Lureen knew that she would meet Elvis sometime, although she wasn't sure how or when it would happen. There were some things a person just knew. She knew that Elvis was good, and she heard on talk shows that he was a Christian and loved his mother, and that he'd been very poor. So he wouldn't make fun of her because of the way she'd been unpopular and lonesome and because she couldn't read. Most of all, she knew he would understand that she had to find her own mother.
Lureen didn't go to school the last Friday in April; she never went on Fridays because that was the day when something important happened on all the soap operas, something that you waited for all week long. She stayed in front of the set until 4:30 in the stuffy living room, the blinds blocking the breeze and daylight.
There was no food in the house, and Pete never came home until late on Friday because it was payday and he went to the tavern. There wasn't any money in the house, but she remembered that Lena had kept a jar of pennies and dimes on the shelf in the hall closet.
It was dark in the closet and the shelf was thick with dust.
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The coin jar was gone; she'd figured it would be. Her hand brushed against the candy tin where Lena had kept buttons and thread. Curious, Lureen lifted it down, the old eight-sided box, its daisies and roses barely visible anymore under the scratched grime on the lid. She carried it into the kitchen and turned on the hanging light bulb there. Lena could have left a few coins hidden under the buttons; she was surprised one of the old women hadn't taken the candy box away along with all of Lena's other things.
The tin was full of costume jewelry, and she recognized the pieces as if they were from another lifetime. It was Dorothy's jewelry; she had played with it years and years before. A double loop of dusky pink beads shaped like roses, claylike and still giving off the faint fragrance of the petals they'd been pressed from. A charm bracelet with an American flag, a "V for Victory," and an "E" from the steel mill—the kind they gave out during the war, the war when her father went away for a long time—a little cracked bell, and a funny little man with a big nose peeking over a wall. She picked out a flower made of colored stones caught in a tarnished metal ribbon. There were earrings. Dorothy had always worn earrings: tiny bananas and apples, red and white squares, purplish dulled sequins, silver half-moons with smiling, top-hatted ladies on them.
She picked up a watch, shook it, and heard a distant faltering tick. She wound it, but it stopped then, one hand falling inside the scratched face.
Her mother's wedding ring was there too, a thin band of gold where there once had been three small diamonds, now only three spaces with prongs sticking up hollow. She looked inside the band and could make out some writing there. Painfully, she spelled it out: "P.D. to D.D., 11-12-39, L.O.V.C."
"Love?" Boy, that sure didn't sound like her father. Maybe that's what they always wrote on wedding rings.
She'd seen every piece of the jewelry; Dorothy had let her play with it to keep her quiet. But Dorothy had loved jewelry. Why hadn't she taken it with her? Especially her watch and her wedding ring?
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Lureen yelped as her finger hit the pin to Dorothy's favorite brooch, a large enameled dogwood blossom with a pink stone center. Sucking the drop of blood away, she carried the brooch to the bathroom mirror and adjusted it at the neck of her blouse. She could almost see her mother's face stare back at her from the mirror, remember how Dorothy had worn the pin just as she did now.
Puzzled, Lureen put the candy tin back on the shelf. She'd never seen her mother's jewelry around during all the time since she'd gone away, even though Lena had had her sewing things out in the living room often. So the pins and necklaces must not have been there before. If Dorothy had come home to visit, she would surely have waited to see Lureen. She wouldn't have gone away again without seeing her own daughter. It didn't make sense. Maybe Dorothy had left without her jewelry and Lena had hidden it from Lureen all these years, and then the old ladies had put Dorothy's things in the sewing tin after Lena died.
Trying to figure it out made her jumpy; she could reason it only to a certain spot and then her thoughts dissolved and she had to start all over again. She couldn't concentrate on the television. She poked around in the refrigerator looking for something to eat even though she didn't feel hungry anymore, but all she could find was an end of cheese with a fuzzy green patch growing on it, and a bowl of something she didn't recognize. She craved something sweet, like a
"short-chocolate" at the drugstore. It wasn't a short-chocolate-something; it was just ice and milk and chocolate syrup. The girl at the counter had laughed when, wanting a double-size, she had first asked for a "large-chocolate," instead of a large
"short-chocolate."
She dug down in the couch cushions and found a quarter and three pennies, and that was enough. There were probably more coins down there, but she needed to be outside quickly; sometimes, walking seemed to help her think better. But Lureen walked slowly along the Old Lincoln Highway—Main Street—and passed up the drugstore without seeing it.
She didn't realize that the blocks were melting away
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behind her. She had walked more than two miles in the failing light when she heard the sounds of the carnival. She looked up to see that the field next to the used car lot on the west end of Main Street was filled with tents and rides; a ferris wheel circled above the street, festooned with lights. Caught in the crowd, Lureen walked past the booths and the freak shows. It was so bright that her eyes hurt, and the music made her ears hum. Her vista on the world had been a twelve-inch screen for so long; now it made her dizzy to be shoved along the sawdust path of the midway.
Every stall seemed to have its own music, and a few steps past took her into another channel of sound. The night air smelled of fried onions, hamburgers, chicken corn soup (from the American Legion booth), submarine sandwiches, smoke, beer, and sometimes an acrid wafting of whiskey on the breath of men who nudged her shoulder as they passed. She saw people she recognized, faces from school, and some nodded. But no one stopped to talk to her. She was no one's best friend—not even anyone's second, third, or fourth best friend. It didn't matter; it hadn't mattered for a long time.
Male voices called to her as she was swept past the gambling booths, seducing her with their voices to come and win with the toss of one dime. She smiled at them, shook her head, and was carried on to the next coaxing pitch.
She stayed a long time in front of the freak show, wondering what it must be like for the creatures who stood on the rickety stage to be stared at. A bearded lady with hair on her chest, but with what seemed to be real breasts. A dwarf with a head bigger than any she'd ever seen, shuffling strangely on two tiny legs. A fat lady, sitting on a chair that looked like a throne. The fat lady had short curly hair and her eyes were almost hidden in a face whose red cheeks melted into her neck and her neck into her breasts, cascading flesh falling away from the polka dot, ruffled baby dress she wore. Her huge legs were planted like barrels beneath the baby dress, fat ankles pouring over little baby shoes with red bows.
It made Lureen feel suffocated to see the rolls and rolls of 23
flesh, and she touched her own waist lightly to be sure she could still feel her ribs there. The fat lady lifted a hand slowly and seemed to be beckoning to her with the perfect, star-shaped appendage, the red nails flashing. Lureen turned away and fled into the crowd.
She heard Elvis singing and she followed the faint thread of his voice, coming finally to a platform at the far end of the carnival grounds.
"Heartbreak Hotel" played continuously as four women gyrated slowly before a gathering cluster of men. Lureen stopped, entranced, as they danced in a blue spotlight. They looked beautiful, although when she pushed in a little closer, she could see that they had on an awful lot of make-up.
"What you see here, gentlemen, is only a small sample of what those little ladies will show you inside. Every one of these dancers has been selected for her ... er ... particular dancing ability. This is not a family show; so we don't urge you to bring the little woman in. I'm not exaggerating when I promise you that you will never regret the price of one ticket. We're going to be full up inside; so I suggest you get in line now and get your ticket for the kind of show that you've never seen before."
Lureen studied the barker. He was slim, and he had brown hair with sideburns like Elvis. She thought he was kind of handsome, and he moved like he was full of energy or electricity. His white shirt was open at the neck and wet with sweat in his armpits. She liked his voice, and she liked the way he winked at the crowd. She thought it must be exciting to work in a carnival.
The dancing girls all wore satin brassieres and little skirts with gold fringe around the bottom. Their legs were encased in black net stockings with sequins that flashed when the light hit them.
"Now, Lila is going to give you just a short demonstration of what I'm telling you about, gentlemen. Show 'em what I mean, Lila." The barker smiled at the woman at the end of the line. She was older than the rest, and Lureen saw she had a soft layer of fat that was marked with a red line where the fringed skirt circled her waist. She stepped to the front
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of the stage and began to move her midsection so that you could see the muscles beneath her skin bunch and ripple up and down. It didn't seem quite right to Lureen to have Elvis singing for a dance like this one, but she did think the woman was pretty talented, even though she never smiled and chewed gum all the while she performed. The men crowding against the platform didn't seem to mind; they weren't watching the dancer's face.
There was a scratching sound that made Lureen wince as Elvis's voice stopped, and "The Steel Guitar Rag" blared out. Now Lila put her hands behind her head and with elbows akimbo began to thrust her pelvis forward violently to the twanging music. The flesh at her waist quivered with each Boom . . . Boom, and the watching males sent out a kind of tension that made Lureen step back and cross her arms over her breasts. She'd seen a pack of dogs once circling a cat up a tree and the men reminded her of the straining, growling animals.
The music stopped in mid chorus, and Lila dropped her arms to her sides and stepped back into the line of dancers. All the life disappeared from her body; she didn't look at the crowd, but turned and walked back through the flap in the tent behind the stage.
"She wiggles, she jiggles, and she bounces, men. And she does more, but that's all for now. Line up over here and get your tickets. Fifty cents. One half dollar for a full show inside. Don't tell your wife, and don't tell your girlfriends. The show starts in two minutes; so have your money ready."
A couple of the men grinned with embarrassment and moved away into the constantly surging midway, but most of them dug into their pockets for coins and passed through the ticket stand. Lureen watched the last of the dancers disappear behind the stage and saw that there were spots in the sparkling net stockings that had been darned with heavy black thread.
She stood, hesitantly wondering where to go next. Part of her wished she had the fifty cents to go inside; she was curious about what more Lila could show the crowd that she
25
J
hadn't done outside. She wondered what it must be like to have so many eyes watching you when you danced, admiring you. And she wondered how you could make your stomach do all those rolling movements that made it look like that.
"Hey! You! Hey, girlie!"
Lureen jumped. The man in the white shirt who'd sold the tickets was leaning over his stand and calling to her. He smiled and she could see white lines in his tanned face as the skin pulled tautly across his cheekbones. She walked a little closer, and his eyes were so blue they were almost white. He was older than she'd thought—maybe about thirty, but she found him the best-looking man she'd ever seen in her whole life.
"You mean me?" she asked.
"Yeah, sweetheart. You." He jumped off the platform by placing one arm on the stage and vaulting over the footlights. His biceps stood out on the supporting arm, and his body moved as effortlessly as a leaf in the wind. He was short and that surprised her—hardly taller than she was. He stood so close to her that she wanted to step back. She couldn't.
"You with it?"
"What?"
"You with it?"
"I don't understand," she murmured, trapped by the clarity of his eyes.
"You with the show, I mean. You work here?"
"Oh. No—no. I was just watching them dance. I guess they have to study a long time to do that."
He laughed, a sharp rasping bark of a laugh. "Yeah. Oh my yes, a long time. You dance?"
"Not like that. A little—at school, and ..."
"How old are you?"
"Sixteen."
"Naw," he drawled in disbelief. "You're kidding me. You're eighteen at least. You don't look like no sixteen-year-old girl."
"Really. I'm sixteen."
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"I'd say you're eighteen." •
She couldn't look away from his eyes, and she shivered.
"I say you're eighteen, and you can dance like a dream." She didn't answer.
"We've got a place for another girl. With your looks, and your figure, you'd be our star attraction. On-the-job training, free eats, free costumes, thirty-five bucks a week, and you get to travel all over the country. Get you out of this town. I mean some of our girls are on television now, in the big time."
"I can't dance like that," she murmured.
"Sure you can."
"Do you really travel all over the country?"
"You bet. Tomorrow Harrisburg. Pittsburgh. Detroit. Cleveland."
"Memphis? Do you go to Memphis?"
"Why not?"
She stepped backward, tripping over a snaking coil of extension cord, and he darted out a tattooed arm to steady her.
"I have to go home now," she stammered.