Third Girl from the Left (4 page)

She thought her heart would break if he stopped. “Go ahead,” she whispered. “I want everything.” They looked at each other a stern moment, legs shifting against the rough plaid wool blanket. He slid a finger in, experimenting. She cried out, pleased, and he grinned a little. “OK, then.” He unhooked her bra and got to work. Her last clear thought was: Boy,
I'm really going to have to leave town as soon as I'm old enough. Folks are going to hear about this
.

Girls who felt the way she did about Bobby Ware under the bleachers didn't last long in the Greenwood section of Tulsa. Not long at all before everybody was calling them “fast” and looking the other way when they came down the street.

 

After they finished, Bobby lay stroking her face, not speaking. She didn't say anything either. She felt the whole world had opened up between her thighs. Sam Cooke's voice was in her head, like silk. She knew it wasn't right, but she couldn't stop beaming.

“What you smiling at, girl?” Bobby said after a few minutes.

“You,” she replied. He liked that. He smiled and kissed her. But she didn't really mean it. She liked the way he made her feel. She liked that her mind was free of words, that there were so many sweet green moments of being completely out of control. That's what made her smile. But she didn't know how to say that. He seemed satisfied with her answer. She sat up, pulled up her panties, brushed at her skirt, kissed him with an open mouth, and said, “We probably ought to be getting back. My mama's gonna be worried.”

That night at dinner, her stomach kept swooping downward unexpectedly. She had trouble eating. She kept remembering some moment—Bobby's mouth on her nipples or the way he ran his tongue, just once, around the edge of her earlobe—and she had to close her eyes, a gasp almost escaping her. Her father didn't notice anything, going on about Miz McNulty coming in to get “something for her monthlies,” and not wanting to talk to him about it, so he had to spend twenty minutes looking around for a woman she could talk to until he finally had to haul Tilly Ransom off the street and Miz McNulty whispered in her ear and then Tilly Ransom whispered in his ear and he soberly reached down the bottle of “remedy” (which was about ninety proof) and wrapped it in paper and handed it to her. “And all I could think,” he concluded in a too loud voice, “was as old as she is, that monthly visitor's been hanging around a good sight longer than most. I think she just likes the medicine. If you know what I mean.” He laughed and shook his head, shoveling in a forkful of mashed potato. He had grown much franker in his dinner-table talk since Angela's older brother and sister had married and moved out.

“Now, Johnny Lee, that ain't no way to talk in front of Angie,” said Mildred.

“What? She's a girl, ain't she? And it ain't nothin' this old druggist ain't seen. She might as well know what goes on in this town. Why shouldn't I talk in front of her?”

“It just ain't seemly, that's all.”

“Hmm.” Johnny Lee retreated to sullen silence. Angela shifted in her chair, flushed. What he was talking about made Angela especially uneasy this time. Mildred's eyes bored right through her.
What if she was pregnant
? They'd have to be careful next time. No way was she having any babies. No way.

 

Every Saturday after chores, Angela and her mother went downtown to the movies. Mildred was an old-fashioned moviegoer. She was willing to see everything. It used to be fine to do that. Everybody saw everything. Johnny Lee never cared much for the pictures, but she never thought twice about bringing the children. There wasn't anything at the movies they couldn't see back then. Times were changing. But Mildred and Angela weren't. Not about this. The previous Dreamland, a place of magic with a glittering chandelier and acres of plush Oriental carpet, had burned to the ground in the riot and was rebuilt brick by painful brick in the years later. No one had told Angela that. And the chandelier was gone by the time she was old enough to have noticed it. But she loved the theater. She thought it had always stood there in its fading but still palpable glory. In 1964, the fading was far more apparent than the glory. The neon out front flickered and the lobby smelled of rancid oil and there were always a couple of letters missing from the awning. Today's film was
Y AIR LADY
. But they didn't care about the popcorn hulls underfoot, their feet sticking to the floor, the faint smell of old, squeezed-out sweat. Everything important was on the screen.

Mildred generally smelled of lavender sachet and wore her hair pulled back in a smooth chignon. To Angela, she only seemed truly relaxed in two situations: one was singing in church, which she did fervently to every hymn, even though she was never in the choir, her eyes closed, her round tones like butter in the air. The other was at the movies every Saturday. Inevitably at emotional moments or in musicals, as the lead actress—Audrey, Judy, Debbie, Dorothy, Deborah, whoever it might be—burst into song, Mildred sat, mouthing the lyrics gently, tears rolling down her face. The first time this happened, when they went to see
The King and I
when Angela was six, she happened to look over during “Hello, Young Lovers” and was terrified.

“Mama, why you crying?”

Mildred wiped hastily at her face and gazed down at her daughter with a look she never forgot. Even though it was dark in the theater, her mother's face was sufficiently lit by the sudden arc of light from a daytime scene, the brightness reflected from the screen. It was the same look Angela saw later in the woman in the photograph she found, the same look she sometimes saw in her own eyes later in life, when she looked at herself in the mirror until she was dizzy, falling into the brown pool that was her face.

It was a look of longing, of rivers unheard and songs unsung and dances never danced and paintings never painted. She seemed not to recognize her daughter. “I'm not crying, baby,” she said. Then she said, “I mean I am. But I'm not sad.” Angela didn't believe her, then or ever. But she knew better than to ask any more questions. She just got used to her mother's tears during movies. Now, with sixteen looming just ahead of her, she was beginning to feel the same way, sometimes. Like there was something there that if she could just reach it . . . But it was always hiding behind the music. She felt her mother's tears in her own throat sometimes.

Like today, when Audrey Hepburn came down the stairs in that column of white, her hair piled upon her head like that of a princess. Angela's breath disappeared. What could she say? What could she say about something like that? She looked at her mother. But neither of them said anything. Just kept reaching into the shared bag of popcorn, eating quietly and methodically.

It was these Saturdays that made Angela decide she wanted to be an actress, although she didn't say so. She started using her allowance to buy every movie magazine she could. The funny thing was, her mama didn't stop her. She usually didn't hold much truck with what she called foolishness, but she dusted around the ever growing piles of
Photoplay
and didn't say anything about the pictures of Sidney Poitier and Warren Beatty and Natalie Wood and Diahann Carroll up on the wall. And they kept going to the movies together. It was the only fun they had with each other.

Today, after Rex had reclined in his chair, feet up, to inquire in his velvet-cream voice, “Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?” mother and daughter walked out together in contented silence. They never talked much after a movie. They relished the remembered pictures in the quiet between them, the early-evening crickets just beginning to be audible, even in town. After a while, though, Mildred spoke. She touched her own hair quickly, making sure it was in place, and said, “Angie, you're not doing anything with that Bobby Ware that you shouldn't be, are you?”

“What, Mama?”

“You heard me.”

“I did, ma'am. No, ma'am. I'm not doing anything I shouldn't.” She surprised herself with the bold calmness of her lie. It didn't even feel like a lie, really—what they were doing didn't feel like a shouldn't. “We're just keepin' company, that's all.”

“Well, I know what these young boys out here are like,” said Mildred firmly, settling her hat on her head. “You got to watch your step. A young girl like you can easy end up goin' the wrong way.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Don't let him take no liberties.”

“No, ma'am.”

 

There was a school dance that night. Angela and Bobby danced all the fast dances and held each other through all the slow ones. Bobby sang the words to the songs into her ear. It was a warm spring night. They went out by the bleachers again, the sky vaulted above them, a deep blue blanket studded with stars. The moon cut a silvery path down the field for them. They fell on each other right away, hands sliding into clothes, buttons unbuttoning, mouths open, burying themselves in each other. Bobby fumbled around until he found his condom; as a measure of his devotion, he'd gone two towns over to get them. He couldn't very well buy them from Angie's father. This time, together, they figured out that if they rubbed spit on it, he could slide in much more easily. Angela didn't mind the rubber. It was just as good with a condom. It was the best feeling she'd ever had. Her mother just didn't know.

T
HE WORST THING ABOUT THE COSTUME WAS THE
tail. Large and puffy white, it made sitting down impossible, going to the toilet a feat of Olympian proportions (you try wriggling out of that skintight bustier, sitting down, and keeping that thing out of the bowl). Aside from dealing with the costume and the toilet (which there was barely time to use anyway), there was so much to learn. Truth be told, not being able to sit down wasn't really a problem because you weren't allowed to sit down anyway. You could only lean, legs aligned seductively, in “the Bunny perch,” against the back of a chair, the edge of a sofa or a railing. Always ready. Always willing. You had to call in your drinks in a sequence that never ever varied and then arrange them with military precision on your tray. You always had to remember to stand in “the Bunny stance” when you weren't moving, your pelvis tucked forward like an offering, your legs together, back arched (but don't lose your balance in those three-inch heels). When you were serving, no matter how bad your feet hurt, you had to do that “Bunny dip” so your titties weren't right up in somebody's face. You'd lean back, again with the pelvis forward, arch the back, then bend the knees. Make them think about resting their hands on the small of your back, or between your legs. But if they ever tried to touch . . . uh, uh, uh. A laugh and a gentle pivot away. No drunken businessman was going to get it for free. He wasn't supposed to get it at all. The Bunny Mothers watched the girls with smiling firmness to make sure that this rule was never violated within the club. But you could always slip someone your phone number. Or meet him later.

Angela didn't do that stuff, at first. She took the rules very seriously and couldn't imagine going out with any of the key holders anyway. They were all white, all fat, all bald, it seemed. They called everyone honey, and thought their unfunny jokes were hilarious (“I love hot chocolate,” they were always saying to her), and drank Scotch straight up until their words were a liquor-edged blur. They were always plucking at her tail and trying to get her to lean forward over the table so they could get a good look at her tits.

The money, however, was unbelievable. She often took home $200 or $300 a night in cash. The first time a guy slipped her a $100 tip, she almost gave it back; she'd never seen a $100 bill before. She wasn't sure it was real, and then, when she saw how much it was, she couldn't believe he'd meant to give it to her. She perched next to Sheila for a second during one of their infrequent lulls. “Sheil, this guy just gave me one hundred dollars. Do you think he meant to do that?”

“Girl, you look like a million dollars in that outfit.” Sheila poked her in one of the rigid stays that made her tiny waist appear even tinier. “You bet he meant to give it to you. You keep it and keep working that shit. There's plenty more where that came from.”

 

And so there was. Angela had a drawer full of cash until Sheila told her she really ought to open a bank account. She could buy any pretty clothes she wanted, but a lot of the money just sat there. She was so tired all the time. She still wanted to be an actress, but she wasn't at all sure how to make that happen. The days slipped quietly by. As soon as she and Sheila got some rest, it was time to go back to work. The only thing that kept her going was Dexatrim. She couldn't afford to gain a pound, and the pills gave her a buzzy feeling that she liked, especially before work. They rarely got home before 4:00 or 5:00
A.M.
(if neither of them had a date). The days were spent sleeping until noon or so and then massaging each other's sore feet and running to the drugstore to buy more Dexatrim. In their refrigerator was a cloudy glass of water, three cans of Tab, two lemons, an old bag of carrots, and a moldy Chinese takeout carton. Angela loved it. She loved walking out of their tiny apartment and standing on the corner, inhaling the mingled scents of car exhaust and gardenia, and standing on the edge of everything good.

Not long after she and Sheila had become roommates, Sheila took her to Venice Beach. Angela, though she'd lived in LA for a few months by then, had yet to see the ocean. She hadn't known how to get there and she had no one to go with. Sheila laughed and took her hand. “Girl, you are so country!” she said. Angela felt sheepish but curiously thrilled at Sheila's warm hand wrapped around hers. They were silent as they drove to the beach.

To get to the water, they had to make their way through a dizzy hubbub of stoned white people. A blond girl with eyes that had long ago left this earth smiled sleepily at Angela and Sheila as they picked their way past. She sat next to an enormous, full-to-bursting backpack and a draggle-haired, dirty white guy. They both wore fringed leather vests. Sheila took a quick look at Angela and said, “Don't worry. These hippies don't bite. Too high.” Then, “Look, Angie, there it is.”