The Chili Queen (2 page)

“We’re just like two maiden ladies on an adventure, then.”

Addie thought that was an interesting way to put it.

“Do you want to see the hats?” the woman asked. Before Addie could answer, Emma jumped up and removed the hatbox from overhead. She unbuckled it and lifted the lid. “This is the pink one.” Emma reached into a cloud of paper and brought out a bonnet the color of a baby’s bottom, with ruffles and couching and long satin streamers, and thrust it into Addie’s hands. “And there’s this one, too.” She removed a tiny round red hat that reminded Addie of a tin of Enameline the Modern Stove Polish that Welcome used to polish the stove at The Chili Queen. Even her girls wouldn’t wear such silly bonnets. “I made them myself,” the woman said shyly. “Even John says I’m an unusual smart woman with my fingers.”

“Where are you going to wear a hat like that?” Addie nodded at the tin of stove polish.

“Nalgitas. It’s in New Mexico.”

Addie jerked up her head. “Nalgitas?”

Emma nodded.

“Hats like them wouldn’t last a single dust storm. We get fierce dust.”

Emma ran a deep blue ribbon on the red hat through her fingers and asked if Addie was from Nalgitas. Addie acknowledged that she was.

“Why, isn’t that the best thing? You’re the first person I’ve met who lives there. I hope we’ll be friends,” Emma said. She set the hat carefully into the box, then reached for the one Addie held, tucking it in beside the first and arranging the tissue paper on top. She returned the box to its place on the rack. “Isn’t this a wonderful coincidence?”

Addie didn’t think so. She inquired of the woman if she were visiting.

Emma flushed and looked away. “I’m going to live there. If you must know…” The pause was a little too coy, Addie thought. “I’m getting married,” Emma added.

“Oh,” was all Addie said. Wives weren’t so good for business. Sooner or later, most of them tried to shut down a whorehouse.

“I won’t actually live in Nalgitas. My husband, that is my husband-to-be, owns a ranch near there—a big one. He says it’s the biggest in a hundred miles, but you know how men brag—except for John, that is.” Her face turned hard.

“What’s his name?”

Emma looked confused. “John.”

“The rancher, I mean.”

“Oh, him. It’s Mr. Withers. Mr. Walter Withers.”

The name was not familiar, and Addie was glad she wouldn’t be losing business. Marriage didn’t keep men from a whorehouse, but bridegrooms weren’t such good customers. Then she wondered if Mr. Withers used another name at The Chili Queen. Men did that sometimes, although she often told them, “What I do best is forget names.” She asked, “What’s he look like?”

Emma looked down at her hands and muttered something.

“What’s that?”

Instead of answering, Emma reached into her bag and pulled out a tiny tintype not much bigger than Addie’s thumbnail. Addie took the picture and squinted at it. The image was so dark and out of focus that she couldn’t tell even if the subject were a white man. “He doesn’t show much, does he?”

Emma shook her head.

“Tall or short?”

Emma shrugged.

Addie snorted. “What’s that? You’re not sure? Sounds like you never met him.” She laughed at her little joke, but when Emma looked down at her hands and began fidgeting with the strings of her bag, Addie blew out her breath. “You never met him? Are you one of those mail-order brides?”

“Certainly not,” Emma said quickly, glancing around as Addie’s voice rose. She snatched the picture from Addie and put it into her purse. “No, I certainly am not.”

“Well, what are you then?”

“I’m not a wife you pay for like something in a wish-book. I have my pride.”

Not so much, Addie thought. She studied the worn velvet on the back of the seat in front of her as she waited for the woman to explain.

In a minute, Emma cleared her throat. “We have corresponded for a long time. I believe that by doing so, we have gotten to know each other better than if he’d courted me in person.”

Addie stared at the tobacco juice stains on the floor of the car and tried not to smile.

Emma explained, “We were not distracted with physical things, you might say.” She cleared her throat again. “We have gotten to know each other’s souls.”

Addie had never known anybody’s soul and wasn’t much interested in hearing about Mr. Withers’s. So she asked how the two of them had gotten acquainted.

“He placed an ad in the newspaper at home, saying he would be pleased to correspond with a good Christian woman, as there are none in Nalgitas.” Emma thought that over and added, “I mean I’m sure there are some, such as yourself, but he said he wasn’t personally acquainted with any.”

“No doubt,” said Addie, who wasn’t acquainted with any, either. It seemed curious to her that Emma hadn’t married before, and she wanted to ask about it, but that was too rude a question even for Addie, so instead, she inquired how long the two had been writing.

Six months, Emma told her. “He wrote two weeks ago and invited me for a visit and said that if I were agreeable, we should consider matrimony. But he said if I didn’t like him, I was not bound. I can always leave.”

“But you can’t go back home, can you? Your brother said as much,” Addie pointed out.

Emma frowned, thinking that over. “No, I suppose not. But it doesn’t matter. I’ve made up my mind I’m going to like him.”

“What if you don’t?”

“I will, that’s all,” she replied so sharply that Addie felt rebuked. Emma unhooked the collar of her wool jacket and stretched her neck. “Anybody has to be more likable than John,” she added more agreeably.

That one was not fit to associate with hogs, Addie thought. Then she asked, “What if
he
doesn’t like
you
? Have you thought about that?”

Emma bit her lip and looked down at her hands. “I hope to be up to the mark,” she said, a catch in her voice, and Addie felt a little ashamed of herself. The woman had enough trouble without borrowing more. Besides, Addie thought as she glanced at the hamper, there was no need to offend her. “Well, I’m sure he’ll like you just fine. I never knew an old batch who wouldn’t be happy with just about any woman. They’re not too particular, you know.” She thought that over. It wasn’t much of a compliment, but Emma didn’t seem to mind.

Emma unfastened another button, then another, and in a moment she took off the jacket. When Emma reached up to put it onto the rack, Addie noticed there were no wet spots under her arms. Maybe the woman didn’t sweat. Addie felt the perspiration on her own face, and as she reached for her handkerchief, she dropped the calling card. She’d forgotten she was holding it.

Emma picked it up and read it. Well, it couldn’t be helped, Addie thought. The woman would give her a horrified stare and move as far away from her as possible. Addie would lose out on the supper, but she’d get the seat back. That was some consolation.

Emma looked puzzled as she studied the piece of pasteboard. Then she smiled. “Oh, I am double-lucky.” She put the card into her purse.

“What?” Addie stammered. Emma wouldn’t be the first woman who was disappointed in love and decided to turn out. Still, Addie couldn’t see this particular woman becoming a whore if things didn’t work with the rancher. Besides, there wasn’t much call for a gray-haired woman in a hookhouse. The Chili Queen was no old-ladies’ rest home.

“I mean, you running a boardinghouse. If Mr. Withers doesn’t want me, I can stay with you at”—she glanced down at the card—“The Chili Queen.” She laughed.

She might be an unusual smart woman with her fingers, but in other ways, she was dumb as a barrel of hair. Addie was tempted to shock the silly woman into silence by telling her just what went on at The Chili Queen, but Emma might complain, and the conductor was just mean enough to put Addie off the train at the next stop. So instead, she replied, “You just do that.”

After a while, Emma got up and removed a cloth workbag from the portmanteau, then took out several scraps of fabric that had been cut into shapes. She threaded a needle with cotton and began to sew the little pieces together. Addie fanned herself with her hand as she watched Emma stitch. In a few minutes, Emma snipped off the thread with a pair of scissors shaped like a crane and held up her work for Addie’s inspection. The design, worked in calicoes that were bright blue and brown the color of stiff coffee, was called Double Pyramids, Emma explained.

Addie didn’t understand women who named their sewing. She didn’t have a hand for it herself. Besides, Addie always put store-bought spreads on her beds instead of quilts. A quilt reminded a man of home, and that was not a good thing in a whorehouse. She muttered a compliment, then turned and stared out the window.

The train passed a hardscrabble farm, the buildings plain and unpainted, the field so poor the homesteaders couldn’t raise a row with a pitchfork. A woman slouched in the barnyard, shading her eyes as she watched the train. Three little girls in raggedy dresses and drooping sunbonnets stood next to the tracks, the biggest child holding a baby. One of the girls waved, the others just stared at the train, their heads turning to watch it out of sight. Without thinking, Addie waved back.

She used to be the girl with the baby—the oldest one, who’d had to mind the others when they came. She’d known all about babies. Her mother had one every year—except in the year after her father died, before her mother remarried—and Addie had helped deliver them. She’d known from an early age how a baby got started, too. There was only one bedroom in the house, and it was partitioned off with rough boards that had big cracks between them. Addie’d lain awake at night, listening to her step-paw root around in the bed, grunting like a pig in slops. Addie cringed when her mother begged her husband to keep away from her, then gave into him. Addie half-pitied her and half-hated her for satisfying the old man. Finally, the worn-out woman with skin the color of smoked ham slid an old bureau in front of the bedroom door at night to keep him out, and he slept on the floor in front of the fireplace, wrapped in a blanket.

But then he had come for Addie, a great big half-grown girl. She kicked him pretty hard the first time, and the next day, he cowhided her. But he didn’t stop pawing her, and her mother didn’t seem to mind. So Addie took the money her step-paw kept hidden in her mother’s scrapbag—not all of it, just enough to buy a ticket and a little more for expenses. Then she flagged down the train and told the conductor she wanted to go to San Antonio. It was the farthest place she’d ever heard of. When she got there, she changed her name from Adeline Foss to Addie French, because that sounded like a long way from the farm, too. Sometimes Addie felt guilty about leaving her sisters behind and wondered if the old man had gone after them after she left. Maybe they’d run off and turned into whores, too. Addie thought about them whenever a girl turned up at The Chili Queen asking for work, a girl who looked as if she’d come from soul-stomping poverty. Addie hardly ever turned away a girl with a sad story.

She stared back at the brown-yellow farm long after the girls had become specks and then nothing at all. The train passed another farm. A boy rushed to the tracks, a dog at his heels. Addie waved at him, too, but he stared at her with a hostile face and didn’t wave back.

“It’s a cruel life,” Emma said, startling Addie, who hadn’t realized she was looking out the window, too. “They’re worn out from being poor.”

“Sand on one side of the house, clay on the other,” Addie replied. “It reminds me of home. We were turkey poor—poor enough to eat wallpaper, if we’d had wallpaper.” Addie stopped herself. She didn’t much talk about her childhood. She turned to Emma, who had a look of hate on her face, as if she were remembering something unpleasant. “You come from such, do you?”

“Oh, no,” Emma said quickly. “Oh, no. But I’ve known men bereft of human decency, men every bit as mean as those farms. Oh, yes.” Her face twisted then turned stony, and Addie stared at her, wondering what had brought on the outburst. But in a minute, Emma got control of herself and gave an embarrassed smile. “I mean, I’ve heard of men like that. I don’t know any personally, of course. We have a very prosperous farm. John’s a good farmer. I have to say that for him. And our folks had money. But I could have been a poor farm woman, I suppose. There but for the grace of God…”

“But for the grace of God what?” Addie asked.

“Oh, it’s just an expression. It means the luck of the draw.”

“There but for the grace of God,” Addie repeated. She’d always been drawn to fancy words.

“My mother was from New Jersey. She was quite refined,” Emma continued, running her fingers over her stitching. “She taught me to do hand sewing. Mother studied at Elizabeth T. Stephens’s school in New Jersey.”

“Did your mother read? Myself, I can read, you know.”

“Oh my, yes Mother could read. She read French, too. Miss Stephens ran a finishing school. Mother made a beautiful sampler there when she was very young. I even remember the verse:

“Isn’t that lovely?” Emma asked.

Addie didn’t care about obeying the truth. “There but for the grace of God…,” she said.

Emma looked puzzled as she returned to her sewing. She worked the needle up and down, taking half a dozen stitches before she used a silver thimble on her finger to push the needle all the way through the fabric. She straightened the seam so that it didn’t pucker, and examined the patchwork. “I probably shouldn’t have stitched it in black. They say if you sew a quilt-top with black thread, you’ll never sleep under it with your intended. But I don’t believe in such things. Do you?”

Addie knew better than to tempt fate, but she didn’t care to talk about sewing, so she shrugged and said, “I guess you’re so prosperous you’ve got money in the bank.” A mosquito landed on her arm, and she flattened the pest, but not before it drew blood. Addie flicked away the dead insect and licked her finger, placing it on the welt. “We got mosquitoes in Nalgitas the size of grasshoppers and grasshoppers the size of chickens,” she said with a touch of pride.