by N. Godwin
“Dr. Ingrid says she’s twelve.”
“I don’t care what Doctor Ingrid says, Kelly barely looks ten!”
“And she’s got a baby!” Fat-Sandy agrees, but her voice trails off as she looks at the girls. “Wait, which one’s Dr. Ingrid again? Is she the doctor from the loony-bin or the ninety-year old one from Whosawitz?”
“Auschwitz,” Eunice looks at her friend and sarcastically shakes her head back and forth. “You know the concentration camp. Ovens, teeth--”
“Oh yeah, the old doctor who just knows when to show up. It’s kinda, creepy,” Fat-Sandy says moaning too loud as she chews three Saltine crackers with at least a teaspoon of butter on top.
“And look at what a difference these last two days have made in the girls,” I argue softly. “It’s like magic.”
“S’what I was saying,” Fat-Sandy says with her crammed so full of crackers the crumbs are spilling down the front of her blouse. Finally, blessedly, she swallows, and begins moaning again.
“Evil had them in the palms of his hands,” Eunice sighs.
“Such evil,” Fat-Sandy agrees in tune.
“Hey, sweetie, did you open me a fresh bottle?” I point to the bottle of deep reddish purple wine sitting right in front of her. “You sure this isn’t an old bottle? The last one wasn’t much on flavor.”
“This one’s yummy.” I cross my heart.
Fat-Sandy dips another shrimp in tartar sauce and slurps it off, moaning embarrassingly loud for at least five seconds then suddenly grows reflective as she pauses to throw back her ice tea. “You know, mothers simply got no morals nowadays. You’d think they’d at least check the rap sheets of their latest pickup before bringing a strange man home to her unsuspecting kids!” I notice she says this so angrily her cheeks flush and her fists clench.
“What’s your point, Fat-Sandy?” Eunice sounds impatient. “Jimmy-Sue, hand me another pack of Camels and while you’re up change that blankety-blank CD player to my radio station. Rush will be on in a minute.”
You can hear groaning when Eunice mentions Rush, none louder than my own, and equally as many excited voices. Not that different point of views aren’t paramount, mind you, but this guy is intense and my nerves are in no mood for any more loud voices heading straight at me today from across the airwaves.
“You’re out of cigarettes and we can’t replace them till the boys get home. Better slow down,” I warned her again, and notice that, amazingly enough, she had.
“I’m saying that men need to start staying in the home, protecting their women and children. If not them, then who will, I ask you?” Fat-Sandy insists. “This divorce stuff is toxic to our society. When it comes to sex and violence even our kids and elderly aren’t sacred anymore! Where have all our good men gone?”
“Ha, men!” a woman from the next table over announces into her fourth beer in twenty minutes. “I once dated a guy who used to plaster his pecker with peanut butter to get his dog to lick it off!” She laughs along with the other buzzed women sitting at her table.
“God, I love our girls only vacation!” another laughs and they all clank glasses.
“Oh my,” Fat-Sandy says, looking quickly at Eunice. As she covers her mouth with a shocked hand a small glob of tartar sauce gets on the tip of her nose. She either doesn’t notice or mind.
“And you … dated him?” I hear myself ask as I rock back and forth in my chair. “Why on God’s green earth would you do such a thing?”
Eunice looks heavenward because she detests graphic crudities about sex. When she looks at me I can tell she isn’t pleased with where this conversation is headed because her cheeks have gone from sallow to flushed and her eggplant-burgundy Miss Clairol number 14 dyed hairs are almost standing on end.
“Because he was fun!” the loud woman howls back in laughter as her friends slap the table and cackle and laugh, and I feel the sour taste of nausea on my tongue.
“Well, perhaps, slutty women, who’d better lower their voices immediately, should learn to practice a little self control and keep their knees together for a change!” Eunice barks at the entire table then, as is her way, waves her hand in their direction and dismisses them all together.
“Whores!” Fat-Sandy whispers in agreement.
“Of all the lousy habits women could pick up from men, they choose whoring around. Well, they’re finally equal,” Eunice harrumphs. “I guess women truly can do anything a man does now... get drunk in public and carouse around.
“But they can also have an important career, even be secretary of state. They could even rule the world one day should one of you young’uns be so inclined. You listening Jimmy-Sue, because I ‘m telling you the world is plumb gaga over women nowadays and is just waiting for the right one to step up to the bat and take charge,” Eunice tells me yet again. “Women are on the verge.”
“Uh huh.” See, she really believes this.
“You know,” Fat-Sandy informs us in a hushed tone, “my mama always said ‘why buy the cow when you get the milk for free?’ And I’m here to tell you that fewer and fewer men are marrying these slutty girls nowadays. They’re staying single. I think it’s because Mama was obviously right!”
Eunice laughs. “Your mama also told you to lie back and hold your breath and it would all be over in thirty seconds.”
“Eunice!” Fat Sandy gasps.
“What only takes thirty seconds?” I ask them.
“Sex!” Eunice laughs while Fat-Sandy blushes from ear to ear.
“Seriously, thirty seconds? Thirty seconds is all it takes?” I ask again to make sure. “Then what the heck is all the fuss about?”
Eunice and Fat-Sandy sigh and pat my hands.
“Now, backwards this time,” I hear Hobie instruct the girls, “take a bite of mashed potatoes then the collards.” Once again the girls mimic his every move. Hobie thinks it’s awesome that anyone would find him mature enough to emulate.
Cecile spoons another huge glob of mashed potatoes in her little mouth as she sits regally on her booster seat, wearing her new Barney outfit, right down to her over-sized Barney tennis shoes, preening proudly, ravenously. Horst and Hobie surprised her with the clothes yesterday on the anniversary of the girl’s first twenty-four hours with us and today Cecile is wearing a bow around her head the size of a grapefruit and looks more like Carman Miranda than a three year old.
I chuckle as Cecile overloads her spoon and the collards topple to the floor. Once she started eating yesterday morning we’ve had difficulty getting her to slow down. She still shields her plate with a protective little arm as if expecting someone to take it from her. I laugh outright when Cecile jumps from her booster-seat and scoops up the collards from the floor and spoons them in her mouth.
“Gross Cecile,” Hobie groans “that’s disgusting!”
In a flash, Cecile is cowering on the floor, her knees drawn into the fetal position, her arms covering her face. She does this the precise moment Ken and Horst walk in the front door, finally home from their errands. I watch as Kelly falls to the floor and shields her daughter’s body with her own. I sigh and stand.
“What the devil?!” Horst roars to Hobie as the wrapped presents he is carrying fall to the floor and he drops to the ground beside Cecile. “Did someone scare my little angel?” Cecile is in his arms in a heartbeat, her little lips quivering while Ken and Horst grill Hobie over his evil transgression.
I slide to the floor and stroke Cecile’s back. “It’s okay, sugar. Hobie was just teasing you too loudly. Boys are loud sometimes.”
In an effort to comfort Kelly, Hobie drops down beside her and pats her on her skeletal back. “There, there,” he soothes earnestly as Kelly remains silent and erect, staring up at him through silent infected eyes as if he were bonkers.
As she looks to me, I nod and smile at her, mouthing the word sorry. I watch as her body softens slightly until Hobie decides to plant a big noisy kiss on the top of her head and she tenses back into feline, and I try not t
o groan. I look down at Cecile and smile widely and notice my heart is racing. I’ve noticed so many things about her in only two days. Like how loud voices scare her less and less with each passing day or how my cucumber and melon body lotion perfectly complements and soothes her. She had immediately taken to my aromatherapy and this makes me smile even wider as she catches my eye.
It occurs to me that I am stroking her back… I stare at my hand as it tenderly moves from her shoulders to her head. I quickly sit back on my heels and look at my hand. There really is no sting when I touch her and the sensation rivets me. I sit down again, looking at the others and catch Horst’s eyes on my hand.
“Man, I keep telling you that nobody is ever going to hurt you again,” Hobie keeps telling Kelly. “Ain’t that right, Killer?”
“Affirmative.”
“Isn’t,” I hear myself correct Hobie’s grammar, watching in amazement as I stroke Cecile’s warm cheek and she smiles up into my face.
“Yeah, whatever,” Hobie chuckles over his shoulder. “We’re magic here, girls. Wait and see.” He crosses his heart.
“Getting too attached,” Eunice offers from her corner.
“And babies have needs!”
I stand and watch as Horst, Ken and Hobie attend to the girls, cooing and assuring soft words between intermittent jokes. I watch as they begin handing each of them various presents. Cecile stares at the presents suspiciously.
“Open it!” Horst urges as Cecile just stares at one brightly wrapped pink box, fingering its bow.
“She’s never seen a present before,” Hobie whispers back to us. “Wow!” he says.
Ken and Horst begin helping her tear into her gifts; a Barney coloring book with toddler-sized crayons, a black Barbie doll, and a red bouncy ball. Horst bends over in front of Cecile and helps her rip open a Cabbage Patch doll half the size of her.
“What an amazing ass on that man-child’,” I hear someone say behind me.
“Oh, I like them young,” another laughs. “They’re trainable.”
I turn to see the buzzed table of women checking out Horst’s backside. As they laugh, I’m trying to absorb the fact that they are talking about fuzzy-headed Horst (who’d gone and shaved his Mohawk so the girls would find him less scary, but now resembles a skinhead and still looks plenty scary to me) and I can’t help but laugh behind my hand. I notice Horst straighten up and can see his anger and confusion over being dissected and I immediately regret my laughter.
“The things I could teach him,” one woman slurs.
I head straight back to her table, keeping my eyes glued to hers. I stand over them, unable to hide my disgust, and I try to keep my voice level. “You’re no longer welcomed in the DemiMonde Café. Get out!”
As one of the women complains noisily to Eunice, who in turns calls her a blankedy-blank harlot! I notice that Ken and Horst are still trying to convince Cecile to unwrap her last present, the bright neon-pink box. She is holding this gift in to her chest for dear life and refuses to loosen up even long enough to open it, so the dudes give in and put her very first doll on top of some phone books then lower Cecile down in her booster chair beside it then coax her to put her present down so she can finish her supper. She resumes eating in earnest as the dudes scatter to the kitchen to begin the evening preps.
“Good riddance!” Fat-Sandy yells at the women as they slam the door behind them.
“I’m telling you they’re getting too attached to that baby,” Eunice warns as I slide down in the empty chair beside her. “Jimmy-Sue, you’d better take care of that before they get too involved with her.”
“Absolutely!” Fat-Sandy agrees.
“Look at Kelly,” Eunice warns me. “Look at her face; she’s confused by y’all. She’ll never stay here. She’ll disappear and take that baby with her and you and the Halflings will be devastated!”
“Devastated!”
“We can’t hide that baby forever and--”
As they agree with themselves, I study Kelly’s face. She sits carefully, silently with an odd expression. She tilts her head and stares down at the presents by her hands, the ones Ken and Horst have bought for her in celebration of her first forty-eight hours with us.
“Kelly will never stay here,” Eunice whispers, following my line of vision as she fills her glass again and declares the wine yummy indeed. Drops of her wine splatter down on to my hand. I let it sit and can feel the liquid staining my flesh.
“Where can she go?” I wonder out loud.
“And thank goodness that awful Billy du jour left yesterday, I might add--” Eunice continues, sucking hard on her last cigarette.
“Amen to that! You got anymore shrimp frying, Jimmy-Sue?”
“--because y’all certainly wouldn’t have had the time to watch Billy around the clock now since that baby is taking up way too much of your time!”
“Way too much!”
“And you know that baby needs special counseling. We simply aren’t equipped to handle the disgusting trauma that baby’s been through.”
“Oh, no!” Fat-Sandy gasps, looking from me to Eunice sympathetically. “You don’t mean--?”
“Dr. Ingrid said she couldn’t be certain!”
“Not certain, but fairly sure, Jimmy-Sue,” she reminds me, ending on hushed tones, pausing to ingest her wine. “And I hate to say it but those girls need AIDS tests.”
“Dear God in heaven, no,” Fat-Sandy whispers. She turns to stare at the girls as if possibly never having allowed herself to do so before now. “Dear God, no.”
“They need us,” I say firmly, standing to go help with kitchen duty because we are behind schedule today, way behind. “And I think we need them, too.”
Before I can turn around we hear a loud, shrill cry that jars us all into surprise. Eunice literally drops her hand of cards. We jump as Cecile let’s out another squeal of delight while Horst plays another round of peek- a-boo. Her sound of jubilation ricochets around us and we all fall silent and stand still and listen. All except for Eunice, she’s holding her heart from the shock of Cecile’s sounds, eyes closed as she catches a dramatic breath.
“Oh, God, I hate toddlers!” Eunice gasps then tries to relight an old cigarette butt with shaking hands.
Cecile makes another loud burst of joyous laughter when Hobie joins in, then covers her mouth and looks around the room, studying our individual reactions. The boys have all gathered around her now, laughing and mimicking her every move, seeing a child at play. I see other things. I see potential. And noise, lots of noise. She makes another giggle-squeal, then another. Eunice covers her ears and groans.
“See? I told you so! We can’t hide that baby forever.”
“Sure we can,” I say. “We’ll just hide her in plain sight.”
“No!” Eunice responds slamming her hand down on the table. “They’re too much noise! Too much mess! Too much.”
The dudes have convinced Cecile into another round of peek-a-boo and are all down on their knees laughing. But Kelly is still watching us strangely, and Eunice is getting too hard to argue with because my mind is so cockeyed today, and my headache isn’t getting any better, and two new customers just walked in the front door! I need help with Eunice. I’m losing this argument and I need help! I blindly look around the café in a futile attempt to find anyone else allowed to speak directly to Eunice.
Eunice and I both startle when Fat-Sandy’s angry fist slams down on our table. Her chairs fall behind her one by one as she stands and faces Eunice and begins shouting at the top of her lungs.
“You better let that precious little baby and her mama stay here, Eunice, or else!” she warns slamming her fist down again. “You know perfectly good and well that God sent them here for a reason! He sends all of us here for a reason! So you just better let them stay or else--” She struggles for words and wipes away tears. “Or else I just don’t know what!”
“Sit down, Fat-Sandy,” Eunice says.
“I most certainly will not!” sh
e insists. “Not letting those precious babies stay here because they’re too young would be like not feeding me because I’m too fat!” she insists, planting both palms on the tabletop as she shakes the table back and forth.
“Well, I declare!” Eunice huffs and seems truly befuddled. “There’s no need for theatrics, Fat-Sandy. You’re not too fat to feed!”
Sandy’s lips quiver and she begins to cry. I quickly right her chairs and she sits carefully on each. “I am too fat to feed and I know it!”
Eunice pats her arm as Sandy holds her crumpled napkin up to her eyes and cries. “Don’t be maudlin for Pete sakes!” Eunice says.
“Well I do weight three hundred and fourteen pounds!”
“Really, I wouldn’t have guessed you were an ounce over two fifty,” Eunice tries to console as she pats her friend’s hands.
“Really?” Sandy asks blowing her nose. “I don’t look that fat?”
“Uh huh,” Eunice says.
“What do you think, Jimmy-Sue?” Sandy asks, her tears stopping as she studies the sincerity level in my eyes. “What do you think about me?”
I’m still staring at her in shock as I realize this is indeed my Fat Sandy lesson. She may be guilty of sloth and gluttony but when it’s important Sandy has backbone. I like this Sandy. For the first time I realize she is much more than whiny flesh and irritations and broken chairs carelessly piled in a heap outside the back kitchen door.
This Sandy is friend. She is beautiful when she’s angry, absolutely, irrationally, compassionately beautiful. Just over her head a light bulb sparks and fizzles and I know beyond a doubt that number 4 is officially off my list. I look at the small dab of tartar sauce still on Sandy’s nose and I slowly reach out my hand and wipe it away with my finger. It tingles when I touch her warm nose.
“Sandy,” I say meeting her eyes, “I think you can be whatever you want to be.”
“I can, can’t I?” Sandy says wiping away a tear and blowing her nose. She nods her head then gives me a closed fist of solidarity. “Right on!”