The Maid's Version (3 page)

She waited while the gravy cooled again.

She cleaned the pots once more, put everything away, and as she walked toward the door, Mr. Arthur Glencross, president of Citizens’ Bank, a guarded but approachable man whose many good qualities were well known and celebrated while his lesser qualities were excused, beckoned Alma near, and whispered, “She wants me home tonight.”

Alma nodded, and went out through the side door, across the lawn to the alleyway in back. The alley was unlighted but offered the quickest route toward home, and she was guided over the slumping dirt and scattered stones by brightness from neighboring windows and the memory in her feet. The alley led to an avenue. Big trees kept the avenue shrouded, but the sidewalk was wide and mostly level underfoot. A cluster of peach trees grew in the large yard of a large old home near the corner where Alma turned south, and she paused there, took a stand near the trees, waiting to hear a voice. The peaches were young, small and hard but beginning to draw the branches down, and the air smelled fertile. She peered between tree trunks and cocked her head to better hear anything said to her from inside that darkness. And in seconds a voice from the peach cluster asked, “Is he in the house?”

“He is.”

“He’s left me sittin’ out here two hours waitin’.”

“He’s with his wife.”

“That nervy bastard.”

“She’s keepin’ him close tonight.”

Ruby DeGeer had been squatted to the ground among the peach trees, and now she rose, dusted her behind with a swatting hand and stepped onto the sidewalk. The sisters linked arms and began walking without comment, all the way to the town square and halfway around, then past the stock pens and down the hill toward the Dunahew shack. The pens were empty this night, but still stunk of livestock, a nearly pleasing stench that lingered over the eastern side of town.

“And here I wore my new hat, too.”

“I like it—what’d it run?”

“Won’t tell.”

“He buy you it?”

“No. Somebody else.”

The sisters favored as to posture, but Ruby was ten years younger and petite, with brown eyes that were often described in poetic terms, and a beguiling figure that she did not hide behind poorly fitted clothing or a dowdy fashion sense. Her hair was dark, with red aspects from henna she added, and was sculpted into a fashion that had roots in Egyptian myth, with straight, full bangs barely above the eyes and crisply sheared edges at jaw level. She was vivid in nature, sparky and game, and flirted readily with about any presentable man just to make time fly or snag a fatter tip at the Stockman’s Café when she waited tables. She’d run away to New Orleans once for three months and returned eager to give the impression that she’d seen many scandalous practices in this wicked old world, but had not been rubbed wrong by too many of them. She smoked Sweet Caporals on the street and laughed out loud in public, sometimes swore, and Alma was fearful for her when she was not jealous.

Alma said, “Will you sleep with us?”

“I’ve got Irish taters in my bag.”

“Them’ll go good with these bones I brung.”

Alma was of a height that earned no description save “regular,” sturdy in her legs and chest, and her hair was an ordinary who-gives-a-hoot brown, with finger waves above the ears that always collapsed into messy curls as the day went along. Kitchen work required her to keep her hair trimmed short to ensure that long hairs did not grace the meals she served. She dressed in whatever clothing Providence provided her and was grateful for anything that fit.

When the sisters went up the stoop to the Dunahew shack their steps were carefully placed on the bad wood of the narrow, askew porch, but they were heard and the door flung open on all three boys gathered just inside, ages thirteen, ten and five in 1929, with thin necks, soiled young hands, and hope verging on greed in their eyes. Alma pulled the bones from the thieving belt under her dress, held them up and said, “There’s gonna be supper.”

The shack had been poorly made long ago, built to house itinerant folks who’d tended to apple orchards at the eastern edge of town before a variety of wasting blights came along and the trees died, taking two dozen jobs down with them. The front steps sagged under every footstep, and the roof of the house was compromised by rot and spavined, a roofline that slumped in the middle, with holes beneath the eaves that were often used as entrances to the attic by squirrels, and the sounds of toenails clicking across the ceiling became frequent and routine. Inside there were two parts to the only room, divided by a stick-legged table plus three chairs, so both parts were constantly open to view and no one could ever be out of sight. A floor had been made of roughhewn planks that had been slowly rubbed to a haggard softness by clomping boots, wallowing toddlers in flour sack britches, woolen socks sliding, and the brisk sweeps of a corn-husk broom. A noisy pump with a long handle brought water into the kitchen. The sink was not laid level in the kitchen counter, but hoisted higher to the left and wedged in stiff, the result of repairs done almost correctly by Maurice “Buster” Dunahew, Alma’s husband. On most days the house held only four people, as Buster was no longer allowed to sleep there, or even visit much since he was required to arrive sober, and Ruby slept over only now and then, whenever blue clouds massing inside her chest raised a need to rest among family.

Alma washed potatoes for the stew while Ruby wrestled on the floor with the two younger boys, Sidney and John Paul. They loved to hug her and feel her arms around their shoulders in return, squeezing them near to smell her perfume, her lipstick, her smoky breath so exciting as it burst onto their faces. Ruby’s style, her looks, her sass and vinegar gave them the urge to fight for more, more of everything they could imagine, against anybody, whenever she was near. James was old enough to have heard stories and insults at school that narrowed his horizon in this town to a pinhole and made him more reserved, sullen on most days, with his taut face and slanted eyes. He had recently become captivated by tales of pirates on the high seas and the lucrative derring-do of regional outlaws, and thus inspired had taken to pinching necessary things from those who had them, and Alma did not ask as many questions as she might have done when medicines somehow came into the house, or canned pineapple, long johns, hunks of ham with savory juices that were memorized by the younger boys and described for weeks.

The bones and shreds of meat flavored the broth, and she’d added onions and Irish taters, a few beans from yesterday, a ramshackle stew, but one that should fill every tummy for a night. Alma turned from the stove and spoke in a whisper, “Supper, boys,” and she didn’t need to whisper twice.

M
iss Dimple Powell was fifteen years old and had never been to a dance. She’d prayed this night of music and boys would come before she wasted away from boredom, and had practiced dancing alone in her room for a full year now, her partner an overstuffed pillow with a dashing manner and a rather racy line of patter. His hair lay flat and glossy, shining like Valentino’s, and his hands sometimes roamed her back and she’d have to remind him she was fifteen and in no hurry, sir, but not mad, either. Her sister, July, and brother-in-law, Charles Lathrop, had gently hectored Mr. Powell, who had gotten accustomed to hearing the expectant sliding of waltzing feet from the floor above as he read the evening paper, until he said yes, finally, yes, and on dance night he gave Dimple a silent, rueful and humbled look over his spectacles as he watched her leaving his house so beautiful in a spotless new dress.

E
ast Side: dirt streets spread with oil to hold the dust low, home after home where the rough-lumbered walls have been deserted by paint and wasps haunt the eaves: a tin roof the sun beats on nakedly and sears but rainwater glides from smoothly and is gone in a slap into the dirt, it makes reddish mud in the front yard, side yard, backyard. Sidewalks are of little use, usefulness burst by the foraging roots of nearby trees, the wooden planks softened by age and slanted in two directions or more from the corruption in the middle. The sidewalk staves make excellent weapons when weapons are suddenly needed—he’s drunk again, that’s my bottle of milk, I just don’t want you around here no more, got that? Cats prowl between houses, dogs range about in the alleys, and a welter of children with bare feet play in wan, worn yards, beneath fading trees, playing with the terrible intensity of those who know already how quickly passing are their scant hours for fun.

Alma walked from the east each morning toward an important place, a house of prospering girth, brick walls sturdy as a vault, with a shaded veranda and heavy balustrade of purified white, a trefoil arch in the masonry over the doorway, large windows spanned by glass that rippled and bowed in the antique manner, bringing a winsome disarray to the eye from certain angles, the view of the world outside bent as the glass would have it bent, or stretched, or truncated. Town life was not so much run by the sun anymore but by the time displayed on clock faces, though Alma still answered to the early cock crows, roosters across town greeting dawn loudly but not in unison, somehow sensing daylight’s arrival with considerable variance of time, some now, some several minutes later. But she would always be at work early enough to make breakfast for Mr. Glencross, a hearty eater—pork sausage, eggs and cream biscuits—then the children, picky and complaining, usually wanting any cereal she hadn’t cooked, or eggs if she’d made cereal, and finally Mrs. Glencross, who asked only for cooled toast with no butter or jam and a steaming mug of English tea.

She often ate while standing near the kitchen sink, staring from the window there, and might address Alma as the table was cleared, “Do you believe it could rain today?”

“It could.”

“Believe it will?”

“Not likely. We need it too much.”

“My poor roses.”

Mrs. Glencross was the real source of wealth in the house. She’d been born into the Jarman family, and the Jarmans owned just about everything they cared to have—giant swaths of Ozark land, cattle, hogs and rental properties, a lumberyard, the Opera House, and a big piece of Citizens’ Bank. Mrs. Corinne Glencross had grown up shielded from a rounded experience of life, considered to be so delicate that she must not know the feel of direct sunlight upon her skin, the rude wind, dishwater on her hands, coarse people, and the common gamut of unpleasant facts. She didn’t know how to do anything much, but Alma liked her, liked her strange lilting mind, innocent and flitting about airily from subject to subject, making amusing points along the way but not lingering. She had few demands, or at least didn’t think of many she cared to utter. She spent the middle hours of most days reclining on the divan in the parlor with the curtains drawn and a cold cloth over her eyes, waiting stoically for her next appointment with Dr. Thomason. When she felt better, peppy for an hour or two, she’d follow Alma around the house as she worked, watching her do laundry, clean all fourteen rooms, make lye soap some days, iron bedsheets others, and ask her why she did things this way instead of that way, or what would happen if you tried dusting with a sponge, or used a more slender stick to stir the clothes in the washtub.

Alma would be patient, try to tell her why, or else say, “You’re lookin’ peaked just now, Mrs. Glencross. Wouldn’t want you to swoon to the floor and bruise. You got such good skin.”

On shopping days Alma would stride toward the square with a canvas tote bag and a small wad of money. She liked the meats from Jupiter Grocery, the produce from Widow McLean’s, and bought bread at the Greek’s down the avenue. When the Greek’s opened, Alma had resisted the place for months but relented, and on her first attempt to shop there she felt the Greek was trying to get an advantage on her in the amount of seven cents. She’d eyed him coldly, coin purse clenched unopened in her hand, then said, “You do me thisaway, mister, and you ain’t skinnin’ me at all—you’re skinnin’ Mr. Arthur Glencross. You best ask a friend who that is.” In the early gloaming of that evening the Greek called at the Glencross house with a heavy sack of hard candy, two loaves of bread, black olives and a long low nod for Alma. The Greek’s bread quickly became so highly regarded by the gentry that all the maids were relieved of bread-making duty, and though their gratitude to the Greek went unspoken, they became forever loyal to the store. The four and sometimes five or six maids who worked near the square tried to meet at the Greek’s between dusting time and lunch. They fingered the jars of interesting foods, smelled the coffee beans, and gathered on a bench outside in the shade where they could observe the avenue but were unlikely to be overheard as they sat there telling the truth in whispers or laughing about it with their faces turned to the sky.

R
uby DeGeer didn’t mind breaking hearts, but she liked them to shatter coolly, with no ugly scenes of departure where an arm got twisted behind her back by a crying man, or her many failings and damp habits were made specific in words shouted out an open window. Accepting boredom did not come easily to her, and some men could bore her beyond courtesy before the first drink was drained or the key rattled into a hotel room door, but if she liked a fella, then he knew unleashed marvels until she didn’t anymore and in their fresh agony the heartbroken twisted her arm crying or yelled her business to the street. She’d known poverty from birth but been blessed with pizzazz and understood early that life was a fight and she couldn’t win even one round if she kept her best hand tied behind her back. If men were smitten by her lyric eyes and fluctuating mounds and scented sashay, well, let them display their feelings in meaningful ways: clothes, hats, rent, a big weekend at the Peabody in Memphis, a morning visit on Christmas Day when they ought to be home with their wives and children but couldn’t stay away, just couldn’t do it, just can’t.

“Bring me somethin’ adorable I want when you come round again.”

She’d part from them one by one as the men grew too complicated with their appetites and plans or her dance card became too full with the newly smitten, who tended to splurge more readily anyhow. She’d soon sink the new beneath her blunt desires and work them and work them until the pump handle started to stick, then spring a farewell moment and move along. The money never amounted to all that much, but it now and then bought a few items of worth, some to be worn, some to be polished and saved in a drawer for pawning later, fed her fairly regular meals, helped her rent a private room. It was not prostitution in her view because she did not extract a payment for each intimacy, never did that, never would, but only accepted something more like a sneak tithing from fellas she called friends. “That’s just romancin’,” she’d say. Wives disagreed and she’d been assaulted a few times, called a dirty-leg whore, bimbo, tramp, had her hair pulled, been kicked blue in the shins, slapped in the face. Alma almost lost her job when she hunted the wife who’d bloodied Ruby’s nose on the square and made the lady say “Snuff” with her face pushed against a store window, then suggested in whispers as she pressed from behind that who the lady ought to be hitting was wearing pants and a mustache. (There’d been calls from friends of the whupped lady for Alma to be dismissed, but Mrs. Glencross heard about the encounter, the vulgarity and vigor displayed by women tussling in a public place, the sunlight brilliant on exposed skin, and flushed with secondhand excitement as she listened, then said, “Valiant, so valiant,” to describe Alma’s defense of Ruby, and that was that.) Such moments were what made sisters special to sisters, and Ruby shared her spoils from the field of
amour
with Alma and the Dunahew boys whenever she had any surplus. Alma did not like the way Ruby lived, had often said so in the sternest tones, but understood too well, too well her baby sister’s ravenous need for the comforts and adulation that men provided her, and the savage joy that bounced in her soul whenever she dumped a stricken beau and went out once more dancing alone.