Her fingers tightened on the beads, her swollen knuckles paled to white. "I never asked you for that! For you and your sister to be decent girls, that's all I ever asked!"
"Mary?" Chester's voice, anxious, from the hallway. I heard Ma's breath catch.
"It's all right," she called. "I'll be right there."
If I'd gone along with what Paulie wanted, she'd still think I was a decent girl. I'd be turning tricks for him every night, and she would have no idea.
"You never asked me about the coat before," I said.
"What are you talking about?" Tucking the rosary into her pocket.
"The coat." I raised my eyes to hers. "How come you never asked me about it before?"
Ma braced her hands on the arms of her chair and stood up. The hem of the cherry-print dress fluttered in front of me. She took two steps and stopped.
"We won't talk about this anymore." Then her voice sunk to almost nothing. "You've broken my heart, Ruby."
Chester came and took her arm. Delicate, the way he always was with her, as if she was made of something rare and precious. He didn't say anything. Ma's steps were stiff. Painful. She shouldn't have sat up so long. She'd hurt tomorrow.
After a long while I got up. My side ached now only when I moved. In old lady Nolan's room—our room, Betty's and my room—Betty lay still and quiet. Pretending to be asleep. I didn't bother undressing. I curled on my bed in my clothes and lay awake until morning.
. . .
I never found out what story Betty told Ma and Chester about that night. I didn't ask her, and she wasn't speaking to me. But from the way they treated her—making her favorite dishes, buying her a phonograph—I guessed she'd told them that finding Paulie, instead of Polly, had come as a complete shock. It seemed easier to let them believe her.
Ma wouldn't look at me. She talked at me: Good morning, dear. Clear the table, please. Mercy, it's so humid today, I'm afraid the laundry won't dry. Would you like milk or coffee with your dinner? But her glances skimmed across my hair. My elbows. The top of my head. Betty pretended I didn't exist. If it wasn't for Chester, I might have disappeared altogether.
I didn't leave the house for two days. Trying to be the good girl. It got hard to breathe, for all the unsaid words in the air. The evenings were the worst. I tried sitting in the living room with the rest of them, listening to radio shows and sewing. When Amos and Andy came on, I knew men would be streaming into the dance hall. Staking out their territory along the stag line, giving us the once-over. I'd have danced five or six numbers already, slipping the tips into my garter purse, giving the boys an eyeful.
On the third day, in the middle of the afternoon when none of the girls would be there, I went to the Starlight. I climbed the stairs and pounded the door until Mack, the janitor, let me in.
"Thought Del fired you," he said.
"He did. I came to clear out my locker."
Mack pushed his dry mop away over the floor. "Help yourself," he said.
It wasn't until the fourth time I tried undoing the lock on my locker that I noticed the new piece of tape on the door. Doreen, it read. I went to go find Del.
"Chucked it," he said when I asked him about my stuff. He leaned back in his office chair and spread his hands, palms up. "Does this look like a warehouse? Most girls skip, I never see them again. It's not my job to save their lipsticks and hairbrushes."
"Hairbrushes! What about my outfits? And my garter purse? I had half a night's tickets in there!"
"Should a cashed 'em when you had 'em," Del said.
After fifteen minutes of squabbling, he finally pulled out his wallet. Peeled off two bucks like he was peeling the skin off his own arm. That garter purse had had three dollars' worth of tickets, at least, but I didn't have the juice to keep arguing. I took the money and left.
Two bucks. Forty nickels. Forty waltzes, two-steps, fox-trots, jitterbugs. Smiling and snapping my fingers and acting perky as all get-out. Acting half in love. Acting all in love. Pretending whatever fellow in front of me was the shiniest thing in shoe leather, just so I could get a lousy ticket and a tip after. And he might have been terrific, too. He might have been swell. But I was savvy. Figuring I'd already found my perfect guy.
The hall was stifling hot. Sun leaked through the smeary windows, showing up every smudge on the walls, every ding and scratch on the dance floor.
I walked out without a backward glance.
. . .
Del might have chucked everything else, but I still had four gowns at the cleaner's. I picked them up and took them to Peggy's, thinking maybe she'd let me keep them in her armoire until I could figure out what to do with them. But when I got there, the armoire was empty, and a flowered cloth suitcase lay open on the bed. I stood gaping in the doorway, the four gowns draped over my arm.
"You're leaving?" I said.
"Looks that way." Peggy nodded at the gowns. "I hope those aren't a going-away gift. I don't think I've got room for another handkerchief, let alone all that."
I dumped the gowns onto a chair. "But I don't understand. What happened?"
Peggy went back to the bed and started sorting through a pile of undergarments. "I should've married Alonso when I had the chance. He wanted to, before he left. But I figured the last time I rushed into wedded bliss, it sank like the Titanic. This time, I thought"—she tapped the side of her head—"I'll play it smart." She held up a white satin slip, looked it over.
"Yesterday," she said, "I saw a notice in the paper. About a fellow from Englewood who was in the Philippines. At Bataan." Her hands closed into fists on the satin. "The War Department told his folks he's been killed. Or captured. They don't know which." She tossed the slip on the floor and turned to me. Her hazel eyes were glassy with tears. "If we'd married, I'd get a telegram a from the War Department. Like that boy's parents. And then at least I'd know. But no, I had to be smart." She laughed, one of her short, dry laughs, but it slid into a sob. I put a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off.
"You shouldn't worry," I said. "Alonso could be halfway across the world from the Philippines. Anyway, he's written you, hasn't he?"
Peggy picked up an envelope from her bedstand. Thick, the white paper smudged with grime. "Just once." She brushed her thumb across her name. "I've called the newspapers, I've called everyone I can think of. All those boys at Bataan, nobody knows what happened. Nobody knows where they are."
"But Alonso's in the navy, not the army. Besides, the mail takes forever to get out. Remember the other night Linda said . . ."
She set the envelope back down. "You're sweet, Ruby. And probably you're right and tomorrow I'll get a letter and he'll tell me he's fat and happy and dumping me for some island princess." She smiled a trace of a smile. "But in the meantime, I'm no good."
I sank onto the chair. I couldn't think of anything else comforting to say. Killed. Or captured. I'd meant to pray for Manny and Alonso every day. For all the boys. I'd meant to light candles . . .
Peggy threw a girdle at me. "Buck up," she said. "If you get blue, I'll start bawling. And then I'll never get this packing done and I'll miss my bus and it'll be your fault."
"Where are you going?" I folded the girdle and handed it to her.
"Back to Wisconsin." She smiled at me again, stronger this time, and shrugged. "At first I thought about going to Seneca. Fellow at the Daily News gave me the poop about a new shipyard there. Said there'll be plenty of good jobs for girls who don't mind getting their hands dirty. But then I decided I'd better mend some fences. God knows that'll keep me busy awhile." Peggy nodded at the gowns behind me on the chair. "So. What's your story?"
I'd planned to tell her about Paulie and Horace Washington. Everything. But seeing the weariness and worry in her face, I changed my mind. "I guess I just had enough, that's all."
"Keeping it to yourself, huh?" I looked up at her in surprise, and she grinned at me, her rare Peggy grin, not as bright as before but enough so the crooked tooth showed in front. "I told you," she said. "Every taxi da
ncer has a story."
. . .
I took the gowns back to the cleaner's. It took some haggling, but the owner finally agreed to keep them for me for a week. I figured I'd have made up my mind by then.
Three nights before, at the Club Tremonti, Horace Washington had offered me a job.
"Friend of mine's opening a class joint," he said. "Looking for gals to work as hostesses. You got the kind of moxie that would make a real splash. Interested?"
"I'll think about it," I told him.
He jotted the club's address on a piece of paper. "Don't think too long."
I knew the jobs would go fast. Half the girls at the Starlight would give their eyeteeth to be hostesses. You did most of your work sitting down, and instead of cola and coffee, the fellows kept you knee-deep in champagne and cocktails. The more they drank and gambled, the more commissions you earned.
The club address was only three blocks from Peggy's hotel. "Owner's out of town," the guy who answered the door said. "But he'll be here tomorrow. You want to leave your name?"
I couldn't have said if I was more disappointed or relieved. "No," I told him. "No, I'll come back."
. . .
That night, just like the last three nights, I lay in bed and listened to Betty snore. For eight months I'd stayed up until the wee hours, then slept until noon. Now I couldn't seem to switch back. Just like the last three nights, I watched the moonlight drift across the ceiling, and just like the last three nights, I stewed about Paulie.
Before I'd spilled his name to Horace Washington— and the fact that he was driving the stolen Lincoln Zephyr—I said, "You have to promise me to tell me when he's . . . when it's done."
"Promise you, huh?" Mr. Washington said. "Okay, I'll send you a telegram." I hadn't known he was joking until one of the guys by the wall snorted laughter.
"I don't have to tell you anything," I said. The guy who'd snorted ambled behind me. I could feel where he stopped by the prickling in the small of my back. Mr. Washington frowned at him. The guy drifted again to the wall.
"You were right," I said. "I want him gone. He's after my sister. I have to know. Please."
Mr. Washington took the cigar out of his mouth and inspected the end, as if he'd gotten a taste he didn't care for. "Five days," he'd said. "Then you check with Lily. I'll leave word."
In bed, I counted on my fingers. Five days would be Friday. Today was Wednesday. Thursday, really. Two thirty in the morning. Lily's would be hopping. I wondered if Ozzie would be there. I'd asked Lily if he'd gotten another gig, if that was why he quit the Starlight.
"He keeps his business to himself," she'd told me, "and if I were you, with the kind of trouble you got going on, I'd do the same."
I could get to Lily's and back before anyone was up. Better than lying here, wondering if Horace Washington had kept his word. Wondering if they'd killed Paulie anyway, or if he'd escaped, if he'd found out I'd ratted on him. If he was waiting for me, or Betty, gun in hand.
I eased out of bed and felt around for my shoes. My side twinged, but it wasn't slowing me down much anymore. The bruise had turned plum colored and black. It was spreading in rings, like motor oil in a rain puddle.
If that was the worst any of us got, I'd count us lucky.
. . .
I heard the music all the way out on the sidewalk. As I paid admission, a trumpet wailed high and loud. Hearing it, my feet itched to fly. I pushed my way through the curtain, into the club. Ozzie wasn't on the stage. Neither was Ophelia.
A waiter nodded at me. This way. I shook my head. "I need to see Lily!" I shouted in his ear.
The waiter jerked a thumb at a closed door behind the bar. "She's busy!"
I signaled I'd wait by the entrance. The waiter shrugged and gestured to the people who'd come in behind me. I waited until his back was turned, then I made for the closed door. Lily might be busy, but I didn't have all night.
I knocked on the door. No one answered. "Lily!" I bawled. "Lily, it's Ruby! Open up!"
The door swung open. I was about to say Lily again, but instead of her face I saw a man's checked shirt, open at the collar. Strong curving cheeks, a sharp-edged mouth. Eyelashes curling, just like his cousin's.
"What do you want?" Ozzie said.
. . .
By the time I left Lily's, the eastern sky was pink, the streetlights pale. Already the air was warm and damp. Even on the wildest of the nightclub nights, I'd never been so late getting home. I trudged from the streetcar stop to Chester's house, dog tired and hungry, hoping Ma hadn't noticed I was gone. But even that thought couldn't shake the relief soaking down to my bones.
Paulie was gone.
Horace Washington had turned up the heat so high, he hadn't needed five days. Papers had been rushed through, signatures gotten, and yesterday, Paulie had been put on a train bound for St. Petersburg, Florida. His ship had come in, all right. Shanghaied into the merchant marine.
Chester had already left for work. Ma sat in the dining room, looking out the window. I picked up her empty coffee cup and carried it into the kitchen. Got a second one and filled them both from the electric percolator. When I sat down, she said, "I thought you were still in bed." She cradled both hands around her cup, as if we were back in the old flat, in winter. "I used to think I knew where my daughters were, every second of the day. And night."
"I'm sorry," I said.
She didn't answer. We watched the sun rising between the houses across the street. It lit Ma's cheekbones a pinky gold, struck sparks of yellow and blue from the diamond on her finger.
"I'm going to leave," I said.
Her mouth wobbled, just for a moment. I got up and crossed behind her chair. Bent down and wrapped my arms around her. Her cheek soft. Scents of cold cream and raisins, and setting lotion, and a trace of the Coty perfume Chester had bought her as a wedding present.
"I tried, Ma," I said.
She laid a hand on my arm; it felt dry and light as a leaf. "I know," she said.
After a moment, I knelt by the side of her chair. "Ma, listen. I have to tell you something."
Betty would be furious. But even if I put on the St. Casimir's uniform every day and walked to school with the Gorman sisters—even if I played the good girl to a T—Betty would know it was just another lie. She'd do what she wanted, and she would never listen to me.
But she still might listen to Ma. And she liked Chester. Maybe she still had a chance.
"Some of Betty's friends," I began, "call themselves victory girls."
TWENTY - FIVE
August 11, 1942
Dear Ma,
I just got home from my first day at work, and I'm dead-dog tired.
I rubbed the sore spot at the base of my right thumb, where the bucking bar had pressed. My writing paper lay in a pool of blue light. I'd thrown a scarf over the little table lamp so that my roommate, Lu, could sleep.
A breeze came through the open window. Before I went to bed, I would shut the curtains tight so the sun wouldn't wake us up too early. I liked sitting up late, the only one awake. I guessed I'd gotten used to night habits.
I finished the four weeks of training which I told you about in my last letter. The instructor said I learned as fast as any girl he ever taught and made the fewest mistakes, so you see I finally did good in school.
I added an exclamation point. Then scribbled it out. I should have written in pencil. Too late now, I was too tired to start over.
The plant we work in isn't like the packinghouse, men in some places and the women in others. We're all of us on the floor together. I don't know yet if I like it.
I put down my pen.
This morning we'd followed a supervisor through the largest building I'd ever set foot in. We walked between a double line of B-24 bombers stretching as far as I could see—not seeming like much except scattered hunks of metal where we started, then the farther we went in the building, they began looking more and more like planes. Ships, the supervisor called them. If I'd eve
r thought the Ladies' at the Starlight was loud, it was nothing compared to this: the pounding of rivet guns and screaming drills, hundreds of them, and hundreds of men shouting to make themselves heard. As we walked, the supervisor parceled us out, two and three at at time. "You and you, what's your names?" he'd call, then "Flight deck" or "Fuselage" or "Wing. Go on, get to work! You in the red scarf, what's your name!"
"Ruby Jacinski," I said.
He pointed to another girl. "Irene Petrovsky," she said. Her voice pitching up at the end, like she was asking a question.
"Nose turret," he said, and pointed to a bomber.
Some fellows were laying wiring in the wing. One of them looked us up and down. Sneer on his face. You could tell he thought he was a tough guy.
Paulie could clean this guy's clock. You wanted to know tough—Paulie was tough.
But I'd turned out tougher.
"I'll buck," I told Irene. "You rivet." I'd picked up the bucking bar and climbed into the half-built plane.
I bent again to my letter.
They put me in the nose because I'm small, I can get where men can't, or even the bigger girls. We have to wear Sanforized coveralls and keep our hair tied up in scarves, and we can't wear any jewelry.
We could wear makeup, though. A few of the girls said what was the point, wearing makeup in a factory? But after all those months at the Starlight, I didn't feel dressed without it. Besides, I had to stay in practice. The USO held dances every weekend. The bands were all right. Nothing like what I was used to in Chicago, though.
Another breeze through the window. I closed my eyes. Remembering Ozzie, the last time I'd seen him. Shirt open at the neck, no tie. Sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. Frowning down at me from the doorway of Lily's office.
"I, I have to ask Lily something," I said.
"Not here. She'll be back pretty quick though. You want to wait, you can sit at the bar."
Nothing seemed swollen or broken on him. Maybe he hadn't been in a fight over Ophelia after all. But his face was stern, the usual quickness gone. Like he'd never thought it was funny I'd almost walloped a dirty old man on a dance floor. Like I'd never given him advice on how to romance his girl; like we'd never sat in a little room across from each other, shadows and music and talk between us.
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