Jesus, yes.
Molly doesn't have a drink but Molly lights up a cigarette so fast her hands fumble. Exhales smoke in a furious cloud. She's one of the cocktail waitresses always angry about something. Tap tap tapping on the floor with the toe of her spike heeled shoe.
Both women are wearing black satin dresses that fit their bodies snugly, with tiny gold stitched slippers on their right breasts, plunging V necklines, puffy little girl sleeves; black spike heeled shoes with sharply pointed toes; black fishnet stockings.
There's the beginning of a run in Molly's stocking.
Persia's hair is upswept and lacquered around her head like a crown, an ashy tawny red; Molly's hair is platinum blond, pale as Marilyn Monroe's.
In the flattering fleshy pink light of the powder room it isn't immediately evident that Persia is so many years older than Molly McMillan. unless you look closely.
Says Persia, bright and edgy, My ex husband, he'd go around most days in a good mood too. High flying. At least so you could see. on the surface. Guess I picked it up from him. The habit.
Molly's eyes swerve onto Persia's, in the mirror. Duke, you're talking about?
'Actually in a way he always was in a good mood. in a way.
Yeah. I know Duke. He's fun.
Like things never went deep in him, you know?
Do I know! They're all that way.
The ventilation's so poor in here, even with the fancy simulated velvet wallpaper and the giant mirror that glitters as if it's been sprayed with specks of gold, Persia has trouble breathing hasafit of coughing.
She's sick. Going to be violently sick.
She's been sick for months: can't keep anything in her stomach, makes appointments to see the doctor then cancels out at the last minute, the telephone receiver trembling in her hand.
Now Persia is steeling herself, waiting for Molly McMillan with her brash careless mouth to inquire after Duke Courtney who's so much fun.
She's standing very still waiting for the question, so still and apprehensive she loses track of what she's waiting for only that she'll have to answer the question. an answer that won't shame her, that can be repeated around town. She knows people talk about her, spy on her, have their theories about her. But she has never been one of those embittered divorcees forever whining and complaining with whom people pretend to sympathize then ridicule behind their backs.
Her voice is shaking suddenly. It seems she's angry. My daughter I'm worried about. How to keep her from harm.
Molly murmurs a vague assent.
So much harm in the world. so much shit.
She's so angry suddenly, so incensed, Molly McMillan's eyes swing on her face again in the mirror.
Persia has more to say but somehow it happens that she has begun to vomit: so quickly she can't set her drink down on the ledge in front of the mirror, can't stumble into one of the toilet stalls in time, she's vomiting onto the floor, into one of the sinks. her vomit hot and searing, liquidy in part, pure vodka, but in part thick as oatmeal and so abrasive her throat feels scraped and she's sobbing too, she's humiliated and helpless and she knows she's going to die, it's Death she's trying to vomit up, her stomach failing her and her nerves tight strung as wires, and she hears Molly McMillan exclaiming in disgust, Oh, shit, oh, no, because some of the vomit has splashed on her dress, her fishnet stockings. but Molly helps Persia too, feels damned sorry for the woman, steadying her shoulders as you would with a small scared child, murmuring, Going to be all right, lion, just hold on. going to be all right.
Molly McMillan's cigarette slanted at an upward angle between her reddened lips, half her young face screwed up against the smoke and the stink of Persia's vomit.
Persia hopes Molly won' tell tales on her, endanger her job at the Golden Slipper. It's all she has, right now.
/wanted not to be lonely. That's all I ever wanted.
When you were born I thought I'd never be lonely or unhappy again my heart swelled almost to bursting.
It was like God made me a promise. I would never be lonely or unhappy again in my life with my baby girl my sweet little baby Graice.
It's a frosty iridescent day in November 1959.
Graice Courtney and a friend are walking on Main Street holding hands.
When Graice isn't in her mother's company and isn't in the apartment on Buena Vista Avenue they've moved again: shabbier neighborhood, tackier apartment, but at least no freight trains every night , she is capable of going for hours without thinking of Persia. her heart lifts.
She's seventeen years old. A senior at Hammond Central High School.
She'll graduate fourth in her class of one hundred fifty three, she'll win a full tuition scholarship to Syracuse University, she's so poised, so coolly mature, adult men sometimes approach her on the street, in stores, in the public library where she works evenings not realizing until they see the alarm in her eyes that she isn't the age she appears. Whatever that age is.
But this afternoon Graice is in the company of a boy who imagines he loves her, a boy avid to one day marry her, and she's feeling hopeful, if not happy precisely Persia is a sick woman, Persia will not go to a doctor , and half listening to his conversation. and she sees to her astonishment a truck rattling by, ORLEANS CO. MAINTENANCE on its side, several black men in the open rear in thick jackets, wool caps, amid shovels, sandbags, road re pair equipment, and one of the black men, the tallest, Jinx Fairchildmy God, isn't it?
Graice doesn't call his name, only waves after him. Tries to catch his elusive eye.
Of course, he doesn't see her.
Of course, the truck just barrels along Main Street, carrying its human cargo away.
The several times Graice Courtney has sighted Jinx Fairchild in the past year and a half, by chance on one or another busy Lower town street, he hasn't seen her. Turns casually away.
Now Graice's friend asks who she's waving at and Graice says quickly, No one you'd know. anyway, it wasn't him.
As if she'd betrayJinx Fairchild in his current diminished state to someone who knows who he is. or was.
blowy January night, temperature around 15 degrees Fahrenheit, so deep a chill it enters the marrow of her bones. Forever.
She's weeping with the insult: sent home dazed and feeble limbed in a taxi, prepaid.
Like a match that's extinguished. you go out.
Her public collapse, the first of her life, is not an event Persia witnesses, nor is it an event, strictly speaking, she experiences. It occurs without her volition, participation, or awareness.
You go out.
Striking her forehead above the right eye on the porcelain rim of the sink. In the women's lavatory, Covino's Bar & Grill, where she's working the 6 P. M. to 2 A. M. shift.
She falls. Her legs melt away. She's just a body, brainless, falling.
The first time Persia has ever blacked out in public.
Amid the smells, the frank undisguised stinks of the lavatory.
Sprawled on the floor, that filthy floor. Dripping blood. Dazed and moaning and bewildered like a cow stunned by a sledgehammer blow It takes them minutes, long minutes, to re vive her.
I don't want no ambulance, what the fuck it's gonna look like, fucking ambulance at the door. people come to have a good time on Friday night, these customers are all my friends, and some stupid cunt it's her own damn fault drinks too much and passes out!
I told her! I warned her! Get her out of here!
Sent home in a taxi like any passed out drunk.
Prepaid: don't bother coming back.
And it isn't her fault! Under such stress. Run off her feet. That wop manager. All the girls drink if they can. Singling her out. And the others staring at her. breasts, belly that's swollen and sore, buttocks starting to sag. Whispering filthy things to her she can't quite hear. Whispering their filthy slanders about her behind her back.
The alternative is taking money from men. Persia re fuses to do that.
She has her pride. God knows it's all she has.
The taxi driver's ringing the bell for 16 D. Prolonged ringing like a summons to disaster.
It's 11:20 P. M. , Graice Courtney has long been home from her library job, hasn't yet gone to bed. Don't let it be trouble, she prays.
Graice Courtney's prayers are lightweight aluminum; she imagines them skittering, skimming, flying across the surface of a body of water, knows they won't be heeded so she fashions them cheap and disposable.
She runs, though. Downstairs. Three flights of drafty un heated stairs. Buena Vista Arms, 3551 Buena Vista Avenue kitty corner from the Hammond Farmers' Market, there's that advantage at least.
Graice cries, Oh, Momma! seeing Persia slumped against the wall, face like putty, eyes blurred, a swelling the size of a hen's egg on her forehead. she's being held up by the taxi driver, who's a kindly taciturn oldish man not so embarrassed by his task as one might expect, and he helps Graice maneuver her mother upstairs to the apartment and inside the door murmurs courteously, Thank you, no, miss, when Graice offers him payment, a tip at least, Graice Court they biting her lips to keep from crying and fumbling, faltering, like a small child not knowing what she'll do. what it is her daughterly task to do.
Next day Graice stays home from school in the morning, brings Persia the only food Persia claims she can stomach, heated milk with pieces of white bread soaked in it, Lipton's tea so weak it's practically colorless, a bowl of sugar cubes if she craves something sweet.
And her pack of Chesterfields.
She's sitting up in bed; she looks a little better. But still her face is battered and scraped, the ugly bruise above her eye lurid as a growth. Without makeup her skin is oddly shiny as if it has been scrubbed with steel wool.
Graice says, gentle, hopeful, not that accusatory voice she under stands now has been a tactical error these many months, Now you know you'll have to stop drinking, Momma, now you know that, don't you?
expecting a shrug or a sarcastic re joinder or at least resistance.
but Persia astonishes her by immediately agreeing.
Yes, honey, you're right. She's repentant guilty, rubbing the swelling on her forehead: Guess I'd better She tries to smile, squinting up at Graice. Her eyes are webbed in broken capillaries and appear thick, rubbery, like hard boiled eggs.
Persia speaks with such sobriety, such chastened sincerity, it's clear she speaks the truth.
ndyou lied. You lied. You always lied.
Insurance? Blue Cross Blue Shield?
No.
Cash, then, or check? If it's check, dear, the hospital re quires two kinds of I. D.
Cash.
The blond cashier at ACCOUNTS, Hammond General Hospital, has a blue jay's perky bobbing manner, a crest of stiff permed hair that lifts almost vertically from her forehead. She's kindly, though, perhaps seeing that Graice Courtney's fingers have gone virtually blue at the tips, the nails a ghoulish purplish blue with cold, fear, low blood pressure. Graice fumbles a little, re moving bills from her wallet, crinkly fresh minted bills of which she's perversely proud that they are hers. even to give away.
Drawn out of her savings account at the First Bank of Hammond that very morning.
The tests itemized, are: blood, thyroid, chest X rays, barium X rays, urinalysis, two or three others. Payable in advance. Each item includes a penciled in figure but Graice has been too rattled to add up the column of figures in her head, it's as if she childishly prefers being surprised. stunned. by the sum the cashier announces as if it were nothing extraordinary: $ 149. 76.
Is that tax included, or?
Oh, no, dear. The cashier laughs. There's never any tax here at the hospital.
Graice laughs too, though her teeth are chattering. Well, that's good!
She passes bills one by one through the window to the cashier, watches them being taken from her as if they were mere pieces of paper. No emotion. No emotion that shows. The Hammond Public Library pays her $ 1 an hour, 78 cents after taxes and deductions, she works fifteen hours a week for less than $ 12, but of this melancholy fact she isn't going to allow herself to think.
Momma, its the least I can do.
The night before, sipping wine to steady her nerves, smoking her endless cigarettes, Persia said, Damn it, Graice, it should be me paying for you, this is the wrong way around, I feel like such a.
failure as a mother, and Graice said, embarrassed, Oh, Momma, don't be silly, you've done enough for me, and Persia said almost crossly, Why is it silly to worry about costing my own daughter money? I know how hard you work.