Authors: Christine Fletcher
Paulie pulled out a cigarette pack, tapped one out into his palm. His eyes under their pale brows not leaving mine.
"Tomorrow night," he said. "After you get off work."
"No. My night off. Monday."
I thought he might say forget it. I thought he might walk away. He didn't. He didn't smile, either, or say all right. But his eyes changed. Cold to warm, like March to May, as if all this time I'd been struggling in the cold and the rain, and all I'd had to do was open a door and on the other side was summer.
I couldn't go back. I could only keep going the way I'd begun.
"Eight o'clock," Paulie said. "I'll pick you up here."
A
t five minutes to eight on Monday night, I was in front of Peoples Theater. Evenings at the movies were even more crowded than the matinees, and the sea of faces under the awning were all starting to look alike. At the curb, a car honked. Then honked again, and again.
"Stuff a sock in it, buddy!" someone yelled. I turned to look—and saw Paulie leaning against a car. Kelly green, with a white convertible top. As I pushed through the crowd, he came around the front and opened the passenger door. I scrambled inside.
"Is it yours?" I said, once he was behind the wheel.
"No. Borrowed it from a friend. Not bad though, huh?"
I'd never been in someone's own car before. This one had stains on the seats, a crack in the dashboard. It smelled a little like an old shoe.
"It's beautiful," I said. Paulie draped his arm across the back of the seat. I scootched close, laid my head against his shoulder and watched the lights spool past on Ashland Avenue.
Sunday morning, when I told Ma I was going to Peggy's on my night off, I was ready for an argument. But all she said was, "We'll both be out, then. I have an altar society meeting."
Betty looked up from the ironing board. "You just had a meeting last night. And one on Thursday."
Thursday? Nobody told me about that.
"We're getting ready for the Confirmation ceremony next week," Ma said. "Father O'Donnell wants the church to look extra nice."
O'Donnell? Sacred Heart's pastor was Father Redisz, not O'Donnell. "Oh, didn't I mention it?" Ma said, when I asked. "These are ladies I met a few weeks ago. From Rose of Lima."
The Irish parish. So that explained the streetcar going east. I passed behind Betty and flicked her on the neck, making her jump. I didn't stop to wonder how Ma had met women from a whole different parish, or why she'd joined their altar society instead of Sacred Heart's. Rose of Lima wasn't far, in distance. But in Back of the Yards, it might as well have been on the other side of the world.
Whoever these Irish ladies were, Ma was out to impress. The next morning, when I came into the kitchen, she said, "Oh, good, you're up already. I want to go shopping today. Just you and me, to buy a new dress. Won't that be fun?"
I blinked at her, not sure I'd heard right.
A new dress? What for?
I almost asked. Ma was standing at the sink, so I couldn't see her face; but I saw her back go stiff, as if she was waiting for me to say it. As if she didn't deserve something pretty, instead of the simply useful, like her wool coat, like gloves.
So we went to Goldblatt's, and right off that was strange. Ma never went to department stores. She always bought clothes on Maxwell Street: shops and pushcarts selling almost anything you could imagine, for cheap.
But Ma wasn't looking for just any dress. As soon as we stepped into Goldblatt's, Ma collared the nearest salesgirl, a little timid-looking redhead, and the hunt was on. I forgot about Angie, and Stan and his mother and the Starlight. Even Paulie I hardly thought about at all. The world shrank down to me, Ma, and a store full of possibilities.
We about ran the feet off the little redhead. In the fitting room, I did and undid buttons and zippers and hooks until the tips of my fingers were sore. Ma was steaming past cranky, right into cantankerous ("Is there a
single
dress in this store that doesn't make me look either six or sixty?"), when, finally, we found it. A divine pale yellow, dotted with navy blue, a navy leather belt to match.
After the salesgirl rang up the dress, Ma dropped her nine cents' change into her change purse. "Well, that's that," she said.
"No, it's not," I said. I snatched the ugly, out-of-style cloche off her head ("Ruby! What are you doing? Ruby, stop that!"), and I ran with it to the hat department. By the time she caught up to me—limping, poor Ma, she was tired—I'd picked out a felt side-brim hat, navy blue with a black eyeline veil. "Oh, Ruby," she said, "I can't afford that."
"I can," I said, and I bought it for her.
Somehow in Goldblatt's fitting room, with rayons and cottons and linens heaped all around us, we'd found a truce. Fragile as a soap bubble, but it held.
Maybe she'd just needed time to adjust. After all, I was the oldest, the first of Ma's girls to grow up. No wonder she had trouble realizing I wasn't a baby anymore. Betty ought to give me a medal. She'd have it easier, when her turn came.
Before I left to meet Paulie, I helped Ma into the new dress. Then I sat her down at the kitchen table and took the rollers and pins out of her hair and brushed it into soft, shining waves, swept back from her face. She reached for the hand mirror. I stopped her.
"Wait," I told her. "Close your eyes. Don't move." I darted into my bedroom and came back with a compact and rouge and lipstick. I kept a light hand. Ma had delicate coloring; too much would drown her.
"There," I said. "Now you're beautiful."
The Ma of the past year—faded and drab, strained thin—was gone. Here, in our ugly, cramped kitchen, was the Ma I remembered. The pale yellow of her dress made her skin seem rich as cream; her face, free of tight clinging curls and the cloche hat, wide-open as sky.
She stared at herself in the mirror. Touched the sleek upsweep over her ear, the soft bright waves at the back of her neck. Her carmine lips. "Oh, Ruby," she whispered.
"You should be going out dancing," I said. "You should be going to a
ball\"
A red flush spotted her cheeks. "Do you really think so?" In that moment, she seemed as young as Betty. As young as me. Not even her knotted hands could ruin how beautiful she was.
"I know so," I said. I laid my head on her shoulder; Ma raised the mirror high, and we studied ourselves together. My dark blond hair against her shining gold. Our eyes both blue, hers pale, mine dark. Ma kissed my temple.
"You're a good daughter, Ruby," she said. "I know it's been hard for you . . ."
She didn't know. She had no idea . . . and if I watched my step, she never would. Then again, had I ever known how hard it had been for her? Pop gone, me and Betty to raise. Under the shoulder pad of her dress, I could feel the sharp bone. Ma, dance? Some days, she could hardly walk. In the mirror, I watched the tears rise and spill over my cheeks. A glass too full.
"No time for that." Ma put down the mirror. "Go get ready. You're going to be late."
. . .
The green convertible flew down streets I didn't recognize. At every stoplight, Paulie leaned down and kissed me. "Where are we going?" I asked.
"Uptown," he said.
I sat upright. "The Aragon Ballroom!"
"That richie-rich joint? I'd rather chew glass. Just keep your shirt on, you'll find out."
The instant I saw the Ferris wheel, lit up bright as Christmas, I knew. "Riverview!" I cried.
We had a long hike from the parking lot—for some reason, Paulie drove what seemed a hundred miles past the other cars, to the far end. "What are we all the way out here for?" I asked, getting out of the convertible. The air was warm and damp and smelled like steel. It had rained earlier.
"Don't want anyone dinging the paint job." Paulie took my hand. "Come on, you can hoof it."
I'd only been to Riverview Amusement Park a handful of times in my life. Never at night. The lights dazzled me, the smell of hot dogs and popcorn, the music pouring out of the banjo speakers. Just inside the enormous arched entrance, the Silver Flash roared by on its tracks. Screams floated like ghosts in the air behind it.
"Where first?" Paulie said.
I didn't hesitate. "The Bobs." The last time I'd been at Riverview, when I was ten, Ma refused to let me ride the Bobs. Too dangerous, she said. Someday, someone's going to get killed.
"Atta girl," Paulie said.
As the Bobs train clicked up the first hill, Paulie put his arm around me. I never could get enough of his scent. Car leather and earth and something faintly metallic, which reminded me of automobiles. His mouth tasted like the Lucky Strikes he smoked. Dark and strong.
The clicking slowed.
"I'd hang on, if I were you," Paulie said. And then the train fell away under me.
I felt myself flying off the seat. I grabbed the thin metal bar in front of me with both hands, and I shrieked living daylights. I could hear Paulie laughing, and behind me someone screaming, "Jesus, Jesus! Mother of
Godl"
At the bottom, a hairpin turn; Paulie slid sideways and smashed me against the side of the car. I bounced off him, bounced off the seat, bounced in the air. My sharpest memory, afterward, was his arms, hands gripping the bar and never budging, the shadows of his muscles sharp as if drawn on his skin with ink.
After the Bobs, we wandered up the Bowery between rows of booths and games. "Win me a doll," I told Paulie, but he shook his head. "All rigged," he said. "Waste of money."
"Hey, you! In the sissy yellow shirt!" someone yelled. I turned to see. A few other people had stopped, too; one of the men wore yellow. "Yeah, you!" The voice came from what looked like a row of tall cages. "I saw you over there at the duck shoot. What's wrong with you, you blind?"
Laughter scattered through the crowd. The man in the yellow shirt glanced right and left, as if unsure what to do. The woman with him pushed his arm. Urging him.
"I ain't never seen nobody miss so many duckies in my
life
as that boy there!" The voice was deep, with a harsh rattle to it. Louder than the music, louder than the roar and clack of the roller coasters nearby.
The man in the yellow shirt seemed to make up his mind. "You want to see aim?" he called. "I'll show you aim." He turned and headed toward the cages, the woman trotting to keep up. Paulie started walking away. I tugged at his sleeve.
"Wait, I want to see."
"Nothing to see except that guy waste a dime," he said. But he came with me.
A row of chain-link cages, set maybe six feet off the ground, stretched down a length of the Bowery. In each cage, a Negro man in a white shirt and white pants sat on a platform over a tub of water. They were the only Negroes I'd seen in the park all night. The sign overhead read AFRICAN DIP.
The Negro who'd hollered at the man in the yellow shirt cupped his hands to his mouth. "Hey, sissy! That ain't the same girl you brought here last night!" That got more laughter, some rude hoots. The crowd was getting bigger. The man paid the attendant, got three baseballs in return. He rolled up his right sleeve.
"Uh-oh, here he comes," the Negro shouted. "Looks like I better shut my mouth."
"Don't worry. I'll shut your mouth for you," the man called. He drew his arm back.
"Winding up for the pitch," the Negro said. "Watch out, now, there's a breeze from the east . . . gotta figure that in, too . . ."
The man leaned forward. Just before he let fly, the Negro yelled, "Pansy!" at the top of his voice. The ball hit the back of the platform, barely two inches from the button that would have dropped the Negro into the water. Groans and laughter from the spectators. The man shook his head—one quick, angry jerk—and picked up a second ball.
He took longer to aim this time. The Negro kept up a steady patter. "Anybody got spectacles he can borrow? Maybe your eyes ain't the problem, though . . . that arm of yours looks no bigger'n a chicken wing . . . looks like you're gonna hurt yourself—"
The man hurled the baseball. It missed the target by a good foot.
"Now that's a darn shame."
Fewer groans, more laughter. By now at least fifty people had gathered around. Most had wide grins. A group of sailors started chanting:
Dunk the nigger, dunk the nigger, dunk the
— The man picked up the last ball. Someone whistled.
I tried to imagine Ozzie up there. Ozzie with his long hands and wide, serious eyes, in a baggy white uniform and cap. Ozzie taunting white boys to earn money. I couldn't picture it. I didn't want to.
"Maybe you ought to get someone to throw the ball
for
you," the Negro was saying. The Negro in the next cage yelled, "How about him?" and pointed to a little boy wearing enormous glasses. The crowd roared.
"How about you shut the hell up?" the man shouted.
"Why don't you ask your girl there to throw for you? I bet she can—"
The baseball smashed into the cage with a ringing
clang.
I jumped, my hand to my mouth. More whistles and laughs. Some people clapped. If the cage hadn't been there, the ball would've hit the Negro square in the face.
"Three strikes," the Negro hollered, "he's out! Better luck next time, pansy!" The man dug into his pocket for another coin, muttering.
"The way that shine's got him worked up, he'll pitch balls until he either dunks the nigger or runs out of dimes," Paulie said. "Come on, let's do the Flying Turns."
We walked up the Bowery. Waltz music floated from the banjo speakers. People strolled past, laughing and talking. With Paulie's muscled arms tight around me, I felt like nothing on earth could hurt me. Still I couldn't
get
the thought of Ozzie out of my head. Ozzie with his talent, the way his trumpet made all of Lily's swing and sweat. Put him in a cage over a tub of water, and men would hurl baseballs at his face. I hadn't understood the cage, at first. I did now. I thought of Ozzie's face, bleeding, and pushed the image away.
Once we got to the picnic area, instead of heading to the roller coaster, Paulie led me into the picnic grove. "Nice and quiet in here," he said.
And dark. The only lights were from the Flying Turns, glimmering on the picnic tables. Barely enough to see Paulie's eyes, black here in the dark, not a trace of color left. He closed them and kissed me, harder than before, rougher. His hands skimmed down the front of my dress, undoing the buttons . . . one, two . . . I shivered as the night air hit my skin. I'd never let a boy undo my dress before, not even the fish at the dance hall. Paulie's hands were warm and I shivered again. He moaned. I felt the vibration of it in his jaw, his tongue, felt it pass from his mouth to mine. He pushed me back against a tree, slipped one hand inside my dress, ran the other one under my skirt. No grabbing this time; his fingers caressed the garter along my thigh. My skin felt electric where he touched me. The whole world was Paulie, and my skin.