Ten Cents a Dance (17 page)

FOURTEEN

I made her wait until I finished unrolling my stocking. "Did any of you say anything to Stan?"

She shook her head, smiling her slow wolf smile. "No sirree. We didn't say a thing." Three lockers away, Gabby made a noise like she was choking back a laugh.

I'd expected Yvonne to gloat, but this was more than gloating. She had a stuffed-to-the-gills look, as if she was bursting with something. Gabby, too. But the rest of their pack—Stella, Valerie, a few others—shifted curious glances back and forth, and Stella shrugged. Stella had gone out with them last night; if there was a trick, she'd be in on it.

I shuffled my tickets into a neat pile. "If you said one word . . ."

"Not one syllable, chickie."

I scooped up the tickets and shoved them at her. Then I grabbed my pocketbook and shut my locker.

"Not so fast!" Yvonne flipped her hand toward me, palm up. "Your tips."

Tips made up half our income, sometimes more. Between them and my savings, I'd be able to scrape by without bothering Paulie. "Go lay an
egg,"
I told her.

It was a gamble. Stan might come back—navy pilots trained right here in Chicago, after all—and if he did, Yvonne could still spill the beans about me and clubs and the fish. But I didn't think he would.

"Listen, sister, you're safe as houses," Peggy had told me earlier. "You know why? Because now he's an officer. Who do you see in here?" She'd waved to take in the entire dance hall. "Servicemen, that's who. The officers go to their Officers' Clubs, or to the Aragon and the other fancy places with the other swells in this town. Face it, kid." Peggy had raised her orangeade and winked at me. "We're the low-rent girls."

Low-rent girls. Of course—when had I ever seen a swell at the Starlight? Even Artie, that slick huckster, for all his good suits, he'd been only a traveling salesman.

Yvonne studied me a moment from behind her hat veil. Then shrugged one silk crepe shoulder. "All right, Little Miss Cow"—behind her, Gabby sputtered into giggles—"if that's how you want to play it, fine by me." She took my tickets, every night for the next two weeks, and she and Gabby snickered behind my back. Whatever they were up to—and they were up to something—I didn't care. Compared to my other worries, they were small fry.

I couldn't relax. Ever. I'd never paid attention before to the hundred or so men who came to the Starlight just to watch us girls. But now I peered at their faces in the hall's half-light. Any of them could be someone I knew. They could come and go whenever they wanted, while I was trapped here, on display, for everyone to see.

At home, the cozy routine I shared with Ma began to splinter. She'd bragged about me until I couldn't go outside without neighbors repeating back to me the stories I'd told her. Stories I'd made up about being a telephone operator, all those long mornings together in our flat. It had been a kind of game. Now when I saw Mrs. Dudek, I ducked down an alley. Thanks to the tickets I'd promised Yvonne, Stan might not know about the fish, and the black and tans, and the Pinoys. But he knew enough that one slip could make my world collapse. Every lie I'd told in the past six months, crashing down on our heads.

I started sleeping later and later. When I did finally get up, I came out to the kitchen already dressed. Instead of sitting down for coffee and a chat with Ma, I ate breakfast over the sink. Then I did the daily shopping. As soon as I got home with the groceries, I left again.

"Where are you going?" Ma would say. "You just got back."

"I'm meeting friends."

"Every day? Who's going to do the ironing? Who's going to help me make supper?"

I'd throw my coat on the floor. Or my pocketbook, or my keys. "I pay for our suppers, don't I? I pay for everything! Now you want me to spend all day slaving, too?"

Ma tried to reason with me. I refused to be reasoned with. I slammed doors and hollered until finally she said, "Go.
Go!
God in heaven, just leave us in peace, will you?"

The dark circles came back under her eyes. She hurt all the time. Her hands, her knees, her ankles. I knew it, and I wore her down. And then I could do what I wanted.

I went to the theater—whether I had a date with Paulie or not—and I watched movie after movie, newsreel after newsreel, until it was time to go home for supper. I always washed the supper dishes. That was fair. Ma couldn't say I wasn't fair.

After two weeks of losing my tickets to Yvonne, my savings in the pillowcase were spent. The minute I was earning for myself again, I sashayed peppier, snapped my fingers faster, smiled at the men more. As much as I wanted to hide in the meatpen, I couldn't. I needed dances. I needed that money back, and more. I had to get us out of the Yards, for all the reasons I'd had before, plus this: I needed to go where nobody knew me. Where I wouldn't worry that every time a neighbor slid a look across me, he might be recognizing me from the Starlight.

Once we were someplace new, I could breathe. Then things would go back to how they used to be.

In May—the freezing weather long gone, the swampy heat of summer still ahead—we were given our first ration books. One for each of us, issued on a sunny Saturday morning by a tired-looking teacher at Sacred Heart School. He tore a stamp out of Ma's, to account for the sugar we already had at home, then went through the rules in a speeded-up mumble none of us could understand.

When we got home, Ma stopped in at Mr. Maczarek's to see if he could explain how the ration points worked. I went to the bedroom and started putting on my makeup. After staying away almost two weeks, Paulie had shown up at the Starlight last night. I smiled to myself, remembering how he'd kissed me on the sidewalk in front of everyone, then in the cab on the way to a Chinese supper. Every time he came back I hoped that this time, he'd stay. That this time, he'd tell me he loved me.

He hadn't, last night. But we'd closed the Chinese joint down, Paulie talking about rackets in Detroit and Philly and I don't know where all, and then we'd made out in the back of the cab until the cabbie said he'd turn a hose on us if we didn't knock it off. My skin thrilled, remembering. The last thing Paulie'd said was to meet at Peoples Theater at one o'clock today. I wasn't taking any chances being late. Paulie never waited.

Betty came in the room and shut the door. "Have you noticed anything strange about Ma lately?"

"Like what?" I opened my Carnelian Red lipstick, examined its tip. "Did you use this?"

"No." A little too quick.

"How many times do I have to tell you, keep your hands off my stuff? I already gave you the Peach Blossom, what more do you want?" I rolled on the lipstick quick, blotted my mouth on a tissue.

"You know how she said she joined the altar society at church?"

"Yeah? So?"

"So I don't think that's where she's going." The bed creaked as Betty sat down. In a sulkier tone, she said, "I look better in that red than you do."

I glanced at her in the mirror. Then took a good second look. When had she started wearing her hair like that? Parted low on one side and waved to her shoulders. No ribbons, no bows. She'd plucked her eyebrows, too. A little archy, but not bad. With that rich chocolate hair of hers, she was right about the lipstick; in fact, put her in the Carnelian Red and a gown and she could be at home in the Starlight.

I slung the lipstick back into the dresser drawer. "Forget it. You're not old enough for a red this dark." I rummaged for my mascara. "What do you mean, that's not where Ma's going? Are you saying she's lying?" Just the thought made me laugh. In the mirror, Betty flushed.

"How would I know? All I know is, last Saturday my friend Evelyn saw her on the streetcar going east on Forty-seventh Street. That's
away
from the church," she added, as if I didn't know which way east was. She stepped over to the dresser, picked up the mascara. "Does Ma know you have this?"

"Ma doesn't say anything anymore about what I wear. So you can just keep your nose out of it." I picked up my watch. 12:35. Better hustle. "Do me a favor, will you? Ma wants a pork loin for tonight, but I don't have time. There's money on the kitchen table. Try Stawarz's first. If he doesn't have it, he might know who does." Certain cuts of meat had gotten hard to find. The war, everyone said. Last week I'd had to go to three shops to find beef brisket.

"I already do everything else around here. I'm not doing your shopping, too. Who are you meeting anyway? Your friend Peggy?"

I didn't like the sneer she used with Peggy's name. As if she didn't believe me. "That's right," I said. "Look, don't be a pill. Just do me this one favor. I'll make it up to you."

"What about Ma?"

I slammed the dresser drawer shut. "What about her? Evelyn Terasek is so dizzy, she probably didn't even know which way the streetcar was going. Have you asked Ma?"

"No, but—"

"Then what are you bothering me for? Now are you going to get that pork loin, or not?"

She'd dropped the mascara and was glaring at me, arms crossed. I fought down the urge to smack her. What did she know about anything? About what I did to buy the saddle shoes on her feet and the pretty sweater on her back? Nothing. So she could just keep her snotty looks to herself.

Still—Paulie wouldn't wait.

I plucked the Carnelian Red out of the drawer. Held it out. Betty made like she was considering. I started taking it back.

"Okay, okay," she said, and she snatched the tube out of my hand. I grabbed my pocketbook.

"Tell Ma I might not be home for supper," I told her.

At Peoples Theater I stood under the awning, searching the faces in the crowd. Suddenly warm hands covered my eyes, warm breath tickled my ear. "Paulie!" I said.

"No, the Easter bunny," Paulie said. I turned in his arms and put up my face and he kissed me, and something that was cranked tight in me relaxed.

The Saturday matinee was a double feature—
Son of Fury
and
Ghost Town Law
—and the place was jammed. We got in line for sodas and candy. A couple of little boys careened between the pillars in the red-carpeted lobby,

waving toy guns in the air, hollering
Bang, bang!
From somewhere ahead of us, over the babble of voices, I heard a girl talking loud.

" . . . so they pair me up with an absolute battle-ax, a Mrs. Hotty-totty from Lincoln Park, and for the first hour nothing I swear but one ugly serviceman after another, nobody higher than a corporal, so I let her wait on all of them . . ."

"You didn't!" another girl exclaimed. I started. That was Angie's voice. I peeked between the people behind me, and sure enough there she was, coming through the lobby with Lois Terasek and Viola Bauer. I edged behind Paulie's shoulder. Angie was still wearing Stan's cross. I wondered if she'd really loved him. If he'd broken her heart when he jilted her.

"Good thing I did," Lois was saying, "because the battle-ax was showing some private how to get to the Greyhound station, when up comes a
dreamboat
of a marine, and he's asking directions to the Auditorium. So I told him I'd tell him, but only if he took me bowling there . . ."

"You
didn't!"
Angie and Viola cried together, and suddenly I wanted to run and join them, talk at the top of my voice about boys and double over laughing, the way I always used to. It hadn't been so long ago.

"I'm telling you," Angie said, "Traveler's Aid is
the
ticket. Much better than serving coffee at the USO . . ."

"Ruby!" Fingers snapped in front of my face. I jumped and blinked at Paulie. "I asked you twice already. You want a Snickers, or what?"

"I'm sorry. It's just, I know those girls." I turned and nodded toward them. Paulie stepped out of line to get a better look. "Don't
stare"
I whispered. "They'll see us!"

Paulie grinned. Then he tilted up my face and kissed me, good and deep. Showing off.
Tsk's
all around, mutterings like bees. Angie's voice stopped, sudden as turning off a radio.

I came up from the kiss like I was drowning. Flailing, gasping for air. "What's wrong with you?" Paulie said. I put the back of my hand up to my mouth and looked over at the girls—afraid to, and unable to stop myself. Lois and Viola were giggling and whispering, their faces twisted with scandal. But Angie looked like she was seeing me through the window of an el train, moving. Like she'd caught the last glimpse of me she'd ever see.

I'd never laugh with her again about boys or anything else. I'd have to not know too much. I'd have to go backward, and I didn't know how.

I walked past them across the lobby, not seeing who I bumped into and not caring. Someone crashed into me from behind, knocking the breath half out of me. Coins fell in a sparkling shower at my feet, bouncing on the thick red carpet. I dodged around a fat fellow coming through the door, and then I was outside. A storm had come up. The sun was gone; rain spattered the asphalt.

Paulie hit the sidewalk right after me. "Goddammit, what the hell's the matter with you?"

I hugged myself. I was shaking. "I can't go back in there."

"Damn right you're not going back in there. I ain't paying admission twice. I've had as much as I can take of this kid stuff, Ruby. You ain't dangling me on your string anymore. I told you at the beginning, I ain't one of your damn fish."

Me and Angie, Lindy Hopping to a jukebox with Stan Dudek and Hank Majewski at the corner drugstore. Dreaming about the Aragon Ballroom, swapping pinkie secrets. I put my head in my hands, squeezing my eyes shut tight, as if I could push myself back into the shape I used to be. People eddied all around me, shaking out their umbrellas as they stepped under the awning.

"You're right," I said suddenly. I lifted my face to his. "This is kid stuff."