The Ledger

by Dorothy Uhnak

  “Mrs. Gonzalez?”

  The woman nodded, her eyes intent on Christie. Christie raised the detective shield, that was cupped in her left palm. The woman’s eyes slid quickly to the shine of gold, then back to Christie.

  “I’m Detective Opara of the District Attorney’s Squad. I’d like to talk to you about Elena.”

  The woman moved her head from side to side. “No, I don’t know any Elena. Wrong house.” As she spoke, she plucked small grubby hands from her skirt, pushed children away from her, automatically, without looking at them.

  “Aren’t you Elena Vargas’s sister?”

  The woman’s face betrayed nothing. “I have no sister,” she said slowly, without passion. “She is dead. My sister Elena died a long time ago.”

  Christie’s shoulder resisted the pressure of the door. She moved over the threshold and sensed the woman’s resignation. Elena Vargas’s sister stepped back, moved her hand toward the room wearily.

  Christie glanced at the children. They ducked their heads shyly but their eyes stayed on her as she sat on the chair next to the table.

  “I will get you coffee,” Elena’s sister said. She moved toward the narrow stove set between two tattered upholstered chairs. She kept her face down, her eyes on the scarred coffee pot.

  Christie felt the room: it was cold and dark and crowded with odd pieces of furniture and children. Consuela Vargas de Gonzalez and her dark-eyed brood dwelt within a riot of color: each ornament of religious adoration decorating the chipped walls, each slash of plastic curtain and flower, each angular slab of varied patterned linoleum placed over God-knew-what corruption of floor, each panel of brightly painted wall encompassed them blatantly within the confines of their small tenement rooms. The ugly garish colors leaped from all directions; the children wore shiny slippery iridescent clothing which did not keep them warm but seemed somehow to dominate and defeat them.

  It was a room containing parts of a kitchen: stove, table, aluminum-framed, plastic-covered chairs, small dripping sink; parts of a living room: broken, heavy upholstered chairs; parts of a bedroom: two cots, one against the other, stale-smelling, grayed with use. And a television set: twenty-one-inch, brightly flickering, sound turned down, picture radiating, providing most of the light in the room. The children were more interested in their visitor.

  Consuela, a small woman, burgeoned with a late pregnancy. She stood, surrounded by her tired, old-faced little children, and plucked warily at a thread which had once held a button midway down her worn maternity smock. Her sallow face was lost amid the ugly flowers winding down both her breasts. There was no trace of bloom on her cheeks. Her features, small and delicate, were totally lost in her surroundings. Christie tried to see Elena somewhere in the dark eyes, but a tired, beaten, bitter and totally unfamiliar woman placed a cup of coffee on the table before her.

  “Maybe you won’t like my coffee,” she said.

  Christie sipped at it, swallowed hard. “It’s fine, thank you very much.”

  Consuela took a huge swallow from her own cup, then gave it to a pair of small hands, which snatched at it. She issued some instructions in Spanish and the children drank from the cup, one after the other.

  “I put a lot of sugar in it,” she explained. “They are greedy for the sugar.”

  Christie could not tell if there were five children or six of them or more or less. They stood clustered around their mother in that shy yet calculating way of small slum children: how might this strange visitor affect them? She smiled tentatively, and as her eyes made contact, first with one small child and then another, dark heads ducked down quickly then, irresistibly, bobbed up again to study the pale and soft-spoken intruder.

  Consuela stood up and they moved against her like magnets. She pushed them from her with a languid, automatic motion of her hips, nothing more than an adjusting of her weight from one leg to the other. The smallest child—not clearly identifiable as to sex, just a small, tousle-headed child of indeterminable age, thumb shoved into a mouth ringed with some grayish, powdery substance—fell to the floor. Its head cracked against the cold linoleum. Instinctively, Christie leaned forward, but the child, without relinquishing the thumb, pulled back and picked itself up silently. The large eyes never left Christie’s face.

  Christie realized she would have to speak before this small and curious audience. “Mrs. Gonzalez, Elena lived with you for about a year. I understand that she had also lived with a family named Fenley before she came to live with you.” Christie consulted her notebook, then slipped it back into her pocketbook. “I’m just beginning to piece together Elena’s background. It is very important for me to do this. Can you tell me about the year that Elena lived with you?”

  The woman’s small dark hands plucked at the thread on her smock. She did not ask Christie why, or by what right, or for what reason she was being questioned. Never once did she assert that this was her home, her domain. She merely sighed and began to speak.

  “Elena left the Fenleys for no good reason.” Suddenly, she slapped at a head that poked against her body for a better view of Christie. The slap was hard and flat but there was no outcry. “She did not like to work, that girl. Always, Elena thought she was something she was not. The sisters at the home, they meant well, but they let Elena think she was better than the others, God forgive them.”

  Consuela’s eyes came alive, glowed darkly with remembered malices. “Yes, she was quick to learn, my youngest sister. She was the youngest of us all, so she learned the English the fastest, the best. The sisters, they made a pet of her.” The voice was stronger now, harsh. “There were seven of us when we were put into that orphanage. Elena was only two years old so they made a baby of her.” She shrugged away a sticky hand that reached for her face. “They placed her with the Fenley people when she was sixteen. They were a nice family, they lived nice. But Elena was too good for that life. She said they wanted her to be a servant, a maid.” Her expression was no longer blank; it was animated and cruel. “So, she came to live here, with us.” Her hands spread to encompass the room. “There were not so many kids then, but even so, my husband did not make so much money. And Elena was young and healthy. At that age, at seventeen, I had Paco, my first son.” She glanced around, then shook her head. “He’s not here now.”

  Shrill voices chanted, “Paco’s got a girl friend. Huh, Maria! Paco loves Maria.” A quick slap shut the mouth of the more vocal of the chanters. The others squinted meanly at the crying child who kicked out at his tormentors. A sharp command from Consuela hushed them all.

  “I told Elena I would get her a job where I worked. At the dress shop. She knew how to sew. We were taught by the sisters. Oh, but not Elena.” Her voice went lower, tasted the words. “Not that one. Not at a ‘factory,’ she said. ‘I’m better than that,’ she said. Huh. All the time, she sat with her little pad, writing those shorthand words. Crazy little wriggles all over the papers, listening to the radio and writing down what the announcers said. My husband, he told her, ‘You want to stay here, you get a job.’ She said she tried, but everywhere she go, they look at her ‘funny.’ Consuela’s lips pulled back in a bitter, remembering smile. “They look at her funny all right. ‘Elena,’ I told her, ‘you’re not going to sit in any office with white girls and play at being white!’ ”

  Suddenly aware of the blond paleness of the policewoman, Consuela bit her lip, turned her head, shoved a child from her knee. She shrieked some words in Spanish and the children scampered away but returned, silently, one by one. “You want some more coffee?” she asked Christie.

  “No. No thank you, Mrs. Gonzalez. This was some seven or eight years ago?”

  The woman tried to keep her voice light. “Sí. Yes, eight, maybe nine years, I’m not so sure. It’s different now, you know? They got all these equal employment things. But it was different then, you know?”

  Christie nodded. “What did Elena do then?”

  Consuela leaned her elbows on the metal surface of the table. “We
ll, she came to work with me in the shop. But she was not happy there. She did not eat her lunch with the rest of us. No, not Elena. She would go into the office at lunch time and show off.”

  “What do you mean, show off?”

  “Type, on the secretary’s typewriter. To show the boss she could do the office work, you know. I told her, the other women they told her, stop playing, Elena. Do your own job, earn your pay and be thankful. And I looked out for her, too. All the time, the stockboys, the salesmen, the cutters, they watched her. She was very ... you know.” Her hands sketched curves in the air. “And with her face, all sweet innocence, they watched her, the men.”

  A hard glint came from the dark eyes. A small, joyless smile pulled her lips down. “My young and pure little sister. I told her to stay out of that office. The boss was a young man and he could see her body, the way she moved around. And the boss’ wife could see, too. She worked in the office, the boss’ wife, and she told Elena to stay out. But the boss, he started to let Elena do some letters and bills for him, when the secretary was out sick. Then, Elena started to go into that office like she had a right to. She said she wanted to get some good experience, so that she could look for a ‘nice’ office job and say she had real office experience. It would be different then, she said. I told her it would be the same.” The small, clenched hand hit the table. “But no. Elena fooled herself. Something wonderful would happen. She would work in some beautiful shining building on Fifth Avenue.” She made an ugly grunting sound and closed her lips firmly.

  Christie thought of Elena, a young Elena, filled with hope for something wonderful. She forced herself to look at Consuela, to speak quietly. “And what happened then?”

  “Well, it had to end bad. I told her it would, but Elena never listened. The boss’ wife caught her.”

  “Caught her? What do you mean, ‘caught her’?”

  “Well, Elena had saved up her money and bought an old typewriter. She used to sit, all night, bang-bang-bang, clicking at those keys.” Her fingers beat an angry sound on the table. “She drives my husband crazy, but she said she would become so fast, so good, she would get a good job and give us lots of money. But she needed paper and those ... those typewriter ribbons. And the boss’ wife ... Holy Mother ... I knew it would end badly. The boss, he went on a business trip and his wife caught Elena taking paper and ribbons from the office supply. She said Elena took money, too, from the ... what do you call it? The petty cash. She had Elena arrested.”

  Christie remembered; Sam Farrell had shown her a yellow sheet on Elena. One arrest for petit larceny; she remembered also seeing the word “dismissed” on the sheet.

  Christie thought of all the white collar crime, all the employees marching home with pockets loaded with paper clips, staples, rubber bands, pencils; with manila envelopes stuffed with carbon paper, stationery, envelopes. But Elena Vargas had been arrested.

  “They put her in jail,” Consuela continued. The children, around their mother again, listened. Their eyes were large and beautifully dark and shining. Their complexions ranged from nearly fair to deep brown, the color of their mother. “I was so ashamed.” Her hand covered her forehead for a moment. “I didn’t want to see her, not in a place like that. But I went. I was her older sister, after all.”

  “But the charge was dropped, wasn’t it?” Christie asked.

  Consuela shrugged, weary now. “The boss, he came back and made his wife drop the charges. He said that he gave Elena permission to take the typewriter ribbons and paper. And he said that he took the petty cash money before he left on his business trip. But who knows?” She made a sharp clicking sound with her tongue. “Eh, I wonder what Elena gave him for these favors?”

  The air around Christie was heavy and stale and thick with the small unwashed bodies. The faces of the children seemed cruel and mocking, old and wise and knowing as their black eyes slid from their mother to Christie to gauge the effect of this information on their visitor.

  “Where did Elena go then?”

  “Oh, not here. Not back here.” She shook her head over the obvious statement. “The court, they sent her to that doctor. I don’t remember his name. Somewhere on Long Island. She worked for him for a while. I don’t know for how long.” She absently reached out and moved her fingers through a curly thick black head of hair; the child so favored pressed against her hand, enjoying the unexpected caress.

  “I had my own troubles. But I have never been arrested. I am what I am. We had the same upbringing, Elena and me. But Elena would not be what she was. She was ‘better.’ So now, her face looks out from the newspapers for everyone to see what she is: a whore, a prostitute, a puta.” She made a gurgling sound, deep in her throat, then a dry, empty, hawking sound. “I spit at her name. She is dead for me. She is dead for my children.”

  It was with great effort that Christie forced herself to stand, to quietly speak some words, to reach out and stroke a thickly matted head of childish hair by way of farewell. The face of Consuela Vargas de Gonzalez reverted to the weary expressionless stare that had first confronted her. She offered no word to send along to her youngest sister.

  Christie’s feet thudded on the hollow tin-edged stairs. The progression of staircases seemed to be growing longer and longer, without end, bottomless. Finally, she yanked at the narrow door leading to the street. She whispered an unheard excuse to the startled old men who had been leaning against the door and fell into the hallway.

  Christie moved rapidly along the narrow sidewalk, squinted against the thin glare of winter sunlight, twisted her body to avoid crashing into garbage cans and young women with shapeless bodies whose hands were pulled behind them by small children. She hurried on as though pursued, as though she dare not stop for fear she would be caught and held and trapped within the confines of that narrow living street of human bodies and sounds and odors and despairs. She slowed her pace finally, breathlessly, and struggled to regain control. She forced herself to stop and to turn and to look back and face the street where Elena Vargas had lived. She faced it and absorbed it and breathed it into her body, into the pores of her skin, and she held it all inside of her.

  5

  MRS. ADRIENNE FENLEY WAS a beautiful woman. Her high cheekbones were as flushed as a schoolgirl’s. Her huge luminous gray eyes dominated the small, finely structured face. The corners of her mouth turned upward, and when she smiled, the small crinkles alongside of her eyes were surface deep, suggesting pleasantness, not age. Her hair, caught up and away from her face by a pink bow, was a subtle shade of golden beige. As she moved about the huge room, lights played upon her soft jersey jumpsuit which was also a subtle, almost indefinable color: the same tone as her hair.

  Her voice was a particular kind of voice, a low, elegant, assured growl. “My God, I was expecting an amazon. Let me look at you.” She placed her long fingers on Christie’s shoulders, turned her toward the light which streamed evenly from the ceiling.

  “Mrs. Fenley, I can see that you are very busy and I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but if ...”

  “No, wait a moment.” Mrs. Fenley’s hand moved to Christie’s chin. The fingers were long and cold as she tipped Christie’s face upward. “You beautiful, beautiful child,” she explained. There was a totally natural pleasure in her words. “Have you ever modeled?”

  Christie felt heat along her cheeks and forehead and moved her face away from the cold touch. “No. Why ... no, of course not. Er, Mrs. Fenley, if it’s inconvenient for you to talk with me just now ...”

  Mrs. Fenley whirled around, her arms thrust out. It was a theatrical gesture, encompassing the room, yet she made it seem a natural movement. “All this, isn’t it a disaster area? It’s always like this before a ball. My God, the work that goes into these things. Sometimes I think it would be easier to just write a check. But, you see, it is expected of us.” She shrugged and sighed, confident of Christie’s sympathetic understanding.

  Thrown carelessly over velvet couches and chairs
was an assortment of dresses and other items of clothing: feathery things, bright, metallic shining fabrics, sheer misty yards of chiffon that seemed to have no form but floated over each other in graceful folds.

  There was too much to see in one slow glance. The room could be better appreciated in a series of color photographs, studied a section at a time. The ceilings were unbelievably high; the huge fireplace was the first Christie had ever seen in an apartment; the paintings were placed in such a way that they did not call attention to themselves but were available for quiet appreciation. Everything in the room was right, emitted a confidence, provided a setting.

  “Do take your coat off, for heaven’s sake, my dear.”

  Christie wished she could hide her coat and her Irish knit sweater and tweed skirt. She held her coat uncertainly, reluctant to place it next to any of the garments tossed about the room. From nowhere, a small, unobtrusive girl in a pale-green maid’s uniform appeared and took the damp coat from her. The thin sunshine had receded and cold rain was hitting the city again.

  Mrs. Fenley gathered some dresses together to make room on the sofa: it was crushed brown velvet. “Do sit down, my dear. Out of all of these, I have to choose four. Four! God.” She held a fringed garment before her, made a face. “Look at this little disaster.” She lowered her voice and a smile glowed from her eyes. “Enrico would die if he heard me say that.”

  Christie sat on the edge of the couch, aware of her wet boots. Her leather shoulder bag emitted a damp, sour smell. She slid it to the floor, next to her feet. “Mrs. Fenley, as I told you on the telephone, I’d like to talk to you about Elena. Elena Vargas.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” The profile was perfect, as though drawn in one quick steady certain line. “Do you hear that? I mean, have you ever heard such a shrieky voice?”

  The voice was high and petulant with a rush of words that couldn’t be clearly understood. Mrs. Fenley waved her hand by way of excuse and crossed toward the doorway, as the owner of the voice plunged into the room.