The Girl Is Murder (14 page)

“What?”

“It’s on your school record. Suicide is forbidden by Jewish law. Were you afraid we’d judge you for that? Because those were your mother’s actions, not yours.”

I couldn’t have been more shocked if she’d slapped me with her sandwich. I stood up from the table so quickly that my chair threatened to topple over. “You may think Suze wears too much makeup and dresses like a tramp, but at least she had the good sense to let the subject drop.”

“You told Suze about your mom?”

Was she really making this a competition? I shook my head. “I’ve got to go.”

“Wait. I didn’t mean it like that.” Her voice was too loud. A table of boys to the left of us caught wind of our conversation and echoed her words back at her, their own voices raised in falsetto.
Wait. I didn’t mean it like that.

I left my plate where it was and exited the cafeteria, while the table of boys exploded with laughter.

I SPENT ALL OF AMERICAN HISTORY fuming about Pearl, instead of listening to the lecture on war preparedness. To think there was a time when I felt guilty about not defending her to Rhona. No wonder Rhona thought she was the one who’d spread the rumor about her absence. Even if Pearl hadn’t done it maliciously, I could see her clumsily making assumptions about Rhona’s personal life and then repeating them within earshot of the wrong person.

She’d probably do the same thing to me. “Her mom committed suicide,” she’d tell people. “And so now she thinks she can’t be Jewish.”

By the time typing class arrived, I’d spent as much energy as I could muster being mad at Pearl. I let my mind empty as we took our places at the machines and keyed
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
in time to the ticking of a metronome. When my mind wasn’t tallying the number of mistakes I’d made, I let it worry over what I was going to wear that night. While my wardrobe had matured since those first, early days of school, it had by no means become fashionable. By the time class ended, I had an outfit in mind: my pencil skirt and a blouse that made me look like I had a bosom.

I half expected to find Pearl waiting for me after school, but she’d either left before me or was deliberately hanging back until she was certain I was gone. I’d overreacted and I knew it. Of course she was curious—I would be, too. In her shoes I probably would be wondering what else I was keeping from her.

I made it home and spent far too much time taming my hair. Pop was out, so I sought Mrs. Mrozenski’s approval on my attire.

“You’re going to a dance?” she asked.

I nodded, hoping she would have the good sense not to ask where.

“You look very grown-up. Maybe, though, something is missing.” She went upstairs to her bedroom and returned a moment later, a girdle in hand. It clearly wasn’t hers, but rather some castoff her daughter, Betty, had left in her possession.

I thanked her and, after a quick lesson on how to squeeze into it, I put the garment on. Instantly, I achieved the smooth silhouette the skirt demanded. And a sudden, inescapable feeling that I couldn’t breathe.

At seven-thirty I made the brief, anxious walk to Suze’s house, arriving fifteen minutes early. If our home was a step down from the Upper East Side, hers was a leap. The apartment was one of many in a tenement building that hugged a thin, weed-choked sidewalk. Outside, bored children played jacks, hopscotch, and any other game they could think of that took less money than imagination. Row after row of laundry rippled in the evening breeze on lines strung between the close-set buildings. There was no attempt at maintaining privacy here. Brassieres and shorts were as prominently displayed as trousers and dresses, all bearing the telltale signs of wear and tear that were visible even from where I stood at street level.

I would’ve died of embarrassment, but no one here cared. This was poverty. In comparison, at Mrs. Mrozenski’s house, Pop and I were on easy street.

I carefully made my way up the stairs and into a narrow hallway. Suze had told me they lived in number six, so I followed each labeled door until I reached one that didn’t bear a numeral but, because of its proximity to number seven, had to be the apartment I was looking for. Inside, dishes clattered as someone washed up after dinner. A woman’s nasal voice screeched at top volume. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or deaf.

I leaned against the door and tried to verify that I was at the right place.

“You need to learn some respect, little girl. This isn’t a hotel,” said a voice from inside.

“I told you I had plans.” That was Suze, or someone doing a pretty good imitation of her.

“You don’t decide when you get to come and go.”

“I’ll stay with her tomorrow.”

“I don’t have to work tomorrow.”

“You don’t have to work now.”

“I do if you expect food on the table. Who else is going to provide it?”

“I gave you my paycheck.”

“Gee, a whole five dollars, Suze. Don’t tell the Rockefellers.”

“What do you want from me? I go to school. I go to work. And now I want to go out.”

“That little girl in there needs someone to watch over her.”

“Then you do it—you’re her mother.” Footsteps pounded across the floor, growing louder as they grew closer to the door.

“Don’t you walk away when I’m talking to you! You’re getting too big for your britches.”

Suze responded, though her voice was so low that the words were indistinct. What came next wasn’t so quiet though: it was the sound of flesh hitting flesh.

“You come back here right now!”

The door flew open and Suze emerged, unlit cigarette in one hand, pocketbook in the other. Her cheek was red, one eye partially closed. Behind her a woman in factory coveralls and a dark blue snood tried to grab hold of her arm and missed.

“I said come back here right now!”

Suze slammed the door behind her and took two steps before seeing that I was in the hallway.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m early.”

“No, it’s good. I need to truck out of here.”

I followed her down the stairs and out of the building. At the stoop she paused and pulled a compact out of her purse. With a practiced hand she studied her reflection, assessed the damage, and then carefully covered the woman’s handiwork with her powder puff. The red was lost beneath the makeup’s sheen.

I tried to imagine what could bring Mama to hit me, but the idea that she could strike me was so absurd that I couldn’t invent circumstances to support it.

But maybe if she had struck out at me instead of herself, she’d still be here.

“What happened?” I asked.

“What always happens? She doesn’t like the way I dress, the way I talk, or who I hang out with. She’s tired, we’re poor, and my no-good father hasn’t made an appearance for months.” She held her eye open with one hand and stared at the red that appeared threaded through the white.

“Maybe you should stay home tonight.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t beat your gums off time.” She instantly regretted saying it; I could see it in her eyes. “I’m sorry, baby—I didn’t mean to bust a button. She has me rattled. Look, she’s sore that I won’t stay home and sit with my sister. The brat’s old enough to take care of herself, she’s almost eleven, but the truth is Ma feels guilty for taking the swing shift, so she thinks if she can goad me into staying, she can forgive herself for working.”

“What does she do?”

“Munitions work. The hours are long, but the pay’s nothing to sneeze at. She’s right—my little paycheck isn’t even a drop in the bucket.”

“Where’s your father?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care.” She added lipstick and rouge to her palette, then returned everything to her purse. Now that her own appearance was taken care of, she turned her attention to me. “Oh, baby—what’s this?”

“What’s what?”

Her fingers indicated my pencil skirt. “We’re dancing. You can’t dance in a straitjacket.”

What was she talking about? I could move my feet just fine.

“Are you wearing a girdle?” she said.

“Yes.”

“Boy, do you have a lot to learn. Come on.” She took me by the hand and pulled me around to the side of the building, where a row of windows stared across the brief alleyway at the brick wall of the building next door. What a view. At the rearmost window she paused, pushed over a coal bin, and then hoisted herself on top of it. She threw one leg over the window’s ledge and then motioned for me to follow. Seconds later she was inside the building and I was left to negotiate the tight skirt and tall bin. After a few graceless attempts, I made it up to the window and over the ledge.

We had landed in a bedroom. Instead of finding Suze, I found a young girl lying belly-down on a bed, flipping through the new Nancy Drew,
The Quest of the Missing Map.
This had to be the sister.

“Hello,” I said. “Where’s Suze?”

She tipped her head toward a wardrobe, where Suze was rapidly flipping through rows of clothing I recognized from school. “Here,” she said, flinging a navy blue skirt my way. “Try this on.”

I looked around, hoping there was a screen I could duck behind to change. Apparently, I was expected to exchange skirts in front of Suze. And this child.

“I’m Iris,” I said to the little girl, because it seemed to me that if she was about to see me in Betty Mrozenski’s girdle, we might as well be on a first-name basis.

“This is my kid sister, Barbara,” said Suze.

“Ma’s going to be mad,” said Barbara.

“Ma’s already mad. And she won’t get any madder unless you tell her I came back here, brat.”

While Barbara stared down her sister, I pulled off my clothes and pulled on Suze’s. Her A-line skirt was designed to lift into the air when I twirled, which I did at that moment under Suze’s orders.

“Now that’s a skirt you can dance in,” she told me. “Here.” She passed me a necklace and a pair of earrings from a box on her bureau. They were just paste, but I felt like I was being loaned the crown jewels.

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely. Where we’re going, you have to be togged to the bricks. Now hold still.” She put her hands on either side of my face and pushed my head until I was looking directly at her. From her pocketbook came the powder puff, rouge, lipstick, and mascara. While I prayed she had steady hands, she painted my face until it looked just like hers. “Perfect,” she said when her work was finished.

I caught sight of myself in the tarnished mirror above her dresser. I did look good. Grown-up, almost pretty. Red cheeks, red lips, eyelashes that went on forever.

Suze turned her attention to my feet. “How big are your dogs?”

I told her and she again turned to the wardrobe and pulled out a pair of well-worn pumps. “These are small, but they’ll do. Can’t have you ruining the effect with saddle shoes.”

I slipped on the leather loafers with Cuban heels, longing to see how different my legs looked. The shoes were tight, but I didn’t care.

“Now you’re hotsy totsy from head to toe. All right, sunshine. We got to blow.” Suze climbed out the window and instructed me to follow her.

“It was nice meeting you,” I told Barbara.

She didn’t bother to reply.

CHAPTER

10

I STRUGGLED TO KEEP SUZE’S PACE out on the street. It was obvious the scene with her mother had bothered her more than she was willing to let on, but I wasn’t sure how, or if, I should ask any more about it. Adults didn’t act that way in my world, and I had a funny suspicion that if I condemned her mother for her behavior, Suze would defend her. And the last thing I wanted to do was to put us at odds. After all, I’d been in enough arguments that day.

“So your aunt was okay with you coming out tonight?” she asked me.

It took me a minute to remember that I lived with my fictional aunt. “Absolutely.”

“No curfew?”

Pop hadn’t said anything about when I needed to return. “Nope.”

Suze eyed me suspiciously. “Lucky dog. If I’m not home by twelve-thirty I get the belt.” She raised an eyebrow. “Of course, sometimes it’s worth it.”

“My aunt doesn’t have any other kids, so I don’t think it occurred to her that she needed to tell me when I should come home.”

Suze laughed. “Enjoy it while you can. After tonight, I’ll bet she gives you all kinds of rules.”

We met up with Rhona and Maria outside Normandie’s Pharmacy. Rhona ignored me. Maria greeted me by saying, “Nice hardware,” which I realized was a reference to the jewelry Suze had loaned me. Five minutes later, two Italian boys I recognized from the Rainbows’ lunch table joined us. Benny was tall and tan, both features set off by the oversized dark blue pinstriped suit he wore. His shoes were polished to a high sheen and from his waist hung a watch on a chain that he twirled as he approached us. With him was Dino. He also wore an oversized suit, only his was a butter-yellow color that made it seem even more like a costume. Neither introduced himself to me. Instead, they talked to Rhona and Maria and periodically looked my way like they were wondering why I was still there.

I was starting to wonder, too.

The plan was to pool our money and take a cab into the heart of Harlem. As we waited for a taxi to appear, everyone searched pockets and pocketbooks for enough coin to get us there and into the club. It was obvious that everyone was broke and no one was eager to pay more than their share. By the time we found a car willing to go north of 96th Street, we still hadn’t sorted out how we were going to pay the bill.

I was starting to panic. What if the entire evening was canceled? “I’ve got it,” I said, producing Pop’s small wad of bills from inside my purse.

“Are you sure?” asked Suze.

She had no idea how hard it was for Pop to come up with that dough. She probably thought it was walking-around cash my aunt and uncle gave to me. “Why not? After all, you’re all being so nice about taking me with you. It’s the least I can do.”

After that the mood toward me drastically improved.

We piled into the cab, Suze in the front seat, Rhona and Maria on the boys’ laps in the back. I was wedged into the remaining space beside them, trying not to become overwhelmed by the cigarette smoke they began to fill the car with.