Tiny Ladies Read online

  After he’d served his time, we had our party. It was 1972, and I’d just turned twelve. I helped decorate with drawings I’d done for weeks in my room. The one I was most proud of had prison bars; handcuffs simplified to a figure eight or an infinity symbol; and the traced-in background of Samson’s temple crashing around a less finished image of my father. I traced the ruined temple from the cover of a Bible stories record he’d bought me from the supermarket. My mother reluctantly taped my drawing to the refrigerator. I helped her with streamers and a banner that read: ‘Welcome Home.’ All his friends brought liquor, mostly beers, and I remember the refrigerator stocked full for the first time since he’d gone. My mother was drinking long before he arrived, nervously talking to his friends and arranging things, but the place looked bereft.

  When he finally showed up, he seemed strangely improved, healthier and rested. My mother looked desperate and old standing beside him, so that I felt bad for her and ashamed of her too. He had incredible energy and lifted me high above his head and spun me so close to the light on the ceiling I had to hold my breath and close my eyes, imagining a shower of glass shattering around us. When he put me down, I stood woozily before him, strangely overwhelmed with tears on my cheeks that he brushed away with the back of his knuckles.

  My mother got drunk, interrupting conversations with comments no one could understand. They tolerated her briefly before sidestepping her, ‘You stay up with me,’ she said after my father had sent me to bed. ‘Let’s show everyone what kind of fun we can have together.’ She hollered out to Ernie to put on a record and swung around to grab my hand and guide me into the center of the living room. She danced until she was dizzy, falling backward over the coffee table, then quickly picked herself up, pushing off anyone attempting to help her steady herself. ‘I don’t need you,’ she snarled at my father. ‘We had a fucking ball. We had the time of our lives!’ She said this with such force and rage, she threw up. Then he carried her to bed.

  I’ve seen Gina that drunk and that angry, and when she feels alone it’s tantamount to a betrayal by anyone who has ever known her. She and Rachel are listening to Madonna. They think it’s perverse to participate in the mainstream. They play it too loud; even their parrot looks irritated, gnawing at the bars of his cage. ‘Bitch, bitch, bitch,’ the parrot says, looking at the three of us at once. I lower ‘Like a Prayer’, and make it more prayerful.

  Gina was raised in Cedar Falls. Her parents divorced when she was five years old. Her mother never sought custody. Her father owned a farm, then he went bankrupt in the early ‘80s. Gina has a scrappy practicality despite the danger she’s courted since she left home at the age of seventeen. It’s not difficult to imagine her in a pair of overalls, fixing a tractor off the side of the road. She was a hard drinker under her father’s tutelage. ‘I’d sit across the table from him,’ she said, ‘and we’d just drink whiskey, competing with shots like we did when we were arm wrestling. I beat him in either sport. It wasn’t hard.’ She worked construction for four years until she was thrown off the crew for drinking. Then followed the years of prostitution, during which time the drinking was an asset.

  ‘A gazelle,’ she says, turning to Rachel. ‘That’s what I’d be.’

  ‘What the hell’s a gazelle?’ Rachel asks.

  ‘It’s some kind of bird. I haven’t seen one,’ Gina says. ‘But it’s a good name, isn’t it?’

  After a moment, Rachel explains, ‘You’ve got to be something you know. Or at least something I know.’

  ‘What brings you out on a cold night?’ Rachel asks, handing me a beer.

  ‘She’s bored. She has no other friends. She’s a lone woman in a world of brutes.’ Gina moves closer, puts her arm around me. ‘Just kidding, kid.’

  She exudes a kind of masculine confidence, and when she puts her arm around you, it’s as though she’s drawing you into a huddle. You’re on her team.

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘I was just thinking how true that is.’

  She laughs. As though it’s unthinkable. ‘We’re not exactly jumping tonight. We could use a few brutes. So I guess it’s ladies’ night.’ She moves her eyebrows up and down. Hoot owl, I think.

  ‘You’re not drinking,’ she says, in her well-humored scold. ‘Ladies’ night’s a drinking night. No little dicks to massage, right, Rachel?’

  Rachel pulls at her beer. ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Are you working on a performance?’ I ask Gina.

  I’ve always felt with a little encouragement she could make a name for herself as an artist. After I first met her, she invited me to see a performance she’d put together for a class she was auditing. I bent down and looked through a peephole where she was tied to a rotating stage in a bunny outfit, whipped by women holding links of sausage. That performance stirred things up, and her teacher told her she was one of his best students and tried to encourage her to make it to class more often. Then the Daily Iowan ran an interview with her. I remember reading it at work. The interviewer asked her about the difficulties of doing a personal piece like that. She said the only difficulty was cutting the peepholes out of the wooden panels. I laughed out loud, remembering how rough they looked, like she’d scratched them out with her nails. ‘I have no difficulty in putting myself out there. Personal shit’s easy. It’s the only thing I know,’ she said.

  ‘My whole life’s a performance,’ she reminds me. ‘I don’t need any more classes.’ She lights a cigarette and crawls over the floor, laying her head in Rachel’s lap. ‘I just wish all these fuckers would pay me for my brilliance.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, your head is heavy,’ Rachel says, but doesn’t push her off. She strokes Gina’s head absently.

  ‘All them brains,’ Gina says. ‘They make my head heavy.’

  ‘Yeah, well, you’re making my leg sweat with these fucking pants on.’

  ‘They look like upholstery,’ Gina says. ‘Like something that would cover a bar stool.’ She laughs hoarsely and claps her hand on her thigh.

  ‘Great,’ Rachel says, pushing her off and standing up. ‘You would know.’ She pretends she’s upset, but there’s something so genuine and tacit between them I feel slightly envious and out of the loop.

  You never find that camaraderie in an office. Sometimes I miss it. Though not often. Because I’ve renounced this life – if only by working at a regular desk job – they assume I judge them. There’s a nerve exposed, as poised and sharp as a whip. I want to tell them about the places I’ve worked, how and when I started, where it took me. But I think it would come off like bragging, an attempt to connect with them in a way I no longer need to. With Gina, I am always asking myself what it is I need from her. Authenticity, perhaps. But that’s always trouble.

  A man comes to the door; he must be sixty years old. Rachel lets him in, but Gina, who has risen from the floor, takes control of the situation.

  ‘How you doin’, Pops?’ she asks. ‘Let me grab the coat.’ I put my hand over my mouth, not sure if I want to laugh or choke. And it’s not that Gina does anything peculiar. It’s just the part where you try to make it seem natural that always gets me; it makes the living room – with Gina’s self-portraits, which are too dark and brooding even for her, and the framed poster for Pabst’s Pandora’s Box – seem too revealing and human, like she’s saying, I’ve got a brain and a personality, and the moment you’re gone I’ll get on with my real life. And, of course, why should he be interested in that?

  The man looks at me while she removes his down jacket, and for a moment I think he’s concerned about my presence, not recognizing my face. Then it occurs to me he’s interested in me. I recognize that look but can’t connect to it. How far I’ve come, how far I’ve run – from that crap. But the man doesn’t take his eyes off me, despite a discreet movement I make to divert my eyes from his gaze. He stands there with the austere patience of a doctor who has come to report on the prognosis of my disease. I stand up to gather my coat. I think of a game I used to play. The moment he looks at me, I
’m dead. I have to dodge him. Him and so much else.

  ‘Don’t I know you?’ he asks. I look at his eyes for the first time, and though I recognize no malice there, I hate him – his sad, selfish eyes that honor his loneliness above anyone else’s.

  ‘That must have been some other girl,’ I say. I look at his Osh Kosh overalls and think: I don’t do barnyards.

  ‘Wait a minute,’ Gina says, clutching my arm. ‘Rachel’s going to take him. That OK, Pops?’

  The man looks shyly at Rachel, and nervously reaches out to shake her hand. The deal is struck with a farmer’s equanimity

  ‘C’mon,’ Rachel says, in a voice already tired despite the slowness of the evening. ‘Right up here.’

  After they’ve gone upstairs, Gina lures me back to the couch. ‘What are you frowning about?’ she asks, tentatively frowning herself as though her mimicry will help her understand me better.

  ‘Did you ever see Walk on the Wild Side?’ I ask her, thinking of Rachel and the man in overalls walking behind her up that creaky staircase. I begin to talk about it, but Gina seems uninterested, and goes off to the kitchen.

  She returns with a beer for me. ‘Sit down for a while,’ she says, and I join her.

  ‘How’s work?’ she asks, after putting a bottle intently to her lips and taking a long swig.

  ‘Fine,’ I answer. ‘I had a woman come in today,’ and I start to tell her about Hannah. I don’t mention her name. ‘She’s interesting. She’s really confused,’ I say, embarrassed by the strange pull her story has on me – the one she’s not told yet – ‘by her friend’s death.’

  ‘Not Hannah?’ Gina asks. ‘She worked for me.’

  I sit there, wide-eyed, feeling very stupid and guilty for talking about her.

  ‘She worked here just before she got herself locked up.’ Gina faces me, puts the bottle down. ‘I liked her a lot,’ she says. ‘But she’s always been troubled. Her friend was killed by one of the professors at the university. He was having an affair, and he killed her when it got too messy.’

  ‘Why does Hannah think she had something to do with it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe because she saw it coming and didn’t do anything about it. Hannah’s an Iowa City legend,’ she says consolingly. ‘Everybody knows her, or about her.’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ I say, trying to figure out why I feel so betrayed suddenly. It’s such a silly thought: I thought she belonged to me, but she belongs to everybody.

  Gina goes on, though. ‘I know she was in this sorority a few years ago, and she got drunk one night and stood at the top of the stairs while a mixer party was going on, and she threatened to slice her breasts with a knife. A huge knife. Then I guess she locked herself in her room when the police came, jumped out the third-floor window and didn’t return to school until a couple of semesters later. That story made its way around, but it didn’t sound that crazy to me. I mean, drinking does things to you. I thought she was pretty balanced. She just temporarily wanted to get rid of her tits.’ She laughs, looking down at the beer stain on her tank top.

  ‘Jesus,’ I say, leaning back into the couch and closing my eyes for a moment. ‘I thought Iowa was supposed to be simple. I thought I left the craziness behind.’

  ‘There’s no escaping it,’ she says with the certainty of someone not running. ‘This kind of stuff happens anywhere.’

  I think of the paintings I’ve collected, snipped from art books. I’ve always wanted to be able to look at these horrors with Gina’s detachment.

  ‘How did her friend die?’ I ask.

  ‘She was thrown down the stairs. Her neck was broken. Her teacher admitted it when they finally caught up with him. It happened in his studio.’

  ‘The poor girl,’ I say. ‘That’s awful.’ The story really disturbs me. It’s too close. I don’t try to explain it to Gina. ‘People are capable of anything.’

  Gina stubs out her cigarette. ‘I used to worry about stuff like that, but in this business it makes you too paranoid. Now I figure whatever happens, happens.’ She takes another pull from her bottle.

  ‘What are you supposed to do for her, anyway?’ she finally asks. And I think: She’s ready to pounce now. She knows I’m upset. She knows I’m already too attached, so she’s going to harangue me until I’ve toughened up. She scolds me for being sympathetic or overly concerned, then demands I respond to her every mood and crisis.

  ‘Well,’ I say – and there’s that awful measuring – ‘maybe I can help her get clear on how much of it was her responsibility’

  ‘Maybe she’s as clear as she’s going to get,’ Gina says, agitated by too much or too little beer, or too little skepticism on my part. ‘Maybe she is responsible.’

  I see she’s baiting me, playing devil’s advocate. I look at her for a moment, considering whether I should tell her she’s had enough to drink, but think better of it. It’s not her drunkenness but my sensitivity that’s making me so uncomfortable. She follows behind me as I gather up my things and make my way to the door.

  She grabs my arm while I unlock my car. ‘Maybe you can help her,’ she offers. ‘Anyway, it’s worth trying.’ My walking out has affected her. She sounds humbled and genuine.

  ‘You didn’t need to go after me like that,’ I say. ‘I’ve been doing this work for a long time, and I can assure you I’m not going to get too attached to be effective, and I’m not going to take the responsibility if she can’t be helped.’ And I’m thinking: The peephole is the easy part. It’s what people don’t exhibit that’s so difficult.

  She looks taken off guard for a moment. ‘You make me worry sometimes, that’s all.’ She hugs me close, but I know her feelings are mixed, and that soon the bad ones will overtake the good. As I drive away from her, I feel an overwhelming pity for her mixed with a pity for myself, for Hannah, for her dead friend who presides over each of us, making the cold so much colder, and the white so much whiter.

  2

  I arrive home and find the box Hannah has left for me. I hesitate before picking it up. Because I remember this was the dead girl’s gesture – at once an intimidation and a seduction. And I am unsure of why I feel I know Hannah so well: It could be the folder still open on my couch, or the exchange I’ve had with Gina. And I wonder why I brought her up, why I inquired of Gina those secrets that Hannah would no doubt confide. I turn the box in my hands; the drawings are pastel-colored snowflake patterns, some intricate and star-like, some just dashes, a code. And inside are butter cookies brushed with sugar, red and green. I take them inside and King bounds up from the braided carpet, tugging at me with teeth and paws. I take off my coat, shaking the snow from it, and sit on the couch to take off my boots. I walk to the bathroom and draw the bath. I can hear the wind outside, and watch it playing with the snow, lifting it after it’s fallen, like another life, another brief fall. I take out a cookie and look it over before putting it in my mouth. I think I’ll tell her she was wise to leave them at my house. We’re not allowed to accept gifts from our clients, and in the office I’d have to turn them down.

  I fall asleep in the tub, and wake up startled, unable to shake the residue of a dream: a policeman taking each of my fingers and bending them back. In my hands are two rocks, about the same size and weight, and I can feel the chalk from them on my fingers. I plunge my fists into the bathwater, which is already cold.

  I close my eyes again, using the rock to draw a starting line. Right foot first. Always the right foot first. And there are good starts and bad starts. But rarely is there a game where the starting line is the finish line, unless you play it wrong. Or you’ve had very bad luck. Or someone has forced you to take steps backward.

  Let’s say I had a normal start and about as much luck as you can manufacture.

  On the weekends, I take baths while the sun goes down. I hate the dark and turn up all the lights before the sun sets. I draw my bath and step in when the light’s just getting orange and fall asleep every time. I wake up with the windows black a
nd all the lights burning. I don’t look out the black windows; there might be someone looking in. Horrible, glowering masks. Daddy’s friends, practical jokers. Let’s put the masks to the window and scare her, make her jump.

  We lived in Sweetwater, Florida, not far from a black ribbon of canal, almost currentless and full of dark life. ‘It’s not your business to go there,’ my mother warned. But it was as if she knew of its attraction, a murky light like emissions from an ancient submarine, or the wide blind eyes offish that never surface. Imagine not craving light, swimming in black panes, masks that hold no terror for each other.

  There were bridges over the canal, and porous jutting stones in perpetual shade beneath them. The canal waters would lap and eddy the ledges I’d sit on under the bridge. There was always the terror of water rats or moccasins and the water itself, carrying trash on its oily surface. There I’d spend hours just being in an unknown place, sometimes smoking cigarettes I’d pilfered from my mother’s night table, or looking at my father’s books in the dim light.

  And when my father was gone, I would sit for hours watching from our front window the neighbors watering their lawns, gathering in loose and fluid association. I wondered deeply about other people’s lives. But always looking out a one-way glass. They looked in and saw themselves, so why look at all? My mother warned me of our neighbors – not only the girl who put flowers in her mouth, but the nosy ones who inquired too earnestly whether my mother was ill and what my father did for a living. I had no answer for these questions but ate the lunches they made for me and swam in their pools. Their houses had different feelings about them: family areas and bedrooms that seemed exclusive, displaying their abundance of folded clothes, working televisions, and neatly made beds.

  Once, when I’d gone to visit Scotty, the boy across the street from us, I overheard his mother ask him if I’d used the bathroom. Later, when I came in early from the pool, I found her scrubbing out the toilet wearing long, green rubber gloves.