A plan that’s on its way to hell, with all that’s going on.
What am I supposed to do now? Find a real, low-paying, low-skilled, forty-hour-a-week job and not go back to school? I can say good-bye to my teaching dreams. It’ll be the beginning of the end, everything unraveling from there, ’til I’m not thriving or surviving.
Could Blanche really be the one thriving, making more money in a single night than I made in a month at the diner?
I start to turn away from my disheveled one-day home. My eye catches on the public phone outside the library. I stop in my tracks, lick my lips. Could a month be all I need ’til Buster is all healed up?
I stare at the phone and finger the coins in my pocket. Doing nothin’, letting my future go to hell, maybe that’s more dangerous than going to the speakeasy with Blanche tonight, just this once. One night of recklessness to make a month’s worth of dough to keep us afloat.
Before the smart side of my brain taps me on the shoulder and screams how I’m acting a fool, I slip two pennies into the phone.
A nasally woman connects me to Blanche’s house.
“Hello,” I hear, in her singsong voice.
I wipe my sweaty palm against my skirt and reposition the phone against my ear. Seconds pass.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
“Oh.” More seconds pass. “I messed up,” Blanche says, again.
“It’s okay.”
“Really?” Her voice is low and soft.
“Yes, really.”
“The fact you never hold grudges is one of your best qualities.”
“Yeah, well, sorry for judging you. That’s one of my bad ones.”
“Yes, Bonnelyn, not the Christian thing to do.”
I bite my lip, knowing if I don’t do this now, I never will, but the telephone’s slick in my grasp as I think of the simple words I need to speak aloud. A big breath helps. “I’m going with you tonight to the ‘physician’s office.’”
Seconds pass.
“Hello?” I say.
“This is Bonnelyn Parker, right?” Blanche laughs before I can respond … or change my mind. “Well, attagirl. You won’t regret it. I’ll pick you up.”
The line goes dead.
I simply stand here, listening to the silence, ’til the realization that I’m going to a speakeasy tonight—for real—swoops in and knocks me upside my noggin.
I rattle the phone into its holder. This thought and that thought bump into each other, colliding, fighting, ’til a single thought remains: Forgive me, Father, for I’m ’bout to sin.
5
I wipe down the icebox with boiling water. The furniture is in need of dusting. And the porch, sweeping. At supper, I chew my chicken thirty times, the proper amount for optimal digestion, and then I help Ma wash and dry the silverware to prevent stains.
I don’t allow myself to think, just do, happy to help Ma, who might as well be sleepwalking after working all day.
“Seeing Blanche again?” she asks.
I nod, not looking her in the eye, and escape to my bedroom to get dressed. My hand is shaky as I paint my lips red and slip from my housedress into an equally modest skirt and blouse.
The blouse caught Roy’s fancy one time when we were down by the river. He said the blue brought out my eyes.
The sound of an engine starts slow, then grows, ’til it rumbles outside my front door. I nearly trip over Billie and Duke Dog to get out of the house. Buster narrows his eyes like he knows I’m up to no good.
As soon as my butt lands in Big Bertha, I want to claw my way out, ’cause I am up to no good. Buster’s right. But Blanche ain’t; she was surely mistaken when she said I wouldn’t regret this here decision. I reach for the door handle.
“Oh no you don’t.” Blanche puts the car into gear. “This’ll be good for you.”
“How on earth is going to an illegal establishment good for me?”
“You’re a blotter,” Blanche says matter-of-factly.
“A what?” My fingers slip from the handle and find the safety of my other hand in my lap.
“A blotter.”
“Blanche,” I say between my teeth.
She laughs, so easy and carefree. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings by sayin’ this, but you only ever go surface deep. Dab, dab, dab. That’s how you approach life.”
Dab, dab, dab.
“But sometimes,” she says, “life needs some elbow grease, a good scrub to get the dirt out.” She shrugs. “Yet you’re a blotter. Tonight is the first step to recovery, Miss Parker.”
I stare at my best friend blankly. With all the dabbing and scrubbing, I have no clue what this girl is sayin’, but, still, I insist, “I ain’t a blotter.”
She shrugs again.
“Well, what do you reckon you are?” I ask her.
Blanche pauses, her one eye squinting. Finally, she says, “Blanche is a misbehaver.”
“Anything beginning with mis ain’t good.”
“Come now, how ’bout misunderstood?”
I open my mouth, close it, pondering that word. It ain’t necessarily good to be misunderstood. It’s only good if you’re finally understood—but then only if it’s a good understanding. I rub my forehead, confusing myself, and silence falls between us.
Blanche continues to drive, looking mighty satisfied with herself. She even hums. At least understanding the way Blanche acts is easy. Maybe it’s myself I’m failing to understand. A blotter? She says I stop at the surface, but that can’t be true—can’t.
I love and dream and believe.
I’m sitting in this here car, putting myself, and my relationship with Roy, at risk so I can keep loving, dreaming, believing.
“So why’d you agree to come?” Blanche asks, as if she’s creeping ’round in my head.
I wring my hands, nerves spiking from head to toe. “I’m doing what I need to do to survive.”
She smiles. “I’ve an idea. Why don’t you really let your hair down tonight?”
Keeping one eye on the road, Blanche plucks pins off my head. I paw at my hair. Even with it heavy on my shoulders and running down my back, I feel exposed.
“And,” she adds, pulling up outside the physician’s office and setting the parking brake, “you could be a bit more hotsy-totsy.”
“What?”
“Here.” Blanche opens Big Bertha’s glove compartment. “A few embellishments, so you ain’t any old Jane.”
She slides a glistening thing with rhinestones onto my head and a bangle onto my wrist—the one she’d worn last night. Sucking air through her teeth, she wiggles her fingers midair, deliberating. The pit in my stomach grows, taking on a life of its own, crying out, This is a mistake.
Like a snake attack, her hand lurches toward me.
I don’t even know what she’s done ’til I look down. My chest’s in plain view for the world to see, peeking out from a tear in my blouse. My mouth drops open. No words come out. I reckon this is what having a stroke is like. I lean away before she can somehow tear a few inches off my long skirt.
“Ready?” Blanche says with a sly smile.
Blanche climbs from the car in a short black dress with silk stockings rolled just below her knees.
I suck in a Texas-size gulp of air, my rear end glued to the seat.