The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 32

E arly Friday morning, as the smell of good coffee filled the kitchen, I sat down to read the Oxford Eagle. I’d bought it the day before and the front page read: “RECORDS BROKEN AT UNIVERSITY” and under that: “Twelve hundred students due to arrive in Oxford Friday by train, automobile, and even a mule cart or two! The stationmaster will be on the sharp lookout for anyone breaking rules in his station. Hooligans and pickpockets will be arrested. Soliciting is NOT allowed except for porters and taxis.”

Today students would start arriving and tomorrow night we’d be open. I felt like I was standing on a precipice, peering over the edge. I was glad to have the kitchen to myself this early so I could think about what all I needed to do. I had meals to plan, food to buy, drinks and ice to order for the front. I needed to tell Silva to arrange for Mr. Binny to come talk to Charlie—that alone was enough to make me want to go get back in bed. But most important was I needed to send a telegram to Frances. They’d been gone nine days and I’d heard next to nothing, so I planned to say I was checking to see how they were doing. But really it was to make sure they were not coming home soon. I was afraid if I called her on the telephone, she’d hear the truth of what we were doing simply in my voice.

Charlie’d come in, and I was just about to show her the newspaper when we heard a distant tap on the front door. We both went still and looked at each other. It was merely a matter of time before somebody drove out here, one of Mrs. Tartt’s bridge club friends, or Pripp, or Garnett to say Mrs. Heidelberg had telephoned Welty because I’d checked on Meg. As we crept up to the front door, I thought we should’ve had a drill for this, like tornado drills at school: Take cover, socialite approaching. Charlie tightened the bathrobe around her, and I peered through a slit in the curtains in the sitting room. “I believe it’s for you, Charlie.”

When she opened the front door, the woman put out a white-gloved hand. “Hello again, it’s Esmeralda. We met yesterday.”

Charlie didn’t shake her hand or speak, and Esmeralda lowered hers. She didn’t seem surprised. “I hope you’ll pardon my appearance. I had … an unusual night.”

The green silky dress from yesterday now bore a black stain blooming across the front like somebody’d thrown a drink at her. Her short dark waves were still rolled perfectly to one side, but her eyelashes were mostly gone. She had tired lines around her wide, catlike brown eyes. She looked older, not that it defiled her at all—even in my lushest youth I never looked as good as she did right now. And that car , somehow it added to her good looks, parked out on the road. The long black nose looked animal-like, crouched and ready, with a whitewall tire mounted to the side with polished chrome spokes.

“What brings you back here?” Charlie asked. Crispy, cool.

“I took a drive up to a place called Sweetwater yesterday, but, uh—” She tried to give a careless shrug, but there was weariness in it. “As it ends up, she wasn’t hiring, or at least not me. I was wondering if, by chance, you might still be looking for somebody?”

“We’re pretty happy with who we’ve hired already,” Charlie said.

“I see.” Esmeralda nodded, deflating a little. “That is unfortunate.”

Good Lord, Charlie. I wanted to pinch her. She knew we needed more workers, and more like Esmeralda and less like Ruby and Flossy. Nobody’d suspect a thing if they saw this woman dancing in the backyard, and on top of that, we wouldn’t have to run the dang advertisement again.

“Look,” Esmeralda said, “I realize I left in a bit of a hurry yesterday, but I’m a hard worker. I don’t mind working six or even seven days a week. I keep to myself and to be honest, the customers are very fond of me. So perhaps you’d reconsider?” She raised her chin and seemed to look past us at nothing, as if to say, Look me over, decide if I’m worth it. The whole thing was gravely humiliating. Charlie waited a second longer than I thought was kind.

“There’s no drinking and no dope,” Charlie said.

“I don’t do any of that. I never have.”

“It’s a five-dollar upfront, three bucks a week for your room, we’ll only be open a month. If you think you’re going to walk out before that when things don’t suit you, I keep your week’s pay, and you can find another house.”

“You have my word,” Esmeralda said. She opened a shiny black pocketbook and fished out some bills but kept them in her hand. “I do have a few requests of my own, though.”

Charlie waited, raising one eyebrow at her.

“I won’t do the cooking or the cleaning, and I’d like my own room.”

I looked at Charlie. Hire her , I said with my eyes.

“How do you feel about her taking the last room?” Charlie asked me.

“It’s fine ,” I said. If Mrs. Tartt came home, I highly doubted Esmeralda staying in her room would be what doomed us.

We helped Esmeralda unload her things from the car. It was a Pierce-Arrow, maybe only a year or two old, with a shiny chrome ornament of an archer pulling back his bow at the tip of the hood. On the back seat were several white suitcases with brass corners and a stack of slim wooden boxes with wooden handles. Loaded into a black trunk tied up to the tailgate were boxes from stores in Jackson, New Orleans, Mobile, and New York City. When Esmeralda saw the mattress on the floor and the sad, single upright chair in the corner of Mrs. Tartt’s room, she didn’t complain. She just said a simple, “Thank you.”

At nine sharp, as Charlie’d asked me to, I knocked on Flossy’s door. Flossy opened it full-blown naked. By this point, I’d seen Flossy naked several times, her privates (hairless), her knees (permanently bruised blue), her flaccid banana-shaped bosoms, but this morning she didn’t have her teeth in either, which I had not seen yet. Her cheeks collapsed inward, and her top lip curved down. I looked up to the ceiling. This felt more private than naked; it was a glimpse of Flossy when she was dead.

“Don’t you know waking a prostitute at nine in the morning’s like waking a ordinary up at two a.m.?”

An ordinary was a non-prostitute citizen, as in, me. I was an ordinary. “Sorry, Floss,” I said to the ceiling, “Charlie wants everybody downstairs, if you don’t mind waking up the others.” I didn’t mention Esmeralda yet. She’d looked like she could use the rest.

As I set out coffee and biscuits, the girls filed into the dining room. Esmeralda had joined us after all. The others seemed to’ve already decided she was one of them despite what set them apart—her looks, the clothes, that car —and she pulled out a chair between mine and Dixie’s. Her hair was wrapped in a silky champagne-colored turban, and she wore a matching wide-legged pantsuit. I had not seen trousers on a woman before, only in a magazine. It seemed daring, modern. Esmeralda’s face was freshly scrubbed, and her lips were bare and yet the color of a plum. Somehow she already looked rested. It was no trick of the hand, Esmeralda was simply beautiful.

I poured more coffee for myself, then stopped. “ Flossy , are those Frances’s good calling cards?” She was snipping the top flap off Frances’s cream-colored cards that read Missus Roderick Beauregard Tartt , using Mrs. Tartt’s gold stork sewing scissors, and Charlie was writing in neat, square penmanship, Monday–Saturday, 6 p.m.–late. Gentlemen welcome. Telephone 43 for appointments.

“I doubt she’s going to need them once she figures out where he’s been,” Charlie said. Which wasn’t nice, but I agreed with her. It still surprised me how much Mrs. Tartt had shared with Charlie in such a short time of knowing her.

Ruby came in last in a faded low-cut black chemise and sat across the table. She had black kohl smeared up under her eyes— probably ruining our pillowcases too. She snatched a biscuit off the platter and stared me down while she lit a cigarette with her coffee. This time, I said nothing. If I had to choose my battles with Ruby, I decided her smoking a cigarette at the table seemed not that important compared to her, say, putting it out on someone’s face.

“Alright, I need everybody to pitch in today so we can be open by tomorrow night,” Charlie said. “Who has widows and how many?” She looked around the table. I didn’t know this word yet. All I could think of was my mother, Doris, and I didn’t think she meant her. The answers around the table added up to about a dozen.

“We’ll need to buy another hundred or so today in town.” She wrote something in the ledger.

I whispered to Flossy, “What’s a widow?”

Ruby, who evidently had heard, barked a laugh. “You mean to tell me you’re running a whorehouse and don’t know what a damn johnny is?”

“It’s a papa stopper,” Flossy whispered to me.

When I showed no response, Ruby said, “Salami skin.” Nothing.

“Lover cover?” Flossy said. “Throbbin’ hood?” She blinked at me. “Wienerhosen? Cock sock?”

“I got it , I got it,” I said. “Isn’t somebody gonna notice you buying a hundred of those in town? Wouldn’t it be safer to order them to the post office or something?”

“Don’t you know it’s highly illegal to put a rubber in the mail?” Flossy said. “That’s against the Comstock law, Bird.”

“Oh, well, God forbid we break the law,” I said.

“I think buying a hundred at once isn’t as risky as buying ten every day for a month,” Charlie said.

“I want the drugstore kind, not the cheapos you get at the filling station,” Flossy said.

“If there’s time, one of you can try the drugstore by the college, but in the meantime, will you try the drugstores around here?” Charlie was looking at me.

“ Me? ”

“It needs to be the least suspicious-looking person,” she said.

I agreed, it would not behoove us for this place to get busted before it’d made so much as a dime, but: “I’ve never even seen one of these things before, Charlie.”

Flossy squinted at me. “Jesus H., Bird,” and in a whisper, “Are you a Mary?”

Everybody at the table was quiet. Even Charlie looked at me. “Yes, Flossy. I am a Mary.”

“I’ll be a monkey’s uncle …” Flossy said. “A Mary running a cathouse.”

“Strangest damn whorehouse I ever worked in,” Ruby said.

“What I need the rest of you to do today is advertise,” Charlie said.

“What does that mean?” I asked and closed my eyes. The sound of that—I did not like the sound of that.

“The girls go to town and hand out these cards,” Charlie said.

“This town?” I asked. “The one with thirteen churches?”

“It’s the only way to get business up and running,” Charlie said and then, to the table, “Give them to boys that look like they go to the college. No men yet. I don’t want any townspeople showing up here until we’ve got this place running smooth as silk.”

“What happens if you give a card to the wrong person?” I asked.

“We won’t,” Charlie said. “The paper said boys’ll start arriving on the Bilbo at eleven thirty today, and there’ll be plenty of specials coming in after that.”

“Good, we’ll go to the station and catch ’em right off the train,” Ruby said. I looked at Charlie—the train station was where she’d been arrested.

“No, keep it to campus and the square,” Charlie said.

“I’m with Rube,” Flossy said, “let’s go to the train station. Get in, get out, get laid, get paid.”

Charlie needed to be firm about this but she was being strangely offhanded. “ Charlie , what if the stationmaster sees them or the sheriff?” I said. Everybody at the table looked right at Charlie. It was like I’d blown a silent whistle only prostitutes could hear.

“You had trouble with the sheriff before?” Dixie asked. Esmeralda looked like she might get up and walk right on out of here. Again.

“No, no trouble,” Charlie said, but she snuck a look at me, teeth gritted, that said, Why would you say that? How was I to know it was a secret? Flossy’d made it sound like a rote event in this business—you got arrested, spent a few days in jail, got out, no harm done. Though of course Charlie’d been an enormous exception.

“You have made a deal with the sheriff, haven’t you?” Esmeralda asked her.

“We’re working on it,” Charlie said, which was news to me. Esmeralda flattened her mouth but said nothing else. “Alright, everybody, go get ready—and don’t forget, Dr. Kleinkamp will be here at one o’clock.”

There were groans at this, the necessary evil. I followed Charlie to the kitchen.

“Charlie, what kind of deal with the sheriff? Is that something you really want to do?”

“No, I don’t want to spook them though, so don’t bring it up again,” Charlie said. “Listen, the girls should probably borrow some clothes to walk around town in so they don’t attract attention. Is it alright if I give them some of Frances’s and Mrs. Tartt’s?”

If my sister ever found out, she would skin me alive. And that was just for the part about letting them wear her clothes.

“Fine but don’t tell me about it,” I said. “Just do it so I don’t have a choice.”

Esmeralda kindly offered to drive us to town in her fancy car, and the six of us slid over the brown leather seats. I was in front between Esmeralda and Flossy, with the twins and Ruby in the back. Pierce-Arrows weren’t rare. I’d seen a few around town, but this one was cushier inside even than Mrs. Tartt’s Studebaker. It sat like the long leather divan that used to be in her library. Each window had fussy little curtains, and sure enough, mounted in the dashboard was a shiny chrome radio. I’d read in one of Frances’s movie magazines that Katharine Hepburn drove one of these.

Flossy opened a little burled wood cabinet in the back that was mirrored inside. “Jeez, Es, where’d you get this thing?” she asked. I was dying to know myself.

Beside me, Esmeralda just shrugged, like the car embarrassed her. “It was a gift from my father.”

“Well, it’s the bee’s knees,” Flossy said, running her hand over the woodwork.

As Esmeralda started the car, she murmured, “I despise it.” She’d changed into a rose-colored silk dress with cap sleeves and a gorgeous pair of calfskin heels.

The twins had on Frances’s floral dresses with drop waists that were a little short on them. Their four skinny, white-stockinged legs stuck out at the bottom like broomsticks. For Flossy, Charlie’d picked out Frances’s navy-blue dress with the white collar, the one Frances had worn the day I’d arrived. Frances loved that dress. But at least it was plain enough so if Frances’s friends spotted Flossy, they wouldn’t recognize it.

When Charlie’d handed Ruby Mrs. Tartt’s nile-green skirt and top to wear, Ruby’d said, “Where we picking these johns up, the School for the Blind?” She and Mrs. Tartt both had big chests and wide hips, and the color did light up Ruby’s eyes. Sort of like a green-eyed animal … that you ran from in the night. “I look like somebody’s granny in this getup.”

“Not yours,” Flossy’d said.

Flossy was leaning back, telling the twins how this worked. I could smell my sister next to me, coming from that navy-blue dress.

“Don’t ever tell a wallet right off what you’re selling, he could be a snitch. If he looks legit, say some pretty girls are having a special party and don’t forget to bring cash.”

“But don’t come on too strong,” Esmeralda said. She drove fast on Lamar, in black leather driving gloves. “Their mamas and daddies have been warning them since their first chin hair to watch out for a certain kind of girl.” The twins nodded but said nothing.

On the right, we passed the deserted Percy mansion, which might as well have had a sign on the front that read THIS COULD BE YOU NEXT . A minute later, on the left and up a gravel road, I glimpsed the blue two-story orphanage. I felt bookended by reminders of why in the world I would ever do something as risky as this.

Esmeralda turned right onto the square and drove slowly around the courthouse. I scanned the stores for any faces I knew—Pripp, Jack, Garnett, anybody who should be avoided—but the square was strangely empty for a Friday at lunchtime, except for a few folks in front of City Grocery and some old men eating peanuts on a bench.

“I don’t see no college boys here,” Ruby said. “All I see are grampas and fat housewives.” Down the alley, where the tattered men waited on work, this was empty too. Half a mile away, the train whistle blew three furious bleats.

“This is horseshit,” Ruby said. “Es, drive us to the damn depot where the boys are.”

“No,” I said, looking back at Ruby. “Charlie said no.”

“Who’s gonna suspect us?” Flossy said. “She’s got us dressed like darn nuns. Es, follow that car up there.”

Esmeralda made a quick right turn off the square and followed the car ahead of us, and five minutes later, we could see the train station up ahead.

“I knew it,” Ruby said. The depot was surrounded by people and motorcars, dusty taxicabs, rickety pony carts tied up to hitching posts. Drivers stood in the tall grass talking and gesticulating; men with sleeves rolled up leaned on wheelbarrows. Peering up the empty track were bands of barefooted little boys, colored and white, here to see the trains of students coming in. A marching band in blue coats and tall hats with feathers stood by the tracks, ready with their shining instruments. The air felt full, expectant, not just with something coming but with something almost here.

“Alright, let’s ankle it, girls,” Flossy said, opening the car door, and the others did the same, except Esmeralda, who said she’d be staying in the car. After a second, I got out too— two rules, that was it: Don’t give cards to grown men and don’t go to the depot, and here we are.

A Ford breezed past us with boys in shirtsleeves hanging out the windows. An old woman on the other side of the tracks, so off the depot property, had a sign that read Pecan 3 cent bag. The newspaper had been real clear: “Soliciting is NOT allowed.” I envied her that all she was selling were pecans.

“Hitch those titties up, Rube,” Flossy said, clacking her teeth together to get them back in place.

“ No! No titty hitching,” I said. “And be careful, and don’t forget, stay away from the stationmaster—”

But they were already walking away. I watched, helpless, as the twins, Ruby, and Flossy weaved through the crowds to go prostitute in Frances’s and Mrs. Tartt’s clothes.

I decided to walk myself back to the bank since there was now a line of traffic to get to the train depot. At the first desk, I told pretty Eleanor that I needed to speak to Jack Walsh. “May I ask what this is concerning?” she said, as a bubble practically appeared above her head: ’Cause I know y’all don’t have a red cent. For maybe only the second or third time since I’d agreed to this terrible idea, I thought, But we might soon, Eleanor, and we sure as hell won’t be putting it in this bank.

“I’ll wait for him outside his office. I won’t be long.”

I helped myself to the chair the sad man with the sad red ribbon had sat in, a hundred years ago. Through the glass, I could see Jack in his office, sitting across from someone whose back was to me. At a nearby desk, a woman’s fingernail clack-clack-clacked on a machine.

After a minute, Jack’s door opened. Even in this cold, uninviting place, I felt a warm light coursing through me, just seeing him. He was with a man, older, with a thick head of light brown hair and a slight limp. That’s Meg’s father. Garnett’s husband. Charlie’s … coward. These thoughts tumbled out as racehorses did out of the gate, at once and all in the lead. Mrs. Heidelberg—had she spoken to him? Had she asked him questions about the little girl who was actually his daughter?

“Birdie, what’re you doing here?” Jack walked over, smiling. “Dr. Pittman, this is Birdie Calhoun. She’s here visiting her sister, Frances Tartt.”

“Course, nice to see you,” he said and shook my hand. “How’s Mrs. Tartt doing? I know the heat gets to her this time of year.”

“Mrs. Tartt’s fine,” I said. His face betrayed nothing, but I stared at him, probably a second too long. Because those were Meg’s eyes, clear blue glass. Had no one ever noticed? It was uncanny. That must’ve eaten Garnett alive. “I’ll tell Mrs. Tartt you asked after her.”

Eleanor approached them with a brown folder. Jack stood a full head taller than Dr. Pittman and he was thicker all over, his arms, his chest. On a different kind of day, I’d be entertained by the thought that my date could beat up Garnett Pittman’s. Dr. Pittman’s navy suit coat and shirt were a little rumpled. I imagined he started out crisp as a new dollar bill each morning, but after breakfast with his cold, bitter wife he was already wrinkled and defeated.

“I’ll let you know what we decide, Jack,” Dr. Pittman said. “I don’t mind showing myself out.”

“Good to see you, Dr. Pittman,” Jack said and turned to me. “That makes you my next appointment,” he said with a sly smile. “Eleanor, would you tell Mr. Allison I’ll be a few minutes late?”

I followed him to his office, and Jack shut the door behind us, but he didn’t sit down. He leaned against his desk so we were eye level and took my hand in his.

“I’ve only got a minute. Everything alright?” he asked.

I nodded. I liked that he was flirty with me even in the office. “You’re in a good mood today,” I said.

“I’m excited about our date tonight,” he said and pulled me an inch closer. “I haven’t seen you in a week.”

I let that sit a second to enjoy it. Through the glass I could feel Eleanor watching us, probably thinking a desperate woman like me could never land a man like Jack, and if I cared what she thought, I’d tell her, Darlin’, I’m still not near as desperate as you are, because nobody has any expectations for me. The freedom in that was significant, though a little sad.

“I actually came by to tell you I can’t make it tonight. Things have gotten a little busy out at the house.”

His smile fell. “Well, you don’t have to look so happy about it,” he said. “What’s keeping you so busy?”

“We—” Don’t say we . “Mrs. Tartt, she decided to take in some boarders. To make a little money while she and Frances are in Jackson. So I’m just getting the house ready—there’s five of them. They got here yesterday.”

He tilted his head like this seemed unlikely, and here I’d thought I was getting better at this lying game. I’d better learn unless I wanted people to look at me like he was right now. “How’d you get that many boarders so fast?” he asked.

“Advertisement in the paper,” I said.

“Good for Mrs. Tartt,” he said, nodding. “Lot of people looking to rent rooms in their house these days.” He pulled my hand up to his mouth and kissed it lightly. “I don’t know yet when I have to go back to Jackson again, but it’ll probably be soon. So what if I drove out to the house Sunday afternoon to see you?”

Absolutely not. My mind scrambled. Sunday everything would be closed in town. “Why don’t we go to church together?”

A church date. His smile faded but it was still there. “Sure, I’ll come pick you—”

“No, you don’t need to. I’ll already be in town for—something. First Christ Methodist on Jackson Avenue.”

“I’ll pick up lunch beforehand and maybe we can have a picnic in my apartment.”

“Perfect,” I said, and he walked me to the door of the bank and squeezed my hand goodbye.

Outside the bank, I took a second to breathe before running the rest of my errands. I needed to order ice and cold drinks and buy cigarettes to sell as singles and all the Merry Widows brand condoms a woman was allowed to buy without a doctor’s prescription. This required some extra oxygen.

Someone touched my arm, and I jumped. “Dr. Pittman,” I said. He’d waited on me to come out of the bank.

“Listen. I need you to stop calling the Heidelbergs,” he said. “Do you understand what I’m asking you, Miss Calhoun?”

I nodded and eased my arm out from under his hand. I understood what he wanted. He wanted Meg to disappear in his wife’s damn work program so she wouldn’t be their problem anymore.

“What … exactly did Mrs. Heidelberg tell you?” I asked.

He looked tired and older than tight-faced Garnett. “That they’d wanted an infant from a reputable agency, and now that you told her the girl is from Oxford, she thinks it would be best to return her.”

I wanted to cry, hearing it put so plainly. “Are they? Going to return Meg?”

“I don’t know. I said everything under the sun to convince them not to.”

“You tried to convince them … not to return Meg?”

“Of course I did. The Heidelbergs are that girl’s last chance for a decent childhood.”

My head was swimming. Did he know his wife was working against him? Did he know her plans for Meg?

“Miss Calhoun, this child is no longer any of your concern. Will you please leave the family alone?”

Could he not even say her name? And I was not about to assume that Meg was fine with a family that didn’t think she was good enough for them. “I want what’s best for Meg,” I said and I left it at that.

Squinting at me in the bright light, he leaned toward me and was about to say something else.

“Afternoon, Doc.” A man raised his straw hat at Dr. Pittman, shutting him up. As the man kept on talking, Dr. Pittman nodded to me, so I moved on.

After my errands, I flagged down a taxi instead of trying to find the girls. There were plenty of them going up and down the road. When I pulled up to the house, Mr. Binny’s taxicab was parked out front. Struggling inside, I almost dropped everything in the foyer, including the bag with the johnnies, and caught a glimpse of pudgy old Mr. Binny and Charlie in the front sitting room. He was perched on the three-legged sofa, sitting as upright as he did behind the wheel of his car, holding a glass of ice water that looked like he hadn’t had a sip of it. At the moment, his frown looked even deeper than usual, entrenched, and I tucked myself back where they couldn’t see me. I strained to hear. I reckoned the disaster of it drew me in, like an automobile accident. This news could kill old Mr. Binny. He was also bound to be the first colored person ever to sit uncomfortably in Mrs. Tartt’s formal sitting room, shabby or not. Only made worse by what Charlie was asking him to be a part of, probably as casual as asking him how his day was.

I heard Mr. Binny say in a deep voice, “And what if Miz Tartt come home to find Mr. Binny and His Band a Brothers playing fo a cathouse?” His question had started down low, but it rose in octaves as it went. Clearly I’d arrived at the moment of impact.

Charlie thought it over. “I suppose she’d take you for a smart businessman, Mr. Binny. I certainly do,” she said in a smooth voice. “You know it makes sense to seize a good opportunity when it presents itself, and I know you won’t spread it all over town. That’s why I’m offering you the job first.”

Mr. Binny let out a sharp, short bark, humph . Like he saw right through her trying to butter him up. But she must’ve lubricated his joints, because after assurances that we’d only be open a month, et cetera, et cetera, he agreed to come play the following night. As I walked quickly up the wide hall, Lord, I thought I might’ve even heard Mr. Binny laugh .

When I went in the kitchen, Esmeralda was in there. She must’ve parked her Pierce-Arrow around back. I could see through the window, Ruby and the twins were outside, hanging ornaments and stringing more lights up in the backyard to look like Mrs. Tartt’s New Year’s party circa 1923. “Es, how’d it go at the depot?” I asked.

“Don’t tell Charlie, but we had to leave in a hurry. The girls thought the stationmaster had his eye on them, so they ran back to the car.”

Oh God.

Esmeralda shook her head. “I think Charlie’s playing with fire, not lining something up with the sheriff.”

I nodded as if I agreed with her, which I did not. I was terrified of Charlie finding herself in the sheriff’s crosshairs, and equally terrified of spooking Charlie with news of Welty and Meg and provoking her to do something stupid, which would create a whole ’nother calamity for all of us.

These secrets I was keeping were really starting to stack up.

“Any sign of the doctor yet?” Charlie asked, coming in with Flossy. Esmeralda and I both shook our heads. As I recalled, he was supposed to be here at one and it was close to two.

“He better show or I ain’t opening,” Flossy said.

“I spoke to Kleinkamp’s nurse this morning and she told me he’d be here,” Charlie said. “Come help me in the cellar, Flossy. We’ve got a lot to get done before tomorrow.”

Indeed, there was a lot yet to do to set up a dance club that was also a boardinghouse that was actually a speakeasy that was truly a brothel.

While I peeled potatoes for supper, Charlie and Flossy stood at the kitchen sink. They’d hauled a few cases of Mrs. Tartt’s bourbon up from the root cellar, and Flossy was pouring the full bottles into empty ones, about halfway up, and then Charlie was filling the rest up with water.

“I want plenty a water on that eel juice, Charles. Nothing worse than a drunk john,” Flossy said. Eventually one bottle became two, three became six, and if a drink cost a dollar, Charlie would have turned a bottle of something that cost us nothing into a profit of seventeen dollars. Those were some swell economics, especially considering there was something in the neighborhood of six dozen bottles of it. Sort of took the shine off selling Co-Colas for a profit of fifteen cents each, but then again, every penny counted.

Charlie kept looking up at the kitchen clock. It was almost three now. “I’m calling Kleinkamp again,” she said and, on her way out, “That looks good, Es.”

I walked over to the table and peered over Esmeralda’s shoulder. “What is that?” I asked.

“It’s the menu,” she said. The mysterious wooden boxes we’d brought in from her car were open, full of tubes of paint and brushes and palettes, and facedown on the table was a large, heavy gold frame with brown paper on the back. In perfect black lettering, she’d painted:

Dance lessons, 30 minutes each

The Jitterbug $4.50

The Flossy $5.00

The Tango $9.00

The Foxtrot $15.00

It took me a second to understand what was what. Esmeralda was clearly the foxtrot girl, a Flossy was a Flossy, but why oh why did we have to be selling tangos?

“At night it’ll be the menu,” Esmeralda said, and then she turned the heavy frame over. “And during the day it’ll be this old man.” It was the dang portrait of Henry Tartt.

“No answer at Kleinkamp’s office,” Charlie said, coming back in. “Maybe he’s on his way.”

“He better be,” Flossy said. “I don’t like these gals well enough to share a disease with ’em.”

“That ain’t Kleinkamp,” Flossy said, peering out the sidelights around the front door. “That broad ain’t even of the same century as Kleinkamp.” At three thirty, Flossy and I watched a young brunette woman coming up our walk. She carried a black canvas bag in one hand and a thick book in the other. She walked quickly, with determination, checking around her like Meemaw did when she was going to sneak a drink of cherry bounce.

“Is it Kleinkamp?” Charlie asked, coming down the stairs.

“Does that look like Kleinkamp?” Flossy said. I told Charlie and Flossy to step back and let me handle it, in case she was one of Frances’s committee friends.

When I opened the door, the young woman was putting on a white coat over her dress. She was lanky and thin and looked especially so in the too-big doctor’s coat. Her short curly hair was unkempt and had mostly escaped from a silver barrette. Large brown eyes behind a set of horn-rimmed glasses, no makeup on. She picked up her book and left the bag at her feet. “Hello, I’m Miss Cunningham, here in place of Dr. Kleinkamp.”

Flossy pushed forward and said, “What is this? Where’s Kleinkamp?”

“The doctor wasn’t available, so I came instead.”

She didn’t even look as old as me. She had a pretty, heart-shaped face but her pale cheeks were pocked with scars and with all the zagging dark hair, she wasn’t attractive but did not seem one bit concerned about this.

Charlie leaned out and looked up and down the road. The young woman’s taxi was still out front. Charlie motioned her in and shut the door behind her.

“We didn’t ask for a nurse, we asked for a doctor,” Flossy said. “You got credentials?”

“No, but I work at Dr. Kleinkamp’s office two days a week and I’m a lab assistant over at the university, and I’ve worked at Oxford Hospital here in town for almost a year now.” She made eye contact with each of us as she spoke. She was officious and seemed determined—though to do what, test us all for gonorrhea?

“So since you was what, fifteen?” Flossy said.

“I’m twenty-two,” she said. “I’ll be attending medical school next year.”

“Well I prefer a doctor that’s already been medical schooled. Where’s Kleinkamp?”

“Dr. Kleinkamp—was indisposed, so I offered to take the appointment for him.” She pursed her lips, not red from lipstick but chapped like she chewed them. A worrier. “But he’s definitely not coming.”

“That’s a crock. I spoked to Methuselah myself yesterday, and he said he’d be here at one o’clock and he’s charging us a fin per girl which is a complete rip-off.”

Already I was thinking, and hoping, that without Kleinkamp maybe we couldn’t open the upstairs. We could operate a nice, regular dance club that sold root beers and waltz lessons.

“Dr. Kleinkamp was charging you five dollars a panel?” Miss Cunningham said.

“I know, toots, but Kleinkamp’s the only game in town.”

“Look, Dr. Kleinkamp’s taught me a lot, I’m lucky to work with him, but he’s almost ninety, he can hardly see anymore. Honestly, you’d probably do just as well going to Old Miss Rondo on the square.”

“You’re preaching to the choir,” Flossy said. “But I still ain’t copacetic with some girlie doctoring me. Just ’cause you got a white coat on don’t make it so.”

Miss Cunningham pushed her shoulders back and the coat seemed to fit her better now. “You do realize those tests he’s doing can’t possibly be accurate.”

Flossy backed her chin up. “Says who?”

Again she paused, I guess considering whether she should rat on her boss, but couldn’t help herself. “He drives those blood samples almost an hour and a half in a hot car all the way to Holly Springs. You have to test immediately after you draw blood or the culture will spoil. Not to mention he conducts his tests in his hot, dirty kitchen. I don’t know what they were teaching back in 1850, but I learned that in Lab 101.”

“What are you saying? That I could have something? You think I got something?” For some reason, Flossy looked at me. I shrugged: I hope not.

“I’m saying …” Miss Cunningham held in a breath. And then the floodgates opened. “I’m saying these doctors don’t care about women—and certainly not women like you! They look at you and think you’re not even worth the test. They think if you’re carrying something, then it must be your fault and you deserve it for being what you are. Their only concern, if they even have any, is that you might give it to some poor, unsuspecting, innocent man.”

I didn’t quite know what to think of this woman. This wasn’t the time to be preached at about the ills of being a prostitute. I wasn’t a hundred percent sure she really understood what this place was, but if Kleinkamp serviced Priscilla’s and she worked for him, she probably knew a telephone call to test five women for gonorrhea and syphilis wasn’t an invitation to a birthday party.

“What do you think we should do, Miss Cunningham?” Charlie said. “About our … situation?”

Miss Cunningham didn’t miss a beat. “When’s the next customer coming?”

Charlie crossed her hands carefully in front of her and said, “Tomorrow night. It’s our first night open. I hope you understand, Miss Cunningham, this needs to be discreet.”

Miss Cunningham switched the thick book to the other arm. “Call me Virginia, please.” She put out her hand and Charlie shook it, though tentatively. “What I came to tell you is that I can do these tests for you. I’ve done hundreds of them—the physical exams to check for lesions, I know how to run the blood tests for gonorrhea, chancroid, and syphilis. Just come down to Oxford Hospital and I can do them for you there.”

Charlie was shaking her head and I was too—Oxford Hospital was where Dr. Pittman worked—but Flossy got to it first. “Oh, no, I ain’t going to no hospital. You know what spreads faster than syph, missy? Word around town we got it. Somebody spots a sporting girl making trips to a hospital, and poof. Customers gone and it don’t stop there neither. Next come the cops, and I might not look smart, but I know my rights, meaning if we get reported for diseases, we ain’t got no rights. They come in here and round us up like cattle and dump us in a internment camp for dirty, diseased women.”

This Virginia Cunningham, who’d seemed so confident, looked very young right then. Maybe too young and too inexperienced to be involved in this business, which wasn’t any of my business either, but I was making it so because I was, well, me . “I’m sorry, you’re right. I didn’t think of that,” she said.

“Well now ya know. Charlie, I’m calling Kleinkamp—”

“You can call him, but he won’t come,” Virginia said. “I saw him just a few hours ago.”

“Well what’d he say?” Flossy said. “He had to have a reason.”

“He said he was too tired and it’s not worth the risk.” Virginia sighed like it made her weary too. Women like these weren’t worth the risk is what I was pretty sure she meant. “They’re cracking down on this kind of thing, the Anti-Vice Leaguers, the sheriff.”

With a chill, I looked at Charlie but I kept my mouth shut. This was exactly what she’d told me this morning not to bring up. Beside her, Flossy waved her hand. “Forget that old dick, we’ll just—you know what, we’ll go to Memphis, find a doc up there. It’ll cost a arm and a leg but—”

“You have an electric icebox here?” Virginia asked. She looked up at the high ceiling, over at the sitting room with strangely little furniture, not sure what to make of this place. Charlie nodded. “They’ve made these tests much simpler than they used to be, thanks to all the men who came home from the war with diseases … if Kleinkamp can test in his dirty kitchen, I don’t see why I can’t do them in yours.”

“In our kitchen?” I said. “Here?”

“I’d just need to get some things and set it all up.”

I looked at Charlie—she wanted to test for syphilis and gonorrhea in my kitchen, where I scrambled eggs? Charlie rubbed her hands on the skirt of the apron, not looking too sure about it either, though not entirely against it. “What would you … need?”

“Microscope, slides, antigen, alcohol. Glass vials, sharps, tubes to draw blood …”

“You have all these things?” Charlie asked her.

“Well, no, but I’m pretty sure I could get them.”

“That sounds expensive,” Charlie said.

“Oh it would be.” Virginia pushed her glasses up on her nose. They made her eyes look huge. “Unless it was free.” She blinked wide at Charlie. “Most of that equipment’s just sitting there up at the school—certainly the microscope and slides are.”

Charlie looked at me then Flossy. “What makes you think they’d let you use them?” she asked.

Virginia chewed her lip a second. “They wouldn’t. So I wouldn’t ask. Look, the first few months of Ole Miss premed are just coursework, labs don’t even start until January, so all that equipment just sits there gathering dust in Dr. Weems’s closet.” Virginia rolled her big brown eyes. She looked dangerously young when she did this. “There’s a chauvinist for you. He lectured in his bio class that women are too hysterical to be doctors because of our hormones . When I told him I was going to medical school, he said if I wanted a doctor in the house, just marry one, honey. Then the creep tried to cop a feel. Ask me, somebody ought to put a dose of tricresyl phosphate in his coffee.”

Even if she was young and not yet a doctor, she certainly had a fire lit under her. Maybe that was a good thing.

Flossy sighed. “Why are we still discussin’ this? I told ya, I ain’t risking my life with a highfalutin nurse still carrying a instruction manual.” She nodded to the textbook in Virginia’s arms.

“I’m not going to be a nurse,” Virginia said and her cheeks flushed pink. “I’m going to be a doctor . And when I do, I’m starting a practice for women only, and those frat boys and chauvinistic teachers can kiss my rosy rear end.”

“Well, when your parents pay to get a M and D by your name, you come back and see us, doll.”

“Believe me, no one’s paying my way but me,” she said, and I believed it. I noticed that her glasses had been repaired with a bit of bandage and she wore saddle oxfords older than mine and covered in shoe polish. Then, quieter, she said, “My mom cleans houses for a living. I work three jobs, and all the hospital will pay me is a quarter an hour, meanwhile they pay the boys fifty cents.”

I had to nod with her on that. A fifteen-year-old boy made more than me at the Foote, and I’d worked there four years. I found this woman’s frustration with doctors compelling. Like most people, I’d been taught that “the doctor knows best,” he was an educated man after all, meanwhile my mother and I traveled several hours to see one and in twenty minutes, he proclaimed me barren, smiled, and went home for his wife’s birthday.

Charlie looked at her wristwatch, ready to cut to the chase. “You really think you could get it set up and do all tests by tomorrow afternoon, or should we be headed to Memphis?”

“I’m pretty sure I can,” she said. Her eyes jumped from my face to Charlie’s to Flossy’s. She looked excited now. “These tests, like I said, they aren’t even hard—I could probably do a Wassermann in my sleep. But I’d have to get everything from the school today since classes start Monday, but—I’m pretty sure I could do it.”

Flossy’s face and neck were turning a splotchy red. “Charlie? Are you pulling my leg here? You really want her playing our pretend doctor?”

“You’re positive these tests will be done right? They’ll be accurate?” Charlie asked.

“As accurate as these tests have ever been, especially since I actually care that they’re done right. I’d have to let Kleinkamp know I’m taking time off … He won’t like it, but—”

“Don’t tell anyone,” Charlie said.

“I could probably keep my shifts at the hospital though. And I’ll charge you the same as they do, two dollars a test. I’d just need a private room for exams, with electricity and water …” She almost smiled at the thought of doing all these gonorrhea and syphilis tests. “It would be like my own practice. I could show up at med school next year with more experience than anybody.”

Next to me, I realized Flossy looked ready to pop. “You think this is some kinda game, missy? A chance to get some extra credit? Lemme ask you something: How many girls in your little sorority club ever picked up a case a the clap, huh? How many cried their eyes out or had to bite down on a stick every time they sat to pee?” Flossy’s face was turning very red now. “Put it off all day until they finally just wet themselves—or how many picked up syph and didn’t know it till it was too late? How many friends did you watch go blind, screaming for help in the bed next to yours?”

“None,” Virginia said. She sounded a little ashamed she hadn’t seen these things. And she looked sorry they’d ever happened.

“Well if you do, it’ll break your heart,” Flossy said.

“Please. Let me try to do this,” Virginia said. “I’ll know in just a few hours if I can. I won’t even charge you for the first round of tests, in case you’re not happy with how I do it. That way you could still go to Memphis in the morning if you need to.”

Flossy looked away and didn’t answer, but Charlie nodded. She didn’t look completely sure about it, though. “I’ll show you around and find a place for you to get set up.”

Stars shining bright above you …

I blinked up at the overhead light in the front sitting room. I was alone, curled up on the three-legged sofa, where I must’ve fallen asleep. My cheeks felt hot, my chest sticky and tender with the sunburn I’d gotten painting a second coat on the dance floor.

Birds singing in the syc-a-more tree …

I stood up, groaning, and walked to the kitchen, where a tall metal pot of water was on the stove at a rolling boil. It was dark out and, oh my Lord, almost midnight. Wayne King’s singing was coming from the backyard. I gazed through the gray screen door. In the center of the yard, the freshly painted dance floor shimmered like a black pool. Electric gold lanterns crisscrossed above it; silvery moons and star ornaments glistened against the inky black sky. The way the crape myrtles bowed around the dance floor, it looked fairylike, like a room, just as Mrs. Tartt said it had for her old parties. When I looked up, I saw Trixie walking across a tree branch in her bare feet like it was a tightrope while Flossy pointed to where she should hang another shiny thing. From the back, Flossy and Ruby looked almost like young girls wondering up at this sparkly world, intended for US presidents and old money and size 3 gold heels. It looked like one of Mrs. Tartt’s old photographs.

When I stepped outside, the screen door popped shut behind me, and Ruby turned around and looked at me. Cigarette dangling from her lips, she smiled and gave me a stark middle finger.

… blue as can be, dream a little dream of me.

“Hey, want me to test you for gonorrhea? I’ll do it for free,” Virginia said, sticking her head out the screen door.

“I’m … pretty sure I don’t have it,” I said.

“Alright, well. If you’re sure.” She walked out on the back porch wearing the too-big white coat. She’d pushed her wild curly hair back with a white headband, making the rest a dark chaotic cloud around her face, giving her sort of a mad scientist look. She scanned the glittering backyard for somebody else to test, I guess. Despite the hour, she did not look one bit tired.

“Hey, uh … can you pick up any of those diseases from anything other than … sex?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. But don’t you go using a condom more than once.” She pointed a spoon at me with a nine-inch-long handle. It was the one I liked to use to make iced tea. “By the way, I borrowed this, but I’ll sterilize it and put it back.”

“You just … hold on to that one,” I said.

Earlier this evening, I’d come down to the cellar. In just four hours, Virginia had managed to set up a testing lab down here. It was a small square brick room at the bottom of the cellar stairs, mostly underground, with a brick-laid floor. Houses like ours in Footely didn’t have such extravagances. It was much cleaner than the rest of the dusty cellar and easily thirty degrees cooler even on a hot day. Virginia and Charlie’d scrubbed the floor and used the vacuum cleaner to clean the walls and low-hanging rafters of dust. What used to smell like a century’s worth of garlic and wild scapes and onions now smelled like Lysol disinfectant, rubbing alcohol, and a hint of some sort of strawberry shampoo Virginia used. When I’d gone down there, I’d made the mistake of not knocking first.

“What is this, a public hanging?” Ruby’d said up to the ceiling. She was lying flat, knees up and wide open, though in spectacular news, there was a sheet draped across her lower half. On Picador’s canning stool, Virginia was shining a lamp without a shade into Ruby’s privates, holding and prodding with the aforementioned spoon.

“Sorry, I’m getting a potato,” I said. The potato box, though, was blocked by the examination table. Then I saw Flossy cowering in the corner, next to the old gas-run refrigerated icebox. Her arms were crossed tight over her chest and she looked older than I’d seen her look.

“I’m afraid she’s gonna tell me I got something,” she said.

“Hey …” I put my arm around her. She was shaking. “Let’s wait and see what she says. I’ll stay with you.”

The old wooden root table had been scrubbed and covered with clean white butcher paper and held, among many things, our Bon Ami cleanser, probably Flossy’s acetone nail polish remover, the El Heato hot plate we should’ve sold, Henry Tartt’s old cigar humidor with his gold initials, rows of glass tubes, jelly jars, a copper pot, toothpicks, shredded cotton, lots of silver utensils, and a microscope with a plaque that read Property of the University of Mississippi Medical Dept. Above it, a framed diploma was propped up on a shelf: Virginia Cunningham University of Mississippi Medical Certificate , next to some jars of Picador’s good watermelon pickle.

I kept holding on to Flossy, but I asked, “Virginia, did you really steal all this?”

Still peering deep into Ruby, she said, “I borrowed some of it from the hospital that nobody’ll miss. And your kitchen. And the lab room at school—but they have dozens of microscopes, and we’ll give it all back.” She added, “I paid for the toothpicks.”

“Did anybody see you?” I asked. We did not need to add theft to our already long list of crimes.

Virginia turned on the squeaky stool and dropped the spoon into a tall pot. “No. I mean, Dr. Pittman was there seeing to an appendix patient, but he didn’t see me.” I was about to ask was she sure, but Flossy’d started sobbing.

“Can I put my twat up now, Doc?” Ruby asked sitting up. Virginia looked at her.

“Fine, may I put my va-gi-na away please?” Ruby said.

“Yes, no lesions, but there’s some scar tissue we should keep an eye on,” Virginia said. To me, she said, “Ruby’s been tested, she’s negative for everything.”

Ruby got up and pushed her dress down while Virginia scrubbed her hands, fingertips to elbow, in the old cast-iron sink. She put on fresh gloves. “Let me see your finger, Flossy,” Virginia said. I unwrapped my arm around her, but Flossy stayed put in the corner.

Ruby stood in front of her. “You’re the one that made everybody get tested, so give her your stinkin’ finger.” Ruby grabbed Flossy’s hand and held it out to Virginia, who took it gently, then swiped Flossy’s forefinger with alcohol and gave it a quick prick. Flossy whimpered.

I watched her blood get squeezed and sucked up a thirsty glass straw that Virginia let drip into a glass tube. She handed Flossy a cotton ball to press to her finger and took the vial to the table. She stirred it with a toothpick, glancing up at one of the new clocks the girls had bought today that she’d hung up on a nail. Then she tipped the blood droplets onto a glass slide and pinched a tiny, red-tipped dropper.

“This is just salt water, so it’s practically free …” she said. She stirred this with a different toothpick and tonged a vial from a metal holder. “Everything’s sterile, but we have to watch for dust down here.” She added a careful drop from the vial to the slide of blood. “This is antigen I took from the hospital … if you’ve got any beef heart powder in your pantry, we can make our own … and this … is just water”—she added a few drops—“I distilled on the stove upstairs.” Steady as a stone, she set the glass slide in the microscope and looked up at the clock again. The hanging bare bulb swayed as somebody walked across the kitchen floor.

Seconds passed, minutes. I held Flossy by her thin shoulders, and Virginia checked the clock again and peered in the microscope. “Congratulations, Flossy, you don’t have syphilis.”

“Jesus H.,” Flossy said, and she sobbed again.

Now, out on the back porch, Virginia took the white coat off and sat on the steps with the other girls. The twins had gone to bed; so had Charlie. I sank beside Esmeralda, who was inking more cards, using her knee as a table.

“Want a stick, Doc?” Ruby offered Virginia a cigarette. She was predictably unpredictable. I’d never seen Ruby offer anybody anything other than a possible broken nose.

“No thanks, I don’t have a good feeling about those things,” Virginia said. “I guess I better get back to campus and get some sleep.” But she stayed where she was, gazing up at the soft gold lights in the trees.

“By this time tomorrow this crib’ll be open, and we’ll all be making bank,” Ruby said.

“It’s about time. Any longer and I’s afraid my cherry was gonna grow back,” Flossy said.

“It’s actually called a hymen,” Virginia said, sitting up. “And for thousands of years men have used it as a patriarchal symbol of a woman’s worth. In fact in some places—”

“That’s very interesting, Doc, maybe we’ll discuss that at breakfast,” Flossy said.

I wondered what tomorrow night would be like, the yard crowded with men, waiting to go upstairs to my sister’s or Mrs. Tartt’s room—oh my God, what were we doing? How in the world had it come to this? Maybe it’ll rain and we won’t be able to open, I prayed. I looked up at the moon, bright as a nickel. Another clear September night.

“Be nice if this crib had a name,” Esmeralda said. With her black ink pen, she drew vines and flowers on the back of the card, leaving the center empty. “Something snazzy, like Le Grand Écart or Le Monocle in Paris.”

“You been there before?” Flossy asked. She looked ten years younger now that she knew she didn’t have syphilis. No gonorrhea either, which had to be a bonus.

Esmeralda nodded, turning ink into a long twisting vine. “I’m going back there. Soon as I make a couple hundred more bucks, I am on the next boat to Paris, and I’ll be drinking champagne at the Ritz.”

“Draw them cards fancy as you want,” Ruby said, “but there’s a couch in there reeks like a dead cat. No card can change a smell like that.”

“She’s right, don’t make it look too high-class of a house,” Flossy said. “Clean but dirty is what the customers want.”

“Whose house is this again?” Esmeralda asked.

“The Tartts’,” I said.

Esmeralda smiled. She seemed to own more teeth than I did. “Now that is a name,” she said, and in a few swift strokes she’d written in the center of the card:

The Tart Club

She looked at my expression. I’d call it alarmed . “Not clever?” she asked.

“Please, please don’t call it that.” We couldn’t do that to Mrs. Tartt. So Esmeralda drew more black vines, twisting and twining them around the words until they disappeared, like Hester Prynne’s letter A .