Louise's Gamble (11 page)

‘So Alessa’s father had an affair with a pretty peasant girl as a teenager. It happens. He did the right thing and took care of the boy.’

‘She wasn’t just a peasant girl,’ Lucia said. She lowered her voice. ‘Her family was
Mafioso
! So degrading!’

‘I’m going to say this once, Mamma, and you will never mention it again. Alessa’s father helped Turi escape to America years ago, when Mussolini destroyed the
Mafioso
and most of them fled Sicily. He is an honest workingman now and Alessa’s only blood relative. She is welcome to see him.’

‘Your father would be ashamed.’

‘Father is dead, along with his time. Now enjoy your steak and we will talk of something else, like our tickets to the USO benefit ball next week. What gown do you plan to wear?’

SEVENTEEN

I
t was late when my taxi dropped me off at the door of ‘Two Trees’. The rain had stopped, but icy, fat raindrops fell from the trees with every cold breeze. I’d expected the house to be dark, but the downstairs lights were still on, and once inside I heard both radios – one in the lounge, and one in the kitchen – blaring, with the voices of my fellow residents chattering over the sound of the news. When I entered the lounge I found Phoebe, Joe, and Henry. Ada was at work. The news ended as I came in, followed by the theme music for the Red Skelton Show. Joe turned the volume down.

Phoebe gathered her skirts and slid over to make room for me on the davenport.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked.

‘President Roosevelt just finished speaking,’ Phoebe said.

‘Good news,’ Henry said, ‘and lots of it! We’ve won Guadalcanal! The Japanese Armada has been smashed! The Japs lost twenty-three ships and twenty-five thousand men! Admiral Halsey’s a hero!’

‘It was bloody close,’ Joe said, with his usual calm pragmatism. ‘Too close. If the Japs destroyed Henderson Air Field and our bombers, we wouldn’t have had a chance.’

Joe turned to me with a significant look. ‘The Vichy French forces in North Africa have turned on the Nazis,’ he said. ‘They’re fighting right alongside the Allies.’ Rachel’s husband Gerald was supposed to be part of the French Resistance there, if he was still alive.

‘The French!’ Henry snorted. ‘Never know what side they’re on.’

‘Ever experienced a Nazi occupation, Henry?’ Joe asked quietly. ‘Sometimes not resisting is the wisest choice, especially when your family’s lives are at stake.’

‘Do you have to work on Thanksgiving Day, Louise?’ Phoebe asked, quickly changing the subject.

I hadn’t given Thanksgiving any thought at all. ‘I would expect so,’ I said.

‘When is Thanksgiving?’ Joe asked.

‘Thursday next week.’

‘A weekday. I’ll be working, I’m sure.’

‘I guess we’ll be skipping Thanksgiving this year,’ Henry said. ‘We’ll make do with a prayer for the troops.’

‘Nonsense,’ Phoebe said. ‘As long as I am alive we will have Thanksgiving dinner in this house. Dellaphine and I will cook during the day, and we’ll eat during our usual dinner hour. Turkey and all the usual side dishes, with sherry before.’

‘But Phoebe,’ I said, ‘turkey is forty-two cents a pound! I saw it in the Safeway ad.’

‘I can manage it, if you all are willing to eat macaroni and cheese and scalloped potatoes and bacon for dinner early in the week.’

We were willing.

I went back to the kitchen for a glass of water and found Madeleine seated at the table with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. Her eyes were swollen from crying. She was dressed for bed in flannel pajamas and a fuzzy bathrobe.

‘Are you OK?’ I asked.

‘I’m so disappointed,’ Madeleine said. ‘Three of my girlfriends and I’ve been looking for an apartment to share. We can afford it. We all live with our folks, and we want to get out on our own.’

‘Sounds like fun,’ I said.

‘For the last month we’ve looked everywhere. No one will rent an apartment to colored girls. No one. Nowhere. No matter how much deposit money we got or how good our references are. We’re all government girls, too.’

‘Dearie, I am so sorry. I know it must be tough to share a room with your mother.’ I couldn’t imagine it.

‘It’s tiresome,’ she said. ‘And crowded. She knows what I’m doing every minute. I can’t have friends over.’

‘What about the colored girls who’ve come to Washington from out of town?’

‘There are colored boarding-houses, and the government has built barracks for them.’

‘I don’t know what to say. I wish it weren’t so.’

Madeleine dropped her head back into her hands, then lifted it again, forcing a look of resolution on to her face. ‘I guess I can save more money this way. I’d like to go to Howard after the war.’

‘I’m going to college too, I hope,’ I said. ‘And I can’t afford an apartment either.’

‘Big difference between you and me is, somebody would rent to you.’

As I walked down the hall back to the lounge I said a prayer that colored people like Madeleine would be better off after the war, after they’d proved they could fight and work as well as anyone else. As long as there were people like Henry in the world it would be a struggle.

I went into the lounge saying yet another prayer, that Joe would be alone there. He wasn’t. Henry still sat in his usual chair reading a newspaper. Why in God’s name couldn’t he read in his room?

Phoebe checked into the lounge on her way upstairs. ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘Coming to bed, Louise? I’ll walk upstairs with you.’

‘Sure,’ I said.

Joe shot me a look of resignation and regret that made my knees wobble.

EIGHTEEN

T
uesday morning. Four days until I met with Alessa again.

I sat at my desk behind my partition, the closest to private space I had, but it was difficult to work. Friday seemed like an eternity from now.

And Betty was still absent! Sure, I was worried about her health, but I worried as much about work. Betty was young and silly, but she was a terrific typist and I didn’t want to have to replace her. I wondered again if something more dire than illness was going on in her life.

‘Ruth, Brenda, can you manage without me for a while?’ I asked. ‘I’m going to take a long lunch hour and go over to Betty’s boarding house and see how she is.’

‘We’ll be fine,’ Brenda said. ‘Things are quiet right now.’

‘I’m glad you’re going to check on her,’ Ruth said. ‘I’ve been worried.’

Betty’s boarding house couldn’t have been more different from ‘Two Trees’ if it was on the moon. It was five stories tall, halfway down a long street of identical town houses, each one as shabby as the rest.

The brick facade was painted a deep green, now faded to a flat pea green in patches where the sun lingered. Shades hung to the sills in all the windows, making the house look as though it was napping. The tiny front yard, though swept and weedless, was bare of anything green.

When I knocked at the door a middle-aged white woman opened it with a do-rag wrapped around her head, carrying an armload of frayed sheets.

‘And you are?’ she asked.

‘I’m Louise Pearlie,’ I said. ‘Betty works for me. She hasn’t come to the office in several days, and I understand she’s ill? I’m worried about her. Could I see her, please?’

‘She ain’t here,’ the woman said.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean she ain’t here. For almost a week now. Her rent’s paid up through the month, though, so I expect she’ll be back. Her room-mates said she got a week’s vacation. I didn’t know government girls got that kind of time off.’

I must have looked awfully surprised, because the woman sighed in resignation, and ushered me into the dark hall.

‘You’d better come in,’ she said. ‘I’m Eloise Brown. I own this place.’

The hall was dark and needed new wallpaper, but was otherwise clean. A steep, narrow set of stairs led up into darkness.

‘One of Betty’s room-mates works second shift; I’m pretty sure she’s in,’ Mrs Brown said. ‘Why don’t you go on up and talk to her? Room Three-Oh-Three.’

I flicked on the light switch before starting up the steep narrow stairs. Nothing happened, and I noticed the ceiling light socket was empty.

Seeing my hesitation, the landlady said, ‘We don’t waste power here, like the President says.’

I don’t think the President wants me to fall down the stairs and break my neck, I thought as I felt my way to the top of the staircase, caught my breath on the landing, and headed up another steep flight.

There were three rooms on the third floor. I glanced into the single bathroom and saw an outdated bathroom suite and worn linoleum, although it seemed clean enough.

I knocked on the door of Room 303, and a girl called out to me.

‘Come on the hell in!’ Her voice sounded familiar.

I opened the door and found that I needed to edge my way inside. Three twin beds and one tall dresser filled the space, with barely enough room to move between them. Drying laundry hung from the curtain rods, and suitcases poked out from under the beds. There was nowhere to sit other than on the beds themselves.

And on the bed farthest from me, under the only window, propped up on pillows, sat Myrna, painting her fingernails scarlet.

‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ she said. ‘Louise! What are you doing here?’

‘Betty works for me,’ I said, so amazed to see her that I stopped dead inside the doorway and stared.

‘Oh, Lord,’ Myrna said, ‘you’re that Louise! Betty talks about you all the time. Small world. Come on in.’

Myrna slung her pajama-clad legs off the edge of her bed and let them dangle off the side.

‘Come on over here and sit,’ she said, patting the bed next to hers.

I threaded my way through the room and sat. I was terribly curious, but knew better than to ask Myrna anything about her job, her work, or our time at ‘The Farm’ together.

‘What on earth is going on?’ I asked. ‘Betty called in sick days ago, and now her landlady says she’s on a holiday? This is serious. She could lose her job.’

Myrna didn’t answer for a minute. ‘It’s already serious.’

The worse possibility I could think of crossed my mind. ‘An abortion?’ I asked.

‘No, thank goodness,’ Myrna said. ‘But it’s bad. Lil, our other room-mate, and I’ve been covering for her every way we know how, hoping she’d get back soon and go back to work without anyone knowing.’

‘Knowing what?’

‘She’s in jail.’

NINETEEN

E
xcuse me?’ I said. ‘I thought I heard you say Betty was in jail?’

‘She was arrested Tuesday, so early in the morning that no one had left for work yet. The police came and handcuffed her. She screamed and cried and begged. Lil and I screamed and argued. All the other girls gathered in the hall downstairs and watched the police drag her away. They stuck her in the back of a paddy wagon with a bunch of prostitutes. She’s in a real jam.’

A dozen images came to my mind, among them Betty shoplifting or dealing in the black market, but I discarded them all. The girl wasn’t a criminal.

‘What was she charged with? It must be a mistake!’

‘No mistake,’ Myrna said, lighting a cigarette and holding it gingerly away from her drying fingernails. ‘She was arrested because she could have venereal disease.’

Of course I was shocked. How devastating for her! All that boy-craziness had finally caught up with Betty, but I still didn’t understand why she was in jail.

‘You can get arrested for having VD?’ I asked.

‘Only if you’re a woman,’ Myrna said. ‘What happens is, when some soldier or sailor gets clap, he has to tell the pecker-checker about all the good-time girls he’s been with over the past six months if he wants to avoid the brig. Some squid Betty dumped months ago turned her in. So she gets carted off to jail until her blood test comes back.’

‘Why on earth?’ I asked.

‘To keep her from infecting some other innocent farm boy.’

‘Some boy infected her first!’

‘Of course, but men have to be free to fight the war.’

‘So what happens next?’

‘If her test is negative she goes free. If not, she’s sent to a quarantine hospital for treatment. It’s prison, actually.’

‘What happens to the sailor?’

‘Oh, he sits around sick bay in his pajamas and takes sulfa pills until he’s cured, and then he goes back on duty.’

‘While the woman he’s named is ruined.’

‘Yeah. Ain’t life swell?’

The injustice of Betty’s predicament enraged me. I’d been raised to keep most of my thoughts to myself, but in this case I couldn’t keep quiet. Oh, I’d heard all about Eliot Ness and his Committee on Social Protection. Promiscuous women were responsible for the spread of VD in the armed forces. Men had needs they couldn’t be expected to control; besides, they had to fight. Fighting men were important, women were expendable.

‘Sanctimonious bastards,’ I said. ‘If Betty has clap it’s because some fast-talking man gave it to her first!’

‘Louise, your vehemence surprises me. It’s not like you.’

‘Where is Betty? Have you been to see her? When will her test be returned?’

‘In the DC jail, no, and I think any day now. What are you going to do?’

‘I don’t know.’ And I didn’t.

‘Let me know if I can help.’

I left Myrna separating her toes with cotton so she could paint them to match her fingernails.

I was too upset and angry to go straight back to work, so I went down the street until I found a café and ducked inside.

‘You don’t by some chance have any coffee, do you?’ I asked. I felt cold, and it wasn’t the weather.

‘In fact, we do,’ the waitress said. ‘I think there’s half a pot left. Want a cup?’

‘Please,’ I said. ‘Anything sweet? At all? I don’t care what it is.’

‘I think there’s some apple pie, but it’s made with honey.’

‘I’ll have a slice.’

The waitress brought my order right away. She was young, maybe fifteen, with a long ponytail and too much make-up. I badly wanted to warn her to stay away from GIs frantic for sex before they got shipped off to some battlefield, but I didn’t. It wouldn’t do any good, anyway.

Ever since the war started, young men and women were thrown together far away from hometowns, families, and churches. They had money in their pockets and the freedom to do as they wished. Having sex without marriage became part of the adventure. I mean, wasn’t I thinking of having an affair myself, something I would never have dreamed of even one short year ago? Joe and I weren’t willing to resort to the back seat of Phoebe’s car or some cold park bench, but plenty were.