“I'd have to be dead broke to sell my skin for cash,” I told Tony when we walked past the hookers.
“Won't be long now,” he laughed, pulling me close against his hard stomach. Sometimes we'd dream about what I'd bring in, how rich we could be, but it never came to that.
I could have had the customers. Cars slowed when they saw me, but I just swung my hips, kept moving. Cops crawled along Lake Street like ants in honey, taking it all in, but it was rare you'd see them bust somebody. They were friendly with the regular girls, drinking bad coffee at the Lake Street Lounge. I learned early that a loose smile could get them to look the other way.
I made up my mind I wasn't going back to my mother, wasn't working as her steady nurse, pouring her drinks and rubbing the chipped polish off her yellow nails. Wasn't going back to the same stories she'd fed me for supper. Wasn't trying to save her again, just to have the cops nipping at my ass. She could drink herself to death without me. I wasn't her little girl.
The street was my family. I breathed the exhaust fumes, sour piss in empty alleys, and felt my blood rush. Tony lit my cigarettes and tangled my hair between his fingers. People were afraid of him, his temper and his rep. They stayed away from me.
It was months before he slapped me, his hand burning a mark on my cheek. He'd been drinking heavy, dope never made him so crazy. He threw me against the wall of the Salvation Army; the jagged bricks scratched the skin off my back. Bums scattered, but no one stopped him. We all knew enough to mind our own business.
“Come on,” I said, leading him into the Poodle Lounge. “Let's get you something to eat.”
When he was up at the bar, I snuck out the back door. I ran between houses, dogs barking and people drinking on their front steps. For a few miles I was sure I heard him behind me, but I never slowed down until I got to her building. The downstairs door was locked. I guessed right away she did it against me. I threw a rock through the basement window, climbed through a tunnel of sharp glass to safety. Then I passed the night huddled up in the corner, hoping for some sleep. I couldn't decide if I was desperate enough to go back to her, how low I'd have to sink before I came home.
In the morning I ripped off a box of Ritz crackers and a Coke from Kenny's Grocery. It was a smooth routine I'd polished through the years. Then I sat on the bus bench, letting the salt and soda explode in my stomach. I was still deciding. Tony or home? I suppose I was half hoping my mother would look out and see me, rush down the stairs and beg me back in. But then I pictured her, passed out in bed, too hung over to lift her head off the pillow.
This is the truth: I hated that girl when I saw her. When she stepped out onto the sidewalk, dressed in my Led Zeppelin T-shirt and jeans, it took me a minute to believe it. Faina? The girl from the picture, the girl who had stolen my father. That stray dog, my mother's lost daughter, my missing sister. Faina. She had come to take my place.
Faina - The New Girl
By August, we've settled into a sleepy routine. Mornings, Lenore wakes slowly, giving her eyes time to adjust to the light. In the freezer, I keep a dish of frozen washrags, and I carry one to her bed and smooth it out on her forehead. Then I deliver her a strong cup of coffee, bitter with a bite, the way she likes it, and a cold Bloody Mary with a crisp celery stalk. While she comes back to earth in peace, without my childish chatter, I run downstairs to the bakery for her marmalade twist.
“How's the new girl today?” Frances says to me. Frances always calls me “the new girl,” her greeting half-scolding, half-friendly.
When business is slow, she visits with me. All of our conversations are quizzes, a series of questions too long and complicated for me to answer. It happens everywhere I go—the bookmobile, Border Drug, Kenny's Grocery—everyone wants to know something about who I am, why I'm here, where I've come from. “You're not from around here,” they say. “It's as plain as day; I can hear it in your voice.” I've already lost track of the stories I've told trying to dodge the truth. A niece, a friend of the family, just a girl visiting from California. All of this I hide from Lenore, so I'm allowed to go out, sometimes in the daylight, and see a small piece of this strange city.
“So,” Frances says today, placing her hands on her hefty hips. “Now that September is right around the corner, I suppose you'll be going home to California.”
“I suppose,” I say. With Frances, I've found it works best to agree.
“She shouldn't keep you up there all day. It's not healthy. Do your people know where you are?” She pats her meaty hand along her crown of white braid.
“Yes, they know,” I say. “I'll take the usual. Two marmalade twists.” I fiddle with the dollar bill I've wound around my finger like a bandage.
“Marmalade twists. She used to eat them every day, when she had the old man to fetch them for her. Or the girl. She's always got somebody doing her bidding. But it's been years since she's been in here herself. Why don't you buy a nice loaf of bread? What do you people live on? Sweets?”
“I don't have the money today. Maybe tomorrow.”
“I tell you it isn't healthy. September is coming. Some of us are smart enough to know what's going on upstairs. You belong in school. So did the other girl. It's the law. And they'll catch up to you sooner or later. Ask her.”
That afternoon, we watch Lenore's soap operas: As the World Turns, The Doctors, General Hospital.
“These shows are more real than people think,” she tells me. She's drawn a diagram of the characters for me in an old spiral notebook of Cammy's. Between the names she's drawn dozens of colored lines marked marriage, birth, divorce, affair.
“Check your outline,” she says, whenever I ask a question. “I'm watching.”
To stay busy, I paint her nails frosty pink, ruby, even a blue raspberry I found in Cammy's room. I file the sides up to a sharp tip. She loves the attention, her hand held in mine, the slippery finger massage I give her when I've finished.
“I guess we hit it off after all,” she says, giving me a weak smile. “Isn't it sweet?”
All of our days are sluggish, spent stretched out in her bed surviving the humidity. So when the phone suddenly rings, we startle like spooked horses.
“Should I answer it?” I ask, my heart pounding.
“Hurry.” A nervous fear washes over her face. “It's Cammy.”
I race down the hallway, eager to answer before the caller gives up on us. “Hello?” Nothing. I press the plastic receiver against my ear, sit down on the tapestry phone bench.
“Hello?”
There's a rustle of breath on the other end, but not the heavy prank-phone-call pant of slumber parties. “Hello?” I say again.
“Faina, is it her?” Lenore shouts from the bedroom.
“Hello?” I repeat, but then the phone goes dead.
When I return to Lenore's room, she's sitting upright at the edge of her bed, her eyes open wide, her hands clutching her satin nightgown. “Was it Cammy?”
“I don't know. They didn't say anything.”
“It was her. I should have answered. Your voice must have scared her.”
“How do you know?”
“Mother's instinct, Faina. It's Cammy. She's coming home.”
The rest of that day we pass in a hush, listening for the next ring or the click of a key turning in the lock.
“Time drags when you wait,” Lenore complains. “Let's do something.”
We return again to the old red scrapbook she keeps under her bed, the fat album of photographs she loves to explain. I hold it on my lap, the leather cover gummy against my bare thighs, and flip the pages carefully so the snapshots won't spill from their tidy triangular corners.
“Always be careful with memories,” she warns me.
We study the black-and-white images of the life that came before me, the strangers who are my family. Papa Roy and my grandmother, Eileen, people I'll never meet.
When Lenore touches them with her fingertips, it's as if she steps into the scene. “There I am sta
nding outside the playhouse Papa Roy had built for me in the back yard of our Kenwood house. It was a magical place, full of tiny handmade furniture. A refrigerator. A stove. All the neighbor kids envied me, begged to play in it, but I preferred to be alone. Like most only children I suppose. Selfish. You never really learn to share. But Papa Roy and I spent hours in there, playing house. You can't imagine how strange it seemed to see a giant man folded into that small of a space. He let me serve him tea, make-believe cookies on a little platter.
“Look at me. That blonde halo of curls.” She runs her finger under the caption, Papa Roy's Angel, written in white ink. “I'm surprised Mother even wrote that. She detested his pet name for me. Later, he called Cammy the same thing. Mother hated his fondness for beautiful girls.”
“What about me? Was I ever Papa Roy's angel?”
“Oh, you couldn't be. You were never blonde. The angel name came from our soft white curls. You were a different look entirely. Born dark like a gypsy. Like Bobby. You look just like your dad.”
“No. I mean, did Papa Roy like me?” I try to picture him holding me as a baby, bouncing me up and down on his strong knee.
“Sure, he was crazy about you. Who wouldn't be? He kept your picture in his wallet until the day he died.” She claps the cover of the album closed, slips it back under her bed. “I'm beat.”
“Then why didn't you ever visit me?”
“Visit you? What do you mean?” She tap-taps her fresh pack of Salem cigarettes against her palm, pulls the long red cellophane thread, crumples the wrapper in her hand, and passes it to me. “Throw that in the wastebasket, would you, sweetie? I'm going to have one quick cigarette before my nap.”
“I mean, why didn't you visit me? You and Papa Roy and Cammy.” When I close my fist around her garbage, the cellophane crinkles into the quiet.
“Well, naturally, we couldn't go that far. We always hoped Bobby would bring you back home. It was his responsibility. I wasn't well, Papa Roy either. He had high blood pressure, heart trouble. I was always frail. Good health doesn't run in my family.
“I don't know what possessed Bobby to take you to another state. So far away. I left you with him so briefly, while Cammy and I took a trip to Nebraska. But when I got back, poof! You were gone.
“Mother, too. I lost both of you in the same year. Papa Roy and I sold the Kenwood house, it was too much to keep up, too much memory. He owned this property then, so we moved in temporarily. It was close to downtown, Papa Roy's haunts. A few years later, he let it go, and we became renters. Papa, me, Cammy. We were so happy then, living here, it never dawned on Papa or I to move on. Rent was cheap. It had to be. We were living off of Papa Roy's assets. We played cards all afternoon, read poetry, drank Manhattans before dinner, watched TV. There had been so many years with Mother between us, it was a relief to finally be alone.”
I'm tired of her story, her straggling sentences, tired of the life she lived without me. “You could have written to me,” I say. Those words have kept me company for so many years, when I finally release them, my heart stalls as if I've lost something.
“Write? What would I write about? In my condition? You've seen for yourself; there's nothing much to say.”
By night, we're still waiting for Cammy's call. “The calm before the storm,” Lenore announces, staring out at the hazy white sky. “I smell a tornado coming. I'll never be able to sleep.”
“Do you want me to read?” We're three chapters into Jane Eyre, one of Lenore's favorites.
“No. I can't concentrate on anything.” She ticks her nails against the edge of her glass. “Why don't you set us up for cards? The diversion will do us some good.”
In the kitchen, I gather the supplies we'll need: a fresh glass of vodka, ice cold to take the edge off the heat, with a dash of Fresca for flavor. The rest of the chilly bottle belongs to me. I've learned to like the sour taste, the cool lime surprise. I pop a small batch of popcorn, shake the pan carefully, four inches above the burner the way Lenore taught me, so the kernels won't burn. Then I drench it in butter, a quarter of a stick, until the popcorn is soggy.
Finally, I retrieve the tin cigar box of coins from Papa Roy's desk. My betting money, the coins which used to be his, my keepsake. “He'd want you to have it,” Lenore said to me. “He'd be amazed at the way you took to the game.” I love the smell of it, old tin mixed with sweet tobacco, the way I imagine Papa Roy must have smelled when he held me to his chest. Whenever I open it, I open a memory, and I'm a baby in Papa Roy's big hands, being lifted up to the sky.
“You lead,” Lenore says, passing my cards to me.
Between hands, we stuff our mouths with popcorn, lick the grease off our fingers to keep the cards clean. I'm winning, as usual, which makes Lenore happy. “You're sharp as a tack,” she says, patting my knee. But she's far away from the game, half listening for that phone to ring. “I wish Papa Roy could see you play. You don't know what it's like to lose somebody.” She stretches her arms up over her head, leans back in bed, then struggles to light a Salem with a wavering match. “My hands are so bad. Faina, I'm sorry, I'm not with the game. My nerves are getting to me.”
“I know what it's like to lose somebody,” I say. “I miss my dad every day.” I think of the letters I write him each night, the mail that never comes for me.
“Oh,” she laughs. “Your dad. It isn't the same.” She presses my head down onto her shoulder, strokes my flushed cheek. “You're happy here with me.” I close my eyes and smell her Fresca breath, her summer sweat, her smoky skin. “And you always will be.”
Then abruptly it arrives, exploding into our night, the ring, Cammy's precious call.
“Help me,” Lenore says. “I want to answer this time.”
I pull her liquid body up in bed. It's always harder to move her at night, her legs too rubbery to support her own weight. I loop my arm around her waist, stagger her quickly down the hallway. “Cammy?” she says frantically, picking up the phone.
I inch her into the nook of the bench seat, untangle her nightgown from around her blue legs. Then I kneel there, barely breathing, staring at her veiny feet, the curve of brown nails curling over her toes.
“Leave us be,” she hisses. She slumps over, hands the phone to me. “Hang it up,” she says, dropping her head into her hands and burrowing her fingers through the dark roots of her hair. “I was wrong. It wasn't Cammy.”
“What did they say?” I ask. Outside, there's a crack of thunder, then the flash of lightning.
“Not now, Faina. I should have seen it coming.”
That night, the storm Lenore predicted arrives, not a tornado but a torrent of rain and hail that batters our building like stones.
When I wake, there's no electricity, the refrigerator is dead. In the freezer, Lenore's washrags are lukewarm, the ice beginning to melt.
“Do you want me to run across the street to Kenny's for fresh ice?” I ask. I'm perched on the edge of her bed, snapping my flip-flops nervously against my feet.
“Stop, please,” she snarls, pulling the limp washrag over her swollen eyes. “It's so muggy in here, I can't think.”
“The electricity is down. I need to go out for food.”
“No more going out. You've done enough damage already.”
“What damage?”
“If you wanted to go to school, you should have told me.”
“School?”
“How was I to know September was coming? In my condition, the days run together. Now you've dragged Frances into our business. Who knows where the trouble will end?”
“I didn't tell Frances anything.”
“Of course you did. Why else would she threaten me? I can't send you to school. Schools are full of perverts and thieves. It was school that took away Cammy.”
Perverts and thieves? Not at Ocean View Elementary with the waves outside our classroom windows, the garden courtyard where we gathered each day to eat lunch. Green picnic tables and cobblestone paths, the tetherball pole, the ol
d teeter-totter even the big kids loved. Mrs. Orr, my sixth-grade teacher who hugged me good-bye on my last day. You've got a good mind, Faina McCoy. Don't be afraid to use it.
“Besides, I'm too sick to be here alone. I'll teach you at home. Aren't I teaching you already? I'm a valedictorian, for heaven's sake. I can tutor a twelve-year-old.”
“But Frances said it was the law.”
“What are you now, an attorney?” Lenore tosses her wet rag down on the carpet. “I'll hide you up here, like Anne Frank in that attic. I shouldn't have let you go outside in the first place. I knew they'd take you away.”
After that phone call, I'm her prisoner again. The bookmobile is forbidden, all the errands are done by delivery, we learn to live without our morning treats from the bakery. We go back to the chain on the door, the check slipped through at the last minute, the package picked up only when we're certain the footsteps have faded.
“I don't want to be locked inside forever,” I tell her. “I don't care about school, but I want to go out in the world. I never stayed indoors at home. I miss the beach. I miss swimming and seeing my friends at the sno-cone stand.”
“Look at me,” she says. “I live without that, and I'm happy.”
“But Frances knows I'm up here. What if she calls the police?”
“Faina, please. I'm trapped in a black hole. My nerves are nearly shot.”
I mope in my bedroom with the door closed, write in my diary, refuse her requests to look at the scrapbook or watch TV. I've returned to the stubborn girl who arrived here six weeks ago. “I want to go home,” I write to my dad. “Please come for me.”
“Okay, you win,” she says, handing me her empty glass for a fresh drink. I can hardly believe my good luck. She surrendered so quickly, after just a few days of chilly silence.
“Really? I can go outside? To the bookmobile on Thursdays? The bakery? Border Drug?”
“No. Stay away from those spies. You're going to school. Like Frances says, it's the law. It starts in a week.”
Where No Gods Came Page 4
