Ten Cents a Dance (9 page)

What I must've looked like, lifting Paulie's gown out of the paper sack—that's what Ma would look like, if I pulled her ring out of my pocket. Gasping, covering her mouth with her hand. Touching it like maybe it wasn't real. Only it was. It would be.

At the next stop, I changed streetcars.

Last year, in English class, we'd read a story where a fellow was so happy he felt like he was walking on air. I'd thought that was the silliest thing I'd ever heard. Ground was ground, and how anyone could mistake it for air or clouds or what-have-you was beyond me.

But when I stepped out of the pawnshop with Ma's ring in my hand, I knew just how that fellow felt. Like I could walk taller than anyone, dance faster, shout louder. Like there wasn't anything I couldn't do.

Best of all, I had plenty of money left. And I knew exactly what to do with it.

In Ma's purse, too, were the store books that showed how much we owed at the shops in our neighborhood. I stopped at Graboski's first. When I asked Mr. Graboski for a box of Rice Krispies and one of Kix, his lips tightened. Fancy cereals were for people who paid their bills, not charity cases who owed six months' credit. I laid the tattered little book next to the boxes. Cash on top. "Ma asked if you could clear the book, too," I said.

"Well, now," he said. His face like I'd parted the clouds. "Telephone work must pay pretty good, huh, Ruby?"

"Pretty good," I said. I grinned, and he grinned back. He counted my money, wrote
0
in the balance column of the book, and handed it to me. Then he reached onto a shelf behind him. Took down a can of peaches, added it to the sack.

"Free of charge," he said. "Give my best to your mother."

At Burkot's, I bought coffee and canned milk and three Hershey's bars. Mrs. Burkot didn't give me a gift for clearing the book. But she did smile, the old sourpuss.
"Gratuluje,"
she said, when I told her about my new job. "Enjoy it in the best of health. My regards to your mother, how is she?"

Better,
I thought with a sudden, fierce satisfaction,
now that you won't give her the evil eye every time she walks past.

At Stawarz's, the butcher, I eyed the roasts but settled for a pound of ground chuck. I took the wrapped package, tied in string, and the butcher book, with its brand-new
0
in thick blue pencil. I stepped out onto the sidewalk, parcels in both arms, singing "Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar." Not caring if people stared.

I was almost home when the noon whistles blew at the packinghouses. A few women chatting on their stoops stood up and went inside. Ma did that—timed her baking by the whistle. In the plants, everybody would be stopping work and heading for the lunch rooms. Hustle and wolf down your food, hustle back. My hands just starting to warm up, when it was time to plunge them into the brine again.

All that work and nastiness, and I'd never accomplished anything like what I'd done in the past two hours. Tomorrow I'd go to Goldblatt's, the department store on Ashland Avenue, and buy Ma some wool gloves. I'd have enough for that. Then a coal delivery for the winter, that was next. Although, if I had my way, I'd toss that old junkheap of a coal stove out the back door and buy us a modern gas one, like my cousins in Wicker Park had. Like everyone had, except us. We might as well wear long skirts and bustles and put our hair up in buns. In fact, if it was up to me, we wouldn't live in that dark cramped flat at all. How would it be, to live in a pretty little place with tall windows that let in the light?

Why not?

The thought was so startling, I stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk. "Watch out, Ruby, I almost ran the baby carriage right into you," said a woman behind me.

"Sorry, Mrs. Nowak," I said. I stepped aside and let her go by. Away beyond, smoke plumes from the packinghouses trailed up into the sky. Hardly any wind today. The plumes spread under the clouds like mold.

If I made fifty dollars a week, and gave eighteen to Ma as my "wages" . . . and then of course I'd have to buy at least one more dress, and a pair of heels that fit me, but it wasn't as if I'd be buying gowns every week and if I saved what was left . . .

I could do what Ma never could. I could get us out of the Yards.

I stared at the smokestacks. But I wasn't seeing them anymore. I was seeing a clean, pretty neighborhood. With trees. No more everlasting soot, from the packinghouse smokestacks outside and from the stove inside. Lamps with soft, pretty shades instead of bare bulbs. Our own bathroom, tile and chrome, and a porcelain tub. We'd be happy, the way we used to be before Ma lost her job. Happier, even, because we'd have enough money to buy whatever we wanted.

The pictures in my head were too big for walking. I ran the rest of the way home, the groceries jouncing in their sacks. Flew up the front stoop, up the hall, through our door.

"Surprise, Ma!" I yelled.

She came out of her bedroom, a dustrag in her hands. "Ruby, where have you . . . " She frowned at the parcels. "What did you buy?" she said, her voice sharp.

"Gifts," I said. I bustled into the kitchen, set down the sacks on the kitchen table, shrugged out of my coat. "Come see."

She did. And she threw a fit.

"Meat!" she cried. And then, in an even more scandalized voice, "Peaches!"

My victorious mood began to flatten. I hadn't expected this. Suddenly, it seemed I should have. "Ma, it's fine. Really. Don't worry." The ring lay tucked in my fist.

"Worry? Why on earth should I worry?" She stood with her back to me, poking in one of the sacks. She threw her hands in the air. "Fifteen cents for Hershey's bars! Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Ruby, what possessed you? When we owe so much already I'm embarrassed to walk past their stores! What must they be thinking?"

"Mr. Graboski sends his regards." I held out my hand. The ring a dull gleam in my palm. "Mrs. Burkot asked after you, too. Ma, look."

She didn't turn around. "I bet she did. Rice Krispies? What in the world . . ."

"Betty hates oatmeal. Ma, please, will you just look?"

"God only knows how much we owe now. Where are the books? Ruby, get my pur—"

I walked around to the end of the table. Stuck my hand in front of her face.

She didn't gasp. Her mouth didn't fall open. The only part of her that moved was her eyes, blinking. Twice, three times. Then she swung her hips sideways and sat down, falling so heavily the chair scraped an inch or so across the floor. For a second I thought maybe I'd killed her.

"Get the grocery books," she said. Her voice as grim and tight as her face. She made no move to take the ring.

What's wrong with you?
I wanted to shout.
You're supposed to be happy!
"Ma, what . . ."

"Get the books!"

I slammed the ring down on the table. Reached in her purse and grabbed the books. One by one she studied them and laid them aside.

"Where did you get the money for all this?" she said.

Of course she would wonder. Of course she would ask. Why hadn't I thought she would? Why would I suppose she'd just accept what I gave her, without having to know everything?

"Working," I said.

"Working." As if I'd said
flying.
She pointed to the books. "Do you think I can't add? You've only been at the telephone company three days. How much did it cost to redeem the ring?"

"Eight-fifty," I said.

"It was more than that, there would've been interest. Where's the receipt?"

The receipt was in my coat pocket, where I'd stuffed it, after the clerk had added,
Crystal butterfly hairpin . . . 75 cents.
The hairpin was blue. I'd thought it would look nice with the gown.

"I don't have it. I . . . I lost it." And then the answer came to me, and before I knew it, the lie was in the air. "I got an advance," I said.

That surprised her. "An advance? On your pay?" she said. "After only three days?"

I licked my lips. Thinking fast. Ma'd gotten an advance once, years ago. I cast back, trying to remember. "I guess I'm doing pretty good. Better than I thought. Anyway, I asked, and they said okay."

"You should've checked with me first," Ma said. She looked at the books, the ring. "This is a week's wages. What are we supposed to do next week? What are we supposed to give the landlord for the back rent? Did you think about that?"

The back rent. I'd forgotten. I sat down and tried to call back all the pretty pictures, the glory I'd felt right up until I'd walked through the door. Why couldn't things just be simple? What was so hard about saying,
Thank you, Ruby, you're a wonderful daughter?

"I thought this was a good thing," I said. "I thought it would make you happy."

"Oh, Ruby, don't you see . . . ?" Ma sighed and rubbed the side of her face with her hand. "We can't think about happiness, the situation we're in. We have to be practical."

She was wrong. Maybe she'd forgotten. Maybe she never knew. There was more out there than just scraping by. I'd touched it.

"You're telling the truth. About where you got the money." She didn't ask it like a question. I lifted my eyes and met hers. Pale blue and afraid. What was she afraid of?

"I told you," I said. The lie smooth as a cab ride now. "They gave me an advance."

She nodded. Her mouth relaxed, the lines around her eyes eased. "After last week," she said, "with you and that Suelze thug, I thought maybe . . ."

"He doesn't have anything to do with it," I said. Too "Have you seen him since then?" she asked.

I dropped my eyes. "No."

She didn't say anything and for a minute I thought she didn't believe me. If she took it into her head to ask Betty . . .

Ma leaned forward and picked up the ring. Brought it to her lips and kissed it. Then she smiled at me.

"Better get the oleo," she said.

EIGHT

It was the first break of the evening, almost a week after Paulie had given me the blue gown. I sat in front of my locker, emptying tips out of my new satin garter purse. Yvonne perched on one of the dressing tables—not hers, of course—her back against the mirror and her ankles crossed on the back of a chair. She wore her hair down tonight, coiling loose and dark over her shoulders, a beaded barrette at each temple.

"I give her a month before the chumps catch on," Gabby said. She sprawled in the next chair, looking like a dropped egg in her gold and white gown. Next to her, the redhead, Stella, spritzed her pompadour with hairspray.

"A month, my eye." Yvonne took a last drag off her cigarette, hollowing out her cheeks. Grinding the stub into an ashtray, she said, "As soon as the men get a good whiff of her, she'll be cooling her heels in the meatpen with Fat Alice over there." The meatpen was what the girls called the folding chairs on the side of the dance floor. Alice always spent half the night sitting there.

"Hey, Alice!" Stella called. "Be sure and save Cinderella a seat. She's about to turn into a pumpkin, just like you." Chuckles from around the room. From my locker, I saw Alice duck her head, so that her sausage curls hid her face.

"And then it's back to the ash heaps for Cinderella," Yvonne said. "What
do
you do, darling, that gives you such a lovely stench?"

She asked me that at least once a night, always at the top of her voice, always when the Ladies' was packed. Yvonne was like my sister, Betty, that way—once she got an idea into her head, she was like a dog with a bone, gnawing and gnashing and refusing to let go. Of course I wasn't going to spill anything about the packinghouse. First—as I knew from living with Betty—it was the surest way to drive Yvonne crazy. Second, the last thing I wanted was for these cats to find out I'd been a meat-packer. Paulie told the truth when he said girls wouldn't admit it, not even when they lived in the Yards. Not even when everyone knew they worked in pork trim, or sausage casings, or canned ham, and the girls knew they knew. It wasn't about being a snob. It was because people looked at you differently. As if, because you worked there, you must not mind the smell, the grease, the filth. As if— almost—you were an animal yourself.

"Hey, Yvonne, I forgot to ask you. How'd it go with the suckers last night?" Stella said.

"Those chumps?" Yvonne said. "Me and Gabby took 'em to the El Palacio. Kept 'em there until they were plastered. Then we let on that we'd go back to their hotel to . . . you know."

"Twenty each, up front," Gabby put in.

"They kept saying"—Yvonne dropped her voice low, like a man's—"'You'll get the money after, not before.' No sir, we told 'em, you gotta pay to play. Then we made like we were gonna walk out. That greased the skids plenty."

"They forked it over?" someone asked.

"Cold, hard cash, chickie. On the way out, they turned left, we turned right, slipped a buck to the waiter to zip his lip which way we'd gone, and out the back door we went. Slick as a goddamn whistle."

"I bet they spent half the night looking for us!" Gabby crowed.

Most of the girls whooped with laughter—although I noticed a few pretending not to hear. Alice actually turned her back. I snapped my garter purse closed and stood up, letting the blue silk unfurl to the floor. I raised my voice over the commotion. "How do you know they won't show up tonight to get their money back?"

The laughter trailed off into giggles. Yvonne swung her legs to the floor. "Because, Bo Peep, the chumps had to catch a plane back to New York first thing this morning." Clapping, more laughter. She sauntered away to a chorus of snickers.

"Well, I think it's disgusting," I said to Peggy. "Cheating fellows out of their money."

"Spoken like a true Girl Scout," Peggy said. "I guess you think the girls should've gone through with it, then."

"Of course not!" At her sudden grin, I shook my head. "Stop trying to confuse me. What I mean is, those men were nice enough to take them out on the town. And then they got cheated. It's not right."

"Uh-huh," Peggy said. "You pay Tom back his money yet?"

I'd bent down to adjust a garter; at that, I snapped my head up to look at her. "I borrowed that, it's not the same thing at all! And yes, for your information, I did pay it back. Last night, when he took me out to eat."

The surprise on Peggy's face was satisfying enough— almost—to squash the twinge I felt at the lie.

Tom had showed up about ten thirty, without Jack this time. The blue silk gown made an impression—it was an hour, at least, before he raised his eyes enough to look at my face. At midnight, he clocked me out and took me to a steakhouse to eat. Just like that louse Artie had promised. But Tom was the real deal.

I meant to pay him back. I did try. I had a whole week's wages in my change purse. In the cab, I counted out three fives and five ones and gave it to him. It was one of the hardest things I'd ever done: taking that money out, handing it away. Money I'd danced myself into blisters for, money we needed.

Tom took it. Riffled through it. But he didn't put it in his wallet. "You're so pretty in that dress," he said. "Did you . . . did you think of me, when you bought it?"

It took me a second to remember; I was staring at the bills in his hand. "Mmm? Oh. Sure. Of course I did."

Tom tucked the money back into my palm, folded my fingers over it. I closed my hand tight, crumpling the thick paper against my skin. It felt just as wonderful as the first time. He put his arm across my shoulders. Drew me close. "Buy something else pretty," he whispered, and kissed me.

I didn't tell Peggy any of this. Ma believed I'd taken a whole week's advance on my pay. Tom wouldn't take his money back. That meant every penny in my change purse was mine. Entirely mine. Thirty-four dollars and seventeen cents. The sight of it made me dizzy.

The next day, I told Ma I was going to a matinee with a friend from work, and Peggy took me to Reinhard's on Madison.

Reinhard's was a tailor's shop, not five minutes from the Starlight. The front room looked like any other tailor's: shelves with boxes stacked high, a counter strewn with scissors and tape measures. The tailor, a thin man with small, watery eyes, nodded at Peggy.

"I ain't seen her before," he said, jerking his chin at me. "She okay?"

"Paulie Suelze sent me," I said. Right away, the tailor waved us to come back.

"Well, isn't that the magic word," Peggy murmured as we followed the tailor into a back room. I smiled but didn't answer.

The back room was tiny, stuffed with trunks and boxes and racks of clothes. Curtains hung against the far wall— changing rooms, I guessed. We wandered between the racks: every kind of smart outfit you could imagine, matching skirts and jackets, day dresses, and—dear Jesus—two whole racks just of gowns. Angie would die if she saw this. Betty, too. Not a plain housedress in the bunch, not a single one with a label. I pulled out a backless metallic gray sheath, held it up against myself.
Paulie stole this.
At the thought, the cold-shivery thrill bloomed again under my ribs. I hadn't seen him since he'd knocked on the bedroom window, a week ago. Betty made sure to whisper to me every scrap of gossip she heard at school: Paulie had been seen at this tavern or that poolroom; he was buddying up to a bunch of tough Lithuanians from Forty-fifth Street; no, he was in with an Irish outfit from Canaryville. It seemed like he was everywhere but near me. Did he like me or didn't he?

I wished I could talk it over with Angie. But Angie and I weren't talking.

The cleaner had gotten most of the stains out of Clara's dress, but a ghost of pink still splotched one hip. You could barely see it, but of course Angie noticed. We'd had a screaming fight, and she hadn't spoken to me since.

Well, she'd come around. She always had before, when we'd fought. She'd say she was sorry, and then I'd say, "Me too"—I'd already apologized a dozen times, but still, this was what you did, for friendship's sake—and everything would go back to the way it was.

I held the gray sheath up to myself, turned to Peggy. "What do you think?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Not your color. Try that navy one, with the gold skirt."

I bought the navy gown and an adorable red wool jacket and skirt to wear out after hours. Peggy told me all the savvy girls bought their duds from places like Reinhard's. Not just Starlight girls, either—taxi-dance halls and after-hours joints were thick as a caterpillar's eyebrows in this part of town. That meant a lot of competition, with every girl trying to look more smashing than the next—at swag prices—because all of us were after the same pool offish.

You could play taxi dancing two ways. Straight, like Alice and a few others. Wear your feet down to stubs at a nickel a dance, go right home afterward. But even if you had a string of regulars—fellows who were each good for ten or twenty tickets a night, every night—well, you'd work and work and work and still your best coat would be a black wool with a Persian lamb collar, and you'd have to take the streetcar everywhere. No, if you wanted to win at this game—
really
win—you needed men who would do more than dance.

You needed fish.

Fish were easy to catch for a single night. They'd buy you a meal at a chop suey joint or an all-night diner or, if you were lucky, a swell after-hours club, and that would be that. Sometimes a fish might stick around for a few weeks, or a few months. A girl never knew how long it might last, so she got what she could. Cash, if she could manage it. If not, then meals. Gowns. Jewelry.

There were different ways of getting fish, I learned. Peggy liked Filipinos—most of them had money, she said, and they didn't mind spending a little extra on a girl if she treated them nice. Nora, on the other hand, wouldn't have anything to do with Orientals. But anytime Del and O'Malley, the bouncer, had their backs turned, she was waltzing her customers into dark corners. Why not? she said. It's only a bump and tickle, it pays better than fox-trotting, and I don't wear out so many shoes.

A lot of the other girls played customers off each other, to make them jealous. Keeps 'em on their toes, Gabby said. Makes 'em think they gotta win. Or, a girl might play it the other way. Stella, the redhead, once threatened to cut a fellow's throat if she caught him dancing with anyone else. She got a new dress and a gold necklace out of that.

And Yvonne? Her fish weren't the handsomest; in fact, a few of them were downright ugly. I watched her, though. Saw how, when she was dancing with them, it was like no other fellow was in the room. Maybe that was why they'd wait all night, sometimes, for a chance to get in with her.

They ought to hear how she talks about them in the Ladies', I thought. Calling them chumps and suckers, laughing at their looks or how they talked. She didn't laugh at their money, though. Yvonne hadn't bought that fox fur. She didn't even pay her own rent. Her fish took care of that. Four of them, Peggy told me, whom she'd had on the string for years. Not only did they pay her way, but each thought he was the only one who had a "special arrangement" with her.

"I figure maybe she hires a social secretary, to keep 'em from bumping into each other in the hall outside her flat. So," Peggy said, "still want a fur coat of your own?"

"I never said I wanted one at all." When Peggy started laughing, I turned my back and walked away.

Somewhere between straight-arrow Alice and Yvonne's scams and schemes—and worse—there had to be a middle way. I still hadn't figured out what it was, though, when, the night after we'd gone to Reinhard's, Peggy set us up on an after-hours date with a couple of Filipino men.

So far I'd managed to avoid dancing with the Chinese and Filipinos. It wasn't hard, with practice—all a girl had to do was pretend not to see them. But this all happened so fast—Peggy introduced us, and then she was dancing away with the one named Alonso, while Manny stood in front of me, holding out his ticket. Obviously, I'd seen him. That and the fact that I knew his name made it seem unspeakably rude to turn my back and run.

Manny was shorter than Alonso, and if he wasn't as slim, he wasn't heavy, either. He was dressed a lot better than my usual customer: snazzy pinstripe suit, spectator shoes. Flip or not, I had to admit that after all we did to put on the dog, it was nice to see a man make a little effort.

We danced a little bit without talking. Then Manny asked, "You dig music like this?"

"Oh, I don't know. It's a little sweet for me," I said.
Sweet
was the nice way of saying
cornball.
"I like swing best, but if the band plays too much of it, the geezers won't dance, and then they complain to Del. A lot of them can't hoof it to anything faster than this."

Actually, I'd already come to hate most of the music the Starlight's band played. I wasn't the only one, either.

One night last week, Yvonne hadn't let up on me all evening, plus my head was fit to split from all that tinkly stuff Del insisted the band play. At break time, I'd headed for the Ladies'. From behind the door came the usual babble and laughter, Yvonne loudest of all. To my right, the hall stretched down to a far window. It was dark. It looked quiet.

I just got to the window when I heard what sounded like a
taaaah
. . . I stopped. Nothing. I must have imagined it. I laid my hand on the glass, and the cold seemed to jump into the bones of my fingers. And then I heard it again, coming from a dark room off the hall. Humming—no, not humming, not exactly—more like notes being sung.
Do-re-mi,
only this wasn't any baby music, and it was no baby singing. I'd only heard his voice once. But I recognized it.

He paused in midnote, then started over, the same melody. Slowed at a tricky spot, then pushed past to end on a high
taaahh . . .
Then over again, faster. And faster. I could imagine the same notes flying out of his trumpet. Feel the music waking up my bones.