by test
One night when the kids were asleep and the dishes washed and put up,
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Tammy was getting ready to walk across the yard home, when Jack said to her, "Tammy, you know how to dance?"
"A little bit," she said. "I can fast dance good. You want me to show you how to fast dance?"
"Naw," lack said. "Fast dancing is for kids. I just felt like dancing, slow dancing, thought maybe you knew how."
"Sort of," she said.
"Come over here and I'll show you."
And she did. And he did. Taught her to slow dance like Arthur Murray would. Official like that. And as the nights passed they might dance some. Wait till the kids were asleep good and dance and laugh a little bit. Tammy even tried to show Jack the fast dances she knew. He watched her with interest, tried it himself just barely, just enough to amuse Tammy and make her giggle. Tammy thought it got to be the best part of the night.
The first night they danced with the lights off it was because Jack said it was more relaxing that way. They danced at least five slow songs. Jack held her so close she thought it was like they were a couple of candleslike the music lit their heads, and was melting them together It was the nicest smell. She closed her eyes because there was nothing to look at. And Jack brushed the hair away from her face sometimes, and kissed her neck. And whispered her name with his lips that were a little bit wet against her ear. Tammy thought this meant he loved her.
But Norma June didn't like it. Tammy coming home at ten or eleven o'clock every night, not getting her homework done, not helping around her own house anymore. Norma June said it would not do, and she put an end to it. Wanted Tammy to come home the minute Jack walked into the house. She said Jack was a grown man and could look after himself. Tammy could not protest much because she was too embarrassed to explain about the game.
And Norma June watched to see too, watched for Jack's car in the carport, and as soon as she saw it she would stand on the porch and wait for Tammy. It made Tammy so nervous. Hurrying like that. Jack knowing she's got to hurry because her mama is standing there, waiting, for the world to see, with her hands on her hips. And sometimes Jack gave Tammy a friendly swat on the bottom real easy, as she was hurrying out the door. Swatted her that playful way and called her "Mama's girl."
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When school finally let out for that year Tammy quit babysitting because Suzanne hired a colored lady to come and keep the kids and cook supper. And because it was summer again, then Tony went off with Barton every chance he got, going places on business and staying in motels. Barton still saying to Tammy everytime he left, "Look after your Mama, now."
It was mid-July when Suzanne went to visit her people in Louisiana. Took
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all the kids with her. Jack couldn't get off work to go, said just the peace and quiet of them being gone would be vacation enough for him, and he grinned saying it. His car left the driveway about eight o'clock every morning, came back around seven just like always. A couple of times Tammy saw him go inside carrying a sack from the barbecue place, for his supper, she guessed. Probably gon' sit over in that house and eat his barbecue with the relaxing lights off and the hi-fi going. Tammy could picture it.
Norma June missed Suzanne, but LuAnn and Blakney were good about inviting her to do this and that thing with them, play some cards, drive down to Madison and bet the dogs, fry some fish in the yard. One night they invited her to go see some kind of Rock Hudson-Doris Day double feature at the drive-in and she wanted to go in the worst way. She wanted Tammy to call up a friend and spend the night out, so she would not have to worry about her at home all alone. But Tammy didn't want to call anybody. She liked being alone, having the whole house to herself. She promised to lock the doors. So Norma June finally said okay, and then went in the bathroom and spent one full hour, maybe longer, getting ready, rattling things in her Merle Norman drawer, singing to herself the whole time.
"Sugar Cube, you be good," Norma June said as she left. "Keep the door locked and go to sleep when you want to. I'll let myself in with the key." And she left to walk down to LuAnn's. She looked mighty good to be going off to sit in a dark parked car where nobody would even see her, but that was Norma June's way.
It was hot July when every minute seems like it is leading up to something. When everything you do is wet. It is too hot to sleep. The window fan moans twenty-four hours a day. Tammy watched some TV. Two different boys called her on the phone, but she didn't talk long because it was too hot and she didn't like the boys much anyway. She ate almost a whole bag of Golden Flake Potato Chips, but it didn't help that July feeling.
Around ten o'clock Tammy took a bath. Sat in the tub of water to cool off. Shaved her legs. Got out and put lotion all over and baby powder on top of that. Then just for something to doshe got into Norma June's Merle Norman drawer, got out all the tubes and compacts and polishes and put them on to see who she could turn into. Put on mascara and blue stuff on her eyelids. Did all the magic things to her own face that she had been watching her Mama do for years and years. Was almost good at it, and she liked what she saw when she was done. Liked the way those little tubes of lipstick and pink lotions and powders gave her five more years than she'd really earned, five years she could wash away when she wanted to. Tammy brushed her hair, pinned up one side of it with a hair clip and let the other side hang loose and free. She felt good. As she was admiring her face, talking to herself in the mirror, the phone rang. She blew a kiss at her reflection and went to answer it.
"How's the sweetest girl this side of New Orleans?"
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"I'm fine, Daddy."
"You ain't just fine, little girl, you're as fine as fine can be, you know that, don't you? And I'm still your best boy, ain't I?"
Tammy recognized all the energy Barton put into his talking, it was how he did when he was half-drunk. Talk loud, like he was singing.
"You miss me?"
"Yes."
"Where's your mama? Put your mama on the phone."
"She's not here."
"Shit." Barton said. "Where is she?"
"Don't say shit, Daddy. She's gone to the show. Her and LuAnn and Blakney."
"I'll be dog," he said. "Here I am a lonely man calling his wife and she's gone off to the picture show. I'll be dog."
"What are you doing, Daddy?"
"Thinking about your mama's ass."
"Daddy," Tammy said, "don't talk like that. Don't say ass. Me and Mama don't like it when you talk like that. Mama says it isn't you talking, it's Jim Beam."
"Well, she ought to know. Do you miss me, Baby?"
"Yes, Daddy. I already told you yes."
"You always gon' be your daddy's girl, ain't you? Won't nobody ever love you like your daddy does."
"I know. I'll tell Mama you called."
"You do that, little Babydoll."
"I'm not gon' tell her what you said though."
Barton laughed.
Tammy hung up the phone. Her daddy got that way every once in a while. Sort of nasty drunk. Sort of lonely for Norma June and he called late at night, woke up the whole house, saying he just wanted to hear Norma June's voice. Sometimes she acted glad he called. She acted sweet over it. But sometimes she got mad, said she just as soon sleep as talk to Mr. Jim Beam himself. Sometimes she got on the phone and fussed, said why in this world didn't he use the good sense God gave him?
But Tammy didn't think of all that now. She looked at herself in the mirror again. If she ever wanted to she could be one pretty girl, she knew it was the truth. Might be as pretty as her mama. She got bold and went into Norma June's bedroom closet and tried on her best dresses. Some of those black dresses, none of which fit exactly, but some came close. One looked as good as Tammy thought a dress could ever look on her. She zipped it up and pulled the belt as tight as it would go. She twirled. She looked in the mirror from a hundred different angles. Smiling. Tossing her head. She sat in a chair and looked in the
mirror. Crossed and uncrossed her legs. Then she lay on the bed and posed like all the glamour women she had ever seen in magazines. She was practically in love
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with herself over her good looks. Merle Norman magic. It seemed terrible to waste looking this good. Someone needed to see her to make it true.
Jack's car was in the carport, the porch light was on, and maybe one light in the living room. He might still be up. It was only eleven-thirty. Tammy would twirl herself down to Jack's house. Go to the kitchen door and knock. He would open the door with a cigarette in his mouth. He would stare at her in disbeliefhe would have to put his glasses on''Tammy?" he would say. "Is that you?"
But what would she say to him? She needed to think of something to say before she went. She did not want to have to think on her feet, not in Norma June's high-heeled shoes.
"Jack," she would say, "I came to dance one slow dance. Mama is off at the show. So we can dance one slow dance." Tammy decided the lights would probably be off already, the music going already, and she would let Jack kiss her neck again if he wanted to. And when he whispered her name the third time, it would be time for her to leave. She had it planned. Third whisper and she would say, "Well, I better go now," and she would run across the yard, fading into the night like a dream. She would vanish like Cinderella and leave Jack standing there in his sockfeet like a stupefied prince. Then she would wash her face, hang up Norma June's dress, and go straight to bed.
When Tammy got almost to Jack's kitchen door she noticed Sunset behind her in the darkness, slow walking. Doing the old age limp. But it was too late to go back and put her in the house. Tammy's shoes tapped across the driveway in what she thought was a too-loud manner, so she began to tiptoe instead.
She heard music before she even got to the door. That much was good. And the house was almost completely dark, just a pale rim of light around the edge of the window. Seemed like Sunset was making a lot of noise in the flower beds, but Tammy managed to be quiet, and to position herself just right to see inside.
Jack was there. She saw his cigarette burning in an ashtray, and his glasses on the table. It was perfect. Everything was perfect. It was just exactly like she imagined, except for one thing, one detail. Her mama, Norma June.
There was Jack, the pretend husbandhis shirt unbuttoned, the hair on his chest as black as a fluttering crow's wingholding Norma June in his arms like all it was was hugging and there was no music at all. And Norma June's hairit was a mess. Her good hair all loose and tangled. Jack and her mama blurred together, the two of them so tangled, so blended it made Tammy rub her eyes and smear blue stuff up the sides of her face. "Oh God," she thought, feeling as if she had been dropped from an airplane, fast failing through the night air.
If Jack was whispering her mama's name Tammy could not hear it. Her ears rang so loud she couldn't hear anything. Ringing in her ears like if an ambulance drives up to your very own house with the siren going. She was sure she was not screaming. It was just some siren going off. Sunset's tail flapping away, faster and faster, like a hand slapping an invisible face.
Tammy tried to run home, but her feet wouldn't run, they only stumbled
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right out of both high-heeled shoes, left lying somewhere in the yard. She went in the side door and locked it, unpeeling Norma June's dress as she went. She was hurrying the way a person about to vomit hurries. She ran to the bathroom and began to wash her face, makeup smeared everywhere. Black and blue streaks across her face, red smears from her lips to her nose. "Shit," she said. "Shit. Shit. Shit." She kept rubbing, but it seemed like she was just rearranging the messnot getting it off.
She put soap on a washcloth and rubbed again, her skin pinkened until it was the same color as the lids on the Merle Norman cosmetics she had left sitting out on the counter by the sink. She swung at them suddenly, her washcloth like a whip, and knocked them across the room where they bounced against the tile, crashed into the tub, and rolled across the floor under her feet, making a noise like Tony's little toy trucks. She scrubbed harder, but those extra five yearsthey did not wash off.
She threw the towel on the floor and went into her mama's bedroom and began rummaging through the bedside table looking for the telephone book and the mimeographed paper that was kept folded inside it, Barton's travel schedule. It was so Norma June could find him if she needed him, in case of an emergency. Tammy found it in the G pages, G for Golden, and unfolded it. July. She thought she might vomit. July 17. Valdosta. Friendly Motor Lodge. It was almost twelve o'clock. Barton would be asleep. It was a long distance call. Practically midnight. Tammy dialed. An irritated clerk put the call through. Tammy's stomach churned.
"What the hell?" Barton's angry voice said.
"Daddy?"
"Who the hell is this?"
"It's me, Daddy."
"Good Lord, what time is it? What's wrong? What's happened?"
"I just wanted to talk to you, Daddy. That's all."
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing."
"Where's your mama?"
Tammy dug her fingernails into her flesh, gripping hard, to stop the falling. "She's gone to the movie, Daddy. I told you that. She's on her way home right now. She's just a couple minutes late."
"You okay?" Barton asked. "You sure you're okay? I swear to God you scared the hell out of me."
"I just miss you, Daddy. That's all."
"You like to give me a heart attack."
"I love you."
"I love you too, Baby. You know that, don't you?"
"Yes, Daddy."
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"You go on and get to bed now. I'll be home in a couple of days, and I'll bring you something nice."
Tammy hung up the phone and scratched through the bedside table for a pen and wrote on the back of Barton's travel schedule, "Mama, your husband called you tonight." She left the note sitting on the pillow on Norma June's bed.
It was after midnight now. Outside she could hear Sunset whining. In her hurry to get home Tammy had locked the old dog out because she was too slow in coming, so now she would have to listen to her whimper, scratch at the door, and whine. All night long she would have to listen.
It was not until she lay in her own bed with the door to her room locked that Tammy began to cry. It was her belly. And it was her face. She rubbed her skin and it burned where she touched it. She put her pillow over her head and the cotton pillowcase felt soothing. She kept it that way for a long time hoping the darkness would help. But no matter how dark it got, Tammy could still see.
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She was not asleep when Norma June's key rattled the door, unlocking it. She heard the sound of Sunset's toenails scratching across the hardwood floor, and Norma June whispering to the dog, "Shhhhh," as she tiptoed down the hall to her bedroom. Tammy got out of bed and followed her.
She watched Norma June take off her shoes, slinging them across the room. Norma June picked up the note on the pillow. Her lips moved as she read it. She crushed the note until it was the size of a clenched fist and jammed it into the bedside drawer. Then she walked to the dresser looking at herself closely in the mirror, running her fingers around the edges of her eyes.
"So," Tammy said. "How was the movie?"
Startled, Norma June twirled around and looked at Tammy as if she were reading something written in small letters across the girl. "It was fine." She turned away and began undressing.
Tammy watched as her mother unbuttoned her blouse, took it off, and hung it up in the closet. She unhooked her bra and held her arms out in front of her to let it slide off. She undressed gracefully, as though she were performing before a live audience, as though she were saying to the world, "See, this is the beautiful way to take off abra and fold it and put it in a drawer." Norma June's immodesty infuriated Tammy, the sight and sway of her mother's breasts as she slid a nightgown over her head, the way she slid out of her panties, left them lying on the top of the dresser, pick
ed up a brush and began brushing her tangled hair. All of this as though Tammy were not watching herbut everyone else in the world was.