by Bel Mooney
She liked the tangs of the farm, hot yeasty fragrance of Lisa’s bread baking, the clean neutral breath of fields of oats, barley and corn, the sharpness of linden trees blooming in the streets of Wahoo bustling ready for the Fourth of July, the bitter smell of gunpowder after the fireworks had finished, when the night sky was blue, velvety and empty once more – returning quickly to its own midwest smell of grass, crops, animals, and distance. Then her father might carry her from the car, and far away, across the wide emptiness of the plains, she would hear the melancholy call of a solitary whipporwill, making her shiver. Don’t forget to say your prayers, little Anna. Good night. God bless.
By the time she reached her teens Annie had begun to chafe under the regime. She locked herself in her room and leafed through Cosmopolitan, and saved her allowance for make-up, clothes and perfume. Lisa disapproved, and Vlasta would shake her head, “Pretty is as pretty does, child.”
Oh, those sayings! “You can tell the way a man works by the way he eats – so mind your manners, Luke … Nobody ever grew happy through material things, Anna … Think whether you want it or you need it, and you’ll know what God wants you to have, are you listening, Anna?” And more and more. “Don’t you be late, mind, Anna Cvach. That skirt’s much too short, a woman should dress modestly or else people will think …?”
What will they think, Grandma? Silence at the table, and then Lisa: “Anna, I really think it’s high time we had your hair cut.” And John: “No, honey, let it be. A woman’s hair is her glory. I think it looks real pretty like it is.” Her brown hair was long and straight, and cut in a heavy fringe. At the age of fourteen she looked seventeen: tall with long legs and a confident walk and a face that made men turn to stare in the street. The girl, the wanted one, her father’s pet, her grandmother’s baby, realised quickly that others wanted her too, to be their girl, their pet, their baby – and that their wanting ran through her muscles, making her strong.
At fifteen she was allowed to date and soon ached to have her blouse undone and her nipples pulled and squeezed – praying all the time that the boy would not say he wished her boobs were bigger. Once, when she arrived home late, sore inside from the prodding of Bobby Newman’s fingers, Vlasta was waiting in the kitchen. “I send your Momma and Poppa to bed, Anna,” she said gravely, “they are worried about you. All I want to say to you is one thing – Our Lord is watching everything you do. And Anna – Respektuj sebe a svt bude respektovat tebe. You understand?” Her eyes fixed on the crucifix on the wall behind her grandmother’s head, Annie nodded, her cheeks burning. But they did not burn with shame, only anxiety. For a second later she found herself wondering how Bobby Newman could bear that smell on his finger, and if he hated it, or if all girls smelled the same.
“Little Orphan Annie,” her brothers teased her when she sulked; and at school the kids said that Cvach was ugly, unpronounceable. They said “Vack”, and by the time Annie was sixteen this was the source of a joke that made her toss her head even higher as she walked, to hide her humiliation. She was no longer a virgin, and Bobby Newman had taught her many things in the back of his father’s Chevrolet. He would take copies of Playboy on their dates, and Annie would find herself shockingly aroused by the girls in the picture sets, their legs decorously crossed to cover any traces of pubic hair, but their breasts magnificent. Bobby read out letters which (he said) were good for a couple’s sex life because they gave them ideas; he told her a girl always had to keep a guy interested. All the other girls wanted to date Bobby; Annie had once cried all night because he said Jenny Frank’s breasts were the best in High School, and he bet she would do anything a guy would ask, especially if he was captain of the football team, like Bobby. So she did as he asked, and crouched uncomfortably in the back of the car, taking a deep breath as the livid blue and pink thing reared in front of her nose, and she hoped it didn’t taste funny. Hoped she wouldn’t gag, too, which was hard at first, as he bounced up and down on the seat, pushing it up into her, the slurping noises embarrassing her more than the action itself. And, God, all that stuff, you wouldn’t think there could be so much in there, swallow it quick in great gulps and think about Lifesavers.
Hey, you suck real good, Annie Vack, you the only chick in High School who’ll put out like that. But she thought that everybody did, Jenny Frank with her buttons busting, and all. No, only Annie. And soon all the guys got to hear of it, and called her Annie Vackoom-cleaner, with the powerful suck. Soon it got to “Hoover”, and older boys she knew only by sight would whisper, “Hi, Hoov”, as she passed, drawing in their breath through mouths full of saliva.
And, at home still, Požehnej Hospodine. Bless us, O Lord.
Four times she stood in the family group on graduation day, her brothers in their blue caps and gowns, clutching the certificate. Lisa and Vlasta crushed their corsages hugging each boy in turn, and even John enveloped his successful sons. Joseph went to study for the priesthood, and came back in black for Luke’s graduation. “Luke Franklin Cvach has a Czech scholarship to the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, sponsored by the Saunders County Czech Club.” This time the sound of the school band playing “The Star-spangled Banner” at a snail’s pace brought tears to Annie’s eyes, of vague patriotism mixed with religious sentiment, and sadness that Luke, her favourite, was leaving home. The magic failed later, when Matt and Pete had their turn. When her father sang “the land of the free” under his breath she felt hate twist inside her; freedom, what was freedom in a country when you couldn’t stay out late at night and everybody, but everybody, told you what to do? And you were stuck in Wahoo, for God’s sake, where there was a church every hundred yards, and the chief work for the sheriff was lost dogs.
Annie drank diet Coke in front of Kojak and fantasised about doing it with Sergeant Crocker. “New York?” said her mother. “Why would you want to go to New York? That’s where people are corrupted.” “Decadence,” was all John Cvach said, rustling his paper.
Matt was going to work the farm with his father, Pete went to Lincoln to sell agricultural machinery, and John spoke quietly to his friends at the weekly auction (for he would never boast). “He’s got a real good business brain; he wants to come back and set up right here in Wahoo.” At each graduation Lisa cried with pride, hastily raising the back of her hand to her eyes, to wipe tears away, as the same photographer came to arrange their group. “Sir, can you have your daughter move into the centre of the photograph … next to her brothers? Anna … is it Anna? Yes, yes, just there. Fine. Will you smile real pretty now … that’s it. You have a beautiful daughter, Ma’am.” Click.
“Why thank you,” said Lisa, smiling at Anna for once, despite the too-short skirt.
Annie stared out of the classroom window, daydreaming about being a model, and sprawled on her bed at night, her school books untouched, listening to Motown and Linda Rondstadt, looking at photographs of herself with a semi-critical eye. The right height, but the hair too straight maybe for the new kind of looks, eyes looking good with Maybelline, lip brush defining the fullness of her mouth, teeth just perfect – yes. She knew she could make it. She’d called a model agency in Omaha who said to come right over and have some pictures taken. Bobby Newman was going out with Jenny Frank now, but there’d been lots of guys since him.
One called Malone she had picked up right outside the Svoboda Funeral Parlor. He had pulled his truck over, started to ask her the road through … then stopped. When they were splitting up Bobby Newman told her that men could always tell girls who put out, it was written on their faces, and Annie supposed later that Malone could read. He was good-looking in a clean, Levis-advertisement kind of way, and grinned down at her. “You wanna come for a ride?” In the distance Annie glimpsed Father Riley crossing the wide tree-lined street, and decided.
He was playing blues on a tape deck, and offered her a Marlboro. “Did anybody ever tell you you should be in movies?” he asked. “Or maybe magazines? With a face and body like that you could be in Playboy”
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“Why thanks,” she said, sliding down in the seat, feeling the familiar loosening inside her. Soon she showed him where to turn off the road.
“What’s your name?” she asked, as he pulled down the cab blinds.
“Malone.”
“Malone what?”
“Just Malone,” he whispered, starting to undo the belt of her jeans.
“Funny name.”
“I’m a funny guy, baby. Oh, come on, kid, let me show ya …”
Annie sat still as he undressed her completely, and made little humming noises of admiration in between kisses. She had never been naked with a boy before; only with bits of clothing removed or undone. This man seemed to want nothing but to view her, to suck on her nipples for what seemed like hours, and at last to bury his face between her legs. She was astonished; Bobby Newman had never bothered – it was she who had to do it to him. Squealing and twisting now, and feeling for his hair, she lifted her hips towards him, wanting so much for the waves to come, pulsing upwards and inwards. Now, oh yes!
She could smell herself on his face. “That all you want?” she asked, as he nuzzled gently at her breast again.
“Mmm, you are beautiful!” he said.
“But …” she said.
He laughed. “Feel” – guiding her hand down to the damp patch on his jeans, laughing again; “I’m just fine. I could just about eat you all over again. I could put you in a little room and come visit you each day, and just lick you all over, so I could. You’re a doll, hon, did anybody tell ya?”
Annie looked down at her own skin, noticing the way the sun filtering through canvas lit golden lights in her pubic hair, and the creamy smoothness of her skin where the tan lines ended, and she loved herself then for the first time. She felt his admiration for her body, and wanted him to begin all over again, no feeling nicer, none she had known. “Anybody tell ya?” he repeated, and she laughed. “You just told me,” she said. “Hey, Malone, where you headed?”
“Denver. Then Salt Lake City.”
“Wish I could come too.”
“Give me your number an’ I’ll call.”
She thought of home, and shook her head. “No, my folks ’ud go sky high.”
“You still at home. How old are you?”
“Sixteen. Nearly seventeen.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“I’m leaving home soon. I’m flunkin’ outa High School and going to get a job in Omaha. Maybe I’ll see you there.”
“Sure,” he said, blowing smoke up to the roof. The point was, until that second Annie had formulated no such plan, but once uttered she knew it would happen. In her mind she ran through the whole sequence in Technicolor: the shouting at home, her mother’s tears, the phone calls to the aunt, the bus pulling out, with OMAHA on the front, her grandmother’s last blessings in muttered Czech. That’s how it would be, and she felt nothing but gladness.
As she pulled on her clothes she smiled to herself to think how alarmed Malone would feel if he knew that she had told him to stop the truck on her own father’s land, their neat little farmhouse just out of sight over the brow of the hill.
At first she stayed with her Aunt Teresa, who was single and worked in the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. Teresa had got her a job in a flower shop, further up Dodge Street, where Mr Neimitz said he would train her, for there was a great future in flowers. He tried to teach her the proper names of plants, and soon took her with him when he went to give talks to clubs and societies attended by women with time to fill in the day. Annie enjoyed herself; she would hand him each plant in turn and listen to his explanatory talk, watching with amazement as some of the audience actually made notes.
Annie loved it at first. She liked the pink and white fitted overall-dress he gave her, and smiling at men who came into the shop to buy flowers for wives and girlfriends, and often stayed to ask her out. She left the top buttons of the dress undone; the shop became popular. The other assistant, a middle-aged divorcee called Elsa, was irritated at what she saw, and once complained to Mr Neimitz, but he liked Annelisa himself and dismissed the tales. Everything was fine for four months. But one day Mr Neimitz was ill, and called the shop to say that Annie could take his place and give the short talk on indoor plants to the Daughters of Zion luncheon club. Her heart fluttered; she, little Annie who had flunked out of High School and made her mother cry – she was going to give a public talk! All the plants were ready, and she had heard him give it many times before, so nothing should go wrong.
The women were well-dressed, the synagogue over half-full. There was a buzz, then a falling-off, as they waited for Annie, in her best navy suit with a white blouse. Her mouth was dry. Sweat trickled down from her armpits to spread in her blouse. She picked up the first plant and looked at it, then at them. The name … the botanical name …? She had learnt it. But looking at that piece of greenery in her right hand, and opening her mouth to speak, the only name to fill her mind was the old familiar one. And in the expectant silence the laughter broke with a crack from deep within her, shattering the eggshell faces of the women before her, glancing off the floor and ceiling, cackling hysterically, “Oh, it’s a … it’s a … Wandering Jew … oh! I’m sorry … It’s …” And off she went again.
After Mr Neimitz, Annie decided there was no future for her in flowers, and about the same time her Aunt Teresa wrote to John and Lisa to say that she was worried about Anna’s general attitude. “All you think of is your looks,” she told Annie, wagging a finger as Vlasta used to do. Annie gazed in the mirror across the room and nodded, because it was true.
She had taken to hanging around the Prima model agency, and drinking in bars where she’d heard the photographers drank, and there in the red gloom she met Mitch Seaton, who was in his thirties and still wore a Frank Zappa moustache. He told her he had been around as a freelance, and knew everybody. He also said he could make her a star. “With your looks you could be big, real big. You ever thought of calendars? You thought of glamour work?” Had she thought of glamour work, she said, she thought of nothing else.
They walked in Peony Park, and he took her on a cruise on the River Belle, casually draping an arm around her shoulders as they leaned out over the Missouri, smoking a joint. “You really think I could make the big time?” she asked, as the engines thrummed, and Mitch’s hand slid inside her blouse.
She showed him her first pictures, innocent ones in short skirts and damp tops, posing against trees, and he laughed. Mitch took her to his studio, and after a few beers she removed her top, and then after another beer she let him pull down her underpants, and after they had made it once he took some photographs of her sprawled on her stomach, her legs apart, because he said that was how a lot of men like to see their women. Annie wasn’t shy. Her memory of Malone was a spurt of pure narcissism; Mitch Seaton’s camera was just like Malone’s eyes, bringing her body into sharp definition, admiringly. But, more important, the camera was her means of escape from Nebraska, she knew it now. It would take her out into the world – the act of love, the moment of penetration, no longer private but public. At night she would lie in the single bed in Teresa’s spare room and imagine that she was naked, standing on a marble pedestal in a park, somewhere sunny and warm, except that the light was blue somehow, giving her body something of the lustre of the veined Carrara. Beneath her, men stood in line, shuffling forward to pass, to glance up for a moment in awe, drawing in their breath as she moved a hand slowly towards one nipple and touched herself gently, like Venus. She knew what she looked like in their eyes, and that on her face was all the gravity of the Madonna, as she allowed the act of worship to happen. Sometimes, in this fantasy, the wind would blow chill from the East, containing a flurry of snow, and the corners of the park would contract. Still the men, frozen heads bowed in humility, would file past her, looking up with red-rimmed eyes at the perfect one, untouched by the cold. And the sky deepened, as distant stars hung there, silver as ice.
It was Mitch who took her to N
ew York. She left a note for Teresa, and wrote to her parents, telling them she had been given a job as receptionist in a model agency, with a promise of modelling work. She knew they would believe her. She almost believed herself. Coming into Manhattan in a yellow taxi, silent beside the man she barely knew, she thought of downtown Omaha with contempt. There was the Chrysler Building, and the Empire State, and Saks, and the steamy streets, and all the rest that she knew from pictures, and a thousand screaming cop shows. She thought then, as she snuggled absentmindedly against Mitch, that she would never see Nebraska again, but it was only the feeling you get when moving on, and up.
Mitch had borrowed a small apartment on East 48th, up three flights of dark stairs which smelt of food and urine. An old man from the ground floor sat out on the stairs all day, nursing an empty bottle, and ran his hand up her leg as she passed. As Mitch banged up and down on top of her each night, grasping the bed-head with one hand to give himself more force, Annie sweated and dreamed about being dressed in furs by very rich men, hundreds of them, all admiring her. Mitch toyed with her breasts as he smoked his cigarette. “You know something, honey, I sure wish they were bigger. It’s what guys wanna see …”
He sent her to small-time girlie magazines, and calendar publishers, whilst he did separate rounds with his own pictures. Annie always told people she had been very lucky. She met girls who carried their Books up and down those crummy staircases, calves aching from the high heels, cheeks aching from the smiling, until some guy said they could earn good money visiting Arabs at the Plaza, and so it began, for them. Annie did not have to turn to those tricks, not ever. Of course she slept with Mitch, and with the friend of his who produced a whole series of glamour calendars for big manufacturers. She heaved the Book around, cleaning its pages of greasy fingerprints each night.