Ten Cents a Dance

by Christine Fletcher

  I never listened to news programs. Why be bored by men yapping about President Roosevelt and Hitler, when The Romance of Helen Trent or The Guiding Light were on? Now, though, words jumped out and I grabbed at them. Attack. Counterattack. Oahu. Nomura. Cast the die. Excitement rippling through the voices like electricity. After a while, the words became harder to follow: diplomatic ties, naval blockade, president's authority, meetings of the secretaries. Ma sat unmoving, as pale as marble, the lace she wore to Mass pinned to her smooth hair. Betty perched on the arm of her chair. Both in their good dresses and shoes. It must be close to time for church . . . no, surely not, Ma would never have let me sleep so late. I looked around Mr. Maczarek's parlor for a clock but didn't see one. I shifted my feet. They ached almost as badly as my head. My mouth tasted rotting sour, like the milk Betty had left out of the icebox last summer. From the sidewalk, Mr. Schenker's voice boomed into the flat; Mr. Maczarek shouted back. Hitler and Japs and Hawaii. I tucked my chin and pressed my hands over my ears.

  "Hush! Hush!" Ma said. Mr. Maczarek popped his head inside to listen, then waved out the window: pipe down. Silence. I let my hands fall to my sides.

  From the radio, a faint male voice. . . . hello NBC . . . KGU in Honolulu. . . Mr. Maczarek twisted the volume knob higher. . . . battle has been going on nearly three hours . . . it is no joke . . . it is a real war. Then a woman's voice, clear and loud. This is the telephone company. . . emergency call. . . More static. The regular announcer: One moment please. Mr. Maczarek frowned at me, as if I were the telephone operator who'd cut off the broadcast.

  From the street, Mr. Schenker bellowed, "He'll have to declare war now, he's got no choice!"

  "Who does?" Betty said. "Who's he talking about?"

  "Roosevelt, of course," Mr. Maczarek answered. He went back to the window.

  But the war was in England. Poland. Far from here. Wasn't it? I looked at Ma to see what she thought. But she was staring at me like she was seeing me for the first time, and her lips were set in a thin line.

  "Get out of that housecoat and wash your face," she said. "Make yourself look decent."

  I fled back to our place. How could I possibly explain last night to Ma? I had to come up with something . . . Crossing through the parlor, I glanced at the clock on the table. It couldn't be. I ran into Ma's room, dug her watch out of her dresser. Three fifteen. I forgot about Ma, and last night, and the Japs.

  I was supposed to meet Paulie at Peoples Theater at three o'clock.

  No time to heat water on the stove. I scrubbed off last night's makeup with cold out of the tap, gooseflesh all over, clenching my teeth so they wouldn't chatter. Realizing that Ma and Betty weren't ready for Mass, they'd already been and gone. Why hadn't Ma woken me up? Maybe she'd tried, I thought, remembering Betty's yelling, how she'd practically had to drag me out of bed. My face burned with shame. All that rum last night . . . Lying on the floor, looking up into Ma's face. Babbling something about a party. Stupid, stupid . . . I hustled into the one new dress I kept at home, at the same time chewing two of Ma's aspirin, the way she did when she needed them to work fast. Almost gagging at the bitterness.

  "I'm going to work!" I called into Mr. Maczarek's parlor from the hallway.

  "You wait right there!" Ma yelled back. "I want to talk to . . ."

  But I was already at the front door. "The switchboard's probably going crazy. Emergency calls . . . you heard that operator just now!" I shouted, and then I was running down the front stoop. I wasn't the only one hurrying; everybody was hustling home or crowding into the nearest tavern. At Hirsch's candy store, the line of people waiting to use the phone stretched out into the street. "What are they saying now?" they asked each other. "Our boys . . . dirty Japs . . . " On Marshfield Street, I almost ran into Stan Dudek and Charlie Baczewski coming out of a poolroom. "Ruby, have you heard?" Stan said. His knobby face alight in a way I'd never seen.

  "I can't stop to talk . . . ," I began, but they ran past me.

  "First thing tomorrow, we're going to enlist!" Stan shouted, and Charlie hollered, "We're gonna beat them Japs!"

  "Enlist!" I said. "In the army?"

  "Better than waiting to get drafted!" Stan yelled. Charlie whooped and clapped him on the shoulder, and they disappeared around the corner.

  Drafted.

  "Paulie," I said. And then I broke into a run.

  It's no joke . . . it's a real war, the man on the radio had shouted. And Mr. Maczarek, once when he'd been going on about Hitler, and Poland: old men start wars. Young men fight them.

  Young men like Paulie. But they couldn't take him away from me now. Not when everything was finally perfect.

  Only a few people under the theater awning. No Paulie. I paid for a ticket and went inside. Sunday afternoon, the place should've been packed. It was less than half full. I wondered if the people watching Veronica Lake up on the screen even knew what had happened, what was still happening. I wandered up and down the aisles, whispering Paulie's name, ignoring the scoldings to shut up. No luck. From the pay phone in the lobby, I called Ed's Garage. No answer.

  I wasn't worried anymore about being late. All I could think of was Paulie being sent to war. Killed, maybe. All those newsreels about the battles in Europe . . . soldiers slogging through mud, filling row after row of hospital beds. I'd paid hardly a scrap of attention.

  Don't come running after me, he'd said. But we hadn't been at war then. I crisscrossed the streets, looking in every poolroom, every tavern and saloon, all the same ones as before. This time, nobody was playing pool. The tavern owners had turned up their radios and men and women clustered three-deep, four-deep around the bars. This time, when I asked for Paulie, nobody made jokes and patted stools for me to join them. All the stools were taken and nobody paid attention to me.

  I couldn't find him. It started to snow. I got to the Starlight with just enough time to get ready.

  Turned out I wasn't the only one worried about a fellow. "But what about the boys who've already been drafted?" said a petite, pretty brunette named Joan. Her husband had gotten called up for the peacetime draft, back in April. "He's only supposed to be there a year. The army'll stick to that, won't they? They can't go back on their word, can they?"

  "Of course not, honey," Nora said. The rest of us busied ourselves with our gowns and our nylons and our makeup. None of us looked at Joan.

  By nine o'clock, when only thirty men had wandered in, Del sent half the girls home. At eleven, the rest of us got the boot. Nobody wanted illusion tonight. Before I left, I called the garage twice more. Still no answer.

  Monday morning, on the little table radio in the parlor, Ma and I listened to President Roosevelt. Mr. Maczarek came over and sat on our sofa with a cup of Ma's coffee. The president's voice crackled: ". . . date which will live in infamy . . . last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands"—Manny's family was there, and Alonso's, all the Pinoys—"the American people in their righteous might. . . state of war."

  That afternoon, I waited for Paulie at Peoples Theater. He didn't show up. I stood under the awning, fretting at a tiny rip in the hem of my handkerchief, and watched the people hurrying past. Yesterday they'd looked stunned. A few angry. Today, their faces were grim. They walked past, heads down, not glancing at the theater or the shops. Stopping only to buy newspapers from the newsboy crying the headlines at the corner. All anybody wanted to know was what was going to happen now. But nobody knew.

  Three hours later, my handkerchief was gone. Shredded and blown away, tiny pieces of cotton snow. I let go the last of them, watched them whirl and dance into the street. The daylight faded, the streetlights had come on. I wiped my eyes with my fingers, my nose on my sleeve. Then, my legs aching from standing on the sidewalk, I walked home.

  Tuesday night, when the Starlight closed—at the usual hour, business had picked up a little—I walked out of the dance hall to find Paulie waiting for me, just like Tom had, exactly a week before. I yipped and ran toward him, but he ba
cked away from me, his eyes dark as thunderclouds.

  "What'd I tell you about not running all over town after me?" he said.

  I stopped, stricken. The other girls drifted around us; I could feel them pretending not to watch, and not missing a word. I blushed hot. "I was late getting to the theater," I said, "and everything had just happened and I thought . . . I was afraid . . . " He shook his head, started to turn away. "Wait, Paulie, don't be mad!" I ran forward and reached for him, but before I could touch him, he'd swung back around, and he was grinning. The relief felt like being drenched in a sudden rain. Exhilarating, a little shaky. "You jerk," I said, but I was laughing, too. He put his arm around me then, and I snuggled close, relieved, too, at his solidness. Every time we were apart more than a day, I couldn't let go the feeling that I'd imagined him.

  Peggy sauntered up. "So this is the dreamboat you're always going on about," she said.

  They shook hands. Peggy was impressed, I could tell. So were the other girls; they tossed their hair, walked away slow. Peeked at him over their shoulders. I slid my arms around his waist. The look on Yvonne's face—like she'd swallowed a knife, blade first—that was the cherry on top.

  In the cab, when I told Paulie my fear he'd get drafted, he started laughing. "That was why you were after me like a bloodhound?" he asked. I nodded. I'd already figured out that Paulie didn't like sappy girls, and he didn't like clingy girls, and I was one teardrop away from begging him not to go if the army called.

  "The army locked me up and then they kicked me out." He looked out his window. "Believe me, after what I did, they ain't about to invite me back."

  Paulie was safe. Safe from the draft. Safe from the war. I reached out and touched his knee. He was solid, he was real. He wouldn't be taken away. The fear and fretting of the past two days vanished, and I laughed, and then the relief overwhelmed me and I burst into tears.

  "What's the matter?" Paulie said. "Don't tell me you had your heart set on the Japs using me for target practice."

  "I'm so glad," I said between sobs. I heard him laughing low, under his breath. Then his arms were around me and it was all right. When I stopped crying, my head lay on his chest. For a minute, I watched the shops rolling by on Ashland Avenue. Then I asked, "What was it that made them lock you up, Paulie?"

  "A private moved on my girl. I busted him up." He ran his hand up and down my arm. "Nothing I wouldn't do again."

  So the rumors were true. I wondered how bad Paulie'd hurt him. "What happened to the girl?" I asked. Playing with a button on his coat.

  "Don't know. Don't care."

  I smiled against the rough plaid wool.

  The cab let us off a block from home. Paulie pulled me into a gangway between two flats and kissed me.

  "What if I did get drafted?" His voice thick and rough, almost a whisper. "What if I had to go fight? You'd be sweet to me then. Wouldn't you?"

  "I'm sweet to you now," I whispered back.

  "No. Sweet." He pressed his hips against mine, kissed my neck.

  Those terrible days worrying about Tom, thinking, Why couldn't it be Paulie? If only it was Paulie . . . Then, I'd told myself I'd still say no. Then, I hadn't had a shred of hope that he could be mine. Now here he was, his dark gold hair and good earthy smell and strong, warm hands under my coat.

  "Would you?" he said again.

  I looked him in the eyes, his beautiful rain-colored eyes, with the little flecks of color deep inside. Too dark to see them, but I knew they were there.

  "Get drafted," I said, "and we'll see."

  Whatever answer he'd expected, it wasn't that. His mouth hardened. He did a quick odd twist and then shoved his hand up under my skirt. I gasped in surprise and dodged away from his grabbing fingers, then slapped him. My palm cracked hard across his cheek. He caught my arm. Squeezed. I felt my bones bend. My stomach flipped with nausea and a sudden stabbing fear.

  I busted him up. But this was me, I hadn't done anythi—

  As suddenly as he'd seized me, he let go. Laughed, and flicked his fingers against my cheek. "I'll see you tomorrow," he said. "One o'clock at Peoples. Don't stand me up this time." He tilted my chin up and kissed me. Then he walked away, leaving me shaking in the alley.

  Stupid to have gotten scared like that, I thought the next day. So he'd grabbed me a little too rough. How many times had I practically done the same to Betty, when we were little?

  I made sure to keep my arms covered, so nobody would see the bruises.

  . . .

  This is what I told Ma about coming home drunk: one of the girls I worked with had gotten engaged, and she'd invited a few of us to her flat to celebrate after work. Her parents were there. Well, to tell the whole truth, they'd been in bed. The girl had served brandy Alexanders. She'd made them awfully strong, but they tasted so good, with the chocolate and the cream . . . And then someone said it was about time I learned how to put on makeup, and they'd started smearing things on my face. Yes, it felt awful to be drunk. I knew better now. I was sorry.

  I put it over okay. Better than okay, actually. The telephone company, I told Ma, wanted us to look nice. It was a rule. And I was the only girl whose mother wouldn't let her wear makeup.

  In the end, she agreed to powder and lipstick. Pink or coral, nothing dark. Yes, Ma, I said.

  As far as the war, everything was unsure. Depending on who was talking, it would be over in a few weeks or would go on forever. Flags flew up and down the streets. Boys from all over Chicago lined up at recruiting offices to volunteer. Stan Dudek and Charlie Baczewski had both dropped out of school to sign up; others from our neighborhood, too. I knew I should be ashamed that Paulie wouldn't be going to fight. I wasn't. I was glad.

  In the dance hall, the Chinese customers had a hard time. Some of the girls who usually danced with them wouldn't anymore, and the other customers gave them the stink-eye. The week after Pearl Harbor, a Lithuanian who'd been nipping from a hip flask all night knocked a cup of coffee onto a Chinese man's lap, saying, "Dirty skunk, go back to Japan!"

  "I not from Japan, I spit on Japan!" the Chinese hollered. "You so stupid, you go back to Poland!" Well, of course that got the Poles and the Lithuanians mad, because they hate each other, and before you could blink, six or eight Slavs were swinging away at three Chinese, who swung right back. We girls jumped up on chairs or scrambled onto the counter to get a good view. There were a couple of good sluggers in the mix, but for my money, Del took the prize. He threw off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and waded right into the thick of it. Between him and O'Malley, it took only a few minutes until the last of the contenders got a boot down the stairs. The band played right through it. Ozzie told me later that Hamp, the band leader, figured it was his job to play the music. If customers wanted to fight instead of dance, that was between them and Del.

  After that, the Chinese stayed away. It wasn't just us; we heard it was the same at taxi-dance halls all over the city.

  "If only the flips would scram, too," Nora said, "I'd be happy as a clam."

  "That just shows how ignorant you are," I said. "Don't you know the Pinoys hate the Japanese as much as we do?" Last night at Lily's, Manny had been in such a blue funk, worried about his family, that he wouldn't dance. He sat at the table and drank whiskeys, one after another, getting more and more broody until finally he wouldn't talk even to Alonso.

  "Hey, Cinderella, that boyfriend of yours know you date flips on the side?" Yvonne said.

  I smiled at her. "He knows what the racket is." Chew on that, I thought, and I hope you bust a tooth. Actually it was getting kind of thorny, juggling Ma and Betty and the Starlight and my fish and Paulie—more and more, I felt like I was being pulled in a dozen different directions at once. I remembered how none of Yvonne's four fish knew about any of the others. Not for the first time, I wondered how she managed that.

  "Any of you who don't want to dance with Orientals don't have to," Peggy said. "But did you stop to think that if they stay away, that's less dough for all
of us?"

  "The only thing I stopped to think is that any Jap can come in here and call himself a Chinaman and none of us would know the difference." Yvonne slipped a heel on one foot, balancing on the other.

  "What on earth would they do that for?" Alice asked.

  "So they could spy what Yvonne stuffs into her bra," I called. The whole Ladies' erupted in laughter, a few scandalized oooohs. For a second, Yvonne got the swallowed-knife look again, and her neck flushed red. So I was right. I didn't think she'd been working just what God gave her. I walked past her in my bra and girdle, then leaned down to a mirror and pretended to check my makeup. Let her see what a set of real tits looked like.

  Aside from the Chinese, the war made other changes at the Starlight. The first was that every granddad suddenly remembered all his doings in the Great War. You'd see a girl trapped in the lounge, looking desperate, some geezer waving his hands in her face: "And then what do you think we did? We marched right back up that hill . . ."

  "If another grayhair tells me one more story about his dysentery, I'm going straight home to blow my brains out," I told Ozzie.

  "You should hear Hamp," he said. "Every word out of his mouth is either foot rot or trenches. Or both."

  I'd started spending some of my breaks in the little back room. Not all the time, not even regular. A week or two might go by. Then a night would come when I wanted nothing more than to close my eyes and listen to Ozzie work out a new solo. Since he'd taken my advice and landed Ophelia—by New Year's she was kissing him behind the bandstand at Lily's—Ozzie was about the only person who didn't want something from me. Him, and maybe Peggy.

  I never stayed the whole break. One cigarette, that was all. I didn't want him to think I was a nuisance. At first I only listened. Then, after a while, we started talking. He told me he'd started playing trumpet when he was nine. Moved to Chicago last year, when he was sixteen. The Starlight was his first gig.