I edged into the alleyway alongside the building, my eyes half closed as white lights zigzagged through my brain, crashing into one another. I tiptoed into the empty lot behind the apartment, sat down on the dirt, and lit up a Raleigh.
The nicotine made me woozy. I hadn’t smoked much since I’d been seeing Bobby. I closed my eyes and saw the two of us lying side by side in the grass at Kessler’s Creek as Bobby ran his fingertips around the edges of my face. I shook my head, clenched my jaw, and looked up at the back window of our apartment.
My mother was ironing. You could see her shadow on the wall through the window, dipping her fingers into a bowlful of water and spritzing clothes with it like a preacher blessing babies.
I was still furious at her for siding with the reverend. Why couldn’t she at least have said, “You know, Nancy, I’ve been thinking. Maybe you were right. Maybe it wasn’t your imagination this time.” Other kids’ moms stood up for them. Why couldn’t mine? It was bad enough Bobby dumped me on account of her. Couldn’t she at least give a damn?
I squished the cigarette out and got up and started twisting. I needed to feel my muscles stretch and scrape and ache until I was exhausted. I bent down in front and spread my hands out flat on the ground. I lowered my nose until it touched my knuckles.
I threw myself into a backbend and tried to walk on all fours but lost my balance and caved in. Lying on the dirt, I started bawling and then I heard footsteps in the alley. A woman giggled.
A man’s voice said, “So what do you get if you cross a cow with a kangaroo?”
“I don’t know.” It sounded like Shirley, Doc’s waitress.
“I don’t either, but you have to milk it with a pogo stick.” It was definitely Eddie. I recognized his laugh, like sniffles. I stood up.
“So thanks for walkin’ me through the short cut,” Shirley said. I heard the back door of Doc’s open and close. Eddie struck a match and went on down the alley when something furry rubbed against my leg.
I shrieked, then looked down. It was only a cat. Damn! It yowled and raced off.
Eddie ran back. “What the hell? Nancy, is that you? What the hell are you doing here?”
I felt trapped. “How about you?” I demanded. “What are you doing in an alley with some lady?” The minute I said it I got irritated that I had to stick up for my mom.
“Jesus. Women. I ran into Shirley over on Broadway. She was late for work. I walked her through the alley. It’s a shortcut.”
“Oh.”
“So…” Eddie’s cigarette glowed orange in the dark.
“I was just … doing some of my twists. Sometimes when I get nervous I come out here and do twists. They help me relax.”
“Twists?”
“Yeah. I’m double jointed. I can twist myself into weird shapes.”
“I never heard that.”
“I don’t do it in front of my mom. She says it’s not ladylike.”
“What kind of shapes?” Eddie took a drag on his cigarette, his face flickering in the light from the ashes.
“I can bend down and touch my nose to the ground. I can curl up in a bundle and roll.”
“No kidding. So let’s see.”
I could tell he didn’t believe me. Some of my spunk crept back. I eased forward and did my nose touch better than I’d ever done it before, Eddie’s breathing adding a kind of quiet rhythm as I moved my head toward the ground, slow but sure. I stood up, then hurled myself quick into a backbend, hard and determined, drawing up every inch of energy I had in me, and this time I didn’t cave in one bit. This time I walked in a perfect circle on all fours, stomach in a high arch, although my palms and feet grasped at the ground in rough jerky moves, like a confused animal.
“Jesus, you can bend backward, too?”
“Yeah.”
“You realize only one contortionist in fifty, maybe a hundred, can do that? Bend forward and backward, too?”
“Contortionist?” I didn’t have the slightest idea what Eddie was talking about.
Rhonda the Rubber Woman
Part Three
16
NANCY, JULY, 1945
The late afternoon sun winked on the spires of the Old Welsh Church as I opened the creaky iron gate to the maple grove in back. Eddie was already waiting for me on the bandstand, grinning. I wiped a smudge of dust off my blue jeans and waved. We were getting along great, me and Eddie. Every Tuesday and Thursday we met at the grove, where he was training me to be Rhonda the Rubber Woman.
I was throwing myself into being Rhonda, the world’s youngest female contortionist, the way a dog went at a bone. I practiced for hours every day. Rhonda was going to be my real ticket out of Marysville. Rhonda was going to help me forget I’d ever met Bobby Felker.
“Good news,” Eddie called from the stage. Eddie was a real good teacher. Already I could walk on all fours in a circle smooth as a daddy longlegs.
“What?” I yelled as I headed toward him. He’d also started training me to bend forward from the hips and put my head through my legs so it came out in back. He had a book that showed a rubber man who could stick his head all the way through and stare up in back at the sky. It looked pretty disgusting to me but I kept trying anyway. All the muscle stretches, all the pulls and strains and shooting pains in my body were nothing compared to the heartache over Bobby.
“One of the circus gals I know over at Belvedere is going to make you up a fancy costume. Spangles, beads, sequins. You name it.”
“Oooh, that’s great.” I grinned as I reached the bandstand, picturing myself on a stage, arms outstretched, blowing kisses, mouthing the words, “Everyone is so lovely.”
“And maybe I’ll work up a musical accompaniment,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “Yeah. Music would give the routine a lot of class. What say we give it a try right now? Give me the routine where you twist yourself into a ball and roll. I’ll sing along.”
“Sure.” I stepped back onto the grass, sat and began to pull my legs up toward my stomach, like the pictures you saw of babies in their mother’s bellies. Eddie perched on the bandstand, legs dangling lopsided over the edge, and sang, “Would You Like to Swing on a Star?” He had a nice singing voice, sort of whispery, like Gene Kelly.
Slowly I gathered myself into a ball as Eddie finished “Swinging on a Star” and started on “I Got Spurs That Jingle Jangle Jingle,” clapping a little bit in rhythm.
When I’d pulled myself together as tight as I could, I started to rock to get myself rolling but I didn’t budge. I felt myself flush and sweat with the effort when suddenly Eddie broke into a loud chorus of “Ac-centuate the Positive.” I rocked faster to keep up with the beat and that was all it took. I rolled a few feet in one direction, then a few feet in another, then I let myself go loose all at once, as though I’d been sprung from a rubber band.
Eddie and I exchanged sly looks and laughed. The music was going to make a big difference.
“Take a breather,” he said so I sprawled out on the ground, grabbed a blade of grass and stroked it between my thumb and forefinger. Eddie told me his mom had been a piano teacher and she’d given him lessons when he was a kid, but he goofed off, so eventually she gave up on him.
“I’m sorry now,” he said. “I wish I could play now, but my mom…” He shook his head and slapped his hands on the jiggly wood planks of the stage.
“I’d be playing a tune, thinkin’, hey, not bad, but all she saw was mushy knuckles.” He imitated his mom. “‘Knuckles up, Edward. Knuckles up,’ she’d say. She was always findin’ something wrong, somethin’ wouldn’t have occurred to me in a million years.”
I thought about Eddie as a kid. It must have been tough with his clubfoot. For a minute I wanted to give him a hug, but he’d think I was crazy so I jumped up and did a quick backbend and walked around in a circle on all fours. The maple trees looked weird upside down, as though they were about to hurtle off the earth.
“One good thing about your mom,” Eddie went on as I squatted
again, “she doesn’t bellyache. Georgia’s always got a smile for ya. I only know one other woman always has a smile. A gal in western P.A. She’s a looker, too.” Eddie stared up at the sky for a minute, then out toward western P.A. The sun was going down. It looked like a huge orange ice melting, spreading out along the edge of the earth.
“Too many women, all they do is bellyache,” Eddie frowned, “Seems a cryin’ shame, a waste. You only go ‘round once in life.” He looked at my face as I sat on the grass now, hugging my knees.
I turned away as I thought about what Eddie said, but I didn’t go for it. You couldn’t stop a bellyache, only what you did about it. I bellyached all the time inside, telling people off in my head, dreaming up ways to make them sorry they’d been mean to me. I grabbed another blade of grass and pictured my mom sitting in the kitchen when Eddie was off on the road, smoking Raleighs and staring at the linoleum. I pictured how she looked at me sometimes as though I hurt her eyes.
You couldn’t tell me she wasn’t bellyaching inside. I looked at the blade of grass, shiny on one side, rough on the other. The difference between me and my mom, she didn’t know what to do about it, and I did. I gazed out at the huge orange rim on the horizon.
“Enough of a breather. Let’s practice the ball and roll again,” I said to Eddie in a voice so loud it surprised us both.
17
GEORGIA, JULY, 1945
Eddie came into the kitchen one Saturday afternoon and said he had to go to Pittsburg for a week. Nancy was out. I’d been shining the chrome on the stove.
“The firehouses and churches, they’re holdin’ their summer carnies,” he said. “I got some new novelties that are supposed to go over big with the kids playing pitch penny. Hand buzzers. Fake dog-do. Candy that makes your mouth turn green.”
“Oh, Eddie, that sounds awful,” I said but I couldn’t help laughing. “So I’ll leave in the morning.” He came up behind me and folded his hands in front of my waist.
“Okay. Sure.” I felt tired and tiny, like a floppy doll. For a while it had been fun, Eddie going off, like the goodbye scenes in war movies. He’d give me hugs and kisses and tell me what a looker I was. I’d feel special. But he didn’t make as much of a fuss anymore.
He kissed me on the back of the neck and I peeked at myself in the chrome and thought about turning thirty-five in August. Ugh! Except I knew I didn’t look it. People were always saying I still looked like a kid. I worked at it, though. I’d been massaging my neck, bottom to top, throat to chin, the way it had said to do in the Marysville Gazette that we read down at Doc’s. For a while I’d tried to tilt my face up a little bit all the time, like the paper had said to, to keep the skin on my chin tight, but then people’d started asking me if I had a stiff neck so I stopped. Later I sent away for a chin strap that was advertised in a magazine but when Eddie saw it, he practically died laughing so I didn’t use it. I thought about it now, though, and decided to put it on while he was gone.
He started edging me toward the bedroom, in little steps, the washrag hanging from my hand. We’d stopped pretending he was a boarder when Nancy went off to Clinton. Sometimes I wanted to tell him if we were married I wouldn’t mind his going off on business trips so much. I could talk to the other girls about how my husband was off on a business trip, same as them. Eddie had hinted a couple of times about getting hitched, but he hadn’t said anything since the time Walt came up to Marysville and tried to slug everybody in sight.
“Walt certainly would be a whangdilly of a relative,” Eddie’d said the next day. “Walt as a relative, whoooo, that’s one thing a guy would sure have to think about.”
After dinner I told Eddie I’d pack for him. “I’ll do a neater job,” I said. “You know men, they’re all thumbs.”
I went into the bedroom and looked for his little book that listed where he was going and that sometimes had papers from carnival companies in it saying what they needed, but I couldn’t find anything. I packed two pairs of brown pants and three shirts—two yellow and one cinnamon—and then something caught my eye. An envelope tucked up on a closet shelf underneath a spangled vest Eddie had gotten once from a circus ringmaster. He’d worn the vest when he did the song and dance routine when his buddy Chester retired.
I pulled the letter out. It was from a place called Lyndora and it was addressed to Eddie at his old apartment. The envelope had a flower in the corner like it was from a woman. My heart started racing to beat the band. I didn’t know whether I wanted to open it or not but I didn’t get a chance. I heard Eddie stomping toward the bedroom, so I quick stuck the envelope back. It was all I could think of the next day. I sat at my machine feeding in the nylon for the parachutes even faster than usual and I was one of the fastest feeders they had. I kept saying “Lyndora” to myself. I asked a couple of people if they’d ever heard of a town named Lyndora, if it sounded like a place that was close to Pittsburg, but nobody knew and a couple of the girls asked why I wanted to know so I clammed up.
Nancy was at the apartment door when I got home at 5:30.
“Guess what? I won a prize,” she blurted before I had a chance to breathe. “I won a prize for my essay on illusions.”
“Your what?”
“My essay on illusions. I told you about it. I wrote it in May and Miss Sandercock sent it in to a contest for kids all over the state. Look, here’s a letter. It says I won a war bond.”
“A war bond?” I said. “Isn’t that something?” I felt grumpy. I just wanted to get into the bedroom and look for the letter with the flower. But Nancy put on her poor woebegone kid look. I knew she’d been moping over the Felker boy. That’s how it is with kids. Puppy love. A month later they’re gaga over someone else, but you couldn’t tell Nancy that. She’d just sass you back or throw around some fancy-sounding saying nobody or their brother understood.
“Well, it’s swell that you won a prize,” I said, forcing a smile. When you thought about it, it was swell, just bad timing was all.
“I’ll read the essay to you,” she said, her eyes bright. “It’s called ‘The Strange World of Illusion.’”
“Illusion, huh?” I wasn’t exactly sure what illusion meant. You’d think they had better things to teach the kids at school than a lot of ten-dollar words nobody needed.
“So here goes. ‘The alarm clock rings and you jolt awake. You stumble into the bathroom and peek at yourself in the mirror. Oh oh. You look like an old loaf of bread. But wait. Don’t be alarmed. This is not the real you, only one of your sides—the just-got-out-of-bed side.’” She glanced up with her dark eyes.
“Uh huh.” It didn’t sound like much to me. How could a person look like an old loaf of bread anyway? Plus I hated it when Nancy looked at me with those eyes.
She went on. “You open the medicine cabinet and grope for the toothpaste. You brush your teeth and peek into the mirror again. That’s better. Now you look more like the Ipana girl.”
The Ipana girl? I wondered if the woman in Lyndora looked like the Ipana girl.
“You wash your hair. It’s squeaky clean, and now you feel like the Kreml Shampoo lady.” Nancy eyed me again.
“But wait. The shampoo lady’s face gets mixed up in your head with the loaf of bread and the Ipana girl. Who are you anyway?”
“Uh, how long is this essay?” I asked. It sounded like all Greek to me. The Ipana girl. The Kreml lady. Bread. I felt dumb, like I must be missing something. It made me nervous, my own kid making me feel dumb.
“Five pages.”
Five pages? How could anybody write five pages? It was beyond me. “Well, that’s real swell, but why don’t you just leave it, and I’ll read the rest later.”
Her mouth dropped a mile and I felt bad again. I hated how kids could do that to you. “Uh, well, but winning a war bond, that’s swell. I guess you take after me. I was good in English.”
“You were?” Her face seemed different lately. Thinner. More like an adult. “I didn’t know that. Did you write things?”
Nancy looked discombobulated for a minute but then she said, “Oh, yeah. Your handwriting is real neat. A lot better than mine.” She looked down at her paper and I noticed her eyelashes. Dark and long, like bugs’ legs. Me and Cora, ours were short and light, more like nailbrush bristles. I wished Nancy looked more like the other Sayers girls. She folded the pages and put them in her book bag. She flipped her hair and said she was going to Joanie’s. There was something about the way she walked lately. Springier. Ever since she and Eddie’d been practicing a surprise they were cooking up for my birthday.
After she left, I raced into the bedroom and opened the closet door but the letter with the flower wasn’t there. The spangled vest was right where it had been the night before, but no letter. I felt on the shelf underneath the vest and looked on the closet floor, squinting to see. I took the clothes off the shelf and ran my fingers through them. Nothing. I searched through the drawers. Eddie must have taken it.
In the kitchen, I got out some Old Crow and 7-Up and mixed myself a drink. I lit a Raleigh, the last one in the pack. I seemed to be going through more cigarettes lately. I finished it, then went down to Doc’s to buy more. I was feeling a little woozy so I decided to stay and have a cup of coffee. I sat at the counter stirring milk and sugar into my cup when Genevieve Metzger came in with her daughter Shirley, both dressed to the teeth. They sat in a booth.
“Ralph’s out of town on business so Shirley and I are treating ourselves to a night on the town,” I heard Genevieve tell Doc. “After dinner we’re off to see the new movie at the Strand, ‘Four Jills in a Jeep.’”
Rhonda the Rubber Woman Page 13