Butterflies in Heat (19 page)

"I'm going into my sauna now," she said on cue. "Let Anne know where I can reach you at all times. Good day." Clutching her robe around her naked body, she disappeared through a curtain.

Tangerine was back in the room.

Numie stared at her for a moment, started to say something, but thought better of it. .

She looked sheepishly at him, then wiped beads of sweat from her face. Going over to a large French window, she threw open the black velvet draperies, letting daylight pour through. At the window, she said, "I've been about to suffocate all afternoon. This vamp stuff's not for me."

"Why do you do it?" he asked.

"Do what, dumpling?"

"Let her humiliate you like that?" he asked.

"She's my friend, " Tangerine answered defensively.

"Is she?" he asked in a sharp voice. "Really?"

"My, what a lot of questions you got. I ain't had much sleep. Woke up in the middle of the night with a splitting headache. So, let's not be getting philosophical."

"Okay," he said.

"I guess I need her," she said, like a little girl lost. "She needs me, too. Other people don't understand her. But I do. She don't want to be mean. But she's afraid—like the rest of us. Of growing old. Of losing her looks. Of life. Just like us."

He walked over and put his hands on her flabby cheeks. Then he stared into the warm fire of her eyes. "I'm not knocking what you do to survive. I've done that and more. I still do."

Her eyes twinkled. "I just feel bad you had to watch. I'm ashamed to do
that—especially
in front of you. "

"We'll forget it," he said. "How long have you known Leonora?"

"Twelve years," she said. "Leonora just arrived one day—after being gone from Tortuga for ages-—and took back her house. I was working as a maid for Ruthie Elvina. She's the tightest bitch on this island. Ruthie Elvina was paying me twenty-five bucks a week, and Leonora advertised for a maid at fifty. So I took her up. She'd brought Anne and Ralph down with her." Tangerine paused a second, then went on. "I know I don't know a lot. There's a lot of things I can't talk with her about. Important things. But I listen. And with Leonora, listening is mighty important."

"She's damn lucky to have a friend like you," he said, smiling. "You're okay, Lady Blanchard. I like you."

"You'd better," she replied grinning. "Or else,
I'll
spank your butt." She walked back to the window—breaking a spell. "After one of those massage sessions with Leonora, I've got to have a shot of only one thing—corn liquor."

"You can't take Georgia out of the girl," he said.

"Hell no," she said. "I grew up on bootleg liquor, and I drink all this fancy bottled stuff, but it just never wets my whistle like a little moonshine. Let's go back to my place and drink some. My apartment's not fancy, you know, but I wouldn't trade it for all the Sacre-Coeurs in the world."

"What is this stuff?" Numie asked. "Rat's piss?"

In the middle of the living room, Tangerine paused as if she didn't hear correctly. Then she said, "This is just the best moonshine south of Georgia. Got
it
shipped down by my kin. What would you know about good moonshine anyway?"

"Had my first drink of it at the age of nine."

"Now who's gonna waste good moonshine on a kid of nine?" she asked.

"My Uncle Pete, that's who. A real bootlegger, pot belly and all." He downed another foul-tasting swig. "His two boys forced half a cup down me the first time I played with them. I vomited then, but
it
was better than the lumpy flour gravy Ora
—
that was Pete's wife
—
fed us kids."

"Lumpy flour gravy," Tangerine said reflectively, almost nostalgically. "We spoke of that before." She ran her hands up and down her body. "I wouldn't be so fat today
if
I hadn't slurped down so much of that stuff."

In the dim light of her apartment, her orange hair was like a fright wig. Her loose-fitting, tacky dress was the same strident color. Slowly she danced around, spreading the odor of cheap perfume across the room.

The naked light bulb, though dim, was cruel to the harsh canals of her face. In the comer a worn-out fan sputtered, but kept stirring up the stale hot air.

For a moment of isolated time, Tangerine was forgetting where she was. Rocking forth on her feet, she shook her fleshy body. "Yes, indeed," she said, "I remember the days when men liked a lady with a little meat on her bones."

"Many of them still do," he said. "I'm told a big ass on a woman turns on a lot of Cuban men. They're all over town."

"Yeah, but everyone I know wants a teen-age girl from the nunnery." She sighed. Taking a stiff shot of moonshine, she added, "It's not just being big. It's everything! I read in the paper the other day a checklist of no-nos for the Playboy Club. To be a bunny, you couldn't have wrinkled eyelids, sagging bosom, flabby underarms, bulging tummy, creepy neck, droopy derriere (I guess that means ass), and rippling thighs. I measured up perfectly to every no-no."

"You're not all that bad," he said, sorry for the way the conversation was going. Everybody seemed to be issuing a lament to old age. Even himself!

"Times were different once, " she said. A slight smile crossed her mouth. She was obviously remembering one of those better moments.

"Tell me," he said, "I really want to know. When was Tangerine Blanchard getting it on in a big way?"

"World War II, man, when I used to ride the rails, the happiest time of my life." Her feet bare as a beggar's, her body sogged with liquor, she plopped down on her favorite sofa. "I was a bit ripe even then, but a lot of young men treated me like a real beauty." Her skin was an unnatural color, like pink angora. "I was every fighting boy's gin mama. I always had a drink in my bag for every soldier, sailor, or marine." Her breathing grew heavier. "A little loving, too,
if
he wanted it."

In the white clamshell dust of this unbearably hot afternoon, he was slightly nauseous at the idea of Tangerine's sex life. But he knew she wanted to share her former triumphs, and he'd have to listen. "You must have kept busy
—
all those horny guys away from home."

"I sure did," she said proudly. "Never met so many uncut virgins in my whole life. Christ, this country in the early forties turned out nothing but virgins, or so it seemed at the time." She brushed under her eye. Was it a tear? "But I loved them all, especially the virgins." Her voice softened. "I was real tender with them."

Tangerine was slipping back, he felt dangerously, throwing a veil over the past, making it sound better than it was. Perhaps that's why he asked pointedly, "Didn't you think you were being used?"

She sat up, one breast practically falling out.
It
was as if his question had never occurred to her.

He decided to press the point. "By guys who didn't care where they got their rocks off?" After he'd said that, it sounded unnecessarily cruel
—
and he hadn't meant it that way.

She fell back again, shaking hard like a woman in labor. "Honey, I wanted to be used." Reaching for her moonshine again, she had a voice more blurred than before.
"It
didn't matter what they had
—
a foot-long sausage or a three-inch piece of spaghetti. Just as long as they were in pants
—
that's all that mattered." Through sunken eyes, she looked over to him.

He smiled, knowing she wasn't telling the truth.

"Well," she said, Mpants wasn't the reason. They had to want me. I never turned down a man." She paused. "Unless he was black, of course. God intended birds of a feather to flock together."

From where he was perched on the living room floor, Numie reached out and gently encircled her ankle. "Now don't you go letting your Georgia prejudice come out. After all, I'm related to black folks."

"What on earth do you mean?" Tangerine asked, not knowing whether to take him seriously.

"Remember that Uncle Pete I was telling you about? And Ora of the lumpy cream gravy? Ora told me she was Puerto Rican, but one of the farmers who lived nearby said, 'Boy, your aunt's as Puerto Rican as a native of the Belgian Congo'."

Tangerine was relieved. "That don't make you colored."

He nodded. An awkward moment came. "Let me get another glass," he said, heading for the kitchen. "This peanut butter one's badly chipped."

In the kitchen mice were playing in moldy garbage. "Hell, Tangerine," he called.

She didn't respond.

At the door, he said. 'Why don't you ever clean up this damn mess? You're breeding mice.'

The heat of the room hung like gauze over her. "I've spent my whole life cleaning up after somebody else. I made a vow that in my own home, I'd
be
just as dirty as I wanted to."

"But the roaches will eat you alive."

Tangerine looked over to the window where bougainvillea was creeping in. She sighed wistfully, almost anticipating a breeze that nevercame. "Who's to say they don't have as much right to live as we do? They were on earth long before we came along."

He turned and went back to the kitchen. The mice darted under the sink. Picking up a dirty glass, he washed
it
thoroughly.

Back in the living room, Tangerine was getting drunk. The moonshine was powerful stuff. In the hot air, she was puffing like an old bulldog. Folding the material of her dress, then adjusting it, she asked, "Do you think this dress looks good on me?"

He flung her a glance, almost a wild appeal for her not to seek compliments. Leonora had demanded enough to last the day.
"It
matches your hair perfect."

"Leonora hates the way I dress. I guess what I wear is the only way I have of defying her. But I'm grateful and all.
If
it wasn't for Leonora, I'd still be a maid."

"I think she reminded us of that just this afternoon." He poured more moonshine from a Mason canning jar. The liquor was tasting better the more he drank. Maybe moonshine was an acquired taste.

The air, so impure and unendurable, seemed to be leading Tangerine into meditation. "Yep," she said, "'I'm her personal masseuse now, but until that promotion I was a maid most of my life. Ever since the depression."

"That shatters my illusion," he said jokingly. "I thought you were the madame of an elegant bordello ... at least."

"I wish it was true," she said. "No, I'm just a damn scrubwoman. Daddy got me going. He couldn't feed me, so he hired me out. I worked as a maid to anybody who was rich."

"Well, you're still with a richie."

"Leonora's a real richie. When I got my start, a family making twenty-five dollars a week was 'rich'. You could imagine what my wages were."

"I couldn't, but I know what it is now. Fifty dollars a week."

"I couldn't even save up enough money for a pair of high heels. I've always loved high heels. They make me feel so thin."

A fly buzzed the room. An echo of the past drifted across. He sat up, jerking his shoulder. My God, he thought.
It
was the remark about high heels that did it. Tangerine was a white version of Louise, his long-ago black mama. Louise used to endorse high heels for the same reason. "You lived through the last of the Old South, didn't you?"

"Sure did. I can still see myself, trudging along some dirt road somewhere, with myoId cardboard suitcase held together by a piece of rope. No money, nothing—just two or three feedsack dresses and the name of some dumb ass farmer who wanted slave labor in exchange for a roof over my head and something to eat."

"I guess you were lucky back then just to have something to eat."
 

"I didn't get much, " she said sadly, "although you wouldn't know it to look at me now. Sometimes the families I worked for wouldn't let me eat at the same table with them. Made me eat in the kitchen or else out on the back porch with the coloreds."

"Mama and I always had collard greens. Sometimes we never had anything else, but she'd always manage to stir up collards." He was enjoying this moment of camaraderie with Tangerine, revelling in their communal bond, like part of the same family.

"Fern Cornelia, as they called me back then, never got near the pork chops, though. Sometimes I'd go over the bones after the folks had finished with them. But no one ever left much meat on the bones in those days."

"I've had to eat other people's leftovers. In New York I used to go into restaurants and sit down at tables after diners had gotten up. People were always leaving lots of food on their plates, and I'd finish a few off when I was real hungry—which was a lot of the time."

"Wasn't you chased out?" she asked.

"Plenty of times, but I kept alive."

A sound was heard against the screen door. Tangerine jumped up, waddle-assing across the floor. The wooden boards creaked. Opening the door, she grabbed up the afternoon paper. "I want to show you something," she said. "It's on the editorial page." Through bleary eyes, she thumbed through the paper. "I always know where to find him, even without my glasses on.
There."