Butterfly (21 page)

steal doughnuts when she was starving in El Paso, just as she never held back any of the

money the clients gave her, as some of the girls did, it would never have occurred to

Rachel to trap Danny with a baby. Other girls, she knew, had done that. They purposely

got pregnant so their boyfriends would marry them and take them out of here. Once in a

while even a client married one of the girls and took her home. Pregnancy was, for many

women, a means of getting rescued. And so it would be for Rachel. But she had not

planned it that way.

She really had forgotten to put in the diaphragm the night she slept with Danny.

And that was how she knew it was his baby.

With the clients, she was fastidious about practicing birth control. As much as she

desired a baby, she did not want a child by one of these men. She wanted it to be a love

child, conceived in love, and loved from the moment it stirred in her womb. And that was

exactly what Danny’s baby would be. They were going to get married one day—he kept

telling her so, and she never let
that
dream die either. And when they did, she would have

his children and be the best wife and mother on the face of the earth.

“Listen, honey,” Hazel said when the party was over and the girls drifted back to their

routine of waiting, “if Danny don’t come tonight, you gotta work.”

Rachel pretended not to hear. She was sitting at the table, carefully pressing and fold-

ing the wrapping paper her birthday present had come in. She would save it in her special

cigar box of mementos, a box similar to the one her mother had kept hidden under the

sink.

“Look, just ’cause it’s your birthday don’t give you no special privileges. Mr. Atkins is

in town and he’ll be wanting you.”

Rachel felt her stomach turn. Mr. Atkins was a traveling Bible salesman and one of the

least-liked customers. The girls were glad he had taken a shine to Rachel; it relieved them

of the unpleasant task of servicing him. And the reason he liked Rachel was the very fact

of her detachment. He liked the way she lay quiet and still. And he liked to cross her arms

over her breasts before he started; he asked her to close her eyes. It wasn’t hard for Rachel

to do, but it still sickened her.

“Danny will be here,” she said softly.

“I’ve heard that one before,” Hazel said.

When her employer was gone, Eulalie, standing at a sink full of hot soapy dishwater,

muttered, “Lordy, hear that wind blow. Don’t I feel a norther comin’! And don’t we about

need some rain!” She looked at Rachel and said gently, “Don’t let that old cow get to you,

child. A girl’s got a right to be happy on her birthday. And Danny’ll be here, God willing

and the creek don’t rise.”

Rachel would not let Hazel dampen her spirits. Danny
would
come tonight. Sure, he

had forgotten many times in the past two years, or he had gotten tied up in something he

and Bonner were involved in, and then his schoolwork took up so much of his time and

energy. But he did love her and he would come for her birthday.

Besides, Rachel told herself with strengthened resolve, now that she was pregnant, she

was never going to bed with another man again.

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Danny was going to take her away from here. Tonight.

“Hey, kiddo!” came Belle’s voice from the doorway. “Great party.”

Rachel turned around to see her two friends. She smiled at them. “Thank you for the

books.”

“Hey, you know?” said Carmelita as she strolled across the kitchen toward the cof-

feepot. “It ain’t easy finding you a book you ain’t already read!”

“Are
you
going to read it?” Rachel asked her with a teasing grin.

“Santa María!
You are a tough teacher!”

A year ago, to the amazement and delight of both, Carmelita had turned out to be a

quick study. Rachel had had her reading the alphabet in a week, and Dick and Jane books

a month after that. Soon, Carmelita had graduated to grammar school textbooks, and

finally to adult novels. It took her a long time, and she often struggled over words, but she

was able to get through a library book—she liked historical novels about biblical times

and stories about the saints—in about two weeks.

As she poured herself a cup from the ever-brewing pot, adding thick rich cream and

three teaspoons of sugar, Carmelita pulled several envelopes out of her fake-silk kimono

and waved them at Rachel. “Got six more to send,” she said.

Rachel beamed. The first thing her friend had done with her new skill was to write a

letter to a crossword-puzzle magazine asking if they could use number puzzles. They had

accepted, and she had been paid five dollars for her first puzzle. Now Carmelita was reg-

ularly thinking up new ones and sending them in. She was putting money in a bank

account now, with her numbers. If only, Rachel thought wistfully, Carmelita had enough

self-confidence to leave Hazel and get more schooling. With her natural ability with

numbers, and her fantasy of the respectable office job, there was no reason why Carmelita

could not make that dream come true.

But unfortunately, like most of the girls in the house, Carmelita had been beaten

down and abused into believing she was exactly where she belonged.

The only other girl, besides Rachel, who did not share that view was Belle.

Belle remained firm in her conviction that, with her Susan Hayward looks, she was

made for better things, and that this was only a way station. A place to save some money,

and bide her time. How she bided her time was following the movies and dreaming.

Today she wore a scarf over her head to hide the 125 pins that kept her short curls in

place. When the poodle cut became the fashion, Belle got one. Likewise the Capezio

shoes and wide plastic belts. With the advent of television, and most particularly with the

installation of a set in Hazel’s “reception” room, Belle was kept even more currently up-to-

date with the latest styles. Now she followed the examples of Dorothy Kilgallen and Lucy

Ricardo. Someday Hollywood was going to call. She didn’t want to look like a hick.

Rachel got up and went to the kitchen door. From the reception room came the sound

of “Mr. Sandman” on the radio. A few deep voices mingled with high girlish laughter. It

was late afternoon and business was starting to pick up. Gently closing the door and lean-

ing with her back against it, she looked at her two friends.

She was going to miss Belle and Carmelita when Danny took her away. Of course, if

they found a place in San Antonio, then she could come and visit, and bring the baby and

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let all the girls ooh and ah over it. Rachel’s child would be a lucky child, because it would

have so many aunts to love it.

And maybe once in a while she could leave the baby with Danny and go into town

with Belle and Carmelita as they usually did, getting on the bus and going to the drug-

store to buy movie magazines and Coty face powder. The three liked to spend their

Tuesdays sitting at the drugstore counter inventing ice cream concoctions. Rachel’s were

always the best, with nuts and marshmallow topping and three flavors of ice cream and

whipped cream and a cherry on top. Quality girls would sometimes come in, wearing

their full skirts with yards of petticoats underneath and being called “ma’am” by the drug-

gist and getting doors opened for them by clean-cut young men. Belle and Carmelita and

Rachel would watch the quality girls and secretly yearn for such respectability. Once in a

while, if one happened to look her way, Rachel would smile, but she never got a smile in

return. No matter how clean and decent she and her two friends tried to look on their

Tuesday outings, they could never disguise the fact that they were trash. And quality

never mingled with trash. Those other girls with their pert ponytails and talk of dances

and football games would whisk past the three at the counter as if they weren’t even there.

Standing at the kitchen door, Rachel looked at her two friends and said quietly, “I

have something to tell you.”

Belle was going through a well-thumbed
Life
magazine. “What is it, kiddo?”

Rachel’s heart was thumping, she was so excited. “I’m going to have a baby.”

Carmelita spun around. “What!”

“I’m going to have a baby. Isn’t it wonderful?”

The two exchanged a glance.

“Well?” Rachel could hardly contain her excitement.

“Does Danny know?” Carmelita asked.

“I’m going to tell him tonight. He’s taking me out to dinner. Someplace special down

on River Walk. I thought I’d wait till then.”

“What are you going to do?” Belle said, laying aside the magazine.

“Do?”

“Yeah, you know,” Carmelita said. “What’re you gonna do?”

Rachel looked at them, puzzled. “About what?”

The two gave each other a quick look again, and Carmelita came to take Rachel’s

hand. “Come here,
amiga,
” she said quietly. “We gotta talk.”

Frowning, Rachel joined her friends at the table. “I thought you’d be happy for me,”

she said. “What’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong, kiddo,” said Belle, “is that we don’t think Danny’s gonna like it.”

“What?” Rachel laughed. “You must be joking! It’s all we ever talk about, how many

kids we’re going to have! We even know where we’re going to buy our house, just as soon

as he’s finished school and we have enough money saved up.”

Belle exchanged a glance with Eulalie at the sink while Carmelita drew circles with her

finger on the tabletop. It was beyond them how Rachel, after over two years in Hazel’s

house, could still be so naive!

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Kathryn Harvey

Nearly all the girls had “boyfriends”—men who brought them here, came to visit once

in a while, and took their money from them. There were many scenarios enacted, a lot of

pretense and self-deception, but in their hearts all the girls knew what their men were in

reality. Pimps, gigolos, no-goods. Nothing more. They smooth-talked their way through

women, lived off them, exploited them, just as Danny did, as Carmelita’s Manuel did.

They weren’t the most ideal of partners, they weren’t respectable husbands, which was

what the girls would have preferred, but they were, after all, men. And women needed

men. For identity, for protection. A woman simply didn’t go it alone. A woman without a

man had somehow failed, she was an incomplete person, a woman who had been “passed

over.” A man gave a woman meaning, a place in the scheme of things; even if she was his

whore, she belonged to a man, and that was what mattered.

But Rachel carried it too far. She actually believed Danny’s fast talk. She blindly over-

looked his thousands of shortcomings and saw only the knight in armor who had rescued her

in El Paso. Damn, Carmelita and Belle both thought. The poor kid had been so desperate,

she would have fallen in love with the first thing that showed her a kindness. A dog, even.

Which, incidentally, was what they both thought Danny Mackay was.

“Well, you’re wrong,” Rachel said, sad and hurt that her best friends were acting this way.

They just didn’t know Danny the way she did. He was going to be thrilled with the news.

“You’re
what?”
he shouted.

Rachel’s joy vanished. “I said I’m pregnant.”

He pounded the steering wheel. “I don’t fucking believe it. How the hell did it happen?”

She started to wring her hands. “I don’t know, Danny. It wasn’t on purpose. You know

how careful I’ve been. But, well, that night we were together, I was so happy, I just forgot—”

He stared at her. “Are you trying to tell me that it’s
mine?
”

She shrank from him, from the terrible look on his face.

“Shee-yit,” he muttered, hitting the steering wheel again. “I don’t believe any of this. I

just don’t. Damn it, Rachel! Just when things were starting to go good for me. School, my

plans—” He turned a dark look on her, something she had never seen on his face before.

It terrified her. “Okay. So what did you want me to do about it?”

“Do?”

“Yeah. You laid it on me for a reason. What did you expect me to do? Pass out cigars?”

“I thought we’d get married—”

He swung away from her and looked out at the sidewalk. “I don’t fucking believe this!

Well, we’re not getting married, so you can just forget that.”

“But, Danny,” she pleaded, reaching for him, “I thought we were going to get married

sometime. And now, if we don’t get married the baby will be illegitimate!”

He turned back around to give her an incredulous look. “You really take the prize, you

know that? I mean, you are a real winner! You know I can’t get married now. I’ve got

another year of school, and after that I have to start looking for ways to make something

of myself. I don’t want a wife and kid now for Chris’sake!”

She started to cry. It was turning out all wrong. This wasn’t how she had imagined it

would be. She had pictured a loving embrace, reassurances that everything was going to

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be all right, maybe a drive across the border for a quick wedding, and then a little house