by Robert Lowry
The boys knew Myrtle and Lily and tiny impish Gracie. They knew that when a boy walked them home he slept with them. But Lupe had them buffaloed; they tried to kid one another about getting Lupe, but each knew none of them had got her yet.
Sometimes Lupe would even walk up to the church with Myrtle and Lily and three boys. They would all go into the back room and then there’d be much giggling and talking and they’d sit on the bed or dance. Pretty soon Myrtle, dark, large-eyed, large-nosed Myrtle, would think in a panic of the old mama sleeping in the front room, and she’d hush them. “Shhhhh! Shhhhh!” she would say. “If mama wakes up! Oh my God!” Throwing up her hands. And for a period of two minutes, deep silence. The soldiers were young drafted kids with sunburned faces, all of them from faraway places like Poughkeepsie and Louisville. They felt a little nervous with the Mexican girls, because this was a whole new race to them, and, what with their intentions and everything, the prospect of the big fat Mexican mama running in on them, mad as a bull, pretty well sobered them. But when the two minutes were up, the girls would be off again, laughing and dancing around and singing the jazz songs in unison and whispering in one another’s ears about the boys—as if there weren’t any mama within five miles. The walls of that room were covered with photos, all of them of relatives of the three girls and of Lupe too, for she was Myrtle’s cousin. It was hard to think of any Mexican in that border town whom Lupe wasn’t related to in some way. One of the soldiers looking for something to say would almost always come out with, “Who is everybody here? We haven’t been introduced,” then wave at the starched-looking people in the photos. The girls would just laugh and wave and say, “Those are our relatives”; it was too complicated going into details—everybody was their relative.
And after half an hour of laughing and dancing with the girls, the soldiers would begin to put the pressure on, leaning them back on the bed. Myrtle was easy; she lay back easily and kissed her soldier with her heavy lips. She wanted him and it was too much bother to act indifferent. But Lily would always come out of it, saying in Mexican, “Let’s dance.” She was so quiet and plain and nice, just an apple-cheeked Mexican girl with rather stringy hair. She and Myrtle were the best of friends, for Gracie usually was going out steady with one soldier—even though every other week it was a new one—and didn’t hang around Herb’s Place to pick up just anybody very often. Myrtle and Lily had an understanding that one wouldn’t take a boy for the night without the other taking her boy too. This was pretty necessary because they both slept in the same bed.
A boy would press thin ovalfaced Lupe back on the bed too, and touch her where it made her heart pound to be touched. But she never let herself be carried away.
“Oh, come on and stay,” Myrtle would beg Lupe when she got up to go. “Come on, I’ll tell your mother in the morning you stayed over here last night. You know you want to.” And the eager soldier kid from Minneapolis or someplace would be sitting there hopefully.
But Lupe would move toward the door. “It’s the baby,” she would say. “If it wasn’t for the baby, I’d stay.”
And then there would be the walk along the avenue, back to the grocery store at the corner of Lupe’s street. And she would leave the boy there, panting and sweating and pleading, and run round the corner into her house.
Safe inside, undressing fast, she would still be able to see the young soldier’s bright, eager eyes so close to her.
Her small town had changed with the war, changed with the coming of the thousands of soldiers to the airbase six miles out: those young anxious men who flooded into the four or five cafés every night, looking for something they could never really find.
And sometimes it seemed to Lupe that all her troubles had come with the world’s trouble. That the excitement of the crazy world had driven her to marry Art Arnez. And then the baby arriving, and him going away to Australia. Maybe he didn’t love her—but anyhow he wouldn’t have been able to go away if it hadn’t been for the war.
The truth was that Lupe did not believe in love. She did not believe in love because she had never seen any of it close up. She had seen it when Clark Gable had it for Myrna Loy at the Strand, but those people did things she couldn’t believe in, very far away in a shiny world. She liked comedies best, she didn’t care whether there was love in the picture or not. Myrtle and Gracie and Lily wanted love, but Lupe was different. She liked Laurel and Hardy. And Pluto the Pup. She used to get all worked up in the movies and clap her hands and scream and act like a kid.
Myrtle and Gracie and Lily felt it satisfactory only when they cried. They used to let all their troubles flow out when Melvyn Douglas had to leave Rosalind Russell behind him. It was all so sad and they loved it dearly—feeling full and rich with sorrow when they came out to the shimmering street afterward, big tears in their eyes and their hands clasped tight together.
No, they were over there and she was over here—in everything!
And she wanted so much to get away from her life. She loved those three living in the old negro church with all their little brothers and sisters and cousins and God knows what playing outside all day. But somehow she could never make her life complete and full like their lives were.
The truth was she was a very lonely and melancholy girl. She worked in the restaurants of the town. During the two years since Art Arnez had left her and gone off to war she had worked in perhaps five or six; she had lost track. Now she was assistant waitress at the Trowbridge Hotel. Really all she did was set the tables and take away the dirty dishes, forty-eight a month, and she worked sometimes ten hours a day. The hotel was the best building in town, constructed with an eye out for the tourist trade going through to Mexico, and therefore much more elaborate than the town itself could have afforded. It was owned by a crabby half-pint who rushed here and there all hours of the day and night under the direction of his huge blackbrowed wife who was always coming into the restaurant looking for him. Lupe hated those two and she knew she’d quit that place also before long. It seemed there was no place in that town she wanted to work. She blamed the town for her unhappiness. If she had only not wasted her chances by getting married and having the baby. If she had only gone away—someplace.
Someplace! That was the romantic thing. Not to go to El Paso or Tucson, for they might be disappointing, but to go Someplace—a Romantic Place!
Well, she knew she’d go one of these days for sure.
Just before closing time that Monday evening two soldiers came into the restaurant and sat down over in the corner, as if to avoid all the officers and civilians in the room. It started then: when Lupe brought them water the one soldier winked his nose at her. She stopped, surprised, and looked at him more closely, but he just looked right back at her without even smiling. He seemed young, as young as she was, with a square face and round, direct-looking eyes.
So she went away and got silverware and napkins and came back, and after she’d arranged them on the table she took a chance and looked again. And the nose winked!
She couldn’t help laughing, it was so unexpected. And the two boys also laughed. She looked right into the eyes of the one with the square face, and it was like falling through space for her to look into those eyes. It was like going on a long journey and returning, all in a moment. She found herself breathing hard, as if she had run the whole way.
“What’s your name?” the squarefaced soldier asked.
At first she was just going to walk away but she couldn’t; she was planted there, hardly able to move.
“Lupe,” she said.
The soldier smiled.
“What’s so funny about that?” Lupe asked.
“I don’t know,” the soldier said. “Do you work around here all the time?”
“Every day,” she said, and glanced around to see if fat Mrs. Trowbridge was anywhere in sight.
Noticing this the squarefaced boy asked, “Aren’t you allowed to talk to us?”
“Oh, I can do anything,” Lupe said, “just so
she don’t see me.”
Both the boys grinned then. The other soldier wore glasses and had a squinted-up sunburned face. He was very thin.
“That’s the way with us out at the field,” the square-faced boy said. “They’ll let you do anything they don’t catch you at.”
While they were eating, Lupe couldn’t keep from glancing over there. She was all stirred up inside and her heart was racing. She broke a glass, and as she was sweeping up the pieces she saw the squarefaced soldier smiling at her as if he understood how awful she felt about breaking something. She wanted to run right over to him and say, “Let’s go somewhere so far away that you will have to take trains and boats to get there. Someplace . . .”
He’ll ask me, she thought, getting forks and knives back in the kitchen. And she could hardly wait till they finished with their meal, so she could go back to his table.
But when she did go back he didn’t ask her. She smiled at him when he said, “Well, look who’s here again,” but he didn’t ask.
She knew that he wanted to ask her, and she wanted him to ask her, but she couldn’t think of anything to say to make it easier for him. She could only stand watching the two of them as they went out the front door.
He was cute, she thought, stacking their dishes. He was real cute.
When she got off work at nine-fifteen he was standing out in front with his back to the entrance. He turned around, touched her arm. “Hello again,” he said. And they started up the street together.
They went into the Red Moon Café, into one of the booths in back, and they both drank tom collins. He seemed very young, and very squarefaced, and he had a habit of meeting your eyes with his sort-of-squinting eyes, then looking off across the room quick.
“I thought you wouldn’t mind going out with me,” he said. “So I gave Gene the slip and came back. What were you going to do tonight if I hadn’t?”
Lupe looked at him and then she too glanced away—already she was getting his habits. “Oh,” she said. And now he was looking at her steadily. “Oh, I was going home, I guess.” What I say now will be what he’ll think of me forever, she thought. “Or maybe I’d have gone over to the church—you know those kids who live in the church—and maybe we’d have all gone up to Herb’s Place, I don’t know. . . . Gosh, I’m so sick of this town——” And then she was telling him everything, and while she spoke he didn’t take his eyes from hers. “Sometimes I want to go away so bad; there’s nothing here anymore. When I was little, the town seemed so different; now it don’t seem like anything at all, there’s nobody around. You know, sometimes I want to be an army nurse. I don’t know, sometimes I think I’ll try to be one. But I have a little baby—I was married, you know, only it’s all over now. We’re separated. He doesn’t even want to know me anymore, but I don’t care. He has other girls now, he’s in the army, in Australia. Look, I’ll show you my baby——” And she brought out her worn leather picture-wallet. He looked at the baby. It was really a very cute little one, with big eyes and legs spread apart, sailor-fashion, the way babies have to stand. He looked at it a long time and then he went on to the others, to Lupe’s mother and father gazing soberly into the camera, and to her sister Dinah, a chunky kid of fifteen with a smile.
And the squarefaced soldier with the nice eyes told her all the places he’d seen in America since he’d been drafted. He hated the army with the same kind of hopeless hate she had for the town. As Hank talked, telling about the three-day pass he and a friend had once taken to go into the mountains outside Denver and just lie on their backs and look at the stars, she began to feel very close to him. She almost forgot that he was only another soldier who would someday leave her and not come back. Or maybe her true feeling was that miraculously she would be able to go along with him, wherever he went.
The door opened, and here came Myrtle and Lily and two soldiers. Her soldier said “Hi!” to their two soldiers, and the four of them sat down in the next booth. Every two minutes Myrtle had to be peeking over the top, sharpening her finger at Lupe. She couldn’t help smiling. And just when everything had calmed down, here came Lily’s little dark face around the corner of the booth.
“They’re so crazy,” Lupe said to Hank. “But they’re really nice to know. I just love Myrtle; I don’t know what I’d do if I wasn’t friends with her.”
The two girls and their soldiers stood up and hung over Lupe’s booth for a moment, laughing clown at her and Hank, and then they went away and left Lupe there with him.
He walked her home, down deserted G Avenue. He slipped his fingers into hers and she let him. He put his arm around her waist and she didn’t care. “You’re so little!” he said. And she just clung to his hand, unable to think of what to say. “You’re so pretty,” he said. She could feel his hip moving against hers. “No,” she said.
At the corner where the grocery store was she stopped. “I live just one house down,” she said. “I’d better say goodnight here.”
He pressed her into the doorway and kissed her full mouth hard and searched her body with his hands. “Look, Lupe——”
She broke away and ran around the corner into her house and slammed the door. She lay on the bed close to her baby and sobbed; she didn’t know why.
But he was there the next night and she went with him. They danced at Herb’s Place, and he danced every dance with her so no other boy could get hold of her.
Now they did not talk very much, they mostly looked at each other. It seemed to Lupe that she had said everything there was to say.
And this night too she left him at the corner, a panting soldier crazy for her.
The next night she went to Herb’s again with him. Myrtle was there with a soldier—both of them a little drunk, whirling around the dance floor and giggling. Gracie and Lily had gone to a movie.
At twelve o’clock when the café closed and the soldiers had to get off the streets, Myrtle, who was not sad now but happy with her soldier for the night, a timid redhead who stuttered, pulled Lupe along down the street with her. It was pitchblack on the back porch of the church. Lupe and Hank and the redheaded boy waited there while Myrtle went in and turned on the light.
Myrtle was sitting on the bed when they trooped in, so they sat down on either side of her. Myrtle took the redhead’s hand and smiled at him; she hummed a tune. Sweat stood out on his forehead. Then she pulled him back on the bed—he looked as helpless in her hands as a bear rug.
When Myrtle stood up she was flushed and laughing. “Come here, Lupe,” she said, and dragged Lupe through a short corridor into a tiny bedroom. “Look, why don’t you sleep here tonight? The kids are over at Hernandez’ house, you can have this bed all by yourself. Please stay, kid.” She squeezed Lupe’s hand.
They went back and sat on the bed again, and when Lupe kissed the squarefaced soldier, she knew she’d have to stay. She clung to him and kissed him the way she’d learned how to kiss—as if she wanted to swallow him, put him right inside her. . . .
Very early in the morning they walked down the avenue together, and said goodbye at the corner. They were so tired they could hardly speak.
When he didn’t come the next night, she could not imagine what was the matter. She went to Herb’s Place, but she didn’t find him there. She went to the Rio Grande Café and the Red Moon, but he wasn’t around. Maybe he’s on detail or something, she thought, and went home to bed.
But there was no Hank the following night either, and it was then she began to know that he would not come back again. Or if he did come back it would not be for her. It would be for the night, for what they did in the night. And if it had to be like that, she didn’t want it.
Thoughts raced through her mind as she stacked the dirty plates in the Trowbridge kitchen. I will not get away, not ever, she thought. I hate this town and I’ve got to get away. But there’s my baby and I can’t ever get away. Now I know he won’t take me away. I thought he would, but now I know he won’t. Now I know that no one will ever take me away. I w
ill live here in this town now, and I will never make it.
Maybe it’s because I’ve got skinny legs. Maybe that’s why he didn’t come back. My legs are skinny, but I know my face isn’t ugly. If that’s the reason he didn’t come back, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care about anything now. I’m lost in this town. I will just be resigned to it. I will never go far away.
A tear ran out of her eye, and she turned her face down to the dishes she was stacking. She carried them back to the sink.
Now I know that I will have to have as much fun as I can. It’s all there is left to do. Then I will die. Myrtle and Gracie and Lily are my only friends. I will have to stay close to them. I will be just like them.
Now I know what I have to be, she thought. There’s no other way for me. So I will be just that.
She felt this desperation grow in her. She didn’t care now. She would be just what she had to be.
She went up to Herb’s Place and found Myrtle and Lily. They had three soldiers at the table with them. Lupe sat down and began to drink. A tall thin sergeant danced her around till she was dizzy.
She got drunker and drunker. Herb’s was packed with soldiers and girls, a regular madhouse of jukebox music and waitresses screaming and people falling over one another. Dozens of faces, some laughing, some just drunk, stuck out of the booths. Once as Lupe was dancing she thought she saw Hank’s face, but she didn’t even bother to look back a second time; it hurt her but she didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything anymore. “I don’t care about anything anymore!” she heard herself saying, and vaguely she could make out Myrtle’s and Lily’s faces looking at her out of a red fog of faces. “I don’t care! I don’t care!” she laughed, so loud that her throat was beginning to hurt. And the tall thin sergeant had small, red, cruel eyes; he pinched her under the table. She didn’t care! She hated the sergeant but she didn’t care, and when twelve o’clock came and they all got up to go, she went with them toward the church, because she didn’t care. As they walked along the avenue Myrtle and Lily tried to hush her, she screamed so loud, but she wouldn’t hush; she screamed louder.