The Sisters from Hardscrabble Bay (31 page)

He walked me to work at the shop after the rain stopped, and he hung around. He stood by my cutting chair talking, and when I got a customer, he went and sat down in the waiting area. I could feel him watching me the whole time. I could feel his eyes like someone was pressing a hot cloth against me. My legs. The back of my neck. My crotch. I don’t know what kind of cuts I gave that day.

Finally my boss, Shirley, she comes over to him and asks his intentions. I knew they’d all been eyeing him, and I didn’t give a good goddamn. He said he had a great many intentions and one was to take me out to dinner. And Shirley said that those seats were reserved for clients only, and Tommy said he was a client, he would like Miss Hillock to cut his hair. They glared at each other, and then she said all right, when Miss Hillock’s chair is free, she can cut your hair. The sap was running that day.

So he sits in my chair while I’m still sweeping up—and you can hear the scissors stop. The place froze. Everyone is looking at us through all the mirrors. And he asks for a trim, please. Just a trim. He didn’t need a thing. Every hair on his head was perfect. But I said, “Why, yes, sir,” and I took my scissors, and I went all around the back of his neck snipping the littlest bit and sort of nuzzling the tips around his ears. His hair was a pale brown, straight and thick. It looked like sawdust around my feet when I was done, I cut so little.

I could barely breathe, I was that hepped up. If he’d looked at me straight on for too long I would have spun that chair around and climbed on top of him right there in that shop. When I’m done, he sticks a fifty-dollar bill in my tip jar for all the world to see. Then he asks when I get off work. At six o’clock he is waiting outside with a car. He opens the door for me, and in I go. The girls were all lined up against the window like bowling pins, and I give a little wave to them as he pulls out into the traffic.

I thought I’d found what I was looking for, all right, dropped down from the sky. I come to find out it was just rain. Tommy always had money. He never seemed to work. He’d refer to business, but he never seemed to do any. I didn’t question it. I was having too much fun just being with him. He took me out dancing and to fancy restaurants. Horse races. The works. And we drank. Everything was better with a drink in your belly. I’d heard that all my life.

Then one night—oh, about three weeks into it—he asked if I’d be interested in making some extra money. Partners, we’d be.

“What kind of partners?” I ask. “Lucrative,” he says. Well, I was game. And by then I was a goner.

To this day I don’t think Idella knows the extent of it. I lured men up to my room. That was the plan. Remember, now, I was a looker. And when the men got their pants down, Tommy was there to clean them out.

And we got married. Went to city hall. My brother, Dalton, was our witness. We were all three soused, but we were good at pulling things off under the influence.

One night I lured the wrong guy. Instead of a fat wallet, he was carrying a thin badge. I got two years. Tommy got four. It wasn’t his first time. It’s not something to be proud of. I’m sure Eddie thought I got what was coming to me. Which I suppose I did.

Idella wrote me letters. One day I got a letter. Whole pages about nothing. It was like having her there. She always asked, at the end, in little letters, how the service was in the “hotel.” Those letters made me laugh. The only thing that did.

I hated being cooped up like a damned chicken. It about killed me. I lost it the one time. I was sitting at the dining table at one evening feed—all in a row, we were—and I looked down and saw those yellow and brown globs of shit they give us for food—and I started to gag. I couldn’t breathe.

I looked around and saw us all lined up wearing the same thing and eating the same thing and doing the same thing and being told when to piss and when to shit and when to get up in the morning—and I stood up and started screaming that I had to get out of there, I had to get air. They didn’t know whether to lock me up or tie me down.

The other women tried to quiet me. “Shut it, Hillock. Shut it fast,” they said all up and down. Finally this black woman—Irene, her name was—come over to me, and she put her hands on my shoulders hard and pressed. She bore down on me with those brown eyes of hers, and we saw each other. “Shut it, Hillock. They’ll put you in solitary. Now, shut it.”

I heard that. That stopped me. She saved me, that Irene. “How you doin’, Hillock?” she’d say after that, if we passed each other. “I’m good,” I’d say. “That’s good,” she’d say. “Hold on. The clock’s moving.”

I want to tell you, having that fit scared the hell out of me. ’Cause I tried to be so tough, see, to get through it. Like nothing bothered me. Water off a duck’s back. My arse.

So I was glad to get them letters about nothing. I’d picture Idella rolling along the highways with Edward on them Sunday drives and squealing about the pretty view. I wish I’d kept them letters. She’s a good old girl, Idella.

It was Dad got me out of jail when the time come. I got out on probation. I never saw Tommy again. That was part of the deal. He died young—still pretty, I suppose. Bastard. It was in the “hotel” where I got an actual beautician’s license. I learned about coloring and permanents and the like, working with chemicals. The learning to be a beautician part helped me out quite a bit, ’cause I was good. I was smart, see. In spite of myself. Always in spite of myself.

August 1941

 

I don’t know if it was my polka-dot dress that made it so funny, that got Mumma and Aunt Avis going so strong at the end. It had a white background with red dots the size of quarters—the size of cherries. I’d worn it only once before, and I’d had Mumma iron the skirt all over and crisp it up before I put it on again for this ride into the country with her and Aunt Avis and Aunt Avis’s new boyfriend, Fred. For some reason—well, because of all the cider—Mumma and Aunt Avis and I ended up in the back seat together, me in the middle, and Fred was in the front doing the driving by himself. I mean, with no one to sit next to him.

He had a beautiful car. The seats were brushed brown leather, pale brown like beach sand on a hot, hot day. He saw me rubbing my hands across the seat and smiled. “Barbara, honey, that’s what the nose of a colt feels like. You ever felt a colt’s nose?” Mumma and Aunt Avis giggled. They’d lost their manners miles back. “No, sir,” I’d answered solemnly up into the rearview. “I haven’t ever felt a colt’s nose.”

Actually, I had. I’d felt the nose of a horse anyway, Chocolate Milk. Grampa Jensen used him to pull the wagon he drove delivering milk and eggs around the neighborhood. Chocolate Milk’s nose certainly didn’t feel as soft as those leather seats, but I wanted Fred to feel like he’d said something with weight to it.

It was stopping at the farm stand that got things going the wrong way.

 

Daddy didn’t like the idea of me and Mumma making this visit to Boston to see Aunt Avis. He’d ranted and raved, as usual, but Mumma had insisted she had a right to take a little trip to see her own sister and her sister’s new boyfriend. “If you was to go down to Boston every time that tart gets what she calls a boyfriend, you’d have to move in with her. I bet you’d like that, moving right in with her.” “Oh, be quiet, Edward,” Mumma said. That’s the gist of what they said the whole time he was driving Mumma and me to the bus in Portland. We got the 9:00 A.M. express, so we’d have most of the day in Boston and much of the next. Daddy handed me a pack of Juicy Fruit as I boarded the bus and told me to be careful.

By midafternoon we were sitting on the porch of the rooming house where Avis lived, waiting for Fred to pull up in his car and take us for a ride in the country. Aunt Avis and Mumma were sitting side by side on a ratty old wicker couch, having a “little drink.” I was on the porch railing in front of them, keeping my polka-dot skirt like a parachute all around me, sucking on ice cubes from out of their glasses. They fished them out and sucked off the whiskey before handing them over. Aunt Avis was telling Mumma about Fred.

She’d met Fred when he’d driven up in his new car to get his aunt from the beauty shop, where Aunt Avis gave Fred’s aunt a perm once a month and a hair curl every week like clockwork.

“Hester’s her name, if you can stand it. She’s what a farm girl from Canada who didn’t know nothing might call an old coot,” Aunt Avis said.

“Why, that would be you, now, wouldn’t it?” Mumma giggled.

“Or someone damn near like me.” Avis laughed. “The old coot expects me to work miracles. Her hair makes a bale of hay look silky.” Mumma laughed.

“And she’s deaf as a post. I have to bend over like this—here, Barb, hold this glass for me, hon—and flap my arms like this, like a goddamned chicken, to get her to see me so I can get her out from under the dryer before that hair frizzles right off her head.” That got them both laughing. Avis choked on her cigarette.

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Mumma was wiping tears off her cheek.

Avis stood up and took her drink back from me. “Thanks, hon.”

“Now, what does he do? Did you tell me?” Mumma’s thoughts were easily fuzzed when she was having little drinks.

“Business of some kind. Something to do with fixtures. Plumbing, lighting, I don’t know. Where else do you have fixtures? All I know is, there’s money in the
damily.
” That was their way of saying “damned family.”

“Jesus, Avis, you’d better find out. Maybe he spends all day making toilets.”

“He’s flush, I do know that much.” Avis held up the whiskey bottle. She kept it hidden behind a pot of geraniums in the corner of the porch. “Want another hit?”

“I’ll have a sip.”

Avis poured a little into each of their glasses. “Sorry, Barb, no more ice.” She smiled at me and handed me the bottle. “Can you go stash that for me till we get back? No one pays any attention to that plant.”

“I watered it,” Mumma said sheepishly.

“You would.”

“Well, is he nice?”

“He’s tolerable.”

“Does he have his good points?”

“A few.” Avis laughed her deep, throaty laugh. Daddy called it her tart laugh. Mumma said she had a naturally throaty voice. I thought she sounded like a movie star.

Aunt Avis had real style. She’d been to beauty school. She was prettier than Mumma—if you liked flashy. Daddy said he didn’t, but I was fascinated by it. She wasn’t tall, like Mumma, or as thin. She had a real figure, with noticeable curves in all directions. Mumma was pretty, but in a more quiet sort of way. Mumma was like iced tea in a tall, thin glass, while Aunt Avis was more like an ice-cream sundae—big scoops sprinkled with nuts and puffs of cream and a single cherry on top. I loved them both.

“Now, where exactly are we going today?” Mumma was surprised to be leaving the city when we’d spent so long on a bus to get here. I wasn’t so sure about it myself.

“Who the hell knows? I’ll keep it short. He’s determined to give us a ride in the country in his new car. Then we’ll come back to the city and he’ll bankroll us for supper. I’ve got a place in mind like you never saw. Anything you want on the menu, Barbie.” She fluffed my skirt up. “Be sure to wipe your hands off before you get into Freddie’s car. He’s very particular about the leather on the seats. God Almighty, Della, I wipe my own hands before I get in.”

“Well, I know Edward would drool if he was to see a car with genuine leather seats. You know what a fool he is about cars. If he could be married to one, he would be.”

“Jesus, Della, Edward drools anyway. And he’s a fool about more than cars. He’s a fool, period.” Avis finished her drink and set it on the railing.

“He’s a hard worker, Avis.” Mumma emptied her glass.

Avis sighed. She lit another cigarette. They neither of them spoke for a minute. Bringing up Daddy often led to taut silences between Mumma and Aunt Avis.

Suddenly a shiny red Ford turned onto the side street where Avis lived. The sun just seemed to slide along from one end of it to the other. Mumma and I sat up and watched. “Oh, Avis, could this be it?”

“The one and only.” Avis glanced up, then stubbed out her cigarette and stuffed her pack into her little clutch purse. “No smoking in the vehicle.”

“Why, he’s not stopping,” Mumma said.

“He will.” Avis stood up. “Barb, honey, take these two glasses and stash them behind the plant. I’ll get it all later.” She adjusted her hat. “He’ll drive slowly past and then turn around and come floating back. Then he’ll toot the horn once. Even though we’re standing here in full view. Don’t you look sweet,” she said to me, and tugged on my skirt.

The red car circled back to us. We all stood on the top porch step and watched. “He’s going to tell one of us we look fresh as some goddamned flower.” Avis whispered this out of the corner of her mouth as she smiled and waved toward the car.

There was a short beep, the driver’s door popped open, and I got my first look at Fred. He was on the tall side, a lot taller than Daddy. He had on a dark brown brimmed hat and a light brown suit with very sharp creases from the shoes up. From his suit-coat pocket, he took a large white handkerchief. He grabbed at that handkerchief like he was wringing it out the whole time he was coming up the walk.

“His hands sweat,” Avis whispered to Mumma. She said it without moving her lips.

“Hello, ladies. What a pleasure this is and will be.” He returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “You must be Barbara.” He extended his hand to me, so I grabbed it and shook it. It felt dry enough. “You are as fresh as a daisy, like your Aunt Avis informed me you would be.” This was news to me, though I was glad to get it.

“Say thank you, Barbara.” Mumma put her hand on my head, which I did not appreciate.

“Thank you.”

He was not bad looking. Avis didn’t go out with homely men. But his teeth were big, especially the two front middle ones. That was the drawback to his face. They were sort of a pale yellow. It could be that his shirt collar was so very white it gave them a dull cast.