In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis

by Josephine Rascoe Keenan

  Gradually, the sounds of shifting to find comfortable positions and pillow fluffing changed into the regular breathing of sleepers.

  I lay awake in blinding darkness until dawn streaked into the window next to my bed, comforting me enough to doze off. But after what seemed like only a minute I jerked upright, unable to remember where I was. Panic flushed through me until I saw the girl sleeping soundly in the next bed. She lay on her side, facing me, strings of her brown hair in clumps across her cheek. Along the rows of beds on both sides of the room, the other girls lay sprawled in slumber.

  I eased up to make an urgent visit to the bathroom. At the door I looked back, fearful that with my futile efforts to keep the bedsprings from squeaking I had awakened someone. No one was stirring. The thought went through my head that they must have gone to bed completely exhausted to continue sleeping so soundly after the sun came streaming in.

  The spotless latrine ran alongside the dorm room. I went in, as I had the night before, and used one of the twelve toilets in the long row. At least there were doors on the stalls. A row of sinks lay opposite them, and off to the side stood the shower stalls. Only two for twenty girls.

  As I slipped back into the dorm room, a deafening siren went off. My frayed nerves made me flinch. The other nineteen continued drowsing until the siren jarred through the house a second time.

  “What was that?” I asked the girl next to me as she swung her legs over the side of her bed.

  “Miss Oldenburg’s version of reveille. I noticed someone new had moved in when I came up last night. Welcome to the Hell Hole. Breakfast is at quarter to seven. If you miss it, you don’t eat again until lunch, and believe me, by then you’ll be starving. Hurry. It’s six fifteen now.”

  “Surely, that gives us plenty of time,” I began, but she cut me off.

  “Not with twenty of us to shower and use the latrine. My name’s Marty, by the way.”

  I stuck out my hand. “Julie.”

  “I bet you believed everything in the brochure, didn’t you? The cooling system is the only good thing about this place. We better put our showers off till later.” Marty began pulling on the clothes lying on the foot of her bed. “Yep. You ended up here because it was the cheapest, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “Don’t feel bad. We all did. Get dressed, quick. I’ll show you the dining hall, better known as the hog trough. You see, we don’t dine there. We gobble down what we can in the fifteen-minute breakfast period.”

  —||—

  There were no eggs and no meat on the menu this morning. Two cross-looking women servers, also pregnant, practically slung platters of pancakes on the tables. There were pitchers of milk and syrup and plates of butter.

  “Do they bring us coffee?” I asked Marty.

  “Coffee’s not allowed. Not good for the babies. Wait’ll you taste the milk. Powdered. Made up fresh every meal, though. At night you can get iced tea, but no refills, and no lemon.” She seized the platter near us the instant the server put it on the table. “Grab what you want before someone else gets it.”

  The pancakes were runny in the middle. The little bit of syrup remaining by the time the pitcher came to me was all that made them palatable.

  “Surely they serve eggs and bacon some mornings,” I murmured to Marty.

  The girl across the table heard me.

  “On Sundays. The rest of the time it’s like today, or cereal.”

  “You forgot grits day,” said another girl, whose voice sounded like that of the pillow pilferer. “So called because that’s all we get for breakfast on Saturdays. Fried grits, plain grits with a pat of butter, or cheese grits. Pick the cheese ones. The others suck.”

  She sat alone at the far end of our table. The top of her blonde head revealed dark roots. I thought she must spend a lot of time in the sun. Her skin resembled a tan leather pocketbook at home in Mama’s closet.

  “My name’s Kay,” she said. “I got knocked up in the backseat of the snazzy convertible my rich boyfriend drives.”

  I gave a sardonic laugh. “Backseats seem to be in vogue this year.”

  Her tough look softened. “Sorry I had your pillow. My back was hurting so bad I used it under my knees. Didn’t help.”

  A bell sounded the end of breakfast. Miss Oldenburg materialized seemingly from nowhere and stood at the head of our table.

  “Julie, come with me to my office. We have some things to go over. The rest of you, get busy.”

  I looked with questioning eyes at Marty.

  “Don’t let her push you around, and don’t sign anything until you’ve read it over at least five times. Don’t give in. She’ll try to make you.”

  “What would she want me to sign?”

  Marty’s face registered surprise, but she had no time to reply. Miss Oldenburg moved behind me and gave me a slight push.

  “I’ll get you some maternity clothes and meet you at my office,” she said. “Shake a leg. I haven’t got all day.”

  —||—

  I saw through the open door that Miss Oldenburg’s office was in meticulous order. A few moments later she came down the hall carrying a stack of clothes—three skirts with tops and two pairs of slacks. She took a seat behind her desk and shoved a single page document toward me.

  “Sign for the clothes. You’ll be expected to return them after the birth.”

  Obeying Marty’s instructions, I read every word before signing my name at the bottom of the page. The document was harmless enough, confirming that I had been given clothing, as promised in the brochure, and would return it when I left Happiness House.

  She stuck the paper in a file jacket and retrieved another document with lots more pages.

  “Your first work assignment is latrine maintenance.”

  “Work assignment?”

  She looked at me with wide eyes. “Yes, work assignment. You didn’t imagine you’d be sitting around contemplating your navel all day, did you?”

  “I . . . I didn’t know . . . we had to work. Nothing was said about that in the information papers.”

  “This is one of the least expensive maternity homes in the state. We require you work off the difference between what it costs to get in here and what it costs to get in a Cadillac version of a refuge for wayward girls.”

  I stood up. “I’m not a wayward girl. I only did it once, and with only one—”

  She rapped her pencil on the desk. “Sit back down, and spare me your protestations of innocence. It’s obvious from your condition you disregarded the rules of God and society by engaging in premarital sex, and now you must suffer the consequences.”

  “What about the boy? Shouldn’t God and society put some of the blame on him?”

  “A man can’t help himself. A woman can. It was up to you to say no.”

  Her face reflected the same suppressed rage that echoed in her voice, making me wonder what her story was.

  “In short, you’ve made your bed, Julie, and now you must lie in it, unless you want to leave here.” She reached for the phone. “I’ll call your mother right now to come get you, if you want me to.”

  I longed to say, “Yes, call her. I won’t stay here another day.” But thoughts of Mama wringing her hands in despair—and of the shame she and I would endure, and of my poor baby and the disgrace it would bear being labeled a bastard—made me shake my head and swallow the pain in my throat.

  “Then you’ll conform to the rules and regulations of Happiness House?”

  I nodded.

  “I can’t hear your head rattle,” she said and pressed her lips together.

  “Yes, I will.”

  “Good. I suspect you have more strength of character than you’ve thus far revealed. You’ll join the latrine team for this first week. You’ll make it sparkle, as I am sure you found it to be upon your arrival.”

  At least I had an indoor job where it was cool.

  “What other work assignments are there?” I ventured.

  “Ins
ide jobs include waiting tables, doing laundry, washing and drying dishes after meals, vacuuming and dusting, that sort of thing. Outside the girls water the grass and flowers, weed the beds, plant seeds, and sweep the walkways. I have a man come once a week to mow. I don’t believe pregnant girls should be doing anything as strenuous as pushing a mower.”

  If I hadn’t been so distraught, I’d have laughed in her face.

  “Do we have any choice?” I asked, thinking that the blonde girl with skin the shade of tanned leather must have had all the outside jobs.

  “No. I assign them. That’s the way I run things. The latrine team gathers in the supply room in,” she looked at her watch, “ten minutes. Before you go, I need you to sign these papers.”

  “What are they?” I asked as she passed them to me.

  “Consent forms to give your baby up for adoption. There’s no need for you to read them now. Just sign them. I’ll give you a copy when you leave here that you can read back home at your leisure.”

  “I won’t sign anything without reading it first.”

  “You do plan to give your baby up, do you not?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure.”

  “What do you mean, you’re not sure?”

  “Just that. I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know later.”

  “You must sign them before you are allowed to leave here. The sooner you sign, the better . . . for your own peace of mind.”

  Wild to get out of her office, I snatched the papers and moved toward the door.

  Her voice stopped me.

  “If you have any idea of keeping the child, what are you doing here? If you go home with a baby, you’ll suffer the same shame you would have if the town had witnessed your entire pregnancy.”

  “I’m still not signing the papers until I read them. And that’s the way I run things.”

  Chapter 22

  ANY PLACE IS PARADISE

  Four hours on the tile floor cleaning the latrine nearly destroyed my knees.

  “Why didn’t you wear knee pads?” Marty asked when I limped into the dorm and collapsed on my bed.

  “Not knowing this place was a work house, it simply slipped my mind to pack a set.”

  She slumped at the sound of anger in my voice.

  “I’m sorry. I rushed off so fast to lawn duty I forgot to tell you to grab a pair from the work room. I couldn’t risk getting another demerit.”

  “A demerit for what?” I asked.

  “If we’re late for our jobs, we get demerits, and ten demerits means no watching TV for a week. Didn’t Oldenburg tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “The bitch. She doesn’t tell the new people anything. Hey, listen, want to go for a walk after dinner tonight?”

  Now flat on my back, I couldn’t picture myself walking anywhere.

  “It’s nice to get away for a few hours,” she said.

  “Where will we get away to?”

  “The shopping area. The diner to get a pop. The movie theatre to see what’s coming.”

  “If I’m physically able, I won’t care where we go,” I said. “Any place away from here will be paradise.”

  Mama had left me some cash. “A girl should never be without her mad money,” she’d said before leaving me here. She’d handed me a small drawstring bag, barely big enough to hold a few folded bills, one of which bore Benjamin Franklin’s picture.

  “Mama! A hundred-dollar bill! That’s too much. Keep it yourself. What will I have need of, anyway?”

  She’d given me her most serious look. “You never know what’s going to happen. Pin it in your bra, and keep it there in case of an emergency, and don’t tell anyone you have it. Use the small bills for pocket money.”

  I needed to spend some pocket money now, for my sanity. Taking care no one was looking, I sneaked a few ones into my pocket and pinned the bag back inside my bra.

  Marty and I each took a fake wedding ring from the bowl on the small table in the foyer and set off on our walk shortly after dinner. Outside, the intense heat of a Texas afternoon had mellowed into the glow of evening. A sense of freedom strengthened me with every step we took away from Happiness House and filled me with exhilaration, as though we were escaping from prison. Had it not been for the baby in my belly, I might have felt carefree again. Despite my love for my unborn child, I’d have given anything to turn back time, if only to be just a Dilbert again in Nowheresville, but a virgin and not pregnant anymore.

  We had barely set off when a voice called out, “Sluts! Whores! You must be the devil’s wives. No one else would have you! Keep off my property. Don’t look my way. Pray for forgiveness, if you know the meaning of prayer.”

  I stared, shocked, at the nicely dressed woman of about forty standing on the porch of her Southern bungalow next door shaking her fist at us.

  “The neighbors hate us because they are convinced that Happiness House lowers their property values,” Marty said, “and they believe our shame rubs off on them. Just walk on and pay no attention.”

  The neighbor’s words set me trembling. I swiped at a tear and opened my mouth to yell at her, but Marty grabbed my arm.

  “If you answer back, she has grounds to call the sheriff on us.”

  I wiped my face on my sleeve.

  “Hey, girl, buck up,” Marty said with a friendly poke in my ribs. “She’s not worth it. Don’t let her ruin your time away from the Hell Hole.”

  “Okay,” I managed to say through a broken breath.

  We walked on in silence for a while. The street was empty of traffic at this hour, except for the occasional carload of kids out for a summer evening. What I wouldn’t give to be going to the Dairyette with the in-crowd tonight, even if Maylene were along. And surely she would be. The thought of her took me directly to thoughts of Carmen. How was she getting along? Had anyone seen through our ruse? Would she go out with Farrel? What about Justin? I was so homesick, I’d even agree to go out with Eugene Hoffmeyer if I could wake up and find this had all been a terrible nightmare.

  I glanced at Marty’s profile as we strolled along the cracked sidewalk. She looked to be about my age, but much more self-assured.

  “When are you due?” I asked.

  “Mid-September.”

  “So am I.”

  “Good. We can keep each other’s spirits up. I can’t wait to get this over with. Then I’m never going to look at a man again. Ever!”

  “Where are you from?”

  She turned sad brown eyes on me. “California. Hollywood. I was going to be a movie star.”

  She had a short, sturdy build, and with her brown hair straggling beside her round cheeks, she looked nothing at all like a slender, beautiful girl you’d expect to see in the movies.

  “A producer got me in the family way,” she said. “Promised me the moon. Said he’d put me in a movie with Elvis Presley. The one he’s shooting now, Jailhouse Rock. Make me a star. Stupid me. I believed him. I never even got to meet Elvis Presley, never mind be in a movie with him. And the asshole producer could have introduced me. We were at a party where Elvis was before I left to come here.”

  “I met him,” I said.

  “You lie!”

  I held up my hand. “I swear. Elvis is my friend. I met him at a concert he did at the football stadium in our town, back before he ever hit the top. He calls me his good luck charm because I was the first girl to scream at one of his concerts.” My voice broke on those last words and must have lent credibility to my story, for Marty’s entire aspect changed from scornful disbelief to awestruck conviction.

  “You’re not kiddin’ me, are you? You really do know him?”

  “I really do. We write each other, and he sends me his records—forty-fives—as soon as they come out.”

  “Well, I’ll be horn-swaggled. What’s he like?”

  “He’s just a good ole boy, and a real nice one.”

  Marty let loose a muffled scream. “Oh Lord. If you don’t stop, I’m gonna drop this baby righ
t here on the sidewalk.”

  We had approached the local movie theatre.

  “Look, there’s the poster for his movie, Loving You,” I said, pointing to it. “Let’s check when it’s coming. We have to see it.”

  We stepped into the outside foyer of the theatre where posters of upcoming movies were displayed in glass cases on all three sides. The one for Loving You said only “coming soon.”

  “We can’t miss it,” Marty said.

  “If we do, we can see it back home,” I said.

  “But I want to see it with you. Someone who actually knows him.”

  I thought back on that one night I was with Elvis.

  “It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two years.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “The girls I went to the concert with left me stranded. Elvis saw me alone in the parking lot and gave me a ride home.”

  Her eyes searched mine. “That’s it? He didn’t take you anywhere first?”

  “To the Old Hickory, to get himself a pig sandwich.”

  “Oh Lord!” She fanned herself with her hand. “What did you talk about to him?”

  “I couldn’t think of a word, at first. He broke the ice by asking me to dance.”

  I thought Marty really would miscarry on the spot. She grabbed her stomach and practically shrieked, “You danced with him?”

  “In the parking lot of the restaurant. It’s not nearly as glamorous as you might think. Everybody dances outside their cars while they’re waiting for curb service. They have speakers that broadcast the music all around the place.”

  “But you danced with Elvis Presley!”

  “Yep.”

  “He held your hand?”

  “Only while we were dancing. He wasn’t famous then.”

  “Were you slow dancing?”

  “Yes, to ‘Autumn Leaves.’”

  “Then he must have put his other hand on your waist.”

  I laughed.

  “Did he try to kiss you?”