Tea Cups & Tiger Claws (10 page)

And that
’s where she hit a brick wall. What business did she know about? She knew Yucky D…and Pine Street…and the bad side of town, useless stuff like that.

One day, after she’d turned eighteen and had moved into
Bingham’s boarding house on Olive Street, a three block improvement over Pine Street, she happened to be at the Prospect Park train station. As she waited for the West bound train to Santa Marcela, where she’d signed up for an adult English grammar class, she eyed the first class car of the East bound train that had just pulled in. The smartly dressed passengers climbed down the steps to be instantly greeted by hustling chauffeurs and fussy butlers. Her envious eyes lingered on them for a moment before drifting back to the rest of the train, where she saw a surprising number of people pouring out of the second and third class cars. What business did all these people have getting off the train? Nobody came to Prospect Park. She gave them a good going over as they approached and pegged them for a bunch of servants—nannies, housekeepers, kitchen maids, cooks, gardeners, gardener’s boys—that sort of lot, obviously just come from their day off in Santa Marcela. They had the plump, rosy cheeks of servants, and the clean unfashionable clothes. And they walked like servants, briskly, mindful of some time clock that waited to report their tardiness. But why were there so many of them? That seemed curious so, without thinking about it, she fell in with the crowd as they left the station. Once outside, some of them broke away to the parking area where shiny cars with idling engines waited for them. Dorthea guessed that these had to be the butlers and governesses and others with enough prominence to get picked up by car. Most of the others headed directly across the street to the bus stop where, unless she had misjudged, they’d catch the bus and take it to the base of the hill. From there they’d hoof it the rest of the way up to the big houses where they got paid to wait tables, fetch brandy, and fasten brassieres.

Dorthea
knew these types well, saw them in town all the time, as did everyone else, and for the most part didn’t care for them. They worked for their food and keep like circus animals but acted like little dictators. And if your shadow happened to fall the wrong way across their path, they’d sneer at you quicker than the millionaire whose boots they shined. Uppity house slaves, that’s all she knew about them and all she cared to know, until this day at the train station. She found it interesting that so many of them had homes and families in Santa Marcela but worked in Prospect Park. That’s a long way to go to work. Her brain began to churn. There must’ve been thirty of them getting off that train. What would they give to live closer? What would they give to be just a bus ride away from home instead of a bus ride, a train ride, and then another bus ride? A half hour away instead of an hour and a half? And not just them. In fact, not especially them, because many of those she saw getting off the train probably lived in the servants’ quarters at the mansions where they worked and only visited home on occasion. But what about those who didn’t live in servants’ quarters? And what about the tradesmen—the carpenters and masons and painters who made their bread and butter in Prospect Park but lived in Santa Marcela? With all those big houses up on the hill, one more perfect than another, there had to be a small army of them.

Dorthea ditched gr
ammar class and quickly walked to Greenberg’s drug store on the corner of Center and Main. She found a seat at the end of the breakfast counter, ordered a coffee, and looked out the storefront window. Sure enough, within the span of just a few minutes, a cabinet maker, a hauler, a carpenter, and two electricians had driven by, one truck after another all headed up the hill. And she had no doubt that if she came back at the end of the day, she’d see those same trucks, plus others, coming back down the hill, most of them on their way home to Santa Marcela.

And why didn’t they live in Prospect Park? Because that’s where rich people lived
, the richest of the rich on the hill and the prosperous merchants down below. Everyone knew that. And unless they had paint brushes in their hands, or screw drivers, or tape measures, they didn’t belong anywhere near this world. So they lived with their own kind in Santa Marcela and rode buses and trains to work or drove forty miles a day in rickety work trucks. And on Sundays they read stories in the newspaper about the Prospect Park gods and goddesses who lived in million dollar mansions built out of granite from medieval castles. These plain folk knew how to ignore sweaty brows and how to lean into their work. They knew how to sharpen blades at night by the firelight. And they knew that rich people lived in Prospect Park.

It wasn’t exactly true
; Yucky D, where white trash families rented homes for eleven dollars a month, proved that. And Dorthea knew another family in a regular house on Pine Street that paid only fourteen. But the out-of-towners didn’t know that. They saw the towering peaks of Sunny Slope Manor and the marble columns of the mansions below, not outhouses and fifty year old shacks. They didn’t know any better. “They didn’t know any better,” she said it out loud, right there at the counter.

The man sitting next to her
looked up from a stack of index cards he’d been studying and said, “Pardon me, pretty lady?”

Ignoring him, she
dropped two nickels onto the counter and got up to leave. He looked back at his cards. She walked a step toward the door and noticed a big, boxy, leather case on the floor next to the man’s stool. It said “Mansfield Hinge and Latch Company, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania” on a brass nameplate shaped like a hinge. He was a traveling salesman who probably knocked on doors and visited merchants and poked his head into every barber shop in town in order to drum up business. And who probably knew Prospect Park as well as anyone who didn’t actually live there. On a lark, she tapped him on the shoulder. When he swiveled in his chair to look at her, she asked, “How come I can’t seem to find any bricklayers in this town?”

He sat up straight
and chuckled. “In Prospect Park?” he asked. “Because they don’t live here that’s why…unless they’ve got bricks of gold they’re not lettin’ on about.” He laughed loudly, along with some others at the counter. “If it’s bricklayers you’re looking for lady, you’re in the wrong town.” Then he stared suspiciously. She smiled and left the store.

Bricklayers…and carpenters…and
all the other workers didn’t live in Prospect Park because they didn’t know they could. That’s why. And maybe, if the numbers added up right, Dorthea might just be the one to tell them something different. She might tell them about living close to work, or family, and making their lives easier. Not at Yucky D, of course, most people had more pride than that, but on Pine Street, in a real house.

At the newsstand
outside the drugstore she bought the Prospect Park Tribune and the Santa Marcela Herald. For the next three days she studied real estate listings in both papers and called the telephone numbers listed in many of the advertisements. She drew columns on paper and filled them with numbers. When new newspapers came out each afternoon, she made more telephone calls and filled more columns with numbers. At the end of that time she knew that average working class three bedroom homes in average working class neighborhoods in Santa Marcela sold for three thousand four hundred dollars, or rented for twenty three dollars a month. On Pine Street, a below average neighborhood, the same homes sold for two thousand two hundred and thirty dollars and rented for sixteen, when they could be found.

She devised a simple plan
: buy a two thousand dollar home but collect the rent of a three thousand dollar home. She’d put twenty three dollars a month in the bank instead of sixteen. Simple. So simple it sounded stupid…really stupid.

But m
illionaires took risks. She knew it from the books. If she wanted to be like them, she had to do the same. So she closed her eyes, held her breath, and took a risk on a small three bedroom house on Pine Street that cost $2,150—paid in cash. According to plan, she advertised the house for rent at twenty-three dollars a month, not in the Prospect Park Tribune, but in the Santa Marcela Herald, and got an immediate response. She quickly learned, though, that responding isn’t the same as renting. When she showed the place, some of the people complained upfront about the size of it, and about the rough neighborhood. Others smiled politely, kept their hands in their pockets, and rushed through like cows being hustled through a chute. And those were the ones who bothered stopping at all; sometimes they drove by, saw the neighborhood, and kept going without even saying “thanks but no thanks.”

Then one day
it rented, just like that, to a twenty year-old hod carrier and his pregnant wife. They didn’t like the neighborhood either, or the size of the house, but they needed to be closer to his jobsites in Prospect Park.

Dorthea’s
plan had worked. Everything about it. From the price she’d pay, to the rent she’d collect, right on down to the type of people who’d move in.

T
hree months later she did it again. This time paying $1,930 for a two bedroom and renting it for $21 to a nanny who moved her old father into the house so she could look in on him during the week.

Dorthea
, who only knew Yucky D and Pine Street and the wrong side of town, had found her business, not a perfect one, but good enough to start. Eventually she expanded into other neighborhoods, including the business district, and most recently, with the war in Europe, and rumors she’d heard about the airport in San Bernardino getting turned into an air force base, she’d bought a three bedroom next to the airport, her first purchase outside of Prospect Park. 

Then she saw the fat banker
standing on the hiking trail and her memories melted away. That’s what she called the boulder that looked like a chubby-cheeked man wearing a derby. It marked the spot where the trail forked, one to the right, leading to Sunny Slope’s stables, the other continuing upward to the manor, which waited for her just past the next cutback.

It had taken almost ten years but she’d turned everything around
. She’d turned a little bit of good luck into a small empire. She’d turned an ignorant girl, who should’ve been tossed down a hole in Bryson Canyon, into a lady, a real lady, who knew how to talk, and dress, and wear makeup. And all of it, every transaction, every sacrifice, every fashion magazine subscription, had been done with at least one eye on Sunny Slope Manor.

Near the
top, where the dusty, lifeless trail ended, and the living, green grounds began, she sidestepped to the right, around a large boulder, to the hedge that separated Sunny Slope from the canyon. She took a blanket from her backpack, arranged it on a sandy ledge, and then lay down on it. She was ready.

Through
an opening at the base of the hedge, her eyes first paid their respects to the grand lady herself, the manor, the one who’d smiled down on her since childhood, the one who’d secretly blessed her on the day her father died. Only then did she admire the gardens, fountains, statues, and all the other jewels that adorned the lady. She saw the swimming pool, the tennis courts, and the back lawn as big as a football field. She saw the mammoth oak tree with a swing, and the wooden canoe by the edge of the pond. She saw the English garden with a maze of crisscrossing gravel paths that came together in the middle by a giant statue of horse and rider.

And she saw
something else too. She saw herself, everywhere: breakfasting on the back porch, attended to by servants in white gloves and powdered wigs; playing tennis with important people who schemed to be in her presence; walking the grounds on moonlit nights with rich young men who desperately battled her indifference. She saw it and believed it to be within reach.

The cream colored Chrysler coupe with bright red rims and polished silver hubcaps pulled into the courtyard and parked in front of the familiar shack. The five year old car looked factory new. Dorthea liked that. For $300, the price of a used car, she got to drive in style, and it had a rumble seat to boot, even if it didn’t get any use.

A
curtain moved and the familiar eyes peeked through the window next to the front door. Ermel always knew when a car pulled into the courtyard. That’s how she stayed a step ahead of the bill collectors, including the landlord. Bad news for Ermel though, the new landlord knew all her old tricks.

Dorthea stepped ou
t of the car and gave the skirt of her peach colored dress a gentle tug. The body-hugging chiffon, interrupted just above the hipline by flirty lace ruffles and a lace sash, fell easily into place, the gentle folds of the skirt extending to below her knees, where the dress ended with another flourish of delicate lace. Lace also trimmed the V-neck and the scooped back. She wore matching peach colored gloves, a wide brimmed straw hat wound with layers of peach colored ribbon, three long strands of pink pearls around her neck, and carried a peach colored handbag. The duchess might’ve brought some style to the curb all those years ago, as her dad used to tell it, but Dorthea planned on bringing it right into the house.

She walked confidently toward the door, a trace of a smile visible on her
glossy red lips. Tresses of short black hair extended from beneath her hat and formed neat rows along the sides of her perfectly made-up face. As usual, Dorthea had put herself together with precision.

Before she had walked even five steps
, the door flew open and Ermel stood in the doorway with a cigarette dangling from her mouth, holding a dirty-faced baby on her bony hip. Wearing a wrinkled, threadbare dress that hung on her bones like a potato sack, she stared suspiciously, before saying, “I don’t care what you got. I don’t want it.” The cigarette in her mouth bounced up and down and little puffs of smoke popped out when she talked. “I don’t want no religion, I don’t want no doodads you might be sellin’, and I don’t want to join no cause.” She slammed the door and the window rattled. Then the door flew right back open. “And if you’re from the Anti-Saloon League, I especially don’t want none of that. You people have caused enough trouble around here.” She slammed the door again.

She
hadn’t recognized her own daughter. Maybe the new, better Dorthea looked too good to recognize…or maybe Ermel had made too many visits to the cupboard and had a case of “Aunt Ginny blur.” She was soused, no doubt about that. After two drinks she giggled. After five she wept and hugged. After ten she turned into a mad pisser. That was the mad pisser who’d just slammed the door.

Dorthea
climbed the wooden step up to a porch big enough to hold a single standing adult. She turned the knob and pushed open the door. Trash and clothes and dirty dishes lay piled on the floor, except for a narrow pathway that led into the kitchen and the rest of the house. The stench of sour milk, dirty diapers, and stale cigarette smoke crawled up her nose. Home sweet home.

“I don’t know who you think you are missy
,” said Ermel, “but in my house the strangers do the door knockin’ and I do the door openin’.” She put the baby in a dirty looking playpen and faced Dorthea. The baby, who wore only a sagging diaper, quickly grabbed the playpen rail, pulled himself to his feet, and stood staring.

“Maybe
I’m not a stranger,” said Dorthea, entering the doorway.

“I said I don’t
know you, and even if I did that don’t mean you can come barging into my house.”

Ermel was lying
, her eyes gave it away, but Dorthea didn’t mind playing along. She opened her handbag, took out a piece of paper, and held it up to Ermel, who stood about ten feet away between the playpen and the kitchen table. “It isn’t your house, it’s mine. I’m your new landlord, and this piece of paper says so.”

“You own
Yucky D?” She eyed Dorthea up and down while taking a long drag on her cigarette. “I don’t believe it.” She walked up, snatched the paper, and squinted at it, as if that might help her understand what it meant. She peered up at Dorthea, back down at the paper, and then turned around. As she walked toward the kitchen table she dramatically held her hand to the side and dropped the paper to the floor. It landed next to a dirty plate that had sprouted a crop of fuzzy, green mold. Dorthea picked it up and put it back into her handbag.

Ermel sat down at the table
. Dorthea stood next to it and saw booze and cigarettes and matches—the usual tools of the trade. Ermel flicked the long ash of her cigarette onto the overflowing ashtray.

“I’m wonderin’ how a young thing like you came to own
Yucky D…unless maybe your daddy died and left some money that you kept all to yourself. Is that what happened?”

“No…that’s not what happened.”

“You mean your rich daddy ain’t dead? Well I do declare, he ain’t very smart then, ‘cause all you got here is a bunch of broken down shacks. Next time he’s got money to spend you should take him to a jewelry store.” She let loose with a raspy laugh that turned into an eye-bulging coughing attack, which didn’t seem to bother her much, as she came out the other end of it still smiling.

“
I never got anything from him. He was a drunk,” said Dorthea.

“
Sounds like my kind of man. You should send him around some time.”

“He’s dead
,” said Dorthea.

“
You need to decide if your daddy’s dead or alive, missy.” She took a final drag on the cigarette and jabbed it into the ashtray. “It makes it easier for a person to follow along.”

“He’s dead
, and you know it.”

With a sudden lunge, Ermel grabbed Dorthea by the wrist and yanked her close. “And if he’s dead, and didn’t
leave no money, how is it you’re standin’ here in a fancy dress holdin’ a paper that says you own Yucky D?”

Dorthea
wrestled her arm free and stepped back. “I never got anything from him! And not from you either, except shit! I own Yucky D ‘cause I worked for it. I made something out of myself. Maybe that’s why you’re afraid to say my name, ‘cause I made something out of myself and you’re…you’re jealous.”

“I’ll say your name
. That’s no bother at all. Mud Sucker. That’s your name. You’re a mud sucking bottom dweller who thinks she can swim up top with the real fish. And that new car don’t prove nothnin’. And neither does that getup you’re wearin’, except it makes you look like a walkin’ peach tree.” Then she smiled and said, “You know what they use mud suckers for, don’t you? Fertilizer. Just like horse shit.” And out spilled another wheezy, raspy laugh.

“
I’m your landlord, the one that can raise your rent from eleven dollars to twenty five.”

Ermel ignored her, taking the pack of Camels from the table, giving it a quick flick, and then holding the
protruding cigarettes to her mouth where her wrinkled lips grabbed onto one.

Dorthea moved a step closer and said,
“I’m the one who can evict you for no reason at all. Look at me and say my name.”

Ermel
tilted her head to the left and squinted as she lit the cigarette. Then she took a drink from the glass, followed by a long drag on the cigarette.

“
In case your brain is too soaked to work right,” continued Dorthea, “let me give you some help. I’m the one you robbed when the duchess tried to give me a decent life. I’m the one you kept locked up, out of school, dumb and dirty, doing your work while you lounged. I’m the one who got invitations year after year to go up the hill to meet important rich people, but you hid them from me. That’s right, I know all about it. Is it coming back to you now?”

“Nobody cares who you are
, missy. I sure as hell don’t. So if you’re waitin’ for someone to bow down and kiss your fancy ass, you can forget about it.”

“You’re gonna
see it, one way or another. You’re gonna see it all. I’m Dorthea, the same Dorthea that never got nothin’ from you. The same one that walked out of here with nothin’ but some worn-out clothes. But look at me now. Things have changed, wouldn’t you say? Look at me!”

The baby started crying. Dorthea
had scared him. She took a breath and composed herself.

Ermel sat in her chair, looking bored, and said,
“When we was kids, we dressed up the dog in bonnets and baby shoes but that didn’t stop it from being a butt-licken’ mutt.” She took a leisurely drag on her cigarette, blew out a tube of smoke, and continued, “And I say the same to you. It don’t matter what you got on, you’re still nothin’ but white trash, and that’s all you’ll ever be.”

“Do you know any white trash
who owns eight homes?” yelled Dorthea as she tilted toward Ermel. “Do you know any white trash who owns two office buildings downtown? No you don’t! And that ain’t all ‘cause I’m just getting started. In fact, I’m gonna tell you something I ain’t never told a single soul.” She set her handbag on the table, leaned right up to Ermel’s face, and solemnly spoke the following sacred words, “Someday I’m gonna own Sunny Slope Manor.”

Sacred or not, the words definitely had an effect.
Ermel set her cigarette onto the heaping ashtray and stared into Dorthea’s eyes. Then she took a deep breath, opened her mouth, and let loose with a raspy, crackling roar. Dorthea watched in silence, swallowed by great bellows of laughter. She watched as the old lady laughed herself into tears. She watched as she raised a quivering finger, pointed it at her, and then melted back into hysterics. She watched as Ermel laughed in her face.

Fortunately
her lungs quickly gave out and the merriment turned into a painful, gasping, red faced coughing fit. Dorthea liked this spectacle better than the other and didn’t care if it lasted forever. Maybe she’d even die, right then and there. Now that would be an unexpected pleasure.

But it didn’t happen. Instead,
Ermel re-lubricated her throat with a few quick shots of gin and then rested her head on the crook of her arm, worn-out but not dead.

Dorthea started circling.
“Who are you to laugh at me?” she blurted. “You don’t know nothing about being a lady. You ain’t even forty years old but could pass for sixty without turnin’ on the lights. You’ve got 6 teeth left in your head ‘cause you ain’t never figured out how to use a toothbrush. Your skin barely hangs to your bones ‘cause all you have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner is booze. You live in more filth than animals at the zoo. You’ve got nothin’ to laugh at!” She stood there hovering, with a red face and shaking hands, when a ruckus at the playpen broke her trance. The baby had started sobbing loudly. He chewed anxiously on his fist and jammed it into his red eyes. Dorthea straightened up, smoothed her dress, and made her way to the front door. “If you want something to laugh about,” she said, with her back still to Ermel, “I’m raising your rent to twenty five dollars.” She opened the door.

“I
bet I can prove it to you,” said Ermel.

Dorthea looked back and saw Ermel with her head still on her arm, eyes closed to the sunlight
that rushed through the open door. “What are you talking about?” said Dorthea.

Ermel raised her head and said, “I bet you I can prove that you’ll never own Sunny Slope Manor. It’s a simple wager, that’s all. If
you’ve got the guts, close the door and come back in.”

After a pause
Dorthea closed the door and the dirty shack rested again in darkness.

“If I prove it,” continued Ermel, “then my rent goes down to five dollars a month. If I don’t, then it goes up to twenty five. Deal?”

“And I want the invitations from the duchess that you stole,” said Dorthea, as she stepped closer to Ermel.

Ermel studied Dorthea for a second and then said, “Deal.”

“Wait a minute. Who decides who wins?” asked Dorthea.

“Why you do,”
said Ermel, with a smile. “You can’t get any easier than that.”

Dorthea didn’t say anything.

“See that phone book at the end of the counter?” asked Ermel. “You’re going to call State Street Lodge and make a dinner reservation for anytime this week for two people.”

“And what will that prove?”

“I told you what it will prove. Now go ahead and do it.”

While Dorthea leaned over the counter and
cautiously searched for the number in the book, Ermel retrieved her cigarette from the top of the ashtray pile and took a long drag. Dorthea lifted the phone from its cradle, and dialed the number, stealing glances at Ermel as she did.

“I’m calling to make a reservation. For tonight.
The name is Dorthea Railer. Yes, Dorthea Railer. What about tomorrow night? What about the next night? Nothing available….” She gently put the phone back on its cradle and stared at it for a second. Then she looked up and said, “That don’t prove nothin’, except they’re busy.”

“We
ain’t done yet,” said Ermel. “Dial the number again and hand me the phone.”

Dorthea
followed the instructions.

“I
’d like to make a reservation for a party of two,” said Ermel. “Tomorrow at seven. The name is Merriweather. Very good, thank you.” After hanging up the phone, she pushed down on the table with both hands, and drew her body up and out of the chair. With fiendish eyes and a toothless grin, she said, “I got just one question for you, your highness. If you can’t even get into the second best restaurant in town, what on earth makes you think the good people on the hill will roll over and let you have Sunny Slope Manor?”