by Sandra Kring
“What do you mean? Brenda, what are you talking about? Just come—”
“I’m pregnant,” Brenda whispered.
Brenda had her back to us, so she couldn’t see her ma. But I could. I saw her hand come up to cover her mouth, then flutter back down, then go up again. She pulled her shoulders back up and said, “It’ll be okay. You aren’t the first engaged girl to find herself in this predicament. You and Leonard will marry immediately and we’ll say you eloped… we’ll pick a date the wedding supposedly happened… we’ll say we were keeping it hush-hush until after the gala. You can have the baby in Madison and we’ll not announce it here for a couple of months. People do that when this happens. Some will suspect, but they’ll be too polite to say anything. It will all be okay.”
“No!” Brenda shouted. “No it won’t be okay. I’m not going to marry Leonard. I don’t love him. And he wouldn’t marry me anyway, because the baby isn’t his.”
Mrs. Bloom let out a gasp and cry and a yell all rolled into one. And when Brenda heard that, she lifted her foot again and stepped right up onto the top railing. Teetering, like a Charlie on ladder-steep steps.
I could feel pinch spots on the insides of my hands where my fingernails were digging in. I took a couple of steps forward and Mrs. Bloom snapped at me to stay back. But I couldn’t. Because Brenda had put her free arm out, and her feet were scooting her sideways, farther from the pole, while the Sunshine Sisters sang below.
“Brenda! Don’t jump. Please!” I screamed. “My ma left me today, Brenda. She’s gone. Don’t you leave me, too, Brenda. Please. Please! Don’t you leave me, too!”
And that’s when Brenda fell.
Not frontward, through the paper ceiling. But backward, onto the metal catwalk.
Mrs. Bloom rushed forward and fell right down to her knees next to Brenda, even if the metal diamond shapes hurt a person’s knees when you did that. She stared down at Brenda for a while, her whole body shaking, then she wrapped her arms around Brenda and started sobbing.
I don’t know how long Mr. Morgan was standing on the catwalk stairs before I felt someone there and turned around.
In his black tuxedo, he was invisible in the dim light, but for his white shirt that looked like a bib over his chest, and the white stage light box he was holding. He set the box down and walked to me quiet as a whisper. The Blooms still had their arms wrapped around each other, crying and rocking, when Mr. Morgan picked me up to carry me down the stairs, whispering, “Shhhh, shhhhh,” into my curls.
He set me down in the projection room, and I went to the glassless windows like a sleepwalker. Just in time to see the Sunshine Sisters leaving the stage—Little Sisters to the right, Big Sisters to the left, exactly like they were supposed to.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
I fell asleep sitting on the couch next to Teddy that night. In the morning, I got out of bed and changed into play clothes, hanging my gala dress up to keep it pristine. I was just stepping out of my bedroom when Charlie came in, saying that Teddy was over at his house talking to Mrs. Fry and Miss Tuckle. They’d talked about the gala first, just like I guessed they did, then, Charlie said, Teddy gave Miss Tuckle a wad of money, saying it took a lot less than he thought it would.
It didn’t make any sense at first, because Teddy didn’t have money to give anybody. But after Charlie said a bit more, I figured it out. Teddy had taken that loan from Miss Tuckle to fix the roof and the lean. Teddy knew the price of boards, but he must have found somebody willing to do the work for less than he expected, so he gave her back what he didn’t need. Like I told Charlie, it was the only thing that made sense.
I guess after Teddy gave Miss Tuckle the leftover money—minus two hundred, that he said he’d explain later—Mrs. Fry said that it was a “sin” what some people were willing to do for money. What could I do but shake my head and tell Charlie that his great-grandma was losing it, because what sin could there be in being a carpenter? Jesus was one Himself.
When Teddy came home, he told Charlie that Mrs. Fry wanted him home to help her with some work. Then while he took out the bread and eggs for our breakfast, he told me again, just like he had after we got back from the gala, how sorry he was that Ma left without saying good-bye to me. This time, though, he asked me if I was hurt because she didn’t wait to hear if I wanted to go with her.
In the years I’d been with Teddy, he never once asked me not to cry. And he didn’t ask then. But still, something in his eyes told me he was hoping I wouldn’t. So I didn’t tell him that when I found out she was gone, it felt like I got hit by a truck, and my heart was still hurting like it was bruised. Instead, what I told him was that if Jolene was telling the truth—that she’d heard Ma tell Paul on the phone that she had to leave immediately because her agent got her an audition for a part in Rock Hudson’s new picture—then I couldn’t blame her at all for leaving when and how she did.
Even sitting there at the table, Ma gone twenty-four hours already, I could still smell her. Maybe some of her perfume was still in the air. Or maybe it was my nose holding on to her smell, just like I asked it to do. Whichever it was, knowing that I’d remember her smell and how she looked and how she sounded this time gave me some comfort because, no matter how long it took before Ma came through Mill Town again, I’d remember her just as she was.
While four yellow slices of French toast cooked on the griddle, Teddy went to the pantry to get the syrup. But he didn’t come right back. And when I looked, he was standing at the metal table, staring down at the words I’d spelled out on the Scrabble board. Teddy nodded and wiped his eye, still staring down at the tiles I’d put down where the word gluck (that wasn’t a word at all) used to sit: im staying with you teddy.
“I know that’s more than one word, Teddy, so it can’t count,” I said. “But how many points is that worth?”
And Teddy told me, “All of them.”
He was so choked up his words were zigzagging as he asked me to go sit on the Starlight seats because he wanted to show me something. He shut off the French toast and went to his room, then came back with stapled papers and handed them to me. I couldn’t make any sense out of what they said because those papers had more Bibley words in them than the Bible itself, so I asked Teddy to just explain them.
Teddy looked down at the floor and bit his lip. Then he told me how Ma wanted to make sure everything would be okay back here while she was in Hollywood, so she signed those papers, making Teddy my legal dad. He told me that the papers didn’t mean Ma wasn’t my parent anymore, because I’d always carry her in my heart, but that from then on, forever, he would be my dad.
Teddy asked me if I understood, and I said I did. It meant that I wouldn’t have to be a fibber-face and tell my new teacher he was my uncle, or make her twitchy by telling her that he was the boyfriend my ma left me with. It meant that if I ever got smacked by a truck, I’d know what to say when a nurse lady asked me my dad’s name. Past that, I told Teddy, I couldn’t see what difference it made, since he’d been my dad for the last five years anyway.
But it made a difference to Teddy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
You’d think that after Teddy lost his girlfriend for the second time, he’d have had to force himself to perk up before leaving the house again. But he didn’t. His shoulders stayed back and his chin stayed up all on their own, whether he was inside or out. Charlie said Teddy even looked like he grew some. I didn’t know about that, but what I did know is that Teddy had lost his noodleyness. Three days after the gala, the Jackson boys attested to the fact that I was right.
I had scootered down the corner to see if the Taxi Stand Ladies were there yet, so I could thank them properly for being our makeup ladies, and tell them about my new teacher, who seemed real nice. But the corner was empty for the seventh day in a row. Charlie was busy helping Mrs. Fry pack away some old junk, so I went over to the Jacksons, even if I knew that Jolene and Jennifer had gone shopping with their ma. And then Jack and James told m
e what Teddy had done.
Turned out, the night of the gala, after Teddy poured me into bed, the Jackson boys were in their yard playing flashlight Hide-and-Scare when a big Lincoln pulled up to the corner where Walking Doll was standing, and Mr. Miller got out, shouting cusswords at her. Joey was hiding in their neighbors’ yard, and he went back to get his brothers, telling them, “Fight! Fight!”
The Jackson boys crouched down alongside The Pop Shop to watch. “We went like soldiers on a maneuver, up against the backs of the houses, until we got to The Pop Shop to watch,” James told me, and Joey nodded.
“Boy, was Miller pissed,” Jack said. “He was shouting at her, saying, ‘What in the hell do you think you were trying to pull, you blackmailing little bitch? You got your car and that’s all you’re getting. You threaten me again, or you even think about opening your mouth, and the only thing you’ll be getting is a knife in your back.’”
“You’re making this up,” I told them, even if something inside me was saying they weren’t.
“Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah? Ask Teddy if you don’t believe us!” Jack said. “He must have heard that whore scream, because he shot out of your house like a bullet and raced down to the corner.”
“It’s true!” James roared. “We saw the whole thing!”
Jack pushed James out of the way. “Miller slugged her while Teddy was running, and when Teddy got to the corner, Miller said, ‘Stay out of this, Big Guy.’”
And then I knew they couldn’t be making it up, because they didn’t know what Mr. Miller called Teddy.
“…and then, Teddy, he grabbed Miller’s arm, and Miller shook him off like a flea. He tried to give Teddy a punch, but Teddy ducked.” Jack started laughing then, and so did his brothers. “Then Teddy… he… he… popped up and busted Miller’s nuts with his knee.” Jack doubled over laughing, so Joey continued.
“Yeah,” Joey said. “And did that big bastard hit the deck hard!”
All of them were yukking it up good by then. Acting the whole scene out like they were the Three Stooges.
“Walking Doll. Was she okay?” I asked as Jack rocked side-to-side on the grass, fake-groaning and holding his wee-er.
“Well,” Jack said as he was getting to his feet, “she couldn’t have been hurt that bad, because she was screaming like a banshee. Cussing Miller out while he lay there groaning, saying that he might as well have killed her mother with his bare hands, because so much of her died the day him and his friends raped her that she was good as dead anyway.”
The Jackson boys must have figured out that I didn’t know what rape meant, because Jack told me that it’s when a guy makes a girl do the Juicy Jitterbug, even when she doesn’t want to. Which made my stomach feel like it had the flu.
“Miller was getting on his feet by then,” Jack said, laughing less now. “Staggering, though, because the wind was still knocked out of him. And he said to Teddy, ‘What you got to be so self-righteous about, you little prick? Who picked us up after the game… after that drunk son of a bitch drove us into the snowbank? Huh? Seems to me it was you, Big Guy, who took us the rest of the way to the cabin, even though you knew damn well what we were up to, because we asked you if you wanted in on the action.’”
“What did Teddy say to that?” I asked, hoping Jack would say that Teddy knee-socked Miller in his wee-er again for being a liar.
“He didn’t say nothing we could hear. It was over then. Miller gave the whore one last warning, then he got in his car and drove away. Then Teddy sat down on the curb with that bawling whore. He even put his arm around her.”
“Yeah,” James added, “probably because he wanted to Juicy Jitterbug with her. But Teddy must’ve not had any money on him, because he walked back home, that whore with him, and he went inside. She waited in your yard until Teddy came out with some money.”
I didn’t know what he’d be paying for in advance, so I asked. The boys yukked it up good then, calling me stupid because I didn’t know that guys paid the Taxi Stand Ladies to do the Juicy Jitterbug with them.
I didn’t wait around to hear anything else they had to say. I just headed home, leaving the Jackson boys laughing behind me.
I never said a word to Teddy about what the Jacksons told me. Probably for the same reasons I didn’t tell him when Jack told me that he was nothing but a shit shoveler back when he worked for the Soo Line.
And Teddy never said a word to me about where the heart-shaped locket—just like Walking Doll’s, only gold—came from when he handed it to me a couple of weeks after the gala, saying only that maybe I’d want to put Ma’s picture in it when I got one.
I wanted to ask Teddy, lots of times, if he knew where the Taxi Stand Ladies had gone, but I couldn’t let myself do it. So I asked Pop. And all he said was, “Probably to do business elsewhere.” Boy, did that make me happy, because I knew exactly what kind of business they went off to do. They went off to open a bakery! And every time I passed the mailbox after that, I thought of Walking Doll baking one loaf of memory after another, and The Kenosha Kid selling it behind the counter, making sure to give every customer that came through the door their proper change.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
I missed the Taxi Stand Ladies after they left. The same way I missed Brenda during the two months she was gone.
Brenda sent me a letter, though, clear from Europe, saying that her and her ma were on a little vacation. She told me she was sorry I had to see such a thing on the catwalk. And sorry that she caused me to miss our big Sunshine Sisters number. She explained that sometimes, when people find themselves in a predicament they don’t know how to get out of, they lose faith in themselves and they start thinking that the world would be better off without them. She talked about making mistakes, and how we all make them. How that doesn’t make us bad, but it sure can make us sorry. Then she said that she figured out that most of the ones we make are the result of not being honest with ourselves about who we are, how we feel, and what we want in the first place. Then she thanked me for teaching her about those things, and for teaching her about hope.
It sure was a shocker, learning that Mrs. Bloom was poor as me and Teddy before she met the late Mr. Bloom. She never fibbed to him about where she came from, but maybe she should have, because he never let her forget it. Brenda said that’s why her ma worked so hard to get respected. So that when Brenda got married, her husband could never throw it in her face that she came to him with nothing, and that she was nothing without him.
But Brenda wasn’t thinking about getting married anymore. Instead, she was thinking about how she wanted to be a teacher. Not teaching kids how to be respectable, but teaching them reading and math, and things like that. She said Mrs. Bloom was going to hire managers for both of the theaters, and watch the baby while it was little, so Brenda could drive every day to Milwaukee to go to school.
When the Blooms got back to Mill Town, they didn’t go anyplace for a while. Brenda said that was because it was hard to show your face when you knew people were gossiping about you. So I told them both what Teddy did back when he was nothing but a shit shoveler for the Soo Line, after Ma left and our neighbors were talking about him. How Teddy would pull his shoulders back, lift his chin up, and out the door he’d go, keeping them perked and not letting them drop until he closed the door behind him at night and then, on the side, I showed Brenda what I used to do to them behind my back, just so she’d have a couple of options.
Whether it was because of the smarts I passed along to them from me and Teddy or not, the Blooms started going places again. And yep, people stared at them. And yep, people said Miller-mean things about them behind their backs—especially the Gaylors—but they went out anyway. And they kept going out until the gossip wound down like a clock somebody forgot to wind.
When Brenda’s baby came, she named him Daniel, which she told me meant “God is my judge.” I told her that was a real nice name, but that maybe she should have looked for a name that meant “Jesus is my judge.�
�� You know, just in case the little guy ended up having a few afflictions, as I knew he would the second Brenda lowered him into my propped-with-a-pillow arms and I saw his little lightbulb-shaped noggin.
I had to give Jolene Jackson my plastic purse in trade for an address where I could reach Johnny. In my letter, I told him that I thought he should know that Brenda had a baby with a lightbulb-shaped head, because I knew that he’d never want a kid of his to wonder what he did that was so bad that his dad didn’t want to stick around.
Two weeks later, while I was walking water out to Poochie, Dumbo Doug’s car pulled up in front of the Jacksons, and Johnny got out. I dropped the pitcher and darted across the street. “Johnny!” I yelled.
He picked me up and gave me a potato-sack shake. He still looked like James Dean—which made me feel both happy and sad. Happy because Johnny was still the same. But sad, too, because James Dean was dead, and I was reminded of how I cried for two days when I heard.
“I knew you’d come back, Johnny,” I said.
Johnny asked how I was, and he asked about Brenda and Daniel. Then he asked me where my little friend was.
“You mean Charlie?” I asked, and Johnny nodded.
“Oh, Charlie’s not my friend,” I told him. “He’s my brother.”
And I wasn’t even telling a fib. Because as it turned out, the day that Teddy and Miss Tuckle and Mrs. Fry went off together and Teddy came back with our pre-gala celebration gifts, they’d gone to see the good judge Miss Tuckle knew at the courthouse. And Mrs. Fry, she took papers she got from her daughter stamped legal, giving Mrs. Fry custody of Charlie, just as Charlie’s dad had given it to her before he went to the clink. That same day, Mrs. Fry had a will drawn up, saying that after she was called Home, Teddy would have custody of Charlie.