The Seamstress of Hollywood Boulevard (39 page)

Lisette patted the chesterfield cushion beside her. The way she reclined and let her head loll managed to give the impression that she was smoking, though at the moment she was not. Mary had started to play pretend at smoking cigarettes in the backyard with twigs from the pepper tree. Lisette said, "Aimée and I—we grew up in Indian Territory."

"How." George grinned.

"Many people think the Indian raids are all over," she said. "They're not. Girls are still taken, right from their houses. Families sit down to dinner, and Indians come and steal the girls."

I squeezed Mary's hand and rolled my eyes, and Mary gave me a cross look that meant she wasn't a baby. She could hardly bear to take her eyes from her auntie.

"Sometimes we would see the stolen girls again, years later, their hair in long braids. They would come to market with papooses strapped to their backs. Sometimes they had paint on their faces."

Lisette's face was solemn, and I supposed she was thinking of herself in a buckskin sheath. Perhaps she was regretting not arriving on my doorstep attired thus.

"The Indians especially liked girls with long hair, and we begged our
maman
to let us cut our hair so the Indians would not take us, but she refused. Well-brought-up little girls in France did not cut their hair.

"Oh yes," she said, as if anyone had said anything, "our first language was French. To this day, we say
oui
more readily than
yes.
Such a simple word.
Oui"

I felt my mouth get small and smaller as Mary quietly tested the world.
Oui.

"I didn't know there were French people in Kansas," George said.

Lisette sighed. "
Papa
suffered reversals of business. We were taken out of our convent education. Day followed day, and we stayed close to home and to each other. We promised that we would always stay together. What does anyone have, if not the security of family?"

My eyes clouded. How many times did I need to learn? Lisette would overlook no opportunity to unsettle me.
Lucille,
whispered my memory. Holding Mary securely, I waited for Li-sette's glance, which would be just like Lucille's. But she kept her eyes locked on George. "Then, one night, the worst came to pass. As we lay in bed, our long hair fanned on the pillow behind us, I heard the stealthy sound of the window opening."

"We didn't have windows," I whispered to Mary, though she would not understand, having never seen a house without windows.

"Frozen with fear, I watched the long arms reach in to take my sister. The Indian was so experienced that she hardly stirred in her sleep and only awakened when he had her on his horse and started to gallop away."

"But you promised you would stay together! You promised!" Mary cried.

"I did not forget my pledge," Lisette said, training her assuring smile first on Mary, then on the rest of us, until we were all children gathered at her knee. All of us except George, for whom her smile shifted, as did his. "I ran to the barn and jumped onto my favorite pony. As fast as the wind, she galloped after Aimée, whose thin cries melted into the night. 'Faster!' I cried to my pony. 'Faster than you have ever run!' Pine branches raked across my arm, but I shook them off. 'Faster!' I cried."

"It will be an ankysway scene," said the girl in blue. "Those branches rushing by."

"Cottonwood branches, maybe," I said. "Kansas doesn't have pine trees."

"Pine branches," Lisette said. "With long needles that catch at a girl as she rides." She touched her hair lightly. "Nell has not been there for so long."

"You would like cottonwoods," I said to Mary. "They send off puffballs in the spring."

That caught her. She had never seen a tree that made puff-balls. Lisette said smoothly, "I glistened with pine sap when finally my pony pulled up beside the Indian encampment. The bonfires there blazed. The warrior clutched my sister, his hand wrapped around her long, silky hair. Parading before the other warriors, he held my sister like a prize. He was a proud Apache."

"Osage?" I said. "Maybe Pawnee. But not Apache."

"Why not? Then you could have Apache dancing," said the blonde. "
Sssssss.
"

"There are no Indians in South Gate," Mary said, her tone balanced between disappointment and relief.

"No, baby."

"No one can be stolen at night."

I thought of her bower bed, stained now from grass and geraniums. "Nothing like that happens here. We're safe."

"Everyone imagines they're safe," Lisette said. "Until the impossible thing happens, and then you find yourself racing across the countryside in the dark."

"So the moonlight abduction is a common thing for Kansas girls?" said George.

"What happened to Auntie Aimée?" said Mary.

"For hours, until dawn, the Indians chanted and beat their drums, and not once did the warrior let go of her. Soon, I knew, he would disappear with her into his fur tent."

The blonde growled, and the others laughed, but Mary's lips quivered. Poor child, she could not gauge how worried she should be for the auntie she loved best, who at this moment did not seem to be listening to the story in which she played such a crucial role.

"The only fur I ever saw on the plains was on rats," I said conversationally.

"Indians know more than you remember," Lisette said.

"Prairie dogs, maybe? They aren't much bigger, though. He'd need a lot of them."

"Prairie dogs!" shrieked the blonde.

"'Come, my maiden. I will bed you on skins of prairie dogs,'" intoned the girl in stripes, while the others collapsed beside her.

Lisette laughed with them, which must have cost her. Then she said, "So much time has passed. Nell doesn't remember. She rarely left our mother's side, until she left us all. Did you ever see an Indian, Nell?"

"No," I said, more to Mary than to her.

Lisette said, "The warrior had been drinking since he returned to the camp, and he staggered now around the fire, gripping the bottle."

"Like Pa," I said softly.

"He was a savage," Lisette said.

"Nell, you never told me you were born of savages," George said.

"
Sssss
," said one of the girls.

"Suddenly," Lisette said, more loudly, "suddenly, he lost his balance."

"Did he fall into the fire?" Mary cried.

"He fell beside it, with my innocent sister before him. Her long hair stretched into the flames!" Lisette said.

"Do something!" Mary said.

"I raced from my place in the shadows. Reaching the edge of the fire, I dropped to the ground and rolled next to my sister, smothering the flames. Her eyes opened and she looked at me first in terror, then with love."

"A look you recognized," I said.

"I had never seen such a look before," Lisette said.

"Then you must not have looked very hard. It's not uncommon."

Lisette's voice rose again. "Just as I took her hand, my head harshly whipped around. The warrior! Above my head he brandished a curved knife. My poor sister, at the end of her strength, fainted beside me."

"A perfect scene," said the girl in stripes. "Every face looks good in flickering fire light."

"Cameramen love it."

"Just look at Lillian Gish."

"Dear Lillian." The blonde sighed, and the others laughed. They loved to make fun of old-fashioned Lillian Gish.

"I never knew anyone in Kansas who fainted," I said.

"It's the new craze," Lisette said, and the girls laughed again.

"The brave has a knife!" said Mary impatiently.

"I said, 'Please,' praying he understood that much English," Lisette said. "'Please, no.'

"But he was not listening to me. Across the bonfire, his tent was beginning to burn! Uttering a roar, he let me go. Frantically I patted my poor sister's cheeks until she regained consciousness, and we crept through the darkness to our pony. She ran! She ran like the wind! And as dawn broke across the prairie sky, she brought us home to safety."

Satisfied, Lisette sat back. George said, "And to this day, Lisette and Aimée don't like marshmallow roasts at the campfire."

Everybody knows what happens when people have been drinking. The girls exploded with sloppy laughter. They collapsed on each other and on me, the whoops lapping around the room. We all knew the joke wasn't funny, and that was funny, too.

And so it was also funny when Mary cried, "Why are you laughing? Auntie Aimée was almost hurt!" Tears stood in her eyes, and she roughly wiped at her nose. "It isn't funny!" she shrilled. "
Why are you laughing?
"

Much too late, I tried to hug her. "It isn't funny!" she cried, and stamped her foot. "You shouldn't laugh!"

"Golly. Look at Sarah Bernhardt," drawled Lisette. Poor Mary whirled in frustration. She didn't know who Sarah Bernhardt was, but a six-year-old is well able to know when someone is making fun of her.

"Sweetheart, your auntie is fine. She's right here. It was just a story," I said, trying hard to wipe the laughter from my voice.

"It
isn't!
The Indian
took
her! And she was in the
fire!
" Overcome, she beat her fists against her legs. Mary almost never had a tantrum, and I couldn't help smiling at her tiny outburst even as I tried again to gather her to me, despite her kicking. To care so much about that trinket of a story—it was funny.

"Tell her," I said helplessly to Lisette. "Please."

Lisette nodded. "You never know," she said to Mary, the scorn now scrubbed from her voice. "You need to be cautious. You can wake up one morning and your mother is gone"—she snapped her fingers—"and everything is different. You need to be ready."

That killed the laughter, all right. Mary stood very still, her cries dried up in her throat. "Do you understand?" said merciless Lisette. "It's been known to happen. Any day she could be gone. You have to be ready for that."

There was one more moment of keen silence before Mary broke into sobs. Only then, finally, did she let me gather her into my arms, her small back heaving. Even her hair, as I bent to murmur to her, was soaked. "I will always be here. Every morning and every night. Where would I go, except to be near my girl? Shh, now, Mary. Hush, bunny. I'm not leaving." Never before had I said such things, personal as love talk, where others could hear. Not since she was a baby had Mary shuddered so in my arms, until I felt myself shuddering, too, as bereft as she. Lisette had given us knowledge to share.

I don't know how many minutes passed before I looked up to see Lisette watching us. "Quite a promise," she said.

"That was vicious," I said.

"It's how we were raised, us plains girls. It's what made me what I am today."

"Vicious," I repeated.

"An inherited trait," she said.

"Not by Mary." The beer talking. I could feel the pressure of so many listening ears, and the beer emboldened me to press back. Mary had stopped crying, but her breathing was still rough, and her weight in my lap was hot and damp. I could not stop squeezing her small hand.

"Well then, Nell, you're holding back the best part of that girl's inheritance. What is she going to have, if she doesn't have backbone? How will she know when to leave?"

My mouth had become uncomfortably stiff. Lisette was wearing her most pugnacious face. "You two look just alike," said the blonde, a comment I did not care to hear at this moment. I looked at Mary, who was still now and watchful, her lip quivering as if Lisette had slapped her. Lisette
had
slapped her. She leaned down, and I feared she would slap Mary again.

"Your mother will never leave you," Lisette said. "She will never leave you because she loves you." Her voice was low, but still everyone in the room heard her. I did not look at her when she straightened up, and I don't believe she looked at me. We looked just alike.

"Please don't talk to me anymore," Mary said.

"Mary!" George said.

"Leave her alone," I snapped at him.

Lisette said, "Are you going to let your daughter be rude?"

"There's the backbone you were looking for. There's the inheritance. Not to mention the family resemblance."

"Can everybody please stop talking?" Mary said, words that broke my heart again. I hadn't known it could break so much.

Before I could stand and shoo out all these girls that Lisette had brought into my house like litter, George spoke up again. "What happened to the Indian encampment?" he said. As if nothing had happened. As if he didn't know or care that our child needed rest.

"It's still there," Lisette said. "Girls still fear for their lives."

"That's quite a story," said George to Lisette, his gaze direct. It would have been nice if he had glanced at his daughter. "You've got something there for everybody," he said.

"Everybody who comes to California has a story," Lisette said. "Smart folks have a few. Hasn't Nell told you any?"

"No," he said. "I wish she would."

"Lisette has more," Aimée said. "Just ask her." I couldn't look at Aimée's moist arms without thinking of a warrior holding her pliant body in the flashing firelight. Aimée should be paying her sister a salary.

Mary said, "Will there be another Indian?" Her voice was small, but still she spoke up, and I was proud of her.

"You don't want Indians in every story," I said.

"Still, this story is the classic," Lisette said.

"Naw. Girl comes to the big city and makes good," said the blonde. "
That's
your classic story. Of course, it's better if she makes bad first."

"Get a boy's hopes up, why don't you," George said.

"We'll see," Lisette said. "There are lots of ways to make bad." The smile she gave him was exactly like Clara Bow's. George rocked back, his tongue lolling from the corner of his mouth, and the girls screamed with laughter. "It" was running like a hard current through the room, even after I said the party was finished and George led the roaring, rollicking girls to the streetcar, even after I laid out Mary's bed for a nap beneath the pepper tree and Lisette and Aimée collapsed onto their bed like wantons, drunk at three o'clock in the afternoon and the house still flooded with light as hot and bright as a spotlight. George carried "It" into the bedroom with him and we collapsed onto our own bed, and I knew whose face he saw as he lifted my new green dress over my head and thumbed the chemise off my shoulder. Neither of us spoke.