by Sandra Kring
“Cool,” I said as she handed it back to me so I could play with it some more. But I didn’t. I slipped it long over my head, then started digging in the big suitcase Ma was rummaging through. “This is for your balloons, isn’t it?” I said, as I pulled out a balloon holder. “They have these in Montgomery Ward catalogs. Did you order this from Montgomery Ward?”
“What did you call them? Balloons?” Ma laughed so hard she almost fell on the bed. She took the white contraption from me, and put it on over her dress, shaking her balloons. “They’re called breasts, Teaspoon. And this is a brassiere. A bullet bra. And no, I didn’t get it from Montgomery Ward. It came straight from Frederick’s of Hollywood.” She tossed the brassiere on the bed and I picked it up to examine it. The cups, as Ma called them, were shaped more like a dunce hat than a bullet, with stitching that spiraled to a pencil-lead point.
I looked up at Ma and decided that this was what Mrs. Carlton meant by feminine influence. Having someone to teach you about breasts and bullet bras and popper beads.
While Ma made piles of folded shirts and skirts and hung long plastic bags she said were for garments, I matched up her shoes like they were socks. I put on a pointy pair that had skinny heels so high that I had to ballerina-walk to reach Ma so I could show her how they made me almost as tall as her. “Hey,” she said, like she’d suddenly thought of something. “Do the Jacksons have a telephone?”
“Yes,” I said, as I clomped in circles around her. “Why?”
“Well, then I don’t have to keep running to find a pay phone so I can check in with my agent.” Ma told me to keep pairing shoes and she ran across the street to talk to Mrs. Jackson about using her phone. She was back by the time I had the last shoe lined up with its match, then headed for her bath.
“I hope you don’t mind Charlie playing your piano, Ma,” I said later, while we were setting up for our performance. “I tried to save your piano pristine for you. But Charlie’s the only one I let play it. And he always washes first.” The second I said that, Charlie shot up and hurried into the bathroom, while I got out our bag of props.
While Ma waited, she ran her finger over the top of the piano and looked at Teddy. “You were such a sweetie, buying this for me so I could improve enough to play in public,” she said. “I’m surprised you didn’t sell it.”
“Why would he do that?” I asked as I pulled the flat black box out of our prop bag. “Remember these, Ma?” I said, taking out one elbow-length glove.
Ma took the glove, turning it over in her hand. “These were mine?”
“Yeah. Can I use them for our show?”
“You can keep them,” she said. “I’ve got more gloves than I know what to do with.” And that was the truth, because I’d put those in pairs, too.
I took Ma’s hand and sat her down in the middle Starlight seat. Then I led Teddy over to sit beside her. Ma goody-goody clapped her hands like she couldn’t wait for the show to begin, so I yelled for Charlie to hurry.
I slung Teddy’s old tie around my neck, making it into a quick bow so I would look like Randolph Carter, the emcee at the Starlight. Then, while Charlie took his seat at the piano, I welcomed Ma and Teddy to Live at the Starlight.
While Charlie played an intro to our first number, I scuttled around him to crouch behind the piano seat so I could rip the tie from my neck and put on Ma’s gloves, because our first number was going to be classy.
Ma put two fingers in her mouth and whistled loud when I returned to the stage, stopping just for a second to kick over a scatter rug so my patent leathers would make good clippy noises on the linoleum as I sashayed.
Ma whistled again after we finished “Ain’t She Cute.” Teddy just clapped. Probably because he didn’t know how to whistle.
We were just about to break into an oldie but goodie, “Kiss of Fire,” the song Georgia Gibbs used to sing—just to help nudge Teddy into remembering how him and Ma used to kiss—when the screen door bounced with knocks. Teddy cranked his head around and gave me a hold-on-a-second finger.
But I told Charlie to keep playing. And I kept singing. Because like Jay reminded us every practice, if we gawked and stopped singing every time someone in the audience got up, one song could take two hours.
“We heard music and thought we’d come over to see what was going on,” Mrs. Fry all but yelled (which was a testament to my claim that she was half deaf). Miss Tuckle was right behind her.
“Well, we’re glad you did,” Teddy said, speaking for all of us, even if I wasn’t glad.
I gave Charlie the cut sign, then tapped my patent leather. I was thinking about how they had the nerve, talking right through our number like they were a bunch of afflicted Sunshine Sisters at a first meeting.
“Mrs. Fry!” Ma said, and she gave her a friendly hug. Mrs. Fry gave Ma’s back a quick pat, her wrinkly Benedict Arnold face not even smiling as it hung over Ma’s shoulder.
“Sorry for barging in like this,” Miss Tuckle told Teddy in a regular-volumed voice that she knew Mrs. Fry couldn’t hear.
Teddy introduced Miss Tuckle to Ma. Poor Miss Tuckle. Even with a little curl in her hair, she was looks-afflicted when you compared her with my movie-star ma. A fact that made me happy, because I knew that even if Teddy had begun thinking Miss Tuckle didn’t look so bad while Ma was gone, he had to be reminded of the truth now when he saw them standing side by side.
Teddy led Mrs. Fry and Miss Tuckle to the empty seats on both sides of Ma, saying he’d stand. Miss Tuckle cranked her head up and smiled at Teddy, so the last thing I was about to do was sing some romantic song about kissing! I told Charlie to do “Shake, Rattle, and Roll” instead.
Boy, Ma sure did like that number! She started Teddy and Mrs. Fry clapping. Then she got up and danced, right on our linoleum stage. “Pick up the tempo, Charlie,” Ma said, snapping her fingers in time until Charlie got his fingers working at the same pace as her snaps. Then Ma started singing with me. Shouting a few go, go, goes into the chorus for good measure. Ma didn’t sound anything like Teresa Brewer. She sounded better!
And when we closed off the show with the Penguins’ “Earth Angel,” Ma took over the whole chorus and told me to do the ooos and ahhhhs in the background. We sounded like a real act!
When our program was over, Ma took my hand. Then she took Charlie’s hand and slid him off the piano seat. She had us make a line, lift our hands together, then drop them as we bent at the waist to take a bow.
“Oh, that was fun!” Ma said, her face flushed and her voice breathy when we stood back up straight.
Teddy yelled, “Bravo! Bravo!”
“That was wonderful,” Miss Tuckle said. “And it’s easy to see where Teaspoon gets her talent.” Ma made her hand do that oh-please-I-don’t-deserve-your-praise wave, but she was grinning.
I was picking up the props, and Charlie was picking at the piano keys again, when Mrs. Fry stood up. She smoothed the front of her housedress and leaned closer to Miss Tuckle, talking half-deaf loud. “She couldn’t let that child be the center of attention even once, now could she.”
Miss Tuckle’s face went pink.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
After the big show, Ma stretched out on the couch for what she said would be a “little” nap. But she didn’t wake up until suppertime. And after she ate, she took her makeup and hair case into the bathroom.
“Where you going, Ma?” I called through the door. With the water running, she must not have heard me, so Teddy answered from where he sat at the table doing a crossword puzzle. “To The Dusty Rose, I’d imagine,” he said.
Ma came out about half an hour later with her hair sprayed in stiff waves. She was wearing a pretty pencil skirt and a flimsy sweater she called “a knit” that clinged tight over her bullet bra. A thick belt held her knit in place.
“What are you looking so pouty about?” she asked me as she slipped into some pretty pumps.
“I want you to stay home with us,” I said.
Ma laughed an
d gave me a hug. “Tell you what. You can come with me. I’ve told everybody there about my pretty baby girl, and I didn’t have even one picture to show them.”
I looked over at Teddy, and Ma giggled. “What are you looking at him for? I’m your ma. And if I say you can go, you can go.”
Teddy looked up, a not-so-Jesus-gentle look on his face. “I wouldn’t exactly say that The Dusty Rose is an appropriate place to bring a ten-year-old child,” he said.
“It’s okay, Teddy,” I told him. “When me and Ma lived in Peoria, I was only four and five, and we went downstairs to the bar every night.”
Ma went over to Teddy and nestled her nose against the side of his neck. “You could come with us to make sure your girls stay safe, you know.”
Teddy scrunched his shoulder up and leaned his head against it so that there was no room for Ma’s face. She looked hurt as she backed away.
Teddy set his pencil down. “Teaspoon, could you leave your Ma and I alone for a minute?”
“Yeah, go in your room and pick out the prettiest dress you have,” Ma said, giving my butt a playful slap. I hurried to do as Ma told me, shutting my door behind me.
My closet didn’t have one thing pretty in it, since the best dress I had was lying crumpled in my hamper, mustard stains down the front. So I found my second-best dress. A pink-and-blue plaid that had a skirt full enough that you could hardly tell the hem was crooked. I flung myself and the dress on the bed, then pulled off my dirty socks to see if my blisters were healed enough to wear my patent leathers. Like I heard Mrs. Bloom say, the right accessories could save any outfit.
That’s when I heard Ma shout, “What’s that supposed to mean? Then waltz out of her life again for another five years?”
“Catty, lower your voice. Please,” Teddy said. “Teaspoon will hear.”
But I wasn’t going to hear nothing, because I flicked on my radio and cranked the sound to ten.
The Dusty Rose was a supper club, which I figured meant it would be nicer than the bar we used to live above. And it was. It had stools with backs on them, not just those metal ones with red seats that wobbled like they were going to tip over when you spinned on them. And folks didn’t have to eat their burgers or fish fry at the bar, their elbows crowded, because they had round tables with plastic tablecloths scattered through the whole place, a short red candle in bubbly glass on each.
The place was filled with people when we got there, half at the bar and half at the tables. Cigarette smoke and the smell of fried food hung above the bar and tables like umbrellas.
“Speak of the devil,” a guy with ears like Dumbo Doug’s at the corner of the bar yelled, lifting his glass like he was giving Ma a toast. The guys sitting on both sides of him, and the big one standing behind them, called out a few hoots.
Star quality. That’s what Jay called it when someone had the ability to light up a stage just by walking across it. Ma wasn’t on a stage, and she wasn’t screaming like a starlet, but still most every head in The Dusty Rose turned to look at her as she sashayed behind the line of stools to get to the guys who were calling her.
“And who’s this pretty little thing?” the guy with the big ears asked when we reached the corner of the horseshoe bar.
Ma pulled me in front of her, her hands hooking together like popper beads. “This is my baby girl. Teaspoon,” she said.
The guys laughed at my name, so Ma started explaining how I got it. I stopped her, though. “I want to tell it!” I said, and she let me.
“She got her big lungs from her mama, though,” Ma said when they were done laughing. As I watched Ma talk to the guys, turning her attention from one to the next, I thought about how that brassiere she had on should be renamed an “arrow bra.”
“You gonna treat us to a song later, little lady?” a guy big as Paul Bunyan asked.
“She might if you’re good, but how can she sing when her throat is as dry as dust, just like her Mama’s?” Paul—it turned out, his name was Paul—ordered Ma a brandy old-fashion sweet, like she asked for, and me a root beer.
“What you got there?” he asked, looking down at the rolled poster I’d brought along because Ma said maybe I’d like showing it around. I was holding it in front of me like wedding flowers.
“It’s my ma’s movie poster,” I said. “Want to see it?”
They did, so I stepped back to the empty table behind us and unrolled it, spreading it flat as I could, while they crowded around. Oooh, did those guys stink like beer!
“Is that really you, Catty?” one of the guys behind me asked.
“Course it’s Catty,” the Paul Bunyan guy said. “Don’t you recognize her?” In one swoosh he picked Ma up and tossed her over his shoulder, then turned to the guys so that he was standing at the same angle as the lake monster. He gave Ma’s behind a swat. “Now can you tell it’s her?”
“Hey, put me down,” Ma screamed. She laughed and beat at his back, but not hard, more like she was just acting.
Everybody chuckled like crazy. Well, except for some older ladies eating at a nearby table, and a few of the ladies at the bar.
I was trying to spot the piano Ma used to play as I rolled the poster back up, when my hand felt a gob of grease stuck on the back. I took a napkin from the table and wiped it off, then hurried the poster over to a lamp hanging from a chain. Sure enough, that grease had soaked through, making a gray splotch that covered Ma’s whole face. I rolled it quick and put the rubber band back on, then ran it out to the car.
Being at The Dusty Rose was a lot different than I remembered it being at the bar in Peoria. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because I was too big to run in circles going nowhere, just for the sake of running. Or maybe it was because they didn’t have a pool table so I couldn’t roll the white ball into pockets, and there was no jukebox to sing to while Ma drank and smoked and laughed at the bar. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t the same.
I circled the room, staying close to the walls so I wouldn’t be in the way of the waitresses carrying trays of food on their shoulders, running my hand across the folds in the thick red-plaid curtains when I came to a window. Curtains that didn’t quite reach the sill, so on my second lap around I counted the flies that were lying belly-up on the sills. There was thirty-one of them total.
My ankles were pinching in my patent leathers, and I didn’t want new blisters, so I went over to stand by Ma.
“You want another soda pop?” Ma asked. “A bag of chips?” My supper was still napping in my stomach, so I shook my head. But Paul got me a bag of potato chips anyway. And a Baby Ruth candy bar to go with it.
“There’s a piano back in the corner,” I told Ma. “Maybe we could do a number together.”
Ma turned around. “What, Teaspoon?” I repeated it. Louder this time, because the folks at the bar were all talking at once. “Hey, you cheap bastard,” Ma yelled to the guy behind the bar. “You get that piano tuned yet?”
“Now, why would I have bothered after you left?” he said. “You should know that the music just went out of our world after that.”
“Smart-ass,” Ma said, and some of the guys laughed.
“How come you don’t have a jubox?” I asked.
“Folks like to hear each other talk when they eat.”
Ma looked at me and she shrugged, making her mouth frown like a sad clown’s.
I think Ma didn’t remember that I could sing Acapolka, and I didn’t remind her. Not after I looked down the bar at everybody talking loud at once—like they were all singing a different song, in different keys.
I wandered off again, stopping to watch the water falling in the land of sky-blue waters on the Hamm’s beer clock, then studying the bubbles in a candleholder, until a lady Mrs.-Fry-old, who stunk like beer and smoke and old, stopped to tell me to be careful so I didn’t light my “pretty curls” on fire. She touched my hair with yellowed fingers, and I hurried back to the empty stool next to Ma.
The Paul Bunyan guy got up to “drain” some
thing (I think he meant his wee-er) and Ma’s attention floated over to the lady and man who had been hidden by mountain-big Paul. “Oh, Betty,” she said. “This is my little girl.”
Ma tugged me off my stool and pulled me to stand close to her crossed legs. “Say hi to Betty and Dale, Teaspoon,” she said.
Betty Rains. The one Mrs. Delaney pointed out to Mrs. Perkins after Betty left The Pop Shop. The one who stole Mrs. Carlton’s husband. I’d have recognized her anywhere. She was wearing a blouse that showed a long crack between her balloons—breasts—and glittery wings on her glasses. The guy had his head turned toward Betty, but when Ma introduced me, he turned around. If that was Mr. Carlton, he looked a whole lot different than when I saw him at our Christmas program last year. His hair was different. Darker, and combed into a do that I think was suppose to be a Duck’s Ass, though it looked more like the bottom of a duck that had either been sitting too long or had gotten it kicked in a fight.
While Betty Rains oooed and ahhhed over me, saying Ma wasn’t kidding when she said I was a real beauty, I looked at the man. “You’re Mr. Carlton, aren’t you?”
He nodded.
“I thought so. Your wife was my schoolteacher. She’s a real nice lady. Pretty, too, even with her lips painted out of the lines. She could have made me a flunky, but she didn’t. I told her she should sing on more days than Sunday, because singing makes you feel happier, and that I figured she could use some happy since you ran off with—”
Ma grabbed my arm and swung me back to my stool. She changed the subject fast. I suppose because she didn’t have anything to add to the conversation, seeing that she didn’t know Mrs. Carlton.