Authors: Christine Fletcher
I eased out of bed and felt around for my shoes. My side twinged, but it wasn't slowing me down much anymore. The bruise had turned plum colored and black. It was spreading in rings, like motor oil in a rain puddle.
If that was the worst any of us got, I'd count us lucky.
. . .
I heard the music all the way out on the sidewalk. As I paid admission, a trumpet wailed high and loud. Hearing it, my feet itched to fly. I pushed my way through the curtain, into the club. Ozzie wasn't on the stage. Neither was Ophelia.
A waiter nodded at me.
This way.
I shook my head. "I need to see Lily!" I shouted in his ear.
The waiter jerked a thumb at a closed door behind the bar. "She's busy!"
I signaled I'd wait by the entrance. The waiter shrugged and gestured to the people who'd come in behind me. I waited until his back was turned, then I made for the closed door. Lily might be busy, but I didn't have all night.
I knocked on the door. No one answered. "Lily!" I bawled. "Lily, it's Ruby! Open up!"
The door swung open. I was about to say
Lily
again, but instead of her face I saw a man's checked shirt, open at the collar. Strong curving cheeks, a sharp-edged mouth. Eyelashes curling, just like his cousin's.
"What do you want?" Ozzie said.
. . .
By the time I left Lily's, the eastern sky was pink, the streetlights pale. Already the air was warm and damp. Even on the wildest of the nightclub nights, I'd never been so late getting home. I trudged from the streetcar stop to Chester's house, dog tired and hungry, hoping Ma hadn't noticed I was gone. But even that thought couldn't shake the relief soaking down to my bones.
Paulie was gone.
Horace Washington had turned up the heat so high, he hadn't needed five days. Papers had been rushed through, signatures gotten, and yesterday, Paulie had been put on a train bound for St. Petersburg, Florida. His ship had come in, all right. Shanghaied into the merchant marine.
Chester had already left for work. Ma sat in the dining room, looking out the window. I picked up her empty coffee cup and carried it into the kitchen. Got a second one and filled them both from the electric percolator. When I sat down, she said, "I thought you were still in bed." She cradled both hands around her cup, as if we were back in the old flat, in winter. "I used to think I knew where my daughters were, every second of the day. And night."
"I'm sorry," I said.
She didn't answer. We watched the sun rising between the houses across the street. It lit Ma's cheekbones a pinky gold, struck sparks of yellow and blue from the diamond on her finger.
"I'm going to leave," I said.
Her mouth wobbled, just for a moment. I got up and crossed behind her chair. Bent down and wrapped my arms around her. Her cheek soft. Scents of cold cream and raisins, and setting lotion, and a trace of the Coty perfume Chester had bought her as a wedding present.
"I tried, Ma," I said.
She laid a hand on my arm; it felt dry and light as a leaf. "I know," she said.
After a moment, I knelt by the side of her chair. "Ma, listen. I have to tell you something."
Betty would be furious. But even if I put on the St. Casimir's uniform every day and walked to school with the Gorman sisters—even if I played the good girl to a T—Betty would know it was just another lie. She'd do what she wanted, and she would never listen to me.
But she still might listen to Ma. And she liked Chester. Maybe she still had a chance.
"Some of Betty's friends," I began, "call themselves victory girls."
August 11, 1942
Dear Ma,
I just go
t home from my first day at work, and I'm dead-dog tired.
I rubbed the sore spot at the base of my right thumb, where the bucking bar had pressed. My writing paper lay in a pool of blue light. I'd thrown a scarf over the little table lamp so that my roommate, Lu, could sleep.
A breeze came through the open window. Before I went to bed, I would shut the curtains tight so the sun wouldn't wake us up too early. I liked sitting up late, the only one awake. I guessed I'd gotten used to night habits.
I finished the four weeks of training which I told you about in my last letter. The instructor said I learned as fast as any girl he ever taught and made the fewest mistakes, so you see I finally did good in school.
I added an exclamation point. Then scribbled it out. I should have written in pencil. Too late now, I was too tired to start over.
The plant we work in isn't like the packinghouse, men in some places and the women in others. We're all of us on the floor together. I don't know yet if I like it.
I put down my pen.
This morning we'd followed a supervisor through the largest building I'd ever set foot in. We walked between a double line of B-24 bombers stretching as far as I could see—not seeming like much except scattered hunks of metal where we started, then the farther we went in the building, they began looking more and more like planes. Ships, the supervisor called them. If I'd ever thought the Ladies' at the Starlight was loud, it was nothing compared to this: the pounding of rivet guns and screaming drills, hundreds of them, and hundreds of men shouting to make themselves heard. As we walked, the supervisor parceled us out, two and three at at time. "You and you, what's your names?" he'd call, then "Flight deck" or "Fuselage" or "Wing. Go on, get to work! You in the red scarf, what's your name!"
"Ruby Jacinski," I said.
He pointed to another girl. "Irene Petrovsky," she said. Her voice pitching up at the end, like she was asking a question.
"Nose turret," he said, and pointed to a bomber.
Some fellows were laying wiring in the wing. One of them looked us up and down. Sneer on his face. You could tell he thought he was a tough guy.
Paulie could clean this guy's clock. You wanted to know tough—Paulie was tough.
But I'd turned out tougher.
"I'll buck," I told Irene. "You rivet." I'd picked up the bucking bar and climbed into the half-built plane.
I bent again to my letter.
They put me in the nose because I'm small, I can get where men can't, or even the bigger girls. We have to wear Sanforized coveralls and keep our hair tied up in scarves, and we can't wear any jewelry.
We could wear makeup, though. A few of the girls said what was the point, wearing makeup in a factory? But after all those months at the Starlight, I didn't feel dressed without it. Besides, I had to stay in practice. The USO held dances every weekend. The bands were all right. Nothing like what I was used to in Chicago, though.
Another breeze through the window. I closed my eyes. Remembering Ozzie, the last time I'd seen him. Shirt open at the neck, no tie. Sleeves rolled up to just below his elbows. Frowning down at me from the doorway of Lily's office.
"I, I have to ask Lily something," I said.
"Not here. She'll be back pretty quick though. You want to wait, you can sit at the bar."
Nothing seemed swollen or broken on him. Maybe he hadn't been in a fight over Ophelia after all. But his face was stern, the usual quickness gone. Like he'd never thought it was funny I'd almost walloped a dirty old man on a dance floor. Like I'd never given him advice on how to romance his girl; like we'd never sat in a little room across from each other, shadows and music and talk between us.
I looked past him into the room. "Can I wait in here?"
He shrugged and stepped back. I walked past him. An office, small and bare. Nothing like the Club Tremonti. A beat-up desk and two hard-backed chairs. I sat down.
"I heard you quit," I said.
"That's right." Ozzie's hand on the door, about to leave.
"I'm glad." As soon as I said it, I realized how it must sound. But he took his hand off the doorknob.
"Thanks." He hesitated, then said, "I got the gig in Kansas City. Went down there to play and I got it."
"No more Turkey Trot," I said.
"Goddamn, I forgot about the Turkey Trot." His face eased, and he laughed his low, rolling laugh. "You know, I almost quit that night, I was so sick of that tune?"
"You and me both." He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both grinned.
High heels clacked in the doorway. Lily came in, saw me. Her mouth screwed down like she'd sucked a lemon.
"Oh,
you,"
she said.
When she found out what I'd come for, she got right on it. She wasn't doing it to be nice. In fifteen minutes, word came from one of Horace Washington's men.
"That's that," Lily said. "You can go on home."
Ozzie was onstage, taking over for the other trumpet player. The rest of the band razzing him fierce. Calling him the "K.C. Kid." Saying, "They better watch themselves down there, now you're coming."
"I'm staying awhile," I told Lily.
He played all of it, the stomping, yowling down-dirty and the wake-up-and-kick-it. One high, sweet, sad melody made me want to cry and scratch Ophelia's eyes out at the same time. Nobody played music like that whose heart hadn't gotten sledgehammered like a steer on the killing floor. I knew about that, all right.
Ophelia never showed. Gone to sing at a fancier black and tan on Garfield, I heard people say. A heavy-set girl with a reedy voice took the stage, not nearly the powerhouse Ophelia was. Ozzie didn't look at her once.
When I got up to go to the ladies' room, Lily followed me in.
"You come here with one of your taxi-dance customers, that's one thing." Starting right in, not an
Excuse me
or
Can I have a minute of your time.
"But a girl by herself, that's not good for business. Makes the place look seedy."
The mirror was crowded, no place to shove in. "I'm not bothering anybody," I said.
Lily was shorter than even me, but the way she set her weight back on one foot, chin tipped high, she might have been tall as Ozzie. "You white girls. Coming in here looking for who knows what. You got plenty of your own men, why don't you go sniff around them?"
"Amen, sister," said someone from inside the stall.
Lily rapped the stall door. "Mind your own business!" To me, she said, "The luckiest day Ozzie ever had was when that puffed-up piece of work Ophelia dumped him over the side, though it took him long enough to see it. Girl hanging on his coattails is just going to slow him down. Especially a little white one like you." Behind me, the girls at the mirror said,
mmm-hmm,
nudged each other. "Now," Lily said, "do I have to throw you out?"
"I guess so," I said, and marched back to my table. Somone else had taken it. I snagged a chair. Lily told the waiters not to serve me. I didn't care. I didn't want anything anyway, except to hear Ozzie play.
Five thirty in the morning, the band wrapped up. Ozzie set his trumpet back in its case. Hardly anybody in the club except musicians: Lily's bunch, and six or eight from other joints, come to play with Ozzie a last time. Ties and jackets off, cigarettes in everyone's hands. The men still razzing Ozzie, slapping him on the back. He grinned, said something that made them shout with laughter. A numbers runner wandered in, pulled up a chair, fell into the conversation. From behind the bar, Lily gave me the stink-eye. She was the only one who seemed to know I was still there.
I'd found out about Paulie. Ozzie'd finished playing. Nothing left to stay for.
Bright outside; I squinted, shaded my eyes. A scrap of breeze blew in from the lake. By midmorning, it'd be snuffed out by the heat. People already out and around. Man carrying newspaper bundles. Milkman carrying bottles. No cabs. I started walking to the streetcar stop.
"Ruby."
I turned around. Ozzie was climbing the steps to the sidewalk. His shoes scuffed the concrete, loud in the early-morning air. He held something in his hand.
"I saw this under a table," he said. "Thought it might be yours."
It was a compact case. Silver, with a fancy monogram.
C.S.
I shook my head and handed it back to him. He turned it over, looked at the lid. "Oh, yeah. Guess not." He glanced up the street. Started to turn back down the stairs to the club.
"I'm sorry about the other night," I said. He stopped. Shot me a quick, doubtful look. "When I asked you to dance. I didn't know it would make Ophelia so mad. Not that I care about her, but if. . ."
Ozzie ran a hand over the back of his head. He kept his hair short. Not straightened, like some colored men's. "You might know girls," he said, "but you don't know
colored
girls."
I thought back to what Lily had said in the ladies' room. "Oh.
Oh."
Baby sees the light.
"She was playing games. You know, trying to make me jealous. So I thought, Let's see how she likes it."
"I guess she didn't."
Ozzie stuck his hands into his pockets, blew air through his lips. "You could say."
We stood a moment, not talking. Then he said, "Just as well." I thought he meant, Just as well since I'm going to Kansas City. But he went on, "Turn eighteen in November. After that . . . bunch of musicians gone already. Not just the sidemen. Bandleaders, too." Gazing up the street, not looking at anything. "I figured I ought to get in as much playing as I can get. Before they send all of us to fight the Jerries."
Paulie shanghaied. Manny and Alonso and half the boys in the Yards signed up or drafted. A gold star in the Majewskis' window. A few more months, Ozzie might be slogging through mud in Europe, or on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific. Or dead. I swallowed hard.
"So when Hamp starts up that Turkey Trot," Ozzie said, "you think about me. Okay?"
"I can't." His face knotted like I'd jabbed him with a fist. "I mean, I would, but . . . I quit, too. Well—I was fired. Both, sort of."
"Got tired of Del, huh?" He smiled, his eyes still somewhere else. "So, where to now, another dance hall? Plenty of'em around."
Where would you go, if you could go anywhere you wanted?
"I don't know," I said. I remembered Peggy. The tip from that fellow she'd talked to, at the
Daily News.
Slowly, as if to hear how it sounded, I said, "I think maybe I'll go build ships."
His eyebrows arched. His smile grew into a grin. "Little different from what you been doing."
"A little bit." Different felt good. I was ready for different. I tried to imagine what it might be like, but I couldn't. Find out when I got there, I supposed.
A jitney cab came up the street. I waved, and the driver cut over and swept up to the curb. I reached for the door, but Ozzie's hand was on the latch before mine.
But he didn't open the door. We stood so close that if either of us turned, we'd bump the other. The hollow of his throat a few inches away. I saw a tiny fluttering under his skin. He smelled like the club, like cigarettes and booze and Lindy Hopping.
"You happen to drop by Kansas City the next six months or so," he said, "I'll be playing the Century Room. Jay McShann's band."
I raised my eyes to his face. My own, without a stitch of makeup on. Eyes too deep. Lips too pale. I didn't care.
"Take care of yourself." He dropped his gaze. Held out his hand. I took it. His palm wide and warm. Fingers strong from the trumpet. I popped up on tiptoe, quick. Kissed his cheek. Tickly with stubble. Him up all night. Me, too.
"I'll listen for you on the radio," I said.
. . .
Why San Diego? Ma had wanted to know. It was one of the few times we'd talked before I left. Once I'd made up my mind, I hadn't seen what there was to wait for.
"If you want to do war work, you could stay right here in Chicago," she said.
"They said San Diego on the radio," I explained. "That story about women taking men's jobs. Remember?"
She didn't. "I just don't see why you have to go so far away."
"Because it
is
far away, that's why."
All I'd meant was, if I was going to go someplace and start over new, across the country seemed like a good place to do it. I tried to explain, but I'd hurt her feelings. After that, we hardly spoke. When Chester drove me to the bus station, she stayed home.
I wrote my first letter to her before the bus was out of Chicago. The next, as soon as I had an address for her to write back. I wasn't sure she would. But a week later, she did. Her letter short, a little stiff. Not saying anything important. Mine didn't, either. It didn't matter.
Once I was here, I'd thought of how to explain better. It was like how Ozzie's music made me feel. Not just like dancing, although at the beginning that had been most of it. But then his music changed, or I did, and the scream and soar of his trumpet made me feel bigger than the Starlight. Bigger than all Chicago. No one to say,
You can't.
Like what I'd imagined it might be like to go somewhere new, nobody knowing what you'd done or who you'd been. To see who you could become next.
Ma was right. I hadn't wanted us out of the Yards for her sake. I'd wanted it for mine.
Where would you go, if you could go anywhere you wanted?
Listening to Ozzie play, that last night, I knew it wasn't to a club. No matter how swanky, no matter how many sequined gowns I could wear. Pretending to be in love for a commission, while the love of my life might be standing a few feet away and I'd never know it.
I frowned and chewed my pen cap. Even if I could write all this on paper, Ma had never heard Ozzie's music. She thought even Benny Goodman was too wild. The Lindy Hopping at Lily's would've sent her into a conniption. I grinned, imagining what she'd say.
The breeze gusted, riffling the curtains. I lifted my face to it, closed my eyes. I loved listening to the rustle of the palms. Smelling the ocean. If the beginning of the world had a scent, it would be ocean. Sharp and strong and new. It had surprised me, how different it smelled from Lake Michigan, back home.