Ten Cents a Dance (11 page)

Peggy stood by the wall, holding her compact high, to catch the light. I did the same.

"I have to hand it to you," Peggy said. "Alonso said this is just what the doctor ordered. No big fancy floor show, just a band that can really cook."

I imagined coming here with Paulie. Imagined him saying,
What great music, what a great place. You're something else, Ruby.
I wondered if I'd ever have the chance.

We stayed over an hour. By the time we left, the weather had let up, a little. Alonso and Manny went out first to get a cab. When Peggy and I followed, a white girl was standing next to them, talking. She was blond—a dye job, even under the streetlamp you could tell, it was too all-over yellow—and so much rouge her face looked like a painted doll's. I didn't remember seeing her in the club. Manny looked embarrassed. Alonso turned his back to her.

Peggy bumped me hard with her shoulder. "For Pete's sake, Ruby, it's
freezing"
I ducked past the woman into the cab. Through the window, I glimpsed her turn on her heel and stride away. Then Manny slid onto the seat next to me, and we were moving. "Who was that?" I asked. Nobody answered. Alonso told the cabbie to drop them off at their flat, then take us home.

"What gentlemen," Peggy said as we waved to the boys through the cab window, after letting them off. "But then, Pinoys always are. Do you want the cab to drop you first, or me?"

"You're closer," I said. It didn't matter where we were; I always said Peggy was closer. I didn't want her to know I was from the Back of the Yards. I didn't want her to smell the packinghouses and the stockyards, that stench of carcass and manure and smoke. The smell of work, the Yards called it. I was used to it, but I'd ridden the streetcar with plenty of people who weren't. I didn't care to see their reaction on Peggy's face.

"I've never had so much fun in my life," I said. "Wasn't the music amazing?"

Peggy stretched, then collapsed into the corner of the seat. "We hear nothing but jazz all night, every night," she said, yawning. "What's amazing about more of it?"

"But this, it was . . . "
Different,
I was going to say.
Exciting.
They hadn't just played popular stuff from the radio; half the songs I'd never heard before. I tried to explain, but Peggy didn't care. I took off a shoe and pressed my fingertips deep along my instep, massaging the ache. How could anyone hear those glorious horns, the belting voice of the tall, freckled singer, and not tell the difference between that and the stuff they dished up at the Starlight?

Ozzie sure knew the difference. Somebody who could play like that, I wondered why he bothered with the Starlight at all.

"Are all the black and tans like Lily's?" I said.

I meant the music, but Peggy said, "No, thank God. The ones I've been to are all fancier than that dump. The Hoot Owl, for instance. You'll go there, if you keep going out with Pinoys. They won't let them in the regular clubs, you know, so you don't have much choice." She yawned again. "I think you've got yourself another fish, with that Manny. He likes you."

"Where do Filipinos come from?" I said sleepily. "I never thought to wonder before."

The cab pulled up in front of Peggy's hotel. She wrapped her hand around the door handle. Then she ducked her head down, close to her shoulder, as if she were talking to the floor.

"They're called the Philippine Islands," she said. "Tiny. Compared to here." Her eyes met mine then; they had an odd look, almost as if she was angry, but her voice was as light and casual as ever. She yanked open the cab door. "You remember those taxi dancers Nora talked about, who married flips?"

My very first night at the Starlight. "Yeah, I remember."

Peggy stepped out of the cab. "I'm one of them," she said, and slammed the door shut behind her.

NINE

"Hush!" Peggy said. She glanced around at the hubbub in the Ladies', then jerked open her locker. "I knew I should've kept my big mouth shut. Just do me a favor and keep it quiet, all right?"

"But who is he? When did—"

Peggy leaned down and clapped a cool hand over my mouth. Her skin smelled faintly of lemon. "Look, I was feeling nostalgic and I let it slip. Okay? Blame the rum and Cokes. That part of my life is over and done with, and it's a brand stinking new day. But if these witches find out, I'll never hear the end of it, and you know that's a fact." I nodded. She took her hand away.

It was a Sunday night. Slow, only half the usual number of customers. I couldn't help but watch Peggy. She was only a few years older than me—not that that mattered, plenty of girls got hitched by eighteen. Ma had been only sixteen when she got married. But to a Filipino! How did that happen? And what on earth did
over and done with
mean? That her husband had died? That they'd gotten divorced? Surely not—nobody but movie actresses ever got divorced. No, she must be a widow. Maybe that was why she didn't want anybody to know; she didn't want to be reminded of her grief. I watched her dance past with a skinny fellow whose ears stuck out like flags, telling him a joke, laughing so hard she could barely talk. That's what the customers liked about Peggy, how peppy and upbeat she was.

Not like any widow I'd ever met.

By closing, at two o'clock, neither of us had snagged a fish. I finished scrubbing my face at the sink—when I didn't have an after-hours date, I liked the warm water at the Starlight a lot better than the freezing tap at home—and padded in my stocking feet back to the lockers.

"Want to split a cab?" Peggy asked.

"Sure," I said.

As soon as we got in the cab, I scootched around to face her. She groaned and laid her head in her hand. "You're not going to leave it alone, are you?" she said.

"I didn't say a word all night. Not one syllable."

"I don't suppose you can keep it that way."

I leaned toward her, my chin cupped in my hands.

She sighed. Glanced up at the ceiling of the cab, as if it might have an escape hatch. Then she said to the cabbie, "We've changed our minds. Drop us at Bennie's on Jackson."

Bennie's was an all-night diner. I ordered a hot dog and a cola, Peggy a piece of apple pie and a coffee. "One bun pup, one Eve with a lid on!" the waitress bawled to the cook.

Peggy had met her husband a year ago, at another taxi-dance hall near the Loop. They'd dated for six weeks, then got married.

"Talk about head over heels," she said. "From the first time I saw him, I was a goner. He could've asked me to live in sin in an igloo in Alaska, and I'd have done it."

Her husband, Vidal, had come to America for college. "That's why most of them are here," she said. "But then the law changed, so if they leave the States, they can't get back in. The problem is, there's no Filipinas here to marry. So a lot of them marry American girls, instead."

Four months after their wedding, Vidal found out his mother was dying. She wanted him to come home, and he went. End of story, Peggy said. She sliced the edge of her fork through her apple pie.

"But you . . . how come you didn't go with him?" I asked. "If a man I loved . . . I mean, it wouldn't matter where he went, so long as we could be together!"

Peggy took a sip of coffee, wiped her mouth. "He never told his family about me." Her voice light and dry, as if she were talking about a pair of shoes. "His mother warned him, see. About us American girls." She arched her fingers like claws, bared her crooked tooth in a Dracula grimace. Then shrugged and picked up her fork.

"But he can come back now, can't he? I mean, he's married to you; they can't keep him out, can they? Or, or you can go there. Now that his mother's . . ."

"He won't come back," Peggy said. "He got married. Again. To a nice Filipina girl his mother approved of. For all I know, Vidal Jr. might be on the way right now." She folded her napkin and tossed it down by her empty plate. "Like I said. End of story. So what's yours?"

"My what?"

"Your story. Every taxi dancer has a story. I spilled mine, now it's your turn."

My hot dog was cold in my hands. I put it down. "Are you still in love with him?"

"Does it matter? Look, if he'd stayed, I'd have divorced him. He wanted me to become a Catholic and he wouldn't pick up his socks."

How could she sit there and talk like it was nothing more than a story in one of Angie's magazines? At least those had happy endings. I tore off a piece of bun, rolled it between my fingers. "What about your family?" I asked. "What did your mother say when she found out?"

She sat back in her chair, her coffee cup in both hands. Looked at the blackness of the window. Outside, or at her reflection, I couldn't tell.

"The last thing my mother said to me was, 'Don't come home. It'll kill your father.' " Peggy glanced at me. Shrugged again, a quick lift of one shoulder. "I told you," she said. "Every taxi dancer has a story."

. . .

Manny became one of my fish. So did Tom. Between them, and a few others here and there, I started picking up three, sometimes four dates a week. Pretty soon, I got to know every chop suey joint and after-hours club for ten blocks around the Starlight, and most of the black and tans, too. Maybe Peggy thought I didn't fool Del, claiming to be eighteen, but I fooled every nightclub I ever walked into. Or maybe they didn't care. After my first week at the clubs, I never thought about it.

If my date was a white fellow looking for a little adventure, then I'd steer him to Lily's. White fellows always seemed to think the black and tans were dangerous, and they especially liked Lily's because it was so cramped, the bandstand practically on top of the customers. Authentic, they said, whatever that meant. I just liked it because nobody played fast, hot, finger-popping-foot-stomping swing the way Ozzie and the band did.

Lucky for me, Manny was as wild for Lily's as I was. I liked Manny. He was fun, and he could tear up a dance floor like nobody's business. Plus, he was the only college boy I'd ever met. Had his degree, too. But nobody would hire a Pinoy architect, he told me, so he'd gone to work for Pullman as a railroad porter. Dressed up in a white jacket, showing passengers their compartments, fetching toothbrushes. He liked me because I laughed at his jokes and, in the cab on the way home, I didn't mind a kiss or two. The first time he kissed me, I was shocked. Not by how strange it was, but how ordinary. It got so where, except for the fact that we couldn't go to the regular clubs, I almost forgot he was a Pinoy.

Was that how it'd been for Peggy? If, once you got to know a fellow, you didn't think of him as foreign anymore? He was just Vidal, who left his socks on the floor. Head over heels for him, she'd said. Sometimes I wondered if Alonso reminded her of him. They seemed to be getting awfully close, and I'd noticed her studying him, almost, with an odd look on her face, like she was trying to remember something she was afraid of forgetting.

Sometimes I felt guilty, for Tom's sake. I'd promised him I'd stay white. And when he talked about it, or Nora or the other girls did, it seemed pure and noble, and sometimes I thought I ought to. But I couldn't give up Lily's, not in a million years. And I had so much fun with Manny, and he brought: me gifts, too. An adorable Scottie dog brooch, in black Bakelite with a sparkly glass eye. A silver charm bracelet with a tiny cross. Best of all, a new wool coat, hunter green with a plaid lining, warmer than any coat I'd ever had. I gave it to Ma, along with a pair of thick wool gloves. When she saw it, she put her hands to her face and cried. I had an elaborate story all ready to trot out, to explain where the money had come from. But Ma only asked, "You didn't get another advance, did you?" I told her no, and after that she didn't ask any more questions.

I'd grown up listening to our Polish neighbors make nasty remarks about the Lithuanians, the Croats, the Irish . . . shanty Irish, they called them, turkey birds. No offense to your mother, they always added hastily. But in a black and tan, nobody cared my mother was Irish. Nobody cared I was from the Yards. What difference did it make to them? I was a white girl, that was all. I could be anybody, and the black and tans let anybody in. No one seemed to care who danced with who or sat with who or talked with who—so long as you weren't dumb enough to poach another girl's fellow, but that was true anywhere.

At the Starlight, though, it was different. We had to be careful. Most of the white customers didn't mind a girl dancing with Orientals once in a while; we told them it was our job, Del made us, what could we do? If a girl took too many tickets from Orientals, though, then the whites figured she must like it. They called her cheap or worse, and they kept their distance. As if she might make them dirty, somehow.

And then, of course, when Tom was at the Starlight I didn't dare look at a Pinoy at all. Thank God Manny was savvy about it; if I snubbed him, he knew why. Still, I was afraid some night Tom would come in while I was dancing with him or one of the other Pinoy boys I'd met. Not that it mattered, I told myself. After all, it's not as if he owns you. Still, on the nights Tom was most likely to show up—mainly Fridays—I was extra careful.

I always knew when he was there. I'd get a tickle up the back of my neck, like a tiny spider climbing into my hair. I'd turn around, and there he'd be. After three or four dances he'd go sit in the stag line, with the men who only watched. Tom would watch only me. Sometimes, if he thought I was dancing too much with a particular fellow, he'd come to the sidelines and stare. If I sat down to coffee with someone, Tom would hover at the next table or over by the wall. His long face getting longer, as if everything below his eyes was rubber and someone was doing pull-ups from his chin. The bouncer, O'Malley, caught him at it once and told him to knock it off or get out. That made things better for a night. Then he was back at it.

"He gives me the creeps," Peggy said. "Now that you've paid him back, why don't you tell him to shove off?"

"I feel bad for him," I said. Which was mostly true. When we went out, he'd go on and on about how hard it was to meet nice girls. How they only went out with him because he made a good wage, how none of them seemed to really care for him.

"But you care, don't you, Ruby?" he'd ask.

"Sure I do," I told him. I didn't, but what could I say? I didn't want to be rude. Besides, he was still giving me money. I always said no, but he always insisted.

"Put it on your tab," he said. "Buy yourself something nice. I like for you to look pretty."

I knew I shouldn't take it. But the problem was, as much as I danced, I never made the fifty a week Paulie had promised. Thirty was more like it. Which a month ago would have been a fortune, but now, somehow, it never seemed to be enough.

Every night, when I got home, I stashed my earnings in an old pillowcase I kept hidden in the far corner of the closet, behind shoes we'd outgrown. Ma couldn't bend that low anymore, and Betty would never look there; she'd been terrified of dark narrow places like that ever since a spider had crawled on her under the porch of our old house. The first few times I lifted the pillowcase out, I froze at every clink and rattle. But Betty's snoring never hitched. She could sleep through Mr. Schenker; compared to that, a few coins must be nothing.

On Saturdays, I squirreled the pillowcase under my housecoat and carried it to the hall toilet. There I counted out a week's wages, eighteen dollars. If I'd been out after hours, I put in extra for "overtime." Tucked the cash into an envelope and left it on the kitchen table. Ma complained that the telephone company was working me to death, that I wasn't getting enough rest. But every Sunday morning, when I got up, the envelope was gone and she was sitting with pencil and paper, figuring how much back rent we still owed and how soon it could be paid.

We ate meat every day now. Pork chops and sausage and meatloaf and even a roast. Not a bean in sight. We made cakes. We got the coal bin filled, a full ton, to last the entire winter.

And then there were all the things I needed for work. Nylon stockings, a dozen pairs, and a cunning quilted box with a dozen compartments to keep them in. Two new bras. A new girdle. Haifa dozen satin step-ins. Hair ornaments to match my gowns, and earrings to match the hair ornaments. I bought two more gowns from Reinhard's, which meant two more pairs of shoes. I would've bought more after-hours outfits, too, except I would have to wear them home, and I couldn't explain to Ma where I'd gotten the money for them. The wool coat from Manny had been dicey enough. Everything else, I kept in my locker at the Starlight. I never wore the lime green dress anymore, and I kicked my old, creased saddle shoes under the bed.

Thanksgiving came. For the first time in years, we could afford a turkey to roast. Ma made stuffing with walnuts and celery; Betty made an apple pie. At work, that night, I could barely zip myself into my gown. But I really regretted how much I'd eaten when Del insisted that the band play "The Turkey Trot" three times every hour.

"Give us a break, Del, wouldja?" Nora begged him. She'd had three kinds of pie at her brother and sister-in-law's house, and by ten o'clock she was panting, her broad face tomato red. "If I have to jump up and down and flap my arms one more time to that old-timey crap, I'm gonna puke."

"Thanksgiving, customers expect the Turkey Trot," Del said. "Next year don't eat before you come to work."

I caught Ozzie's eye. He cocked his finger and thumb like a gun, held it to his temple, and fired. I laughed out loud. But there was no getting out of the Turkey Trot, not for Ozzie or for us. Like Del always said: in this business, if you don't have illusion, you don't have anything. Tonight, the illusion was of a happy holiday.

"Well, I think he's right," Alice said in the Ladies'. The rest of us groaned, and someone threw a roll of toilet tissue at her. "No, really!" she insisted, untangling the tissue from her curls. "Look at them out there. Most of them tonight are old. They don't have anyone to spend Thanksgiving with except us."