by Larry Brown
“No. No I didn’t.”
“How old are you?”
She started to lie and say that she was eighteen but she didn’t want to lie to him.
“I’m seventeen,” she said.
A small cloud of smoke drifted in front of him and she could smell the cigar, the odor of it sharp in her nostrils. He took it back out of his mouth and sipped at the coffee again. She was aware all over again of how big he was.
“You in some kind of trouble,” he said, not as a question, which she thought it was at first, and then she saw that he already knew somehow, could just tell from talking to her and looking at her that what he’d said was fact.
“I’m gonna have a baby,” she said.
The silence drifted in again. She could hear the sound his lips made on the rim of the coffee cup and she could hear him inhale on the cigar.
One word from him: “When?”
“I don’t know. I just found out a few days ago.”
“You know who the daddy is?”
“Yeah.”
“Does he know?”
“Yeah, he knows.”
“But you left him anyway.”
“I had to.”
He turned the rest of the coffee up and drank it and tossed the dregs out in front of him. He stretched one leg out and then pulled it back, working his calf back and forth, squeezing his kneecap with his hands. Then he drew his knee back up and turned his boot over on its side and ground the nub of the cigar out against it. He tossed the cigar behind a bush near the porch.
“Well it ain’t none of my business,” he said. “All I know about babies is that their mamas need their rest. You ready to get some sleep? Or you want to finish your coffee?”
“I’m ready,” she said, and stood up. He picked up his cup and they turned together and he held the screen door for her. He locked the front door, picked up her suitcase and from a board on the wall in the hall lifted a gold key attached to a piece of red plastic. He unlocked the door to a front room and opened the door and set her suitcase inside. She stood there, looking in.
He gave her the key.
“Sleep late as you want to,” he said. “If you get up early just help yourself in the kitchen. I’ll see Mama before you will probably and I’ll tell her you’re here. You need anything?”
“No. I’m fine. Thanks a lot. I really needed a place to stay tonight. It’s mighty nice of you.”
“It’s got its own bathroom and everything. If you want to catch some of that breeze you can raise the windows or open that front door in your room. I’d keep that screen door latched, though.” He backed up a few steps and started to unbutton his shirt. “Well,” he said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” she said.
He didn’t look back. She saw him head back into the kitchen and she stepped into the room and closed the door. Then opened it again, looking for the latch. There was a small knob and she turned it and a metal bolt slid out. She was satisfied. She shut the door again and turned the knob. It was locked. And he was okay. He wasn’t going to try anything.
One lamp was on in the room. She picked up her suitcase and put it on the bed. It was a nice bed with a canopy over the top and four tall posts of polished wood and a rug on the floor beside the bed.
She unsnapped the latches on the suitcase and went through her clothes for the one gown she’d packed, an old cotton one of Karen’s that she’d found in a drawer one day. She looked at the curtains, holding the gown to her chest for a moment. She didn’t think anybody could see in. She undressed silently and pulled the gown over her head and buttoned the three buttons on it and searched through her purse for her toothbrush and went into the bathroom. She stood there in front of the mirror brushing her teeth, looking into her eyes, watching the pale foam form on her lips. Overhead she could hear the creaking of one board. Two boards. Then silence. She cut the light off in the bathroom when she went out. Then stepped back, turned it on, put the rubber stopper into the drain on the sink and filled it halfway with warm water. She picked up her bra and panties from the floor and put them into the water to soak overnight. Maybe that would clean them a little bit. Early in the morning if she got up in time she could hang them somewhere to dry. She turned the light off again and went back into the bedroom and closed the suitcase and set it on the floor.
Standing at the window with her hand holding the curtain open she looked out into the night to see the ghostly masts standing aloft, and when she raised the window she could hear the wind still singing out there in the harbor, and after she had pulled back the coverlet and slipped in between crisp clean sheets and had fluffed the pillow to her liking and reached for the chain on the lamp and turned it off and had put her head back down into darkness, she could still hear it. She believed she could hear the boats creaking at their moorings.
“I miss you, Sam,” she said quietly, just to herself, just to hear it said, even if there was nobody there to listen.
Sometime during the night she heard a car pull in but it was lost somewhere in sleep and she barely wakened at all.
MONDAY SHE WOKE to nausea in the early morning hours when the big house was still quiet. She turned over onto her side and lay like that for a while, trying to make it go away, hoping it would, but then it came on stronger and she had to push back the covers suddenly and find the light switch in the bathroom and go to her knees on the tile floor next to the commode and hold her hair away from her face while she threw up. It left her heaving and trembling and without rising she pulled some toilet paper off the roll and wiped her mouth and spat strings of mucus into the cloudy water.
She leaned back on her bottom and her right leg, resting, waiting to see if it was going to come again.
She sat there long enough to know that it was over, thinking of the darkness outside and the distance back to Sam. In a way she wanted to go buy a newspaper and see if there was anything about Alesandra in it. In a way she was scared to. What difference was it going to make if it was in the paper or not? She got up and turned off the light when she went out.
She wasn’t sleepy now. The clock beside the bed with its little digital numbers said 4:57. She didn’t know at what hour daylight would arrive. It had been so long since she’d been up that early. Back when those boys had taken her to their trailer, she guessed. Days at Sam’s house had been lazy, sleeping late, watching television, eating, lying out on the beach, swimming, eating again. She sat on the side of the bed and lit a cigarette. She saw the front door he’d been talking about and went over to it, unlocked it and opened it. Through the screen door a sea breeze filled the room and cooled it, bowed the ruffles over the four poster bed, lifted strands of her hair and pushed them back. She stood there, looking out at the harbor, listening to the chiming in the riggings again, so close out there in the dark. There was nothing to stop her from getting dressed, easing out the door, heading down the highway again. And she had thought for all that time with Sam that she had been saved from all that forever, that the picking up and the moving was over and done with, nothing more than bad memories of days and nights in places she didn’t want to be. But nothing had changed. She was again just like she’d always been. And maybe would always be. But there was one thing she could do, one nice thing she could have right now.
She soaked in the tub for thirty minutes, one leg over the rim, amazed that her belly looked the same as it always had. Once she was done in the tub she washed her hair with the shower, afraid the running water might be waking people up. With some hand soap she washed out her underwear in the sink and from the suitcase she pulled a clean sleeveless blouse and a neatly folded skirt. The blouse was a little bit wrinkled but she put it on anyway with clean panties and the last clean bra. Out the window she could see a pale streak of light that meant morning was near. She saw a few clothespins hanging on a short line. She carried the wet things out there just as she’d done at Reena’s and hung them to dry.
Back in the bedroom there was nothing to do but sit on the bed and that got old f
ast. She was hungry, too, wanted a cup of coffee at least. There didn’t seem to be anybody up when she stepped barefooted into the hall. She had combed her hair and pinned it back with a clip and she felt clean now and somehow able to go on and face this day and whatever it would eventually bring.
At the back doors she looked out at the dawn. She tried to move quietly, not make much noise. Once the light was on in the kitchen she found the coffeemaker and the coffee and figured out how to operate it.
It was full daylight by the time she got back to the front porch and the little round table. Pink light in the bay rising up over the masts and people already beginning to stir down on the docks. She watched a few boats pull out, watched the care they took backing out of their berths. And then the water foaming behind them when they got turned and headed out, reading the names written back there in flowing script: Bettye’s Ride, Mama’s Dinghy, Rosa Hartsell. Far out in the bay a sail unfurled, tiny figures working at their tasks, and she watched how the boat took the wind under its sail and began to move out. Such a thing she’d never seen before, and for a few brief moments she was happy that she had come all this way. It wasn’t like she had imagined it all but it was better somehow, this time in the early morning before the people in the house sleeping would begin to stir.
She went back for another cup and thought about fixing something to eat, but decided again to wait until somebody, Aaron or his mother, got up and came down. Mainly she didn’t want to make any noise.
So she was still sitting there on the front porch with her coffee and her cigarettes when the slow steps came down the hall, stopped, paused, came on again. The lock moved in the door. She turned around in her chair as it swung open. Then the screen door pushed out and a woman was standing there, studying her from inside the wire mesh. The woman stood there for so long that Fay began to get uncomfortable. And then without saying anything, she backed up and the door closed again.
Fay thought maybe she should have said something, good morning or something, but she’d been waiting for the woman to come on out. And was that Aaron’s mother or somebody who was just staying here?
She wished Aaron would come on down, but as late as they’d stayed up, no telling how long he might sleep. If he worked late like that every night, he might do all his sleeping in the daytime.
She looked down into her cup and swirled the dregs of the coffee around. Another cup would be good but she believed she’d wait and see what happened next. The woman hadn’t looked friendly and it bothered Fay that she hadn’t said anything. Maybe this was her regular chair. Maybe this was where she sat every morning to drink her coffee and watch the boats across the road. But there were three others around the table, looked like she could sit in one of them.
She wished he’d get on down here.
Shit, she couldn’t sit here all day. She had to start thinking about looking for a job. She never had asked for a job, didn’t know how to go about it, didn’t know the first thing about it. And what if they asked her a bunch of questions? There might be those forms to fill out. You might have to tell them all kinds of things, like where you were from, how old you were, all that shit, who’s your mother and daddy? Well my daddy’s a drunk and my mama’s a frigging fruitcake and they live in a little rotten cabin up in the woods and the floor’s so dirty you can’t stand to walk on it barefooted. And you have to be careful inside because the wasps keep building nests. Anything else you want to know?
Shit, it looked hopeless. How was she even going to get around to someplace to ask?
Inside somebody said a word. A woman’s voice. Another woman’s voice answered it. Fay sat there, trying to hear what they were saying, but it was low and indistinct, like a child mumbling in her sleep. Somebody had to be fixing some breakfast in there. She wondered now if they’d let her eat.
About that time the door opened again. She hadn’t heard any footsteps because this woman was barefooted. She was coming out from behind the door with a smile on her face and a long white cigarette in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. Her hair was blond and some of it was piled on top of her head while other strands hung down the sides of her face and throat. It was the woman she had seen on the poster outside the strip joint. Aaron’s main squeeze maybe? She was wearing a short yellow teddy trimmed with lace under a long flowing dressing gown. Her chest was big and her thighs smooth muscled and deeply tanned. Her toenails were red and her teeth were bright in the lipstick smile she gave Fay.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m Gigi. Mind if I sit down?”
“Sure.” Fay scooted her chair over several inches as the woman flowed to the table and set her coffee down. She bent, her hand extended.
“You are?”
“I’m Fay,” Fay said, feeling stupid. She took the hand that was offered and shook it briefly.
“Isn’t it a beautiful morning?” Gigi said, standing with her hand on one hip and gazing off across the road. Posing, looked to Fay like.
“It’s pretty nice,” Fay said, looking down into her cup again, knowing there was some more in the kitchen. Or had been.
“Is there any more coffee in there?” she said.
“Oh yes,” she said bending from the waist to pick up hers. “Arlene just put on a fresh pot. Did you meet Arlene?”
“Somebody come to the door a while ago. I didn’t exactly meet her. Is that Aaron’s mama?”
The eyes swiveled back on her.
“Ohh,” she said, holding the cup just beneath her moist-looking red lips. “So you know Aaron?”
“I just met him last night,” Fay said. The woman hadn’t moved a hair, was waiting for her to go on. “He brought me out here and let me spend the night. I think he’s supposed to give me a ride back to Biloxi sometime.”
“Is that right?” Gigi said. “Well. That’s interesting. Where may I ask did he find you?”
She knew well enough that she was being put down, but she didn’t quite know what to do about it.
“I was in the bar.”
“The bar?”
“The club or whatever.”
“The club? I don’t think I know any club Aaron goes to.”
“The strip joint, then. The place where he works.”
“I see,” Gigi said. She sipped at her coffee and gracefully pulled back one of the chairs at the table and sat down. She crossed one elegant leg over the other. Fay had to admit she was beautiful. And then she wondered what she was doing here. Where Aaron stayed. With his mother.
Gigi puffed at her long cigarette and Fay watched the ash hanging off the end of it. She pushed the ashtray over closer to her and Gigi smiled and nodded and delicately tipped the ash into it.
“I was in Memphis last night,” she said. “I’m afraid I got in late.”
“I think I heard you pull in.”
“It was pretty late. But you were up?”
“I was awake. I didn’t sleep too good. Strange place and all, you know. I kept hearin that wind in those boats.”
“Boats?”
Fay pointed with her chin. “Those out there across the road.”
Gigi turned her head and Fay watched her profile as the hand with the cigarette went slowly to her mouth, watched how her cheeks hollowed slightly, how the red lips sucked at the little white tip, and then how she slowly exhaled.
“Oh,” she said. “You mean those boats.”
“Yeah.”
She turned her face back to her and gave her that smile again.
“I don’t pay much attention to them. Usually when I come out here I have other things on my mind.”
Fay didn’t answer. She hated sitting out here with her.
“So,” Gigi said. “How was it that Aaron happened to bring you out here if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I don’t know,” Fay said. “I was just hangin out with this friend of mine, Reena …”
“Reena? Reena Mize?”
“Well, I don’t know what her last name is. She never did tell me that.”
> “Does she work where Aaron works?”
“Yeah …”
“That’s Reena Mize.”
“Oh, you know her, huh?”
Gigi picked up her cup with her lacquered perfect fingernails entwined in the handle and took a sip, set it back down.
“I’ve had the pleasure of meeting her, yes.”
“I like her,” Fay said. “She’s been good to me. She let me stay with her some.”
“How nice of her.”
“She’s got a couple of cute kids.”
“I don’t doubt that. I wonder if they’re legitimate.”
“What?”
“Nothing. So. Tell me. Are you a … did you just start working at the Love Cage?”
“Naw,” Fay said. “I don’t work there. I just went over to see Reena.”
Gigi put her cigarette in the ashtray and stretched her arms and gave an enormous yawn with her mouth wide open. After she finished she grabbed her head with her hands and moved it around her neck, swiveling her eyes from the floor to the ceiling. She finished by lacing her fingers together and turning them outward and flexing her knuckles. She smiled and picked up her cigarette and coffee cup again.
“Honey,” she said, without looking at Fay, but gazing instead out across the water, “I don’t mean to be indelicate, but I’m having a small problem here and I’d appreciate it if you’d bear with me for a moment.”
“Okay,” Fay said.
“I’m having a small problem coming in and finding a strange woman here saying Aaron brought her home with him.”
“You mean me?”
“Yes. You.”
“What’s a problem about that?”
“It just is. You sure you’re not a dancer?”
“I’m not a dancer. Are you?”
“I’m not a dancer. I’m an artist.”
“An artist?”
“Yes. I was in the House of Vixens on Winchester last night. And I’ve been in several films.”
“You mean movies?”
“Yes. I’ve had several starring roles.”
“Golly,” Fay said. “What’s some of the names of em? I might have seen one on TV or somethin.”