by Sam Torode
“Circumcision.”
Eddie never got an answer, because the old hag turned purple and ran out of the room.
Later, I asked my father what it meant. “It’s the removal of the foreskin of the penis,” he said.
It took me a minute to get over the shock of Father saying the word penis. “Re—removing? As in, cut—cut—cutting off?”
“That’s right. With a knife.”
I looked down at my crotch. “Did—did I have that done to me?”
He frowned. “Of course. It’s a sign that your body is consecrated to God, every member of it.”
The blood drained from my face. And from my injured member, too. From that day on, I was haunted by the ghost of my foreskin. What did it look like? Would girls like me better if I still had one? Did chopping it off stunt my growth? Was that I why I still hadn’t hit
puberty?
After Abraham gives his 99-year-old pecker a shave, the lowly foreskin becomes a major player in the Bible. It becomes the defining mark of God’s chosen people. Things really get crazy in the Book of Samuel, when David slaughters 200 Philistines, circumcises their corpses, and brings the bloody foreskins to King Saul on a silver platter—in exchange for the king’s daughter. And this was the same David who killed Goliath? Every Baptist boy’s hero? Author of the Book of Psalms?
My life would be a lot less confusing, I thought, if only God had told Abraham to cut the whole damn thing off.
+ + +
The idea that we evolved from monkeys was tough to swallow. But what was the alternative? Flaming swords, fornicating angels, faked dinosaurs, and Philistine foreskins? No wonder the Chicagoans heckled that old evangelist.
As far as I could see, there were only two possibilities. Either the evangelist was right—and my father with him—or the Chicagoans were right.
If the evangelist was right, this life was nothing more than a waiting room for the next. The only thing on earth that mattered was placing your reservation for eternity. And, considering how I preferred the French Lady over Jesus, I’d already bought my ticket to that warm place down South.
But if the Chicagoans were right, there was no hell—and no heaven, either. This life was all there is. You’re born, you eat, you shit, you screw, you die.
Funny thing was, the Chicagoans seemed happy, while the evangelist—sure of his eternal reward—didn’t. Then I realized why: if no one’s keeping score, there are no rules. If there is no Judgment Day, you can do whatever you want. Forget about laws and obligations—follow your whims and enjoy life while it lasts.
As we pulled into St. Louis, the last ember of my childhood faith flew out the window and disappeared in a stream of smoke. For the first time in my life, I was free to do whatever I wanted.
Bring on the Harvey Girls.
CHAPTER 7
FRED Harvey’s restaurant was right inside the station, so all I had to do was follow the scent of succulent flesh. My belly was as famished for food as my eyes were for pretty girls.
A man in a tuxedo showed me to a table in back, where I scanned the menu and the room. Once I got my bearings, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Those were the Harvey Girls? Beautiful in form and spirit?
What a crock. They looked like a bunch of damn Pilgrims in a Thanksgiving Day pageant, with their starched white collars and black dresses that touched
the floor. You couldn’t even see their forms. Aside from their hands and faces, you wouldn’t know they had bodies at all.
My waitress looked and talked like a prissy school marm. I always figured I was damned to wind up with a girl like that—mousy, pious, with thin lips, pencil-drawn eyebrows, and granny glasses. That was the only sort of girl who’d ever want to marry a preacher’s boy. She wouldn’t give me so much as a kiss before we were married. And after were got hitched, she’d undress in the dark so I’d never get to see her naked.
The acme of femininity? Those Harvey Girls were straight out of my worst nightmares. I chowed down my hamburger and got the hell out of there.
Unlike Chicago Union Station, they had bathrooms in St. Louis. In fact, they had two different kinds: White and Colored. It took me a minute to figure out that Colored didn’t mean red and blue toilets. In Remus, nobody was scared to use the same john as a black man. I knew from experience: white shit doesn’t look any different from colored.
Remus had quite a few Negroes, known as the Old Settlers. Nobody knew how they got there—maybe the Underground Railroad—but they’d been there as long as anyone could remember. My best friend at school, Sammy Swisher, was one of them.
Walking to school together one winter morning, Sammy and I found a dead skunk, frozen stiff. The whole rest of the way, we played skunk hockey, kicking it back and forth over the ice. When we got to school, there was a note on the door: no class—Ms. Steinke was home sick. That gave Sammy an idea.
We went inside and propped the skunk up in her chair. I found a pair of Ms. Steinke’s wire glasses in the desk drawer, and set them on its nose. To top it all off—Sammy wrote “Ms. Stinky” in huge letters across the blackboard.
Mrs. Steinke never lived it down. Neither did she ever catch the culprits. She suspected Sammy, but he had a perfect alibi: he’d been with the preacher’s son all day.
+ + +
My experiment in doing whatever I wanted was off to a poor start, but the possibilities before me were endless. First thing, I left the station and walked until I came to the Fox Theater. When I saw the sign out front, I couldn’t believe my luck: Modern Times was playing—Charlie Chaplin’s new movie.
In Remus, the “theater” was a converted storage room in Bob’s Barber Shop, with a wobbly projector in back and a white sheet up front. The film reels were old and grainy, with no sound other than old Bob’s coughing and wheezing. I didn’t mind too much, though—for a penny I could see Chaplin in The Circus, or Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Junior, or Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last.
Inside, the Fox didn’t look like a theater at all. It was more like a temple to the God of Cinema. Everything was decked out in red and gold; satyrs and nymphs cavorted along the walls, and Oriental warriors stood watch from their pedestals high above. The ceiling of the auditorium was as wide as the night sky, painted deep blue with blinking lights for stars, with a chandelier as big as the moon in the center.
My favorite part of the movie was when they hooked Charlie up to the Billows Feeding Machine—“A practical device to feed your men while they work.” The machine short circuits and dumps hot soup down Charlie’s shirt, splats a pie in his face, shoves a metal bolt in his mouth, and slaps him silly with a sponge.
My other favorite part was Charlie’s sidekick, played by Paulette Goddard. The title card called her “The Gamin, a child of the waterfront.” Long, graceful legs, black hair wet with sea mist, strong cheekbones, cunning eyes, a tight-fitting dress torn at the bottom . . . For a child, Paulette Goddard sure was well-developed.
It was past 8 o’clock when the show let out, though you wouldn’t have known for all the city lights. After the train ride, dinner, and food, I still had $29 and some change. A ticket to Fort Worth would only cost $10. That left me plenty of money to burn, and I had the urge to burn it. No more train berths for me. Tonight, I’d sleep in luxury.
And tomorrow—? I didn’t know what I wanted to do next. Why go to Texas at all? Why did I owe it to my father? He brought this mess upon himself. Maybe I’d stay in St. Louis and get a job. Or head out to California, where I could pick oranges and sleep under the stars. But there was free money to be had in Texas. Maybe I’d get the money first, then go to California. I’d live like a king, sleeping in swanky hotels every night.
It was all too much to think about now. I could barely keep my eyes open. The first order of business was finding a place to sleep for the night.
I walked over to a hot dog stand. The proprietor was a red-haired, pimple-faced boy about my age, and I figured he’d know this town as well as anybody. “Excuse me,” I said. �
�I’m not from around here and, well, what I’m wondering is—what’s the best place to bed down around here?”
I always get nervous asking for help, so I was relieved when he gave me a friendly smile. “Out for a good lay tonight, eh pal?”
“That’s right, someplace nice. Not a seedy flophouse—I mean someplace ritzy.”
“I know just the place,” he said. “Follow Grand to Market and hang right. Keep on for a couple blocks till you come to a pink house. Pink and purple, really big. You can’t miss it.”
“What’s it called?”
“The Palace.”
“You’re sure it’s nice?”
“The swankiest joint in town, pal. I can vouch for that myself. All the Harvey Girls stay there.”
It sounded too bizarre to be true. Then again—if they showed movies in a Hindu temple, why wouldn’t they sleep in a pink palace? I wanted to stay far away from those Harvey Girls, but it wasn’t like I’d be in the same room with one. I tossed the pimple-faced boy a penny for his help and headed up Grand Avenue.
+ + +
I’d never stayed in a hotel before, so I wasn’t sure what to expect. Remus had only one hotel—the Remus Inn. It wasn’t really an inn, though, just two spare rooms above Bob’s Barber Shop. Bob Rufus—“Blind Bob,” everyone called him—presided over a vast conglomeration of enterprises. His two-story brick building served as barbershop, movie theater, inn, and meeting hall. Bob wasn’t truly blind, but he kept a bottle under the counter and would sneak a few nips in-between customers, which produced a similar effect. His barber business dried up for a while after he sliced off the top of Albert Denslow’s ear—and that’s when he cleared out two spare rooms and opened the inn. The inn turned out to be a bust, since nobody travels though Remus except the occasional northbound hunter. But if fleas and rats were paying customers, Bob would’ve been the richest man in town.
I hiked down Market Street for at least five blocks with no pink palace in sight. I began to have my doubts; but even if the boy was fooling with me, I figured, some other place was bound to turn up. The district was teeming with people, mostly colored. Doors opened and closed, spilling laughter and music out onto the street. Black men in white undershirts leaned against lamp poles, puffing on cigarettes and whistling at women. Old ladies leaned out of apartment windows and shouted gossip at each other. Street vendors hawked their wares. All this excitement, and I could barely keep my eyes open.
I trudged on, past bars and clubs and cabarets with dancing girls and blaring horns. More than anything, I wanted to go inside, order a drink, and take a load off, but I didn’t have the courage. I wasn’t even sure if white folks were allowed.
Then, passing by an open door, I heard a sound that stopped me in my tracks. There was no wild laughter, no raucous music here. All was quiet except for a tinkling piano and a woman’s voice.
Love for sale;
Appetizing young love for sale;
Love that’s fresh and still unspoiled,
Love that’s only slightly soiled;
Love for sale.
I leaned against the window and let her voice wash over me. Through the glass and smoke, I glimpsed the singer, a black woman in a silver dress. She seemed to gather up all the sadness in the world, boil it down to its essence, and pour it out in her song.
Let the poets pipe of love
In their childish way;
I know every type of love
Better far than they.
Something tugged at my shoulder. I started to turn around and, behind me, a man had his arm halfway inside my pack. I yelled, pushed him away, and ran as fast as I could.
I ran till there were no more lights, no clubs, no crowds. When I stopped and looked back, I was the only soul on the sidewalk. That damn pimple-faced boy must have sent me down the one street in town that didn’t have a hotel. My feet were sore and blistered. I sat down on a patch of grass and cursed everything and everyone who’d got me in this fix.
All the houses were dark except one—a Victorian mansion across the street. It was at least three stories high, a jumble of gables and dormers and wraparound porches, with a round turret off to one side. The lamps in the windows cast a red glow over the place, more eerie than inviting.
Red glow? Couldn’t be. I got up to take a closer look. The hedges out front hadn’t been trimmed in ages, and vines were crawling all over the verandah and up the walls. But yes, the siding was pink—with purple trim! I took back all my curses and thanked the pimple-faced boy a thousand times over.
Beside the door was a sign half-covered by ivy:
LE PALAIS
Cuisine Française
Cuisine—didn’t that mean food? It was a damn restaurant, not a hotel. I started back to cursing.
It looked open, though, and I could hear voices inside. Maybe someone here could point me in the right direction. I rang the doorbell but no one answered, so I tried the door. It fell open, setting off a series of chimes. Inside the parlor, some gents were playing cards and snacking on what must have been some French hors d’oeuvres. Two ladies descended stairs, wearing silk gowns with necklines that plunged clear to their belly buttons. But it wasn’t their belly buttons I noticed as they brushed past me.
From behind, a stern voice broke my reverie. “Excuse me.”
I turned to find a wide woman behind a narrow desk. “Pardon me, ma’am, I’m, uh—”
“Mademoiselle,” she said. “Mademoiselle Colette.” Her face was ghastly white, with bright red lips and two slashes for eyebrows. A great mound of thick, blonde curls perched on top of her head.
“I’m sorry, Miss Colette. If you please, I—I seem to be lost.”
“How may I be of assistance, monsieur?”
“I’ve come a long way, and I was looking to bed down for the night. So I asked where a nice place was, and—”
She raised a hand to silence me. “I’m sure you’ll find our accommodations quite satisfactory, monsieur.”
I breathed easy and dropped my pack on the floor. Of course, I realized—all swanky hotels have restaurants on the first floor. At that moment, I could have kissed the mademoiselle. Hell, I could have kissed the pimple-faced boy. “You can’t imagine how much this means to me.”
Her mouth twisted into a smile. “Is this your first time?”
“First time anywhere. I’m from Remus, in Michigan, and back home we don’t even have—”
“There’s no need to explain,” she said. “You look like a sweet one. I’ll give you a discount—only seven dollars for the whole night.” As I counted out my bills, she scanned her ledger. “What’s your favorite month of the year—April, May, or June?”
“October, actually,” I said. “I like the way the leaves—”
She snapped her ledger shut and handed me a key. “I think you’ll like June.”
CHAPTER 8
BY the time I reached the top of the stairs, I didn’t give a damn about luxury anymore—I was ready to sleep in the hallway. But I staggered on like a drunkard till I found my room number. I rattled the key in the door, kicked it open, flung my pack on the floor, threw off my coat, yawned, and—without even turning on the light—lunged for the bed.
The bed was not as soft as I expected. In fact, it felt like there was something hard under the blankets. And that something seemed to be moving. Then it cursed. “Get the hell off me, you filthy bastard!”
Fingers clawed at my face and knees kicked at my groin. I tumbled off the bed, knocked over a lamp , and got tangled in the electrical cord. “I’m so sorry,” I pleaded from the floor. “I thought this was my room—number eight—the number on the—”
“What do you think I am, a trampoline?”
“Why no—that is—let me—”
I propped the lamp back up, extracted my legs from the cord, and tried to get a handle on the situation. Either I had the wrong room, or this girl had the wrong bed.
One thing was certain—she wasn’t happy about it. “I keep saying
—no more drunks. And what does she send up? Some shit-faced punk . . . ”
When I fixed the shade back on the lamp, she leaned over and clicked it on. The girl looked younger than she sounded—maybe sixteen or seventeen—with a powdered round face, bright red lips, blonde curls, and dark Theda Bara eyes. Her shoulders were bare, and she was wearing nothing but a sheet below them.
I backed up against the door and felt for the handle.
She looked me up and down. “My, you’re a young one. I think I’ll call you babyface.”
She was calling me young? I gripped the doorknob, ready to run.
She straightened out the blankets and pillows around her. “Well, aren’t you going to sit down?”
I was confused—if this was her room, why did she want me to stay? And if it was my room, why didn’t she get out?
“Don’t stand there looking stupid, babyface.”
I eased over to a wingback chair in the corner, ready to sort things out. “The lady downstairs told me room eight,” I started.
The girl frowned and slapped the edge of the bed. “Over here, silly.” That’s when it dawned on me where I was—and what she was.
Temptress. Harlot. Whore. The words I’d heard in a thousand sermons echoed in my head. This was the sort of girl Father had always warned me about.
She didn’t look particularly loose or fallen, whatever that meant. She was kind of cute, actually. I sat on the far end of the bed, with my back to her, then twisted around sideways.
