Borrow Trouble (21 page)

T
hirty minutes after Franchetta called the corner grocer with her delivery order, a young, pimply-faced teenager arrived on his bicycle with two bags stored inside a wire-framed handlebar basket. Franchetta paid and quickly sent the boy away. She floated around the small kitchen while setting out cutting boards, mixing bowls, and seasonings. It didn't take too long before Melvina and Daisy joined her, with Chick dragging along behind them, like it pained her to do so. Daisy's face brightened when she saw the preparations for a grand dinner spread. “Ooh, Frannie, you must really like having that man around?” she asked knowingly. “He must have been heavy on your heart once upon a time.”

“Hmmm,” Melvina sighed pleasantly. “Seems to me, he still is.”

“The older y'all get, the more you'll realize how some things never change,” Franchetta said, then blushed. “Now who's gonna peel those potatoes?” she asked, motioning over to a five-pound sack resting on the oatmeal-colored Formica countertop.

“Uh-uh, not me,” squealed Daisy, “I've never been good at peelin', but I wouldn't mind pulling on some snap peas.” She plopped down happily onto a metal chair with padded blue vinyl cushions.

“Is that sage I smell?” asked Chick, with a measured amount of reluctance. “What you know about corn-bread stuffing?” she teased Franchetta, assuming that was what the spice had been used for.

“You think you know better?” Franchetta replied, licking a smidge of stuffing from the tip of her finger.

“Ooh!” howled Melvina. “If you can't stand the heat, get the hell out of the kitchen.”

“Oh, I can stand it alright, but what if things get too hot for all of us?” Chick offered, speaking of Baltimore handling the promotion end of their business over the next week.

“Let me worry about that,” answered Franchetta, with a stern eye.

Melvina nervously rubbed her open palms along the ridges of her curvy hips as she drew in a measured breath and frowned. Daisy stood silently, with her hands buried deep in a plastic bowl of snap peas. “Chick's got a point, Frannie,” Melvina said, siding with Chick for the time being. “I mean, Baltimore seems like a real nice man, but all we know about him is what he did to keep you from getting pinched today.”

Finally, Daisy looked up from her duties to share in the conversation. “Frannie, how'd you come to know Baltimore in the first place?” That question put a subtle shine on Franchetta's lips as she thought back to the very day she laid eyes on him.

“Well, I'd run off to see the world, since I couldn't decide on what I wanted to do with my life. At sixteen, I came of age and realized I was a woman. I took up with this traveling carnival that pitched a tent in Beaumont, Texas, where I hired on as a popcorn girl. I made a little money and bought me a couple of dresses, you know, to help me appear older than I was.”

“Too bad they don't make dresses to help a woman to appear
younger
,” Melvina quipped as she chuckled heartily.

“Wouldn't that be something,” Franchetta agreed. “Well, we rambled up the eastern seaboard before winter set in and then, one day, pulled into the tiniest little tick on the map, called Whiskey Bottom, Maryland. I was bored and growing eager to sell more than just popcorn, but the headman wouldn't let me outta his sight until I turned seventeen. He said so's I could get those girlish notions out of my head before I found more trouble than I bargained for. My second day in Whiskey Bottom was much like all the others, hawking boxes of corn and keeping clear of the slugs who worked on the machinery, 'cause they had some bad habits and a taste for young girls. It was half past three when the sun shined on a brash eighteen-year-old strutting around like a prized peacock, with three girls on his arms and spending money like he was snatching it down off of trees.”

“That was Baltimore?” squealed Daisy as she became noticeably more excited than before.

“And that was ten or so years ago, but, yeah, he was a fine young thing and so sure of himself that lots of grown men at the carnival sneered at him something fierce, but they was just jealous, and he knew it. That didn't stop him from showing those girls of his a grand afternoon and smiling about it while rubbing the other men's noses in it. Before nightfall, I caught his attention and asked if I could speak to him, alone. The next day, he showed up without his arm pieces, but he was just as generous. He won so many Kewpie dolls and stuffed animals that we couldn't carry them all. Hell, I didn't know what was going on until it happened. That boy had me so sweet on him that my teeth hurt every time I said his name. And, that was just for starters.” Franchetta went on to explain how she stayed awake at night, thinking about being with the smooth youngster she'd met just south of the Baltimore, Maryland, county line. She wrote down his address and wrote to him for months. He didn't return any of her letters until she sent him a postcard from Santa Fe, New Mexico, informing him that she was now seventeen, legal, and desperately fighting off the carnival headman's advances every night. Within a week, Baltimore caught up to the troupe, setting up camp in El Paso. He'd boarded a train and subsequently stolen a late-model automobile, and there he was, standing right outside the popcorn stand a few minutes before opening time. It appeared that he hadn't slept in days, but his beige cotton blazer and white linen slacks were as crisp as a new dollar bill. “Before I could speak,” Franchetta continued, “he held out his hand and told me, ‘Come on, baby girl. Let's go home,' like I was supposed to up and fly off to Lawd knows where with him.”

Melvina was breathless, while Daisy actually held hers, awaiting the outcome of Franchetta's fascinating tale. “So, after he came all that way, trotting behind you, what did you say?” asked Chick, now drawn in as well.

Franchetta tilted her head back, closed her eyes, and giggled. “I didn't say a damned thing. I up and flew off to Lawd knows where with him, like I was supposed to.”

The small room, which smelled of cooking spices and a barely noticeable commingling of reasonably priced department store perfumes, roared with unbridled cackles from the women, including Franchetta, who said, with her head cocked to the side for emphasis sake, “My mama didn't raise no fool.” None of the girls knew it, but Baltimore and Henry had been listening to their conversation from a mouse hole they'd begun to cork in Daisy's upstairs bedroom.

“He was into saving women even back then, huh, Frannie,” Melvina said, as a fact instead of a question.

“That's not the half of it,” Franchetta responded, thinking back, with her face now wearing a saddened expression she couldn't shrug off. “After we ditched the car and caught a rail all the way back East, I learned that Baltimore had a slew of chippies working for him, seven girls in all. I begged him to teach me the business and put me in his stable so's I could earn my keep like the others. He fought me on it and told me it could be a hard life sometimes, but if I was sure, he'd do it. It seems like a million years ago and only yesterday, both at the same time. I kept after Baltimore until he made love to me, taught me how to do it right, and put me on the stroll, like I wanted. It was so much fun, for a while at least, all the shopping and partying we did. Every week was kinda like Christmas.”

“Wow, it all sounds swell,” Daisy cooed, her eyes cast upward as if she was picturing the best times a young girl could ever have.

“Yeah, he's always been a swell fella, too, as far as swell fellas go,” Franchetta added proudly. “Although he's no slouch, loving a man like him is harder than picking up a dime off a marble floor.”

“Is that why ya'll parted ways?” Daisy asked innocently. “Loving him was too hard?”

“Nah, he up and left one morning while all of the girls slept. He shelled out three hundred dollars apiece of his own money to send us on our way,” Franchetta remembered unpleasantly. “None of us had to ask why,” she said. “Baltimore simply quit the business when he got tired of calling on men after they'd beat up on one of his women. That sorta thing riled him up something terrible. He said a man with the taste of a woman's blood in his mouth would keep after it until he'd killed her. Baltimore wasn't about to let that happen, so he'd protect us by leaving a cold body behind each time he had to call on one of those woman beaters.” When Henry considered Franchetta's heartfelt words and his friend's troubled past, he climbed to his feet and left Baltimore there to deal with it, alone.

An awkward smile eased at the corners of Melvina's lips as she tried to make sense of Baltimore's plight. “It must be hell, carrying all that around inside him.”

“Yeah, I think I fell in love with his misery before I fell head over heels with him,” Franchetta thought aloud.

“I'll say,” whispered Daisy.

“Tell me about it,” Chick said, before turning her head away to hide her sorrow. “Tell me about it.”

As Franchetta squirted butter on two whole chickens with a turkey baster, she perked up, as if that time in their lives had come and gone. “Every so often, Baltimore comes back to me, and don't ask me how he does it. In Chicago, he showed up at a stage play I had a small part in. One summer in Springfield, I was managing a cathouse for a sick old lady too mean to die and too ornery to trust anybody else with the money other than me. Low and behold, who strolls in with a baseball team barnstorming up and down the state, playing fairgrounds and city parks to scratch a living? Oomph, that was a nice weekend, but Baltimore never stays for long. One day I figure he might stay for keeps, when he's tired of running maybe.” Franchetta peered up from the chickens to see three sets of eyes staring back at hers. She answered those wondering eyes before any of them had to ask. “Sure, I'll take him in after he's seen too many cold days and rainy nights to continue going at it alone. I'd be a fool not to. I just hope he can locate me when that happens.” She crammed the corn-bread stuffing inside both birds and slid them into the oven. “Baltimore put his brand on me. Ain't nothing ever gon' change about that. If something could, I wouldn't want it to, nor would I be willing to let it,” Franchetta surmised, while summing up her affections for the first man to share her love and break her heart.

Hours later, dinner was served as everyone sat around the table in evening attire: long sleeves, dressy slacks, dresses, and heels. Henry said grace, thanking God for good food, good friends, and the wrongs He promised to forgive in the end, amen. During the meal, Baltimore teased Franchetta about the look on her face when the store manager had his paws dug in. She laughed so hard, she nearly choked on a chicken bone. Henry slapped her on the back and dislodged it, although she was concerned his technique might have left a bruise.

Baltimore helped Franchetta with the dinner plates afterwards, while Melvina served heaping helpings of hot apple pie. Henry took one look at his slice, turned his nose up, and adamantly refused it, making a grand spectacle of himself. “Uh-uh, apple pie is the root of all evil!” he ranted. “And I know what the preacher say, but he's wrong on this account. Some men say money is the root of it all, others charge that it's women who's got money beat by a mile. But think about it. Ever since Eve brought Adam that apple pie from out the bushes, men folk haven't seen nothing but troubles. Go ahead on and think about it.”

“Ooh, Henry, you ought to be shamed,” hollered Melvina, tickled as she could be.

“Well, I'm not,” Henry asserted. “Though I am still itching for something sweet. I know. I'll run down to the corner and fetch some ice cream.”

“But it's cold out,” Daisy argued as she forked another bite of pie in her mouth.

“Good. Then it won't melt before I get back,” said Henry, with his mind set on sitting down to something that had nothing to do with Adam, Eve, apple pie, or the bushes he was sure Eve had baked it in.

As Henry hit the door, Chick opened the cabinet on a slightly used RCA Victrola stand-up record player and stereo. She slowly adjusted the radio tuner until the sounds of a Chicago broadcast came through nice and clear. “Hey! The Johnny Otis Quintet is performing live with Little Esther. I hope they shake up some of those ‘Low Down Dirty Blues' like that time they hit Kansas City and almost burned down the Atlantic Club. Remember that, Frannie?” Chick danced to the soulful sounds coming out of the stereo speakers until she realized no one had answered. “Frannie?” she called out before turning to catch a glance of Franchetta ushering Baltimore through her bedroom door and closing it behind him.

“Chick, I've talked to Melvina, and I know how Daisy feels, but I want your say-so before going in there to convince Baltimore to promote and look after us with these out-of-town white men here for the automobilers' convention,” said Franchetta. Daisy dried off a dessert saucer with her apron as Melvina looked on from the thick brown corduroy-covered divan.

“Well, we could do worse, I guess. I'd feel good about having him at our back if something came down,” Chick submitted. “Think he'll give in and go along with it?”

“We'll know soon enough,” Franchetta answered, with good loving on her mind. “I've learned a lot of new tricks since Chicago.”

Franchetta had been in the bedroom for an hour, while Daisy and Melvina listened just outside of the door. Chick pretended to be disinterested in whatever had Franchetta moaning passionately and screaming wildly, as if she was being tortured, in a good way, despite having lowered the volume on the stereo several times in the past five minutes. Then, suddenly, it quieted down on the other side of that door. Daisy hunched her shoulders and shook her head at Melvina, her snoopmate. “I on't know Mel. It sounds like she's laughing 'bout something.”

“Forget this. I'm tired of being left out,” Melvina complained. “I get men to pay me by the minute, and Baltimore's got me standing out here, wishing.” She tapped at Franchetta's bedroom door, hoping someone answered. “Hey, is it alright to open up?” she yelled against a wall of oak.