Crackpot, p.20
Crackpot, page 20
Hoda was sorely tempted, but she decided she’d better not. She’d tasted whiskey at weddings and she didn’t like it much. She really liked sweet wine better, and she didn’t know how to act with strange men from downtown and rich Americans; she wouldn’t know what to say to them. She’d like to see what the dancehalls were like, though. She didn’t think she’d mind dancing with anybody, even if the steps were different from those she knew. She could do that all right.
“So come on!” Seraphina urged. “You don’t have to do anything but dance if you don’t want to!”
No, Hoda didn’t think she’d better. What about those diseases Yankl the butcher had told her about? She had a feeling that downtown among total strangers and rich Americans was where you must catch them, especially if you went to hotels with them like Seraphina had done four or five times already. But Seraphina just laughed at her when she mentioned diseases, and said “I’ve never caught anything yet! Honestly Hoda, you’re so fussy it’s unnnatural!”
It was really tempting, just to try it once. All that money you could earn, that Seraphina boasted about, and not even have to make the bed afterwards. Tonight it was especially tempting, after her disappointment. Maybe that’s why she had run into Seraphina, because she was meant to go downtown tonight. What if “he” were to manage to slip from the clutches of his rich, skinny, beautiful, dull gentile hostesses tonight, because he had a strong feeling that he must go out and search among the people of his Empire once again? It was all silly kid stuff and she didn’t believe in it, but still, shouldn’t she give him the chance? What if he was gone from his bed tonight, his place taken by his most trusty servant, his well-beloved figure disguised, perhaps as a rich American with natty light coloured clothes and a big roll of bills. He would scarcely speak for fear of betraying himself to others; but Hoda would know right away, and he would be glad. What a lot of crap!
“All right I’ll come,” said Hoda. “But I won’t sleep in a hotel room all night.” Maybe Seraphina’s mother didn’t mind much if Seraphina stayed away, because their house was so crowded anyway, but Hoda was not going to leave her daddy alone to worry all night. Even if she went to a hotel, just to see if it was really the way Seraphina described it, it would only be for a little while.
“Can I try your perfume, too?” she asked, when Seraphina had come over after supper and was smearing what felt like jam all over her face.
“Sure.”
All made up and drenched in cologne, she looked at her face in the mirror, but couldn’t recognize herself in the mask that stared back at her, until her eyes connected with the eyes, and the looking eyes said, It’s glamorous, and the seeing eyes said, Dumb cluck with dumb guk on your mug. But the looking eyes said stubbornly, But it is glamorous.
It’s uncomfortable, said the feeling skin, and twitched all over with a thousand little itches that wanted to be scratched.
“Don’t smear it!” screamed Seraphina. “It’s beautiful,” she crowed.
It’s just for tonight, like a disguise, Hoda assured her feeling skin and seeing eyes. It is glamorous, she let her looking eyes assert. It was somebody else, out there, helping her to hide, somebody who could make all kinds of faces she had never tried before, and when she made her familiar eyes into the mirror now, wow! they sure showed. Sexy. Glamorous. And safe too, older looking, at least seventeen and maybe even eighteen. No one would recognize she was jail bait.
She told Daddy she was going out with her girl friend tonight, and kissed him very lightly, so he wouldn’t feel the makeup or smudge it.
“Do I smell nice, Daddy?”
“Yes,” said Danile, trying not to sneeze. “Enjoy yourselves.” He suppressed the urge to chuckle at the way she was suddenly fussing over herself, because he didn’t want to risk hurting her feelings. When her pupils and boy friends were over she was his own little Hoda, noisy and natural and romping unselfconsciously about among them. But the minute two girls get together, a subtle change takes place. That’s when the femininity begins to assert itself, and they begin to hatch their little plots to make captive, even more securely, by asphyxiating them if necessary, the same boys who already hang about them adoringly.
On the way downtown Hoda couldn’t remember what the important word was, and had to ask Seraphina what that word was when you wanted to make people think a guy was forcing you. Seraphina trilled it loudly on the streetcar, so people looked around at them oddly, and Seraphina posed, pleased, and Hoda got a little self-conscious in her new face. But she repeated it over and over to herself, so she wouldn’t forget it again if she needed it in a hurry: “Rape…rape…rape…rape…” No matter what happened, they mustn’t take her away from Daddy. But when they got to the dancehall, and went downstairs into the dark, she forgot again. She stood for a little while near the wall, shy in this strange place, where all the lights were coloured, and wheeled around the room, passing, like waves, over the faces and ever-moving forms of the dancers. Beautiful. She’d never seen anything like it before. She waited, smiling hopefully and watching the different steps the dancers were taking, too shy at first to indulge her usual exuberance among these strangers. But Seraphina snapped her fingers and executed little steps by herself, and made nasal sounds with her big, painted-on cherry mouth, “Come on come on come on!” So pretty soon Hoda started doing it too, forgetting her false face and just letting all the little rolls and hitches go inside of her, swelling and rolling and rippling with the unselfconscious ease and rhythmic insistence of some ocean surface, and attracting, eventually, would-be navigators of crest and wave. Seraphina was dancing too, somewhere, in the undulating, rainbow-shotsilk darkness. Hoda remembered fleetingly, after a while, that there was some word she must be sure to remember, in case she needed it in an emergency, but she couldn’t remember what it was, and after a while, the dancing and the newness and the excitement made her even forget to wonder what it could be.
It was easy, just like Seraphina said it would be, only, except for the dancing, she didn’t enjoy it so much. The first guy who was willing to pay what Seraphina had told her to ask for, didn’t take her to a hotel at all, but sneaked her out into the alley and part way up a fire escape. It was like what she was used to, only she didn’t feel the same about it; she didn’t feel she really knew what he was like, the way she felt when she did it even with total strangers, in her own part of town. He hardly said anything and she didn’t really even know what he looked like. It wasn’t as though they were having fun together at all, or sharing a good secret, or anything. The only compensation was that afterwards she could sneak back into the dancehall through the back way, without having to pay admission twice, so it was clear profit, anyway.
The next guy actually did take her up to his hotel room. It wasn’t one of the two biggest hotels in town, whose names she’d heard of; it was just a messy little room in a hotel she never even knew existed, not far from the dance-hall. But there were certain unmistakable hotel luxuries, a carpet on the floor, and a sink right in the room with you. He really seemed to like her, and Hoda made a glamorous face at herself in the spattered mirror above the sink where he was putting water in his drink. He really tried to be nice. He had even stopped to buy a bottle of pop to put in her drink before they came up here. Then, while they were drinking and fooling around, he said, “Say, you’re just a kid, ain’t you?” and Hoda suddenly remembered the word, ‘Rape! rape! rape!’ and stopped enjoying herself and got scared the cops were going to come in and catch her, and didn’t enjoy her drink, though it was sweet, or anything afterwards, because she was listening so hard for sounds at the door. This one really liked her a lot, and wanted her to stay with him all night. He said he’d even get more pop for her to put in her drinks. He said “Let’s tie one on, kid.” But she said she was sorry, she had to get home because her daddy would be worried. So he asked her where she lived, so maybe he would come and see her sometime, but for some reason she herself didn’t understand at first, she didn’t want to tell him. He was too pushy, even after they’d done it. There was something scary about him, though he started out trying to be nice. Then he began to say funny things like how he could look after a kid like her, and see she got plenty of good contacts, and how she could make plenty of money with him to manage her. He knew a lot of guys who liked a fat young piece. But when she still wouldn’t tell him where she lived he got kind of sore and said sourly, if she wanted to get on all right she should take his advice and not wear so much makeup. It ruined a guy’s shirt so he couldn’t wear it again tomorrow. And though he’d paid her in advance like Seraphina told her to make sure they did, he made it kind of hard for her to leave the hotel room till Hoda promised she’d come to the dancehall again tomorrow night. Like heck she would!
On her way out, when she got downstairs into the lobby, the man behind the counter beckoned her over. He said, “Hey kid, how about my cut?” He was very tough looking, and when Hoda said “Cut?” he said she’d better shell out some of what she’d made up there or he’d call the cops, because he was the hotel detective. Hoda got so scared she could hear her heart hammering, ‘No–rape! no–rape! no-rape! no-rape!’ She looked around quickly and there was no one else in the creepy place and her throat was full of splinters of heart beat so she could hardly breathe, but at the same time when he mentioned cops and taking her money away from her another feeling surged up on top of her fear. So when he said again, roughly, “Come on kid, shell out!” and made a threatening gesture toward the telephone, without even thinking Hoda jumped and swung her fist over the counter, hitting his hand and knocking the telephone right off the desk. “Hey!” he yelled out, but while he was bending to pick it up off the floor, Hoda ran for the door. She turned, holding the door open, long enough to yell back at him. “If you want money, you can fuck for it yourself!” And she ran, ducking around a corner and into an alleyway when she saw two cops strolling along a block away, and waiting there fearfully, for a long time, before she worked up enough nerve to slip out and walk round to where she knew she could wait for a streetcar in comparative safety.
On the streetcar she sat with her hand protectively on the pocket in which she had pinned her change purse with the money, and thought about what a close shave it had been. Boy, it would be a long time before she tried to work downtown again. You might be able to make more dough but you ran a lot more risks and met a lot more creeps. Too bad the dance-hall wasn’t closer to home, though. Maybe she could get some of her own guys to come with her sometime, when they had enough dough.
She wondered how Seraphina had made out. They had hoped to latch on to guys who would double date with them, but she guessed Seraphina had probably run into only lone wolves too, tonight, because she hadn’t seen her at all after they both got to dancing. Well, at least she’d earned enough to pay Seraphina back for her carfare and admission ticket to the dance. And she still had enough left over to put her and Daddy ahead. Maybe she’d even keep something back from the household funds and begin to save for a small bottle of Seraphina’s nice scent, which Seraphina said came all the way from Paris or Toronto, and you could get it at the fifteen-cent store.
As it turned out it hadn’t been a very lucky night for Seraphina either. Hoda went over to her place late the next afternoon, to pay her back the money she owed her, and found poor Seraphina sick in bed, with her little brothers and sisters climbing all over her, though she kept shoving them off the bed and whining at them to scram because they were hurting her. Seraphina looked just awful. Her face was bruised all over, and her lip was split open and one of her front teeth was so loose, she could push it right up with her tongue. She whispered to Hoda not to say out loud what they’d been doing last night, because the excuse she gave her mother was that she had tripped and fallen down the streetcar steps, and that way her mother had only screamed at her for wearing those damn tight clothes like a chippy. She’d really be mad if she knew Seraphina had run into a crazy meatball last night. “He had a big wad of dough, and we went up to his hotel room, and he beat the shit out of me!” Seraphina whispered with difficulty, and with an expression of such idiotic surprise she almost looked pleased. “Look,” she showed Hoda, under the covers, how her body was horribly bruised. Seraphina groaned, and sank back, screaming weakly at the kids who’d found their way back and were beginning to jump on the bed again.
Hoda whispered indignantly that it was just awful. He ought to be put in jail. But Seraphina laughed, unexpectedly, and gave her a very crafty look. “It’s all right,” she whispered slyly, “I charged him extra for it.” She giggled weakly. “He paid me so much it’s un-natural!”
Hoda was glad when she could decently put an end to her sick bed visit. It smelled just awful in Seraphina’s house, of stale cooking and stale eau de cologne and the stale urine of a lot of careless people. Seraphina’s mother came out of the kitchen before she left, and stood there growling hopelessly at her, in language Hoda didn’t understand, and making accusing gestures toward Seraphina. Hoda shrugged her shoulders and made sympathetic noises. She realized now that Seraphina, good-natured girl that she was, in spite of all the things she did seem to know, was not the one who was likely to be able to answer the questions she’d been unable to ask anyone since her own mother had died. What Seraphina could teach her Hoda had not already learned, that she was not yet ready for what Seraphina called the big time, and she certainly wasn’t sorry, if what had happened to them was any example of what went on downtown. Seraphina wouldn’t understand it of course, but Hoda could see now why her mother used to say that these people had a long way to go to get civilized. Still, she wished there was someone she could talk to about the things that bothered her. More and more she missed having a real friend. Some things she just couldn’t tell the guys, not simply because they didn’t care. Some of them confided in her like real friends, and told her all kinds of things, even about the girls they really liked, as if she didn’t have any feelings about being liked that way too. But her mamma had told her that she shouldn’t talk to boys about things like what happened to a girl every month. It had to do with a woman’s job in the world, and how she could have babies now, and her mamma had said that all she had to make sure of was that she kept herself clean so she wouldn’t get sick or anything, and spoil her baby-making thing. Her ma had told her not to discuss these things with anyone because they were important, and sometimes ignorant people talked foolishly about it all and spoiled your feelings about it. And she had promised, too, that someday, when Hoda was a little older, she’d tell her more about it herself. There was nothing to be afraid of, Mamma had said, when Hoda was so scared the first time; Hoda came from a family of good, healthy baby-makers. Mamma said her own grandmother had been betrothed when she was eight years old, and had her first child at thirteen, and had countless more after that, though many of them died. But that was in the olden days, and nowadays there was no need to hurry these things. When the time came she would explain it all to Hoda. But instead of the time coming, all that other thing had happened and her mamma was dead.
Though there were some things that Hoda really wondered about, she understood very well, now, from her own experience what her mother meant when she talked of how people could spoil things, and she wasn’t going to let them do that to something Mamma said was so important. Somehow she would find out what else there was to it, eventually. Only somehow, lately, she had been getting these awful fits of worry. What if something had gone wrong with her baby-making thing? What if it didn’t get set and start working again and she lost the knack of making babies? Would she never be able to get married then, ever at all? What if her right guy came along and liked her like those guys liked some of the girls they cried on her shoulder about; how would she tell him that something was spoiled?
It wasn’t that Hoda didn’t know all about having babies. For crying out loud you’d have to have straw between your ears not to know. She didn’t know exactly all the little details about what went on inside, but she knew if you kept on getting laid by the same guy he’d end up shooting all the different pieces in and you’d end up in trouble. That’s why people who wanted to have kids got married, because one man’s bits were more likely to fit each other and work out into an all-right complete baby. Hoda was pretty safe the way she operated because when you went with a lot of guys it was more like scrambling the parts of a whole bunch of jig-saw puzzles; you’d never be able to put together one right baby out of them, unless several guys happened to have parts that didn’t fit in too badly together. But if you stayed with one guy only for time after time, and gave him enough chance to get all the parts in before the loose and extra bits got washed away every month, then you might just as well marry him and start ripping up the sheets to make diapers with.
She even thought of going to see a doctor, but not for long, not after what the doctor had done to her mother. All she had to do was complain to the doctor that she felt funny inside sometimes. That would be the end of her. Out with the big knife and into your gut. Oh no! She could just imagine herself lying covered over and still, on the living room floor, and Daddy sitting there and crying, and even just imagining it Hoda wept a little too. Anyway, she didn’t need any doctor to tell her she’d been over-eating again, and that she would feel better if she lost weight. That’s all he’d tell her. That’s all anybody ever told her, as if she didn’t know. Even the old ladies who knew her when Mamma was alive, who said they liked her, when they ran into her, told her in that blunt way that old people feel they can afford, as if only young people have to have respect, “Hodaleh, how are you? You’re getting fat as a pregnant mare. Why don’t you go on a diet? You’d look nice if you lost a few pounds, and then the good boys would chase after you, not just the discards.” They were always making remarks like that, and if they hadn’t been Mamma’s friends so she had to be respectful, she’d have told them off long ago. Why should they call anybody a discard? Who gave them the right to discard somebody? She’d rather be a fat discard thank you very much, than somebody who went around discarding other people. If there was anything that burned her up it was when she saw in the synagogue how some of the men disregarded Daddy, which was the same thing as discarding him, as far as she could see, when they interrupted him in the middle of trying to say something, and they didn’t even bother to listen, but talked right over him.
