by Steve Stern
“You dress me, Harry,” she said.
My throat went dry, my tongue like something washed up on a beach. When I managed to speak, I think that I actually muttered some caution against her taking a chill, though the heat in the rear of Kaplan’s couldn’t have been more dense. Turning in a full circle before I was able to locate the rack, I snatched up one of the remaining frocks. It was some lavender period piece, as it happened, with an upstanding bodice scalloped in lace-trimmed brocade: Guinevere meets Little Bo-Peep.
Without inquiring whether the gown was at all to her taste, I flung it over Naomi’s head the way you might throw water to douse a flame—but not before I’d taken a sneaking account of her spindle-shanked anatomy, which included, item: the furuncular knobs of her shoulders; the bumps like mosquito bites under her bow-tied camisole, which was short enough to show a navel so convex that it seemed to be coming unbuttoned; the frosting of down on her coltish legs, knock-kneed below the edges of her baggy drawers. None of it was lost on me: how she looked, my near relation, like she’d just been hatched from an egg. Only nominally human, she nevertheless gave the impression that she was on her way toward becoming something else. A word I didn’t know I knew—sylph—popped into my head, and I wondered if I was about to come into a knowledge beyond my years.
Turning away from her again, I started to rummage through the squat iron vault. “Accessories,” I muttered; that’s what I was looking for, or was it my scattered wits? In a tray containing—alongside the costume jewelry—fake eyeballs and prosthetic hooks, snake rattles and hollow fangs, wishbones, a devil doll, and a sulphur-yellow rock labeled “Philosopher’s Stone,” I found a conservative strand of tiny seed pearls. I faced my cousin a little stiffly, like I was bestowing them by virtue of the power vested in me as…what?, and fastened the pearls around her meager stem of a neck.
While I was asking myself what ought to come next, Naomi read my mind. Stooping, she retrieved a drawstring leather bag from the pocket of her shucked sailor pants. This she pressed into my hands before returning to her passivity of a moment ago, only now she didn’t appear to be so floored into confusion by it all. Give her a gown and some jewelry, and all of a sudden she’s posing, the pitsvinik; she’s above having to wait on herself. Who did she think she was, putting on airs like a princess? Who, for that matter, did I think she was?
Inside the leather bag I discovered a variety of cosmetics: Tangee compact cases and aromatic puffs, lipstick tubes, eyebrow pencils, swabs. These were the sort of things that required an exacting touch, the sure hand that delivers the coup de grace. “Oh no.” I was shaking my head, pleading inexperience. “What do I know from glamour?”
But in my mind I was giving testimony: I knew the show ladies at the Palace, their dressing tables crowded with toiletries like an Emerald City; I knew the ladies of the Baby Doll with their henna and hare’s-foot unguents, their bezoar powder, their bleaching compounds for cutting coffee complexions with cream. What, come to think of it, didn’t I know from glamour?
Besides, it didn’t take a genius to apply a little lipstick. I’ll admit I was worried at first that I might be hurting her, the way her mouth got so inflamed and her lips tightened to a slit. But when she released them in a slow impression of scarlet petals unfolding, I relaxed. Next came the eyes, which I caught on to pretty quick. If you stirred the little brush in the palette of shadow, then gently etched her quivering eyelids in soft greens and blues, you could create all kinds of effects. You could give her startled eyes a deep sadness or, with a deft stroke at the corners, a touch of boldness or even ferocity. You could turn them from the eyes of a girl to those of a tigress, then soften them with your fingertips until the frightened doe peeped through. You could make them fathomless and full of mystery.
Next it seemed that a little face powder might be in order. So I took up a puff and proceeded to raise a storm of fine white dust, from which Naomi emerged with an unearthly pallor. In a hurry to restore her vitality, I dipped my fingers in a tiny paint pot and daubed her with an excess of rouge. By rubbing circles over her cheeks, however, I was able to reduce the garish clown splotches to the merest phantoms of a blush. After that I closed an eye to peer at my cousin over the top of my upraised thumb, and judged that the results were perfection.
I even liked the way the tight black babushka, which still hid her hair, brought out the dramatic features of her face. I liked the way it contrasted with her lavish gown. Still, I knew what was missing. Beginning to shuffle among the bonnets and ruglike toupees on top of the costume rack, I brought down a couple of faceless wooden heads wearing wigs. The wig I chose was a high-piled, blond-ringleted concoction, more of a tawdry Madame du Barry than a Queen Marva June, but it was close enough and so roomy that you could pull it conveniently over Naomi’s scarf.
When I looked, however, I saw that my cousin had already whipped off the scarf and was in the process of shaking out her hair. And now that the secret was out, it looked to me like it might be a job to cover it up again. For one thing, she seemed to have more hair than I remembered, or was it just that she’d washed it for a change? In any case, taking a silver-spined brush out of her bag, she began to stroke the shock of it into a dark and static-crackling tawniness. With every brush stroke her hair seemed more abundant, acquiring a kind of corona from the overhead light, which gave me another idea. I tossed aside the dusty wig and went casting about in the vault again, this time coming up with a delicate rhinestone coronet. Using it as a comb to sweep back her veil of bangs, I positioned it in Naomi’s hair. Then I stepped away to watch its blue-black sheen catch the fire of those winking and shooting stones.
I gave a nod, turned again, and began rooting around under the costumes, searching for a suitable pair of shoes. I didn’t look over my shoulder when I heard her in motion again; I didn’t need to. The whispered susurrus alone was enough to carry me back to that sidetracked afikomen hunt on a distant Passover evening, so I knew that Naomi was pulling on a pair of silk stockings (in dark indigo, I imagined, or smoke), hoisting them over her azure-veined thighs.
Taking a deep breath, letting it out, I kept my mind on the matter at hand. From among a mismatched assortment of galoshes and clogs, elevators and carpet slippers with upcurling toes, brogans caked in the mud of Verdun, I selected a pair of blue satin dancing pumps. Hoping they would fit, I swiveled around on my knees to help Naomi try them on. She obliged me by steadying herself, placing a hand benediction-style on the top of my head. With her other she lifted the rustling organdy of her gown, raising it as far as her ankle. This was a perfectly functional action on her part, nothing you would call especially Cinderella. So why did a certain organ in my chest choose that moment to do its impersonation of a landed fish?
When I stood up to get the full effect of my labors, I found I didn’t quite know how to look at her anymore. I averted my eyes and said I supposed that she wanted to get a load of herself. “Don’t go away,” I told her, which struck me as funny, as if I’d said it to a manikin instead of a living girl.
I flung about outside the cage for another minute or two. Eventually I turned up what I was looking for, wrapped in a bullet-riddled flag: a cloudy oval mirror in its burnished frame. I went back and held it in front of my cousin’s face. I stood just behind her, holding up the mirror, kibbitzing her reflection over her shoulder—so that together we seemed to be gazing at the portrait of one shayne fair lady. In this way I was able to make an objective assessment of my handiwork.
She was a dream, the one in the mirror. She had a comeliness that could have presided over pageants, be they in the city of Memphis or the palace of Belshazzar. She was the type that could tease a dozen suitors, playing each against the other, while behind her fan she exposed the wickedness of his most trusted adviser to the king. She was a corker, all right; she could have fooled anybody. She could have fooled her own father. She could have fooled blithering Michael, shimmering into his field of vision like a lavender-blue flame—a flame composed
of all the careless sparks that had flown from his mouth in the course of his long delirium. In fact, she could have fooled me.
As I craned my neck to peer into the mirror, I could no longer see past her radiance to the original shrimp underneath. The difficulty was possibly due to the murkiness of the glass, which I promptly put aside. But when I took her by the arm to turn her around, gingerly, as if she might break, it was even worse. She was beautiful. The thought came to me then that I was seeing my cousin for the first time as she truly was—which was ridiculous. After all, wasn’t I the author of her transformation? I was the one responsible for having just made her up, and I knew what was real. Still the thought persisted like an itch that you’re embarrassed to scratch in public. So who was in public?
“Naomi?” I said, the way you’d ask, Is anybody home? I resisted an impulse to tap on her forehead. Then she had to give me this smile. It was a close-mouthed smile, gentle and self possessed but nonetheless cruel. A smile by way of informing her cousin that she refused to be so kind as to disillusion him.
That was all it took. Suddenly I had a dilemma on my hands. Which was the greater crime, I asked myself: to run out on the twins in their hour of dreadful need or to come to their aid by handing over my cousin for them to do with as they pleased? Because that’s what it boiled down to, didn’t it? I could either forsake my colored acquaintances—since to turn up empty-handed now would be as good as forsaking them—or give them the tender, night-blooming Naomi at the risk of her health and well-being, not to mention her honor. There was nothing in between.
Of course I couldn’t leave my old pal Lucifer in the lurch. Weren’t we practically blood brothers under the skin and all that? Didn’t I owe him for all the adventure I’d ever known? To abandon him at such a time would make me the lowliest kind of traitor, a rat and a worm. It was unthinkable. On the other hand, how could I place my defenseless cousin, this knockout darling in her party attire, in such uncertain peril? How could I lead her into all that shvartzer chaos on the notorious side of an unnatural body of water that stunk enough to stain the very air?
Then it was funny that the scheme didn’t seem so farfetched anymore; clearly it had been a brilliant strategy all along. She was perfect for the part, Naomi, just what the doctor ordered to bring this whole cockamamy situation to a head. Like a living poultice, she could have drawn out the infection of moonstruck yearning from the sick kid’s system. The septic boil that his heart had become (which he might have done better to wear on his dusky behind) would have burst in a spray of fleeing demons at the sight of her; it would have survived, Michael’s heart, exquisitely seared but knitted whole again by the cautery of her touch. She could have done that—what couldn’t she do, the angel? But she was mine.
So I told her it was all a joke.
“Naomi,” I said, “I got a confession to make. You know all that stuff about the colored twins? Well, it was all just a load of bunk.” It was, I told her, just a line to get her to come down to the pawnshop after hours. “And why, you might ask, would I want to do that?” This was a very good question indeed, and one for which I had no ready answer.
Stumped, I looked to Naomi, hoping unreasonably that she might provide an answer herself. You wanted to see how far I would go for your sake, she might have suggested, and I’d have wagged my head idiotically and said, “Bingo.” But as no help was forthcoming from her quarter, I blundered on.
“I was curious to find out how, I dunno, gullible you were. It was kind of an experiment,” I submitted, which didn’t even make good sense. Aware that I was probably hanging myself with every word, I nevertheless seemed unable to curb my tongue. “I guess you’re pretty gullible, aren’t you? I mean, just imagine trying to pass you off as the queen of the Cotton Carnival.” Here I filled the air with bogus laughter.
Throughout my foot-in-mouth performance, Naomi had yet to give anything away. A little pity or even righteous anger would have been a relief, but no such luck. If her limpid eyes betrayed anything, it was, Look at what you’ve done to me, Harry. I hope you’re satisfied.
“You’re really taking it like a champ, kiddo,” I assured her, leaning forward to pat her vertebra at the place where her underwear protruded from the back of her gown. Then I told her I supposed the joke had gone far enough, and I was ready if she was (Mr. Big-Hearted) to let the matter drop here and now. I asked her if she didn’t think it was time we started for home.
Still not a peep from Naomi, not a tummy rumble. All right, I thought, if she won’t cooperate of her own free will, I’ll just have to give her a shove. What choice did she leave me except to undo the wondrous thing I’d done?
I began cautiously with the coronet and, meeting no resistance, unhooked the string of pearls. I paused for a moment’s regret, then reached around her bodice to unfasten the clasps at her spine. (It might have been less awkward to stand behind her for this operation, but Naomi was slight and my encircling arms were long for my size.) Then I gave a tug at her ruffled shoulders, and in an instant she stood defrocked.
I hadn’t anticipated such abrupt results. I’d assumed that Naomi would intervene, having been provoked into taking over herself. But as it turned out, the costume collapsed of its own accord, settling in a sibilant heap about her ankles. Along with it a loose strap of her camisole had been dragged off a shoulder, so that a budding right booby sprang into view. This I pretended not to notice, quickly turning my back to gather her cast-off clothes. As I was picking up the sailor pants and the jersey, everything that was needed to restore Naomi to her former self, I heard a noise behind me. With a sound like a cough giving birth to a whimper, she’d broken her silence for what seemed like the first time in centuries.
When I looked, her tranquil composure had come apart, leaving her racked with shuddering all up and down her bony frame. She was given over to a fit of sobbing, so careless in its transports that she neglected her modesty. I marveled slack-jawed at the way her upstanding pink nipple clung to her joggling breast like a blood tick or a jumping bean. God knows I hadn’t meant to disrobe her so violently as to reduce her to such a state—though you couldn’t help feeling that, in some respects, this was more like it. Human again, Naomi might now be persuaded to get out of here.
I took a step forward to offer her clothes and maybe some sympathy, then took a step backward to dodge the arm that she was suddenly pointing at me.
“Harry!” she hooted, making it immediately apparent that she hadn’t been sobbing at all but laughing hysterically. Moreover, I myself seemed to be the butt of her joke. This might have upset me more if I hadn’t been secretly pleased that the first word she uttered after finding her voice was my name.
“Oh Harry.” There it was again. “I never saw anybody look so,”—she practically choked, the words swelling her cheeks till they burst forth in a guffaw—“so scaaared!” Doubled over with laughter, she allowed the cotton vest to slip from her other shoulder and fall to her waist, thus lending her mirth more symmetry.
I supposed it was good that she was able to see the humor in our situation, saw it evidently much better than I. I tried to force a grin myself, hoping to show I could enjoy a good yuck as well as the next, even if it was at my own expense. This was turnabout, after all: having more or less played her for a patsy, it was only fair she should pay me back in kind. Tit (so to speak) for tat.
“Ain’t we got fun,” I said, and repeated it was time to go home. I even suggested that some witching hour might be at hand. Hadn’t it just today been confirmed in my hearing that Kaplan’s sometimes played host to thieves? At any moment they might burst in on us; she should hurry up and take her belongings, which I tried again to dump in her arms. But it was clear that I was wasting my breath.
She did, however, do me the favor of attempting to suppress her hilarity, subduing it to the level of sniffling and the odd adenoidal snort. She even went so far as to affect a fleeting frown, studying her clothes in my hands as if I’d brought her the evidence of a shed
chrysalis. Then she gave herself up to a stormier fit of giggling than before.
I couldn’t stand it any longer. Dropping her rejected garments into the sawdust on the floor, I told myself that what I was doing was for her own good. She would understand that, no stranger to hysterics, I was administering a kind of first aid. I threw my arms around her bare shoulders and squeezed for all I was worth to calm her down. In a minute she’d be as limp and unresisting as her discarded gown, ready to see reason again.
With my chin clamped tight against her hair, I inhaled her closeness, her talcum and stale gardenia fragrance. I felt her sticky warmth glued to my shirtfront, through which I was tickled by her jiggling thingamabubs. It frightened me so much, this dazzled proximity, that I couldn’t tell where her spasms of laughter left off and my shaking began. Again I tried to assure myself that I was doing nothing wrong—or if it was a sin to hug your half-naked first cousin, then it was the kind that even my grandfather’s Scriptures must have made allowances for. Especially in the case of emergencies such as this.
When she pulled her face clear of the hollow of my neck, freeing her gleeful mouth, I saw a worried set of myselves reflected in the wet depths of her eyes. One worried Harry being all I could handle, and as the glare from the overhead bulb was anyway too harsh, I reached up and pulled the cord. In the dark I told Naomi to hush and, though I doubted that she heard me, suggested she might like to lie down for a spell. “Just until the craziness passes,” I said. With one arm still hooked about her fitful waist, I guided her in the direction of Zippe’s casket. I groped in front of us until my free hand made contact with the knotty pine, then swept wildly from left to right, clearing the coffin lid of bric-a-brac and, judging from the way that it bonged across the floor, an empty samovar.
Apparently amused by all the noise, Naomi renewed her cackling, stumbling a bit as I urged her forward. What she’d tripped over, as I discovered with my foot, was the clump of her party gown, which had yet to be unraveled from her ankles. Crushing the material with my heel, I took Naomi under the arms and lifted her—helplessly giddy featherweight that she was—out of the gown. Think of separating a mermaid from her vestigial fishtail. After that I encouraged her to lie back on the coarse-grained lid of the box, then climbed on board myself to keep her company.
