Last Night at the Blue Angel (11 page)

Mr. Miller said hello, how are you, how's the family, etc. And,
Now, how many of you are there?

Seven
,
sir
.

He leaned forward.
Is that a Polish imperative?

He gave me a simple math test, looked it over, and threw it away.
Mostly
,
Miss Hutnik
,
I just need you to be pleasant and attractive and efficient. It would boil down to that
, he said.
Think you can manage?

Yes
,
sir
.

Well, then, let's start you today
, he said, and it occurred to me that with love as my motivation, I might be capable of just about anything.

The work was easy. Math mostly. And writing numbers in tiny boxes.

Laura and I ate lunch together on the bench in the alleyway. Her mother packed her twice as much as she could eat and she shared with me.

She's trying to fatten me up for Alan Lawry
, she said, handing me a piece of cold fried chicken. I took a bite.

She what?

Nothing
.

I imagined Laura with Alan and had to force myself to chew the food in my mouth and swallow. It was all temporary—us, work—and would end as soon as some man came along and put us away in a little place in town or back on another farm. We were something to exchange hands, like cattle. I thought of Mother. I'd never seen her do anything but work and pause to catch her breath.

My Mother played the piano. When she was young. Back in Poland
.

Your mother?
said Laura.
She any good?

I've never heard her. It's just a story now
.

Well, that's terribly sad
, said Laura.

We finished our lunch and leaned our backs against the building's warm bricks.

Sister I's brother sent her some new records
, I said.

Laura looked straight ahead.
That so?

She said we could listen to them if we wanted. Saturday
.

Laura became very still. Then she ran back into the bank and came out with a sheet of stationery and a pencil. She tapped her pencil on the paper.

What are you doing?
I asked.

A plan. If we're going to do this
,
we need a foolproof plan
.

O
n Saturday, Laura and I prepared an elaborate lunch in the Miller kitchen. I had the plan fixed in my head and every move I made passed through it.

Mr. and Mrs. Miller sat at the table, he with the paper, she with the latest copy of
Look
magazine. “Margaret . . . the Girl and the Princess” was written across the cover below side-by-side images of Margaret the woman and Margaret the Princess. She was somehow entirely the same and entirely different and it gave me hope for myself.

Are you planning to feed the troops?
asked Mrs. Miller, scanning the food on the counter.

No
, said Laura.
Just us
. She lined a basket with a linen towel.

And Sister
, I said.

Laura scowled at me.

Mrs. Miller bent to check her lipstick in the toaster.
I could've sworn Sister was going to Topeka for the day
.

No
, said Laura.

And what is it you're doing?
Mrs. Miller asked, folding wax paper around a sandwich.

We're helping her strip the desks. Horrible things written on them
,
horrible little pictures
, said Laura with a shudder.

Seems like she could make the boys clean 'em up
, said Mr. Miller, suddenly listening.
No doubt they did it
.
Unless it was Naomi
, he teased. Like I belonged to him, to them.

I told you
, said Laura,
she's reformed
.

Bad girls don't reform
,
doll. They just get better at hiding
. He stood up and stretched.
Isn't that right
,
sugar pie?
he asked his wife.

I'm not even listening
, she said.

I'm off, then
, he said.

On a Saturday?
complained Mrs. Miller

Money doesn't know from Saturday
, he said. And he kissed her.

Mrs. Miller strolled into the parlor with her cigarette case.
Everyone's leaving me
.

Mother
,
David said I could get something from his room before he left. May I?

Mrs. Miller glanced at her as she lit her cigarette. It was a look that said,
None of these matters interests me at all
.

We ran upstairs into David's old room. Black-and-white pictures of musicians that had been cut out of magazines were taped to the wall. Laura opened the third drawer of his bureau and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tucking it in her shirt. Then she flipped through a stack of albums and took two. She hugged them to her as we ran down the stairs.

I followed her out the front door. As the screen door bounced in its frame she called,
Bye
,
Mother!

Bye
,
Mrs. Miller
, I said, and we raced the dogs to the road.

It was hot. My stomach leaped behind my ribs. I searched Laura's face but saw nothing to suggest nerves, guilt, fear.

What does David do in Kansas City?

Oh
,
let's see
,
gambling
,
women
,
jazz
,
whatever he wants
.
At least he lives far enough away to not be a COMPLETE embarrassment!
Laura said, imitating her mother.

I laughed at her. She walked taller, having made me laugh.

The schoolhouse seemed a long way off. The heat's haze wiggled the lines of the road, of the fields, of the horizon. I thought of David. How different his world must look from this.

You should go visit him someday
, she said.

Why don't you?
I asked.

They would never let me. They watch me like a hawk
, she said.

A truck went by us, the driver waved, and the draft of his passing knocked us into the weeds for a step or two.

But you could. Seems like no one watches you very carefully
, she said.

They do
, I said, though they didn't. They didn't watch me, they tolerated me.

Race you
, said Laura, running up to the schoolhouse.

I
n Sister's room there were peonies in a glass jam jar. I unlocked the record player with the key around my neck and Laura pulled an album out of its sleeve. She handed the sleeve to me; there was a red saxophone with black wings on the cover, a sketch of a man, a black hand and an ivory trumpet, a finger on the valve slide.
Bird and Diz
, the album read. Short sweet words, words from another world. I had to hear them out loud.
Bird and Diz
,
Bird and Diz
.

The music bounced in my chest. It rose around us like a dark tent, shielding us from everything we knew, carving a space for us. The saxophone pierced me. Laura watched my face like she was putting me to a test. She turned up the volume carefully so as not to knock the needle.

We helped each other out of our clothes and I closed my eyes. There was just the music inside of me and Laura's hands and mouth, her weight. My mind was pulled here and there by her skin, her breath, to the river, to David and his women, his long hands, to touching myself in the bath while the others waited their turn. The music rushed this way and that, notes popping and fighting one another then flipping and tumbling down like playing cards whipped into the air.

I covered her with my mouth, felt all of her with the skin of my upper lip. She tried to stop me when I moved down her body and pushed open her legs with my elbows.
What are you doing?
she said, and I didn't really know; and I did.

We rested. I stared at her. Here was her face imagining things, here was her looking at me like she knew something I didn't. There was so much to this woman, so much to learn and memorize. Would there be enough time? Would I be allowed? She pulled the key and string from around my neck and put it over her head, resting the key between her breasts.

The music stopped and we lay there listening to the needle bump the center. She stood up, stepping over me to turn the record over. I studied her body as she bent to place the needle. Kneeling down behind her, I slid my hand up between her thighs. She reached back and braced her hands on my shoulders. I rested my cheek against her, touched her barely, and felt her swell. Then her legs started to tremble as I lowered her back to the floor so I could see her face, where she was going, her face without me.

W
hile this was happening, while we were cutting ourselves loose from everything we'd known before, Mrs. Miller discovered the forgotten basket of food in the kitchen and maybe shook her head, saying,
oh
,
those girls
, and decided to walk it to us, because Mr. Miller had taken the car. So she wandered down the drive and up along the road and she probably thought it was hotter than she expected, like we did, was irritated and maybe thought about turning back but she didn't turn back. She looked for us in the empty schoolhouse, I imagine, before hearing the music and following the sound right to us, hot and naked, tangled on a blanket on the floor while Bird and Diz blew, pushed, pulled, fell down, flew up, notes shooting everywhere like the world would fall apart if they stopped. She dropped the basket in the doorway, her hand just opening on itself, and the glass pudding dish cracked inside.

She righted the basket before she turned and walked away.

Laura scurried like she was suddenly stuck under something heavy, and held her shirt to her chest as she ran out the door. I tried to stop her but she jerked her arm from me. When she caught up to her mother, who was walking stiffly down the road, her mother's voice flew out of her—a short wail like an animal snapped in a trap. Laura stopped. Stood in the road and watched her walk away. I was frozen and waited for her to turn around. I believed we could be okay if she would just turn around, come back to me.
Turn around
,
Laura. Just turn around
.

I stood absolutely still, staring at Laura's back. Her skin was ghostly in the afternoon sun, flushed in places, marked. The sound of her mother's shoes on the gravel road became faint. I begged Laura with my heart to turn around. I felt my bare feet on the rocks and promised to God I would take care of her.
Come to me
. She did turn around. And my breath fell out of my lungs and I smiled but she raised her hand to me like you would to stop a truck in the road.

She walked back to the schoolhouse, dragging her shirt in the dust, then dressed, collected her things, left. As she walked back down the road she pulled the key off her neck and dropped it in the weeds.

When I could no longer see her, I went slowly up the road and found the key. I lifted it from a shock of thistle and put it back around my neck.

Then I walked.

CHAPTER 14

D
OWN THE HILL
, past the copse of cottonwood, toward the creek. I stepped into the water and moved against the current, the silky mud sliding around my feet, small, moss-wrapped stones shifting, the water pushing and pulling my balance. Soldier Creek dumps into the Kansas River. All that rushing just to become something else. I felt its cold, cold water and the hot sun on my hair. I somehow knew, standing there, that my world was going to drop like a clean sheet slipping from the line and I was going to be all right.

When I got home I played with the little ones in the yard. I smelled their heads. My sisters huffed past me for being gone all day. A wet pile of laundry sat in a basket on the ground, so I strung it up.

I listened to my family talk during the meal, not eating. I watched them as though I'd never seen them before—the silverware tinking tin plates, the rush, the laughter, the freckles, the dirty nails. It was how I imagined the dead twin watched us when I was little, lingering, suspended. I put my fork down and stood at my place. Everyone looked. I started to sing.
“There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There's power enough in heaven to heal the sin-sick soul.”

The little ones chewed their food. Murielle scowled. Mama cocked her head at me.
Where did you learn that?

From Sister Idalia. A Negro woman taught her it
.

Mama and Father looked at each other, and then down at their plates.

There's more to the song
, I said.

I think we've heard enough
, said Mama.

D
inner was over and I'd washed the last plate when Mr. Miller appeared at the back door. I stood in front of him, my heart pounding, and he looked through the screen door and through me. He came in without speaking and took off his hat and smoothed his hair. He was still in the suit he wore that morning when I cooked pudding in their kitchen and he teased me. I slipped out of the room and hid under the stairs and wondered how I might escape.

I heard Mama and Father rush to welcome him, offer him a seat, a drink. I peeked my head out and watched them through the balusters. He smiled at them but it didn't hide the fire in his skin. I thought about running down into the cellar and up out the cellar door but I was so afraid I couldn't think fast enough; I couldn't move.

I'll need to speak with Naomi
, he said.

Of course
,
of course
, Mama said, her brow pinched.

To Father he said,
Went in this morning and realized I'd not given her her first week's wages
. He held an envelope in the air.
New employees. It happens
. He slid it back into his coat pocket.

I stepped into the kitchen, my heart banging. A vein behind his collar twitched.
There she is
, he said. And then, to Mother and Father,
Do you mind? Business
.

Oh, my
,
yes
,
of course
, said Mother, rushing Father back into the parlor and closing the kitchen door behind her.