”

Charlie and I had both leaned back, I guess sensing we ought to stay out of this. Flossy and this woman were like two feral cats, eyes locked on each other. Nobody’d been brave enough to offer her water.

“ Choices? I never even heard a this crib,” this Ruby said, looking around her. “What is it, a retirement home? Somebody finally put your wrinkled ass out to pasture?”

“You ain’t heard a it yet ’cause it’s new, a hot commodity. And it’s a good one too,” Flossy said. “And as it just so happens, I’m on the choosin’ committee, which means you ain’t getting choosed. So beat it, Ruby Slipper.”

“How good,” she asked.

“Five up front halfsies, three a week, and a 50 percent split, that’s how good. Not even your stinky Granny Nan gives you a split like that.”

“Granny Nan died.”

Flossy blinked. “No kidding? When’d it happen?”

“Two months ago.”

“Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle … I thought it’d take Satan to kill that woman. How’d she go?”

“Drunk a bad pint. Foot and leg turned black. I nursed her, but …” Ruby shook her head, her thick red lips turned down. “She screamed a week till she gave up.”

Flossy rubbed her own stomach but stopped. “You poison her?”

Ruby slitted her tiny eyes at Flossy. “I oughta rip your face off.”

Flossy ran her tongue across her teeth. “It’s a valid question, Rube.”

While this went on, I elbowed Charlie and shook my head, hoping this frightening woman wouldn’t notice. It wasn’t just her bad attitude; she had a line of raised scars up her arm that gave me a doomed feeling, something much worse than this place. After a few minutes, Flossy whispered to Charlie, and I heard the words “pain in the ass” and “moneymaker” in the same sentence. Charlie made a grumbling sound and seemed to be thinking it over.

“Alright, look,” Charlie said to Ruby. “If you want to work here, you have to follow my rules .”

“Name ’em,” Ruby said.

“This is a clean house, no exceptions. No drunks, no tar, no needles .”

“She knows I don’t do that shit,” Ruby said and, softer, “anymore.”

“Rent’s due Fridays. Pay is Sunday. No rolling customers, no fights. This is a quick turnaround; we’ll be open a month tops and then we’re shutting down.”

“And we’re testing you and everybody else to make sure you ain’t got cooties,” Flossy said.

“You trying to tell me a old whore like you ain’t got the clap?”

“Believe me, it’s a miracle I don’t,” Flossy said.

“And I’m only hiring hard workers,” Charlie said. “ That is a requirement.”

“Lady, you ain’t seen anybody work on their back hard as me,” she said. I didn’t like her, but I did believe her.

After Charlie and Flossy conferred quietly, Charlie looked at me. We both knew it would take six girls plus Flossy for this thing to make enough in a month, and there were only four girls left under the tree.

“Can you dance?” I asked. “That is also a requirement.”

“You kiddin’ me? Ruby could dance Clara Bow under the table,” Flossy said, like she didn’t want to admit this but still admired it.

I shrugged at Charlie, and she said, “You’re hired.” Ruby tossed three bills on the table that seemed to’ve come from nowhere and said she’d be back later. Flossy hollered to bring a better attitude with her when she did.

By noon, the sneaky heat of September had started to set in. I took the pitcher of water inside to refill it even though Flossy was already calling next . While I was at the sink, Charlie came in, her face ashen, mouth drawn down. “What is it?” I asked, but she just shook her head and filled a jelly jar with water when I was done. I thought maybe she’d gotten overheated again. I followed her out but eased to a stop in the doorway.

Flossy was standing up behind the card table. A woman was standing across from her in a dirty white dress, her cheeks so hollow they looked spooned out. She’d tried to brighten her skin with an orangey rouge. It gave the air of a decorated corpse. She looked old and she also looked thirty.

“I’ll let the customer do anything he wants, I ain’t real particular.”

“No. I’m sorry,” Flossy whispered.

“I’ll let him hit me if that’s what he wants,” the woman said. “Some of ’em like that.” She stared at Flossy, waiting. “And just think, I don’t even get no more menses so you wouldn’t have to sit me out a week.” She grinned at this fact that did not feel so lucky to me. A patch of dark hair was missing on the back of her head.

“I’m sorry. We can’t hire ya,” Flossy whispered to her again.

The woman nodded and set down the jelly jar on the table. Her palm was covered in a red prickly rash. She turned and walked slowly down the stairs and like a ghost, she was gone.

Charlie wiped her forehead with a napkin, looking sick herself. “Syph,” she said, in case it wasn’t already clear. We hadn’t even tried to help the woman. I felt like a coward.

“She’s too late for a dose a Salvarsan,” Flossy said. “She knows what she’s got and she’s still—” She shook her head. “It ain’t her fault.”

Charlie picked up the woman’s jelly jar with the napkin and took it down the front steps. I couldn’t say what she did with the glass.

After that, we were all rattled and ready to get this over with. There were still three more girls wilting under the pecan tree. Flossy didn’t wait for Charlie to get back, and when next came up the stairs—fortyish, dyed black hair, not bad looking, though missing a front tooth—the woman delivered such a wild-eyed speech about dote you know the damn doctor that give you the diseases in the first place , and then so fiercely denied having anything herself, Flossy decided she did and sent her packing, going as Charlie was coming.

“Next,” Flossy said with no enthusiasm now, blotting her neck with a handkerchief she then stuffed down her dress as two young ladies walked up the stairs at once. “Hey, one at a time … oh. You’re a two-fer-one.”

Twins had walked up on the porch, identical twins. Skin-and-bones blonds, except one moved faster up the steps while the other loped behind her slowly. They were both tall, a little knock-kneed. I put them in their early twenties, with thin, drawn faces.

“You’re filthy,” Flossy said. “And I don’t mean in the prostitutish way.”

Mud was splattered across their pale drop-waist dresses. I guess it must still rain where they came from. One carried an old paper bag that looked sadly empty. Their skin was tanned brown, more so against their white hair, or maybe that was just dirt. Neither wore a hat, and I could hear my mother saying, You will ruirn your skin, doing like that. Mud was also stuck in their yellow, stringy hair.

“Sorry for the mess,” the leader, and somehow dirtier one, said. “We been on the road a while now. I’m Trixie, this Dixie.” They had thick blond eyebrows Frances would have given anything to pluck. I wouldn’t call these two pretty; I’d call them oddities that I feared might attract too many eyes. I tried to think if I’d seen any identical twins in Oxford—surely there must be some, but I couldn’t recall any.

“I-dent-i-cal,” Flossy said, nodding. “Lemme guess, twenty … one?”

“Twenty-two,” Dixie, the slower-walking one, said.

“And you?” Flossy asked the other one, then winked. “Kidding, doll.” Neither laughed. “Where’d you two come from?”

“Texas.” Dixie sighed like just saying the state made her exhausted. When she blinked, her eyes stayed closed for a second.

“And you’ve been in this line of work before?” Charlie asked.

Trixie nodded. “All over Texas. Started in San Antone, then Abilene, Houston, Refugio, Beaumont … You ’member what come before Beaumont?” she asked her sister.

“’Redo.”

“Traveling whorehouse? Not a bad idea,” Flossy said.

“Circus,” Trixie said. “We had us a sideshow reading minds and that kind a baloney.” Trixie also seemed to be the slightly more talkative one. “A fella worked us on the side, doing this for extra.” I didn’t like the sound of that term “worked us.”

“We keep to ourselves and we’n share a room. We’re just looking to work a couple weeks and then move on,” Dixie said.

“Good, because we’ll only be open until mid-October,” Charlie said. “But you have to stay that long.”

They both nodded. Before she could tell them the rules, Trixie said, “Don’t worry, we don’t drink or do any a them other things.”

“And no rolling customers either,” Charlie said. “We don’t need to draw unnecessary attention out here.” I turned and looked at her—did she think identical prostitute twins from Texas wouldn’t draw unnecessary attention?

Trixie grinned, showing a crooked front tooth. “Too bad. Dixie here’s one hell of a pickpocket. She’n steal the thoughts right outta your head. We never seen a doctor, but I reckon we’re clean.”

“It’d be the only clean thing about you,” Flossy said.

Dixie, the darker-mooded one, said nothing in all this but she gazed over at the front door. They both seemed itching to go inside, get off their feet. I felt bad for them, especially after we’d done nothing to help the sick woman. When Charlie’d said, four days ago, that a woman out there was gonna see our ad and say, This. This is exactly what I’ve been waiting for , I didn’t think she meant circus twins, but my vote was yes. They looked utterly exhausted.

Charlie and Flossy looked at each other, since there were no more questions to ask.

Oh, but evidently there was one more.

“So, you two do doubles with a customer?” Flossy asked.

“Sure,” Dixie said, glumly. “We kinda prefer it.”

“Okay—” I stood up, almost toppling my chair, and gripped the back of it.

“It makes sense,” Flossy said to Charlie. “Charge more for it.” No, that does not make sense, Flossy , I wanted to say. They are sisters, for God’s sake.

“But you wouldn’t have to do that if you didn’t want to,” Charlie said to the girls. “You can say no.”

Flossy said, “I think what she means, Charles, is then you don’t got to do it alone.”

Charlie turned to me to see what I thought. Lord, don’t look at me. All we’d hired today was that scary Ruby Slipper, and the economics of this business were very simple: For profits, we needed to hire people, and for people, we needed to hire a two-for-one deal because nobody else was left in the dang yard. I hated this business.

When Flossy told them they were hired, they were able to produce three dollars between them. “Close enough,” Charlie said.

After the interviews were over, my head felt leaden. It was now a fact that we were opening this business, though it’d also felt like it when we’d placed an ad in the situations and I feared how many more times I’d have to confront this fact . While I sliced the last of the summer’s tomatoes for sandwiches, Charlie leaned against the kitchen counter.

“Four girls isn’t enough, but it’s better than nothing.” I didn’t answer that; I was running a dance club. “I think we can be open by Saturday night. You know what I think we really need now?”

“Please don’t say gambling tables, Charlie.”

“A proper supper. You feel like cooking?” she asked.

“Lord, yes.”

Cooking always calmed me down, and shopping with more than twenty-five cents felt downright luxurious. We’d collected six dollars today thank goodness , since we’d already spent all of Flossy’s money on the telephone. Since I didn’t have time to go over to Freedmen Town, I went to City. At the counter, Mr. Fudge looked surprised when I ordered “ten pounds of coffee, two pounds of bacon …” Also ham hocks, grits, biscuit flour, sugar, fresh black-eyed peas, vanilla, and a big sack of very end-of-season overripe peaches, like I liked them. I had six mouths to feed now, most of which had been places I did not want to know. I paid Mr. Fudge an extra quarter to put toward the Tartts’ overdue tab and I hurried on out of there before he could ask me who all this food was for and I found myself telling him outright, Prostitutes, sir. Four of ’em at the house. Imagined conversations like this were always playing out in my head. A grocery sack in each arm, I checked the mail at the post office. I didn’t know if Jack was back in town yet, but sure enough, there was a note from him. No postage, just a folded note passed between us via good ole Mrs. Nutt, who seemed to want our romance to succeed. It read: Got back this afternoon. See you tomorrow night. Can’t stop thinking of you. I grinned like a kid, and behind the counter, Mrs. Nutt chuckled, even though I knew I’d probably have to postpone, now that I was running a front for a brothel. Just thinking that sent a cold wash of wonder over me.

It was a relief to be cooking again in the same language I spoke, no Italian tins of fish or French jars of goo, just plain ole Footely, Mi’ssippi.

“Golly, that’s a swell spread,” Flossy said, eyeing everything I’d laid out on the white-cloth-covered card tables: a steaming bowl of black-eyed peas with ham hocks; rice with gravy on the side; bacon was the best I could do for meat; a tomato casserole with hoop cheese and bread crumbs toasted on top; and cornbread because I didn’t have time for dinner rolls to rise. For dessert I’d made a pound cake with sliced peaches and whipped cream to put on top. “Not a egg or a darn pickle in sight,” Flossy said.

Before I’d gone to the store this afternoon, Ruby’d returned, courtesy of her own two feet. She’d walked in toting a flour sack full of clothes, a round blue case of some kind, and, thank the Lord , a Little Fella portable radio set. I’d followed along as Charlie showed the new girls the house. Now that I saw it through newcomers’ eyes, the sparse furniture looked even more decrepit under the twelve-foot ceilings, and the drawer-less piles of junk seemed to have bred and birthed more junk. “This place ain’t near nice as I thought it’d be,” Trixie’d whispered to Dixie.

“Coming from somebody who’s been wallowing in a pigpen,” Ruby’d said, and Flossy’d snorted a laugh. I couldn’t decide if those two were friends or blood-sworn enemies. Maybe they were both.

The twins Charlie had put in Rory’s room with the two narrow mattresses, and Ruby’d gotten the large yellow guest room across from the sleeping porch. My hope was maybe the heat in there would make her too lethargic to “remove somebody’s face,” as she’d put it when Dixie had accidentally stepped on the back of her shoe.

“Whose house is this anyway?” Dixie had asked.

“I don’t know,” Flossy’d told her, “but they’re outta town, so we’re turning it into a whorehouse.” The flat fact of it had made me light-headed.

Charlie called everybody down to supper. She sat at the head of the table and I sat on her right, Flossy was on her left with Ruby next to her. Dixie was next to me with Trixie at the end.

The last time I recalled eating with at least five other people was at the church potluck. This was not that. When everyone was seated, I bowed my head and said a quick thanks for the food—I was not nearly ready to bring up anything else with Him yet. Charlie served her plate but then opened the ledger and started scratching things down. She’d put on red lipstick and brushed her hair down against her neck and more or less looked like she knew what she was doing, which was good because I sure didn’t.

“We need more bedsheets, more towels, what else?” Charlie asked Flossy.

“Clocks,” Flossy said. “Every key’s gotta have a clock.” I listened for anything that might help me run the front, doing my best to decipher what Flossy was saying:

“Every key (room) is gotta have a clock so the wallets (customers, also known as johns ) can see for themselves we ain’t skimming time (stopping early), and don’t forget, we could sure use us a premiere girl in this crib (the most expensive girl in the house), a sheba so hot (pretty) you could fry a egg on her face.” Flossy pointed a pink chipped nail at Charlie. “Even if they can’t afford her, they like to know she’s here with somebody who can spring for a better dish than the one they ordered.”

Though that last part was surprisingly self-evident, it was such a strange new language, it felt like foreigners had invaded my quaint village, but instead of wearing proper English shoes and stiff shirts, they wore tight dresses and no drawers. Flossy’d taken to wearing Frances’s pink silky bathrobe, crossed tight at the top but I knew— I’d seen when she walked—that she was drawer-less underneath it.

At the end of the table, Trixie served herself more peas and more cornbread and shoveled it in her mouth, and Dixie did the same. They both seemed to be starving to death. They’d bathed, and Charlie’d given them huge white button-down shirts of Henry Tartt’s to wear as dresses until they found something better. There was something I’d been wondering since the interview.

“If y’all were working in Texas, how’d y’all hear we were hiring?”

They looked at each other. “We’d left Texas for some personal reasons so we was already headed in this direction,” Trixie said. “We made it far as Natchez when we heard about y’all.” I did not like that “heard about y’all” part until I remembered Flossy had sent word to a friend in Natchez. “We stopped to earn a few bucks at a house down there, but, uh …” She glanced at Dixie again.

“It was time to move on,” Dixie said. A lock of soggy hair fell down against her cheek. She tucked it behind her ear, and I saw a curved scar around her left eye.

“So where you headed after this?” I didn’t want to sound like I was prying but I was definitely prying. Something about them leaving Texas had me wary.

“Anywhere he ain’t,” Trixie said.

That hung in the air a second. “Is … he coming after you?” And what happens if he finds you? I didn’t add.

Dixie smiled for the first time, though there was no joy in it. “No ma’am, I can assure you he is not.”

I looked from one thin face to the other, waiting for more, but Dixie turned to Trixie, and they started talking privately. I guess I’d be asking Charlie what this meant.

I turned back to the left side of the table. Ruby, who was sitting next to Flossy, was now wearing a faded black cotton dress, though it was really more of a slip, with thin straps that cut into her freckled shoulders and revealed probably four tight inches of cleavage. She was puffing a cigarette while she ate, setting the cigarette next to her food between drags. On the white underside of her arm, I saw the track of scars, knobby and dark pink but thankfully not fresh.

For a few minutes everyone ate like any old supper, forks clinking on plates. No one seemed to show any shame about what they were here to do, and why would they? They were all equal parties to the crime. As they served themselves more cornbread and gravy, I sensed a light relief in the room, that was quickly growing more relaxed, maybe to be gathered at a table with others like themselves. Human beings were, after all, drawn to the familiar but these were lawbreakers. Did throat slitters get together like this? Or train robbers or child twiddlers— Going out to see the gang, honey —for the relief of not being judged for a few hours?

Across the table, Ruby took a deep drag off her cigarette, lifted her chin, and blew her smoke directly into Trixie’s face on her left. Maybe I’d imagined the camaraderie.

“Cut that out, Rube,” Flossy said.

She did it again, this time at Dixie, across from her.

“Excuse me, but the owner of this house doesn’t want you smoking at the table,” I said. I had no idea if that was Mrs. Tartt’s rule or not, but it sounded better coming from her. Ruby acted like she hadn’t heard me, set the cigarette on the side of her plate, and ate the rest of her cornbread.

Flossy and Charlie were talking again. “By the way, Kleinkamp said he’ll be here tomorrow at one,” she told Charlie. Kleinkamp was the doctor who’d tested girls at Priscilla’s. Flossy’d telephoned him this afternoon. “But bad news. He wants five dollars a girl.”

“But you said he only charged two fifty!” Charlie said.

Flossy shrugged. “He knows there ain’t so many doctors who’ll tend to gals like us anymore. But we gotta test before we open, Charlie—clap, syph, preggers, bad attitude, the full board.” She turned to the twins. “Which reminds me, I gotta show you two how to pull a prick for the clap. Very vital information, even if you think he’s a Mary.”

Dixie didn’t know this one either. “What’s a Mary?” she asked.

“Virgins, Marys, lotta these college boys are, which of course lessens our chances a dying from a horrible disease, but you can’t be too careful in this biz.”

On that appetizing note, I reminded myself that the raciest thing I’d be selling for my front on Saturday night was sassafras root beer. But I couldn’t shake the image of the sick woman on the porch today. That is what this business can do to you.

When Charlie got up to go to the kitchen, Flossy said, “Jesus, I gotta eat something besides cornbread and gravy.” She shifted her jaw side to side like a boxer preparing for a fight. “Pass that bacon, would ya, Rube?”

Ruby took the platter of bacon and dumped it all on her plate, putting back half a piece somebody’d torn off. Ruby hadn’t even eaten the two pieces she’d already served herself. This was too much for me . “Hey, that is rude, share that with Flossy,” I said. “And I told you, there’s no smoking at the table.”

This time, Ruby smiled. She had squinty little green eyes but meaty red lips. “Lemme put it out for you then,” and she crushed her cigarette out on the little half of bacon and passed the platter over to Flossy. “Here ya go, dick ditch. Ain’t that what your sister calls you?”

“No—no—you can’t say that!” I said to Ruby. “Do not call Flossy a—a—”

“You stick that up your ass, ya stinky hooker whore,” Flossy said back to her.

“ No , Flossy! We don’t call Ruby a stinky hooker whore while we’re at the table!” I stood up. “You know what, no dessert for you and no dessert for you ,” I said, pointing at each of them, and took my plate into the kitchen.

“Ruby needs to wash her mouth out with borax, and Flossy does too,” I said to Charlie.

“I’ll talk to her,” Charlie said and took my plate and set it beside the sink. She dried her hands on a dish towel and leaned on the counter. “We’ve got a lot to do if we want to open by Saturday.” I nodded. It was already Thursday. “I could use your advice on how to handle Mr. Binny.”

“What do you want grumpy old Mr. Binny for?” He certainly didn’t need to know anything about the business.

“I was thinking we could hire him and his band, but what’s he like? I’m not sure how to put it to him.”

Mr. Binny? “He’s grumpy! He’s old! He’s Mrs. Tartt’s driver to the beauty parlor, so he’s loyal to her !”

“Good point,” Charlie said.

“Which part of that point is good? We can easily find another band to play, Charlie.”

“We could, but he’s a taxi driver, Birdie. He’ll be driving the college boys out here and back, and unless he’s stone-deaf, he’s going to hear what they’re coming out here for. Wouldn’t you rather we hire him to keep him quiet since he’ll find out anyway? I think he’s perfect.”

“Whatcha talkin’ about in here?” Flossy asked, coming through the swinging door.

“That the taxi drivers know before anybody else,” Charlie said.

“True,” Flossy said.

I groaned. I was doing that a lot lately, but I guess Charlie was right. Why hire somebody else who otherwise might never find out about the business? I wanted to keep the circle of who knew about this as small as possible.

Flossy’d set her plate by the sink and was looking at the pound cake I’d already sliced. She smiled at me with her big false teeth. “Sorry ’bout the talk in there at the table.”

I put a piece on a plate and handed it to her. “Take it.” Then I handed her one for Ruby too.

“You think we should put another ad in the paper?” Charlie asked. “Try and get a few more girls in?”

“ No .” I couldn’t imagine going through that again and every time somebody saw that ad was another chance for us to go to jail. “Let’s see how it goes with what we’ve got.”

“Will you ask Silva to call Mr. Binny to come by tomorrow?” Charlie asked.

It wasn’t really my decision but it seemed like no matter how hard I dodged and ducked to keep out of Charlie’s side of the business, I just kept on stepping right in it.