The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 36

A t the Foote, some items simply did not sell. Baby shoes, ice skates, those four lipstick tubes of Devil’s Delight, something called an “Electric Jewish Menorah” sent to us in error, two Flexible Flyer snow sleds—but also milk, butter, and eggs since, if you had a cow at home, you surely had a chicken, and if you had neither, you probably couldn’t afford to buy anything at the Foote anyway. Then there were the things people chose to buy but just from some-dang-where else. The look on Mr. Parkins’s face as he handed a neighbor a parcel he’d ordered from Sears, Roebuck and Co. that we probably carried right there on the shelf, but Sears, Roebuck and Co. offered it for cheaper and maybe better made and in a wider color selection. The consumer of 1933 was both parsimonious and fickle. A good businessman knew not to take it personal, but it still burned us up.

At the first wink of light Sunday morning, I opened my eyes and for a few seconds, I wasn’t quite sure where I was. Then the springs in my cot squeaked and— Oh, that’s right . I turned my sister’s house into a brothel and the items for sale ain’t selling.

I dragged myself downstairs to milk the cow and saw that Charlie had already made coffee. Something had changed between me and Charlie last night, after our discussion, which had continued into the early morning hours. The best way I could describe it was to say our friendship had darkened and grown thicker, like a roux for gumbo. There were still some hard feelings between us: She had tricked me into opening a brothel, and I’d kept the truth from her about the Heidelbergs. And Welty. And Garnett. But what we were both pretty sure about was we wouldn’t deceive the other one again. We needed to be a united front to figure out how to fix this business. It helped, too, that we liked each other’s company, and it didn’t hurt that we liked each other’s coffee, strong to where it made your words fry on your tongue.

By nine, the entire population of the house had gathered in the kitchen and Ruby’s Little Fella radio played the Grand Ole Opry from on top of the icebox. It was stuffy in here and hot and prostitutes kept getting in my way, but it was nice to have the company while I cooked everybody breakfast. It gave me a feeling that was the opposite of lonesome— full was how it felt. Like I’d eaten too much of something rich, on the verge of turning, but it was still better than not having eaten at all.

I flipped the first omelet onto a plate and handed it to Dixie. She’d cut the line in front of Ruby. The twins were always starving.

“ Watch it , Number Two,” Ruby snarled and jerked the plate out of her hands. Number Two was one of Ruby’s many names for Dixie, though she’d never called Trixie something as nice as Number One. “Thought you geeks preferred live chickens for breakfast.” A geek was the caged man at the fair who ate the live animals. Ruby’s loathing for most of us was unpredictable—one minute she’d offer you a cigarette, the next a knuckle sandwich—but she seemed to loathe the twins fairly predictably.

At the big round kitchen table, Charlie was wearing black and a look of utter confoundedness, squeezing her temples. We’d already gone over the facts of the matter: On Friday the girls had handed out almost fifty cards to boys at the depot, the filling station, the Tea Hound, the Mecca, and plenty of places in between, except campus, because they’d run out of cards. They’d flirted and made eye contact and even drawn promises from boys that they’d show up. Last night, after we’d split the earnings in half with the girls and divided the rest by three, everyone had made zero dollars and zero cents each.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Charlie said at the table. “There are 950 boys three miles down the road.”

“Well, 949 of ’em must be headed to the priesthood,” Ruby said, I suppose taking into account the one who’d shown up here but left.

“I think it’s this house is the problem,” Flossy said. “It just don’t feel like a whorehouse. I betcha nobody’s fadoodled in that pink room a mine in since maybe ever .”

I looked over at Flossy. She could really sense that? I banged the skillet to loosen the omelet.

Charlie stopped rubbing her head, maybe realizing how desperate it looked in front of her employees. “Things will pick up. We just have to do more advertising.” She went back to cutting up more of Frances’s calling cards.

“What if we tried a gimmick of some kind?” I said. “Like at the picture show. They punch a coupon, and after five shows you get a full place setting.”

“Hell is a coupon?” Ruby asked.

“Hell is a place setting?” Flossy said. “Sorry, Bird, that ain’t how this business works.”

Virginia came in the back door. No doctor’s coat on today, she wore a white nurse’s dress with a little white cap pinned to her head.

“Customers sure would like that nursing getup you got on,” Flossy said.

Virginia pulled the white hat off, scowling at it, and stuffed it in her dress pocket. “It’s ridiculous I have to wear a dress, when all the boys get to wear doctor coats.” Without the hat, her dark frizzled hair rose loose around her face. I’d heard Flossy ask her, not unkindly, “You look like a Jew I used to know from Brooklyn, you a Jew?” This had caught my interest because I’d never met a Jewish person before, but Virginia’d shrugged and said she’d never known her father. She hadn’t looked ashamed about it, she’d looked grounded and driven. She’d have to be, if she was really going to become a doctor: There’d been no breaks in life for Virginia, not from looks and not from money.

Eyes bright, eager to test for a fresh batch of diseases, she asked, “So did anybody show up with symptoms? Anybody’s condom slip off?”

When no one answered, I said, “No customers showed up.”

“You’re kidding .”

“What do you think about the girls doing some advertising on campus today?” Charlie asked Virginia.

“You want to hand out cards for a cathouse in front of teachers and parents? Even the churches’ll be up there recruiting for Sunday service. You better be careful.”

Virginia sat at the table and drew them a map of the campus. I brought her an omelet, topped with hoop cheese and parsley, and she took a bite and groaned her thanks. Pointing to X’s she’d drawn, she said, “Those are the men’s dorms, Barr, Falkner, and on down, but watch out for the house mothers, they’re like spies. And stay away from Ward, Isom, and Ricks, those are the girls’ dormitories, and don’t even look in the direction of the Lyceum.”

As she marked the map, she did not seem troubled a bit by the ethics of not just testing prostitutes in a root cellar turned laboratory but now ushering them to her former classmates as customers. Since she hadn’t charged Charlie for the first round of tests, clearly it was in Virginia’s best interest for this thing to work.

“You can probably catch some coming out of the Sigma Chi or the KA houses too, but I’m warning you, those frat boys can be enormous jerks. One of them poured sulfuric acid all over my lab book because he couldn’t get square with the idea of a girl getting a medical cert. I had to borrow money from my poor mother to buy a new one.”

“Whus his name? He need a lesson from Ruby Slipper?” Ruby popped her fist against her palm so hard, I could feel the smack.

Virginia shrugged. “I heard it’s only going to get worse in med school, so I better get used to it.” She tucked a lock of wild hair behind her ear. “I typed it up on hospital stationery that he was positive for gonorrhea and sent it home to his parents.” She added, “And to his fiancée’s parents.”

That got a good laugh from the room. At least for a second, I felt better about the world.

“The ones you ought to go after are the saps that don’t ever get dates,” Virginia said. “The girls call them the Last Resorts. There’s a bunch that hang around University Sandwich—they’re actually pretty nice, but don’t clobber them all at once. They’re kinda shy.” She marked the sandwich shop on the map too.

It was already nine thirty. “I better get dressed,” I said.

“Where you going on a Sunday morning?” Flossy asked.

“I have a date,” I said. “For church.”

Flossy stood up and followed me to the back stairs. Behind me, I heard her say, “Ruby, bring me the plucker .”

They sat me on the toilet upstairs, with Esmeralda standing back, appraising the procedure. “Ow!” I cried. It felt like a dang bee had stung my eyebrow. “You’re going to make my face even redder than it already is!”

Arms crossed, Esmeralda said, “More.”

“Don’t make them all thin and dramatic,” I said. “Remember, I’m just an ordinary.”

After a few more, Esmeralda said, “Alright, that’s good.” She opened a square blue train case and took out a bottle that said Max Factor on it and rubbed a thin layer of something creamy across my face.

“What is that?” I asked as she smoothed it in with her fingers.

“All the girls in the pictures use it,” she said. Then she dabbed rouge on my cheeks and powdered my face, cocking a gorgeous eyebrow to concentrate. If she thought she could make me look anything like her, she was about to be very disappointed.

“I want to see,” I said.

“Not yet. I want to put a little spit black on you, so close your eyes.” She rubbed a tiny wet brush onto a black cake of something and swept it up my eyelashes, holding it there. “Now blink. Let’s make these puppies curl.” She did this several times.

Next, she uncapped a deep red lipstick. “Your lips are nice, full,” she said, dabbing the lipstick on them, then wiping the edges with a tissued fingernail. She did not blot. Then Flossy bent me over and brushed my hair up—“Now flip it over”—and then down again. She parted it far to one side and pulled the heavier side back in a loose clip. Thanks to Charlie, I had a terrific wardrobe of clothes to choose from now—four dresses, two skirts, and three blouses, simple and slim like the style, with a bit of “de-luxe” added to it, as Flossy called it, which was brass or shiny buttons or some kind of trim. This morning, Charlie came into the bathroom holding a cream-colored dress, cut on the bias, printed with large magnolia blooms. It was lovely . Not too loud, not too hot.

“This one took me a while, but it’s done,” she said and winked, which I’d never seen Charlie do before. She unbuttoned the back for me and I stepped into it, and then I pulled on somebody’s rayon stockings that already smelled a little like feet, and Esmeralda handed me a pair of her expensive-looking black high-heeled oxfords. Esmeralda beamed when she looked me over, her cheeks full, like she couldn’t have waited another day to share the heels and her handiwork with me.

“Now look at yourself,” Esmeralda said and turned me around. I went closer to the mirror. This was much better than what Frances had done. My brown, usually lank hair—it looked like more . My eyebrows were slightly arched now, and whatever Esmeralda had rubbed on my skin made it not nearly so ruddy or splotched, and there they were— cheekbones . The lipstick was much bolder than what I’d borrowed from Frances a few times, and I had the sudden urge to wipe it off—I didn’t want to look like I was “trying.” Wasn’t that what Frances had said when I’d tried on the Devil’s Delight lipstick— why try ?

“Why’re y’all doing this for me?” I asked. I looked away from myself in the mirror, but I couldn’t help smiling. I hadn’t had close women friends since high school, before they’d all gone off and gotten married.

“Oh, I been wanting to do this a long time,” Flossy said.

But this didn’t feel like they were trying to fix me or like Frances who, even though she’d called me “sex-y,” only took an interest in my looks so I wouldn’t embarrass her. They seemed to simply want me to look like a better version of myself.

I’d spent most of my life marinating in other people’s lives: engagements, marriages, no divorces but a few left behinds, some comebacks, too many illnesses and accidents. Babies born, babies lost. So much death, so much life . I listened to all sorts of noisy opinions—Delta storytellers were well-known exaggerators and told tales rich as the soil. I certainly had my own. But it crossed my mind, as I rode to church that morning, that maybe I hadn’t been living life so much as watching life in Footely. I didn’t have to wonder much what’d enlightened me—in a few weeks, I’d fallen in love with a married man, had my eyebrows plucked, started a dance club when my sister was out of town, and was getting dropped off at church by five prostitutes. If all that hadn’t woken me up, probably nothing would.

“This is good—stop right here,” I said and got out on a rare deserted corner without a church in sight.

As I straightened Esmeralda’s black brimmed hat, Ruby leaned out the car window. “Hey! Hitch them titties up like I taught you to!” I hitched them as taught, and the ladies drove away.

I walked in the shade of the old oak trees to First Christ Methodist as thirteen church bells rang from all directions, a gentle reminder of what kind of town we were living in. Standing on the edge of the crowd out front, I felt strange being here without Frances or Mrs. Tartt. I reckoned life went on without us, even when our worlds seemed to be coming to an end. I saw Mrs. Tartt’s friend Mary Pepper, and of course Garnett Pittman with her constipated smile. People were standing around her, both women and men, and as I got closer, I heard, “Congratulations, Garnett! This is some real big news.” Lord, what did she win now? “The state AVL is so fortunate to have your leadership. Imagine, a president from our very own Oxford.”

So she’d done it. Garnett was the new president of the Anti-Vice League, and not just a local chapter but the main branch overseeing the entire state of Mississippi. From what I’d read, they weren’t just anti everything we were doing up the road, including merely staying open after eight p.m.; they were also opposed to miscegenation, the public mixing of races, and something called the tainting of “a pure Christian population,” whatever that was.

Dear Lord, if she knew about the dance club. Next to Garnett, her husband, Dr. Pittman, stared off, looking unusually unwrinkled in a dark suit. I could just about hear Garnett telling him, Your assigned assignment is do not embarrass me today. As the minister approached Garnett, I watched Dr. Pittman turn and look right at his wife. His brows drew together slightly, and he seemed to be asking himself, My God, what have you become? He shook the minister’s hand with a tired smile. Had I really seen that?

“Why Birdie, don’t you look all gussied up today,” Pripp said.

Gussied? Was that like hussied? I touched my made-up face and saw that other eyes were on me as well. They went too far and I look like a—

“That is just the cutest dress you got on with those magnolias all over it. Where’d you get that, Neilson’s? Did you get it at the markdown sale at Neilson’s?”

“I’m not sure …” I said. I didn’t think anyone had ever asked me where I’d bought something before.

“Birdie, can I ask you something?” Pripp came closer and whispered, “is Frances doing alright?”

I wasn’t sure what had gotten out, but Pripp sounded, surprisingly, like she genuinely cared. I knew Frances could use a friend right now, a telephone call, a letter from somebody who’d stick by her after this Rory mess was over.

“She’s having a hard time, Pripp.”

“Is it sumpin’ going on with her and Rory? I heard he got let go at the bank, and then it seemed odd how Frances just up and left town like that.” Pripp had laid a heavy white hand on my arm, and I sensed it, it was almost a smell. She didn’t care about Frances; she was looking for gossip she could spread over this nice town like a sticky jam.

“She and Rory are fine,” I lied. Then lower, so she’d know it was juicy, “Frances is too nice to say so, Pripp”—her lips parted in anticipation—“but she actually left to get away from people like you.”

She looked me up and down, hating my dress now, and walked off in a huff.

Just as the bells started ringing for people to go inside, I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. What a relief to see somebody I trusted.

“Hi, Jack,” I said.

“Hi … Birdie.” And then I had the delight of watching him drink me in. He took my hand, and a lady named Laurie P-something I faintly remembered from the Orphan walked by with her husband, saying, “Don’t they make a good-looking couple!” If I could remember her last name, I’d send her a thank-you note for that.

Among the last ones inside, we sat in the back pew of the church. The minister spoke about love and kindness, repeating John 15 a second time, and then again: “Love each other as I have loved you.” This is a good church , I thought, despite people like Garnett and Pripp. In fact, Oxford really is a good town. For the Lord’s Prayer, Jack took my hand and said it with me. While I wished Mrs. Tartt was here for this sermon, I thanked the Lord Jesus she was not here considering what we were doing in her house. For an hour I felt grateful and I felt hopeful.

We filed outside to see that a rainstorm might finally be coming. Since I was more than happy to skip the ass-kissing show starring Garnett Pittman, we trotted the two blocks to the square as fat raindrops started to fall. We made it up the wooden stairs before the rain could ruin Es’s beautiful hat and shoes, and he led me to a door marked No. 3 .

It was a simple white room with a waxed dark wood floor. A single bed that his feet probably hung off of was in the corner. There was a lovely pair of French windows with a drawn white curtain, a table, and a chair, as in one. I was sure he had to duck to go through the arched doorway to the little washroom, but overall it was clean and smelled like laundry soap and slightly damp sheets.

“I’m sorry there’s no drawing room in number 3.” He took his suit jacket off, hung it on a hook, and loosened his tie. He filled two glasses of water from the tap and set them on the table. I’d never been in a man’s apartment before—I’d never been in an apartment before. I stood there holding Frances’s black pocketbook. He sat on the end of the bed that faced the French windows, and the mattress springs groaned.

I sat next to him on the bed. It was warm in here, almost hot. I wondered if he slept without clothes on in this bed I was sitting on. Then I was nervous he knew I’d thought that. “Want me to pull the fried chicken out?” I asked. He’d told me he’d picked some up yesterday.

“Sure.” But he laughed and pulled me back, so we were both lying down on his bed, facing each other. He kissed me, and while I started out with nice intentions, real soon it was nothing my mother or sister would approve of. We could hear the rain tapping the pavement outside. I slid my hand against the back of his neck up into his blond hair, and I could feel all six feet four, maybe five, of him pressing against me through the thin dress. It was like we were trying to swallow the other one up, and this went on for many minutes until—

“Why’d you stop?” he asked.

I wanted a moment to appreciate this. His smooth, tan skin, with traces of lipstick around his mouth. I touched the scar on his cheek, half a thin question mark. “Where’d this come from?”

“Horse,” he said and pulled me back and we kissed like teenagers again.

When I unbuttoned a button on his shirt, he started unbuttoning my dress from behind, his fingers moving faster and more nimbly than mine. He slipped his hand inside the cloth and pressed it against the bare skin of my back, and I felt like I might melt right here. I wanted him to strip me down so I could have that delicious bare-skin feeling all over me. Another button, he was halfway there, my fingers were on his fourth button down—

“Why are you stopping? Again,” he asked.

“I just—am.”

I wanted to, oh I did . I’d never done this, though I certainly didn’t want him to know that. It was more complicated, much more complicated, and I wasn’t sure if it was even logical, but I was afraid if I did, it could ruin my chances with him. Because if he ever found out about the sordid, filthy business I was part of down the street, I had a feeling my innocence would be a lot more believable coming from somebody who hadn’t had sexual intercourse after church with a married man she’d known maybe three weeks.

“I think I need more time,” I said. Twenty-seven days to be exact, which was when we’d shut down, plus a day to erase the evidence.

“ Hey ,” he said, “it’s alright.” He pushed my hair out of my face. He looked down at his shirt, all the unbuttoned buttons. My God, I’d done that? “I’m just glad you’re here with me.”

We spent the rest of the rainy afternoon playing gin rummy and a card game he taught me called Russian bank and eating fried chicken. I told him about my job at the Foote, and he told me more about his teenage son, Sam. Normally a talkative, outgoing boy, quarterback for his high school team, Sam had grown quieter around Jack this year.

“He resents me terribly for leaving him and his mother alone. I miss him so much.” His face was grave. He sounded like he was getting strangled when he said this. “I need to be with him, Birdie. And it looks like the job at the bank’s winding up faster than I thought.”

“Oh.” Oh. “What does that mean?”

“I should finish up the last of the audit in the morning and then I go back to Jackson.”

“But are you … coming back here?”

“Yes,” he said and softer, “but I don’t know when yet.”

I felt stung, a little betrayed. He reached across the table and took my hand, and I studied the golden hairs on his forearms, wondering if there wasn’t more to this that he wasn’t telling me. “Why didn’t you tell me this sooner?”

He shrugged. “Because I didn’t want you to think I was, you know, pushing you to—like this was our last chance for a while to …” He furrowed his brow and glanced at the bed, the covers rumpled but still made. “But now that I think about it, it probably looks like I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to ruin my chances to … do what I still want to do.”

“If I’d known, I probably would’ve done it,” I said, and he groaned.

I stood up and he did too and took my hands in his. He hadn’t stopped touching me more than a few minutes since we’d walked in here. “I’ll be coming back as soon as I can, but while I’m gone, you think we could keep writing each other? I swear, I get excited every time Mrs. Nutt at the post office gives me one of your letters.”

“Sure,” I said.

He wrapped me up in his arms and leaned his forehead on mine and said, “Where did you come from?” like he had weeks before.

This time, I told him, “Mars.” It felt like an ending to something that’d only just started. I tried to make myself see the good in it. Least I wouldn’t have to worry about him driving out to the house.

We kissed goodbye and I walked to the depot and took a taxi home in the rain. So he wouldn’t drive me home, I’d lied and told him I was walking over to the Orphan, and he’d believed me.

At the tick of six on Monday evening, I gazed out at the empty road, kicking at the mosquitoes eating my ankles under the table. Charlie paced along the hedge of privet, reciting the rules; the repetition of it seemed to calm her nerves. “One dance minimum, ten dances max. If you hear ‘Night and Day,’ it means there’s trouble …” In her puritanical black dress with the white collar, dark hair neatly curled at her neck, she looked more like she ran a girls’ school than a sporting club. The girls at the cocktail tables mostly ignored her. They knew the rules by heart by now and had their own set of rituals: Esmeralda squeezed a white rabbit’s hind foot before she walked outside. It still had gray curved toenails. Trixie winked in a little compact mirror by the back door, then Dixie did it too. Ruby spat on a lucky penny, then rubbed it between her palms. Flossy’s wasn’t a superstition, it was more of a checklist: adjusting the string that held her face taut, clacking her false teeth in place, rearranging the crackly tissue stuffed in the lining of her pink dress—

“Hey drop that!” she barked at Ruby. “That’s three fags you lit on the same match. You trying to ruin everybody’s night?”

Even I knew three cigarettes on one match was bad luck. Ruby threw the match down. “Thanks, fish face.”

“Don’t mention it, bone breath.”

That afternoon the girls had strolled around the Ole Miss campus, which was about a mile west of the square, asking boys for a light, for directions, for the weather—“by the way, you busy this evening?” They’d given out over a dozen cards. But still, at six thirty, then seven, then seven thirty, no cars, nothing.

Then at quarter till eight, I finally heard a motor. Flossy, who’d been sitting with me at my telephone table, said, “’Bout time.” She laid her hand of cards facedown. “No peekin’,” she said and went to stand with the other girls. I hated this part, them standing there like items on a shelf for sale. I watched two boys get out of a taxi and come this way. The short one had on high-waisted pants, his dark hair spread open, showing a long center part. I could practically hear his daddy teaching him how to comb the Brylcreem through it. The other was tall and skinny, studious looking, in a dark suit and large black glasses. Mr. Binny began playing a terminally slow version of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” the beat an old lady with a cane and a flyswatter. As they approached the opening in the hedge, they eased to a stop and stared, the way the only other “customer” had on Saturday before he’d run away.

I studied them, wondering, was that disappointment I was seeing on their faces? Was it that our front simply looked too legitimate? With its sparkly ornaments and lights in the trees behind the huge white antebellum home, ferns on the back porch in my mother’s same white wicker stands? Would we do better if it was sleazier or more against-the-law looking? Smelling like cheap perfume and liquor?

The tall boy in the big glasses cleared his throat and approached my table. He looked like an accountant in the making. “Evening, ma’am. Is this the uh … establishment we were informed of by the lady with a card?”

Like I’d rehearsed it, I nodded and said, “It’s ten cents a dance, one dance minimum, cold drinks are a quarter, cigarettes a nickel.” It felt like I’d been waiting years to say that. He set what looked like four dimes down on the table but kept his fingers on them, looking back at the road—I guess nobody liked to be first to the party, though it seemed like in this business you really wouldn’t want to be last . Before he could change his mind, Ruby came and snatched his arm and dragged him to the dance floor. I handed his friend their tokens. I was no expert but if it took that much muscle to keep a customer from leaving, something was not working.

The boy with all the Brylcreem and wide pants approached Dixie, but some unseeable force made him choose identical Trixie instead. I took a deep breath and watched the two couples waltz to Mr. Binny’s slow, steady dirge. The Brylcreem boy was a full, stiff arm’s length away from Trixie, while Ruby held the tall one a little closer, his lips moving silently, counting his steps, one-two-three, one-two-three . After a minute, he snuck his friend a glance— Why are we dancing again? The whole ruse was so awkward, so painful, they could easily have been dancing with their sisters. When the song ended, Mr. Binny started a catatonic version of “Moonlight and Roses,” the notes turning like a very slow wagon wheel.

“What the hell? We dancing or dying out here?” I heard Ruby holler.

I thought the accountant’s terrified face imparted it best: This is a very inefficient prostitute operation. Not even the prostitutes looked like they wanted to go upstairs and do it anymore. It was so unprovocative that when Ruby tickled her boy’s neck, he slapped at it, saying he thought it was “a mosquita.” Charlie’s mouth was a flat, grim line and I faced the road. It was just too embarrassing to watch this disaster happening. We needed to come up with a completely different front. Maybe Flossy’d been right, that a Bible-selling business was a better idea than this, and why not, I was already going to hell for this—but then, it did work. Sort of. I looked back and Ruby’d strong-armed the tall stiff-armed boy, or his shirt anyway. Drug him by the sleeve into the darkness on the other side of the house, to the side door. Maybe fearing being left alone to this terrible music, the Brylcreem boy and Trixie skittered after them. I imagined Ruby at the side door, hissing the password, “Frances,” and Charlie, who’d rushed inside, opening it. And then Mr. Binny’s funeral song ended, and his players laid their instruments down, and we waited. The other girls went back to reading Frances’s old Good Housekeeping magazines.

Half an hour later, the boys came out. They walked past me, heads down, hands stuffed in front pockets. The whole thing felt awfully anticlimactic, though I was aware that was a strange way to put it. We did not get any more customers after that.

“Polly,” I said. She was pushing a baby carriage out of City Grocery, wearing her white uniform.

“Miss Birdie, how you doing?” she said and smiled. In the pram, I saw a tiny white baby fast asleep.

“I’m alright, how about you? You found work?”

“Yes ma’am, the Lamars give me a day here and there, but I’m still looking for full-time. Miss Birdie, we been wondering, how Miss Viktoria doing? We try and call the house, but the telephone been cut off.”

“Things are … not so good,” I said. I wondered if she’d heard about the club from Mr. Binny, but she hadn’t seemed to. “She and Frances went to stay with her sister down in Jackson.”

“No sign a Mr. Rory yet?”

“Not yet,” I said. “How’s Picador doing?”

She rolled her eyes and chuckled. “She still Picador, but she alright. She ain’t had this kinda time on her hands in a while.”

“So she hasn’t found work yet?” I asked.

“She been looking but,” she shook her head and sighed, “nobody wanna hire a colored woman that old,” she said, and I wanted to cry. “It don’t make it any easier with a mouth like Picador’s. The Tartts was used to it, but to somebody new, it sho do sound fresh.”

“That’s my favorite part about Picador.”

“Mm-hmm,” she said, smiling. “Miss Viktoria’s too. When you hear from her, you tell her I said hello?”

I told her I would and if I heard of any kind of work, I’d sure let them know.

As I approached city hall, I had to slow down so I didn’t run smack into Dr. Pittman, who was coming out. I waited as he walked in the other direction and then I went into the post office.

“You got some things in the outta-town box,” Mrs. Nutt said, and at first I thought, Jack , but it couldn’t be; he’d only left for Jackson yesterday. She handed me a letter with Frances’s handwriting on it and another one from home.

“While I got you … you know this lady?” She slid over a box marked Dead Letters with a single envelope in it addressed to Mrs. Charlie Lefleur . The globe light over my head seemed to brighten a bit. I hesitated—should I say I didn’t? Would I give Charlie away if I accepted it? But then Mrs. Nutt said, “I done ast everbody that come in here today. Somebody suggested maybe she’s one a them boarders the Tartts got out at Idlewilde.”

So people knew about that . I thought about Welty Pittman walking out before me and prayed she hadn’t asked him. “Actually, I think do know her,” I said and quickly took it and stuck it in my pocket. “I’ll find her and give it to her.”

“Thanks, Birdie, and don’t tell the guv’ment,” Mrs. Nutt said, which she always said since it was supposedly illegal to give somebody another person’s mail.

When I was out of sight, I squinted at Charlie’s letter from under my sun hat. It was from the Department of Education, Los Angeles, California. Maybe Mrs. Nutt hadn’t asked Welty Pittman because she’d been waiting on me to come in. Or maybe Welty’d had other business in city hall and hadn’t even been to the post office. If he had seen it, there was nothing I could do about it now except worry, and my dance card was already chock-full of that.

I took out Frances’s letter and read it on the walk home. Except for a telegram saying they’d arrived almost two weeks ago, I hadn’t heard squat from her. She wrote that they’d looked up, down, across hill and valley in Jackson and there’d been no sign of Rory. That the Jimmy fellow at the shoe store’d been no help either. Birdie, you wouldn’t believe how quick money goes here. They won’t so much as give you a paper cup of water without charging you two stingy cents for it! We’re already down to only three little dollars, which means we’ll have to head back home soon

I looked up at the Percy mansion ahead. “Soon”? What did that mean, “soon”? As in this pot of water will be boiling soon or “soon” as in compared to the rest of us, Meemaw will be dead soon? I turned the letter over …

unless you could send us a little more money to keep looking for him?

Where in the world had all their money gone to so fast? They’d had thirty dollars when they’d left here. Last night’s two customers had brought in nine dollars and forty cents, and when we split that with the girls and paid Mr. Binny and divided the rest among three partners, it came to one dollar and thirteen cents I’d risked my life’s freedom for. So no, I could not send more money, Frances. I wasn’t even sure we could pay for groceries soon.

In Even Worse News was a letter from Mama, which I assumed had to be worse because it was from her.

Dear Birdie,

Are you alright? Why haven’t we heard from you or Frances? When in the world are you coming home? Do you think you might be wearing out your welcome?

Half a dozen more questions later, I finally arrived at Birdie, I have some bad news.

Oh, Mama. I sighed. Of course you do.

Mr. Parkins hired somebody else to do the books at the store. He said what with his angina getting worse, Mrs. Parkins has to stay home and see after him, and the store can’t run itself.

I wasn’t surprised but hired who? Who would work there for as little as I did? Like Mama’d heard me:

Her name is Ida and she’s a cousin of some kind and not from around here. I tell you, she has plumb took over the place. She will tell anybody comes in how too many customers aren’t paying their tabs and it took her three nights without sleep to get the books straightened out.

Oh, come on, I could’ve done those books and gotten home in time to listen to The Lone Ranger on the radio before supper.

Now she has put up a sign on every wall that says “No Credit Given Over Twenty-Five Cents,” and this morning I watched her turn away colored Arthur AND the poor sharecropper family still living on the Tate property. Ida let me charge some coffee and flour out of consideration that you’d worked there like you did but said she will need to cut us off if we don’t settle our bill soon. We owe twelve dollars and forty-five cents. She had it typed up on a paper even!

I stopped reading and blinked in the bright sun—I’d lost my job. It wasn’t much, but it was what we’d had to get by on.

I found Charlie on the back porch, furiously sweeping away dirt that hardly existed. “This came for you,” I said and handed her the letter.

She took it and her eyes widened. “They were supposed to address it to Idlewilde, not to me personally.” She opened it.

“What is it?”

She skimmed it and took a beat to answer. “I registered Meg for sixth grade.” She frowned. Tears filled her brown eyes, so rare on Charlie.

“Charlie … do you even have a plan?”

“Yes.” She stuck her chin up at me. Her eyes were red, and she swatted back a tear.

“What is it?”

“I’m going to make enough money to support my child, and then I’m going up there and getting her.”

I sighed. It came from my soul. “Well, I think your plan stinks, Charlie.” It was basically kidnapping. And if Welty could manage to keep Garnett’s hands off Meg, Meg might very well be better off with the Heidelbergs. Charlie showing up there could ruin that.

Charlie didn’t say anything, just went back to sweeping.

That evening, from my telephone table, I watched a red-hued sunset stretch over the green unkempt fields across the road. Surely someone would venture out our way on this lovely pink evening.

And yet that night cost us money. Mr. Binny came to play; the customers did not. Not a single one.

Rain. Of the many things we feared showing up here, we’d forgotten to dread rain.

It started late Tuesday night, a steady downpour that made me sleep like the dead. When I woke up early Wednesday morning, I wasn’t sure what the sound even was. It had only rained here twice, and not for long, since that day I’d arrived in mid-July. As I milked the cow in the downpour, she shuddered in relief. Charlie looked ready to faint, though. Not that we’d been expecting crowds at the club that night, but I doubted anyone would make the trip up sloppy Lamar Boulevard in this mess.

Charlie did what she usually did to stave off panic. She started scrubbing things—walls, floors, countertops, the trim above the doors. Every bedsheet whether it needed it or not (most unfortunately did not). Since she couldn’t hang them outside, she ran clotheslines through the front sitting room, from picture hook to curtain rod, draping wet linens over them. “This is hell,” Charlie said.

After lunch, she backed into the dining room, carrying a tray of cups, announcing, “Teatime, everyone.”

Teatime was the worst time, and in this business that was saying something. I followed her, carrying a five-layer caramel cake I’d made out of flat boredom. It was gorgeous. Charlie lined up the jelly jars on the card tables, each with three inches of warm yellow liquid. A midwife in Freedmen Town mixed the herbs up for her—ground raspberry leaf, prickly ash, blue cohosh, and yam—and it tasted like dime-store perfume boiled with hot cabbage and cigarette ash. Supposedly the concoction would keep the girls from bleeding or at least make them bleed lighter. There was silence as cups were thrown back, followed by soft gagging sounds.

“My God, how can something that smells this awful taste even worse?” Esmeralda said, and she never complained.

“Like Flossy after a Saturday night,” Ruby said. Only Charlie was exempt, thanks to her trip to the Mississippi State Insane Hospital, but me and Virginia had to drink it too, since, according to Flossy, “if one a us starts, the whole house starts. It’s one a the mysteries a being female.” Virginia claimed that, while the tea probably wouldn’t work in so short a time, she never underestimated the colored midwives. They serviced women all around the county and they’d saved a lot of women’s lives, colored and white. She drank the midwives’ tea out of solidarity, with them and with us.

Virginia came in just about every day to “keep an eye on her patients.” I thoroughly enjoyed having her around even if, without any customers, there wasn’t much point. When she didn’t have to rush back for a hospital shift, she’d sit in the dining room and study from a book called Gynecological Procedure , which she was doing now.

“And listen to this ,” she said to the table, out of the blue, no preamble. “For a female exhibiting fainting, fluid retention, irritability, and impulsive sexual desire, the diagnosis is very likely a case of female hysteria and if left untreated the patient will have a tendency to cause trouble for others .” She glared up at her audience, nostrils flared, offended as an old aunt by a short skirt. “Can you believe this nonsense?” When no one answered her, she raised a finger. “Well just wait, because there’s more: The most effective treatment to alleviate the condition is to perform masturbation on the female patient , to be administered by a qualified physician .” Virginia leaned back and crossed her arms. “So they’re saying if a woman pays a man to do it, he’s ‘qualified,’ but if a man pays a woman to do it, she’s a whore. I swear this book makes me want to absolutely scream.”

“Makes me want to go see the doctor,” Flossy said, and Ruby snickered.

“Who wants caramel cake?” I said. I’d just sliced eight pieces onto Picador’s blue-and-white dessert plates. “Anyone? Dixie?” No one took a plate except for me. I tasted mine and it was divine, the caramel creamy with a touch of salt. I’d added almond extract to the cake and more vanilla to the icing than the recipe called for.

Most at the table were busy desecrating Frances’s calling cards. There seemed to be an endless supply of them, a sign of how often Frances anticipated handing her name to people who already good and well knew it. Charlie was writing details in her perfect Palmer method, while on separate slips of paper Ruby was scribbling messages in first-grade block letters. They reminded me of the fortunes you got in the little Oriental cakes we used to get at the county fair.

FIRST FIVE GET A SPISHAL PRIZE , Ruby wrote. I doubted it was a cookie.

GESS WHY WEDNESDAYS THE BEST NIGHT AT THE CHARLIE CLUB?

“How’s that for a name?” Ruby held it up for Charlie to see.

“We can’t call it that,” Charlie said. “Think of another one.”

“Fine, we’ll call it the Ruby Slipper Club then,” Ruby said.

“Fine,” Charlie said.

“We’re not naming our house after this stinkin’ quiff,” Flossy said. This wasn’t the second or even the third time we’d discussed this. Besides the aforementioned Charlie Club and Ruby Slipper Club, the names the girls had come up with were: the Twat Club, the No Customer Club, the Tart Club, the Cheap-Ass Ain’t Got No Furniture Club, the Supperless Club, because last night they’d had to spread the pimento cheese on the bread themselves, the Sorriest Strangest Club I Ever Worked In Club and the Calamity Club. If these were really the choices, I suppose I’d choose the last.

Ruby lit a cigarette; we were at the table, after all. “How ’bout we just call it the See You Next Tuesday Club.” For a second, no one spoke. Then Flossy laughed, high and staccato.

“I don’t get it,” Dixie said, frowning.

“Spell it, geek, if you even can,” Ruby said.

“I like it,” Flossy announced. “The See You Next Tuesday Club is now open for business.”

Even Virginia had to hide a smile, but she was blinking like the word stung her eyes.

“Can y’all at least try the cake I made?” I said, pushing a plate to Ruby. Her approval was harder to earn, so I valued it more. I didn’t care that it’d taken me three hours to make; time we were rich in, but sugar and vanilla were precious ingredients when you were broke.

Ruby took a bite, then a second. “Hell, shit, and fire, this is a damn good cake.”

“ Thank you , Ruby.” I’d made a three-cussword cake. You took your compliments where you could get them. Finally, the rest took plates and started eating.

“Esmeralda, why don’t you and the twins try giving out more cards on campus today,” Charlie said.

Esmeralda leaned over to see through the window. It was absolutely pouring out. “It looks like soup out there.”

“If we ain’t careful, the wrong people are gonna notice this card shit, Charles. We need something better and quick,” Flossy said. “Tell ’em what you told me, Virginia.”

At the far end, Virginia looked at Charlie at the head. She seemed reluctant to say it. “The frats are driving all the pledges up to Priscilla’s starting tonight. Though maybe not in this weather. They do it every year, and it’ll go on through the weekend before classes get serious on Monday.” It sounded like an apology.

“Well, a damn card ain’t gonna convince the boys to come here instead a Priscilla’s,” Ruby said. “Know what I heard she’s got up there?”

“What’s she got?” Trixie asked.

“She’s got the—hell, I don’t know what the thing’s called.”

“I’ll tell ya what she’s got.” Flossy doled out her fingers, one by one. “She got furniture that don’t smell like a dead cat, she don’t make ya dance one minimum, her music don’t sound like Granny Nan’s funeral, and she’s got the thing, the whatsit.”

Ruby nodded. “You put a nickel in it and it plays your song.”

Mouth full of cake, Virginia said, “Priscilla’s got a Selectophone?”

“And a private telephone line,” Esmeralda said.

“Does she let the girls use it?” Dixie asked.

“Yeah but she charges double the rate,” Flossy said.

“She sells all the liquors too, not just brown, and she’s got twice as many girls as we do,” Esmeralda said.

“She also cheats them out of their pay,” Charlie said. “Tell them that part, Flossy.” She wasn’t liking this talk and neither was I, but I figured if she didn’t let them talk here, they’d just do it behind her back in their rooms.

“Oh she’s a cheater alright and a sicko, but she knows how to get the biz,” Flossy said.

“Know what I think?” Ruby said, leaning back on the legs of her chair, which I’d told her not to do. “I think we oughta pack up our shit and move the See You Next Tuesday Club to Priscilla’s where we can make some real dough.” She laughed, a low rumble, but didn’t sound like she was joking.

Charlie was burning holes into Ruby. Very clearly, she said, “I hear you say that again and I’ll call you a goddamn taxi myself.” And she got up and left the dining room.

Later that afternoon, there was a rap on the front door. A boy in a brown suit and flat cap, dripping wet with rain, said, “Telegram for Birdie Calhoun.” He handed it to me. He looked about nineteen with wire glasses and an Ole Miss pin on his collar.

“Hey, hold on a sec.” He probably thought he was getting a tip, but I came back and handed him one of Charlie’s cards.

He looked at it. “I think I heard a this place …” he said, looking around the porch.

I nodded—that was good, it meant the word was getting out, even if it wasn’t bringing them in. I smiled in the way that didn’t show the gap between my teeth. I felt creepy. “Closer than Priscilla’s. Be sure and bring money,” I said and shut the door on him. I leaned against it and tore open the envelope, hoping it was from Jack but praying it wasn’t from Frances saying coming home “soon” actually meant coming home soon .

TELEPHONE RELEE HOTEL AT 900 TOMORROW STOP VERY IMPORTANT WE HAVE NEWS ABOUT RORY STOP

She’d already gone over the ten-word limit so why didn’t she just say what the dang news was? Now I had to get through the next sixteen-some hours worrying about it.

We didn’t even open the dance club that night. It was raining too hard. By eight it’d turned to a mist, so we were taking shifts sitting on the front porch, in case a car happened to show up. Charlie’d gotten word to Mr. Binny not to come, and the girls were in the parlor listening to Ruby’s radio. When it was my shift, I rolled the phonograph table out on the front porch for something to listen to. I’d have to change the needle and wind it up with the screwdriver after each record, but it was something to do.

Sitting on a towel on the front steps, I listened to Wayne King croon “Wabash Moon” and thought about Jack. The rain reminded me of that downy afternoon we’d spent at his apartment. I missed him deeply, darkly, in a way that I knew was not realistic—we’d only had what, four dates? And I ought to be glad he wasn’t here to come by and see what I was a part of.

I lit a half-smoked Lucky I’d stuck in my pocket, inarguably Flossy’s from the deep teeth marks and red lipstick so bright it looked lit on both ends. She hadn’t sold any specialties since we’d opened, so what could it hurt. When the original owner of the cigarette came outside, I stubbed it out quick so she couldn’t see it—nobody needed to know I did things like that.

“Why you smoke them old butts, Bird,” Flossy said and sat next to me on the towel. “Here.” She offered me her pack and I took one out and she drew one for herself. We smoked awhile, watching the quilt of fog hang over the road. The night felt ripe for a nice, strong tornado to barrel through, a perfect ending to the Calamity Club.

After a while, Flossy asked, “You miss your family much, Birdie?”

“ No. ” I’d said it fast and laughed. “Sorry, I’m just terrified of them. Or some of them.”

“Why? They like you, don’t they?”

“Yeah, but they won’t after this.”

I drew in smoke and thought about that first morning Flossy’d come to the house. It’ll be like a family. That was what had made Flossy turn around and come back inside.

“You miss your family, Flossy?” Maybe she’d asked me so I’d ask her, as people sometimes did.

“Oh sure, some real characters in my family. It’s a while since I seen ’em.” She pushed her top teeth up with her thumb, grimacing a little at the pain. “But, you know the thing what I was telling ya about my uncle and all? How I choosed me since my sis was too young?”

I nodded. That story would probably never leave me.

“She hates me on account a this is what I do. Ain’t that something?”

“But you did it so your sister didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Flossy said and then smaller, “ I know. ” She was staring straight ahead. “Look, I ain’t saying I’m a saint or nothing, I ain’t saying that. But she really thinks you can do this at age twelve and then grow up and just go do another thing? You can’t do no other thing after this one, not really. Sure, you can go get the job in maybe the fancy dress store or the butcher, putting the frilly shoes on the little chicken feet, but you’ll still be doing this in your sleep.” She watched as the fog billowed up the road. “Do this every night for the rest a your life.”

There was no joke to make here or smart-aleck comment. I moved closer to Flossy so my shoulder was touching hers. She wasn’t young like Ruby and she wasn’t beautiful like Esmeralda; she didn’t have a career ahead of her like Virginia did and she didn’t have a twin. All she had was a specialty the college boys liked to joke about, but the truth was, Flossy was getting old.

“When’s the last time you saw your sister?” I asked.

“It’ll be two years next Thursday I went up there. For my birthday. She called me a succubus whore and run me off her porch.”

“Your sister’s starting to make my sister look like a real treasure, Flossy,” I said.

“The password, right?”

I nodded, sort of laughed.

“Don’t let her treat you like trash, Bird. There was anybody left in my family besides her, I wouldn’t take it. But they’re all dead or disappeared and didn’t bother to tell me where to.”

A fresh patter of rain blew in, tossing the trees side to side with a whooshing sound. “I’m a little scared we ain’t made no money here,” she said.

“Yeah. Me too.” I got that sinking dread in my heart again, of them taking our house. And this one. “Where will you go after this place closes, Flossy?” I prayed it was somewhere besides Priscilla’s.

“I dunno,” she said like she was just now wondering, but then her voice cracked a little. “I ain’t got the choices I used to. Guess I’ll give New Orleans another shot.” She sucked on her cigarette. “Maybe I’ll try going up to Dakota and see will she let me past the porch. People change their mind, don’t they?”

I thought again of my daddy’s story about the Mississippi River going south to north, proving to me that anything can change. “They certainly can.”