Rust & Stardust Read online

  “Mama says I’m fortunate to have naturally curly hair. That ladies pay a lot of money for permanent waves,” the girl said softly.

  “Said,” Frank corrected her.

  Florence’s brow furrowed. Confused.

  “Your mama said you were lucky.” He lifted his chin to Ruth. “Hard to think of her in the past tense. It ain’t been that long.”

  “She’s right, your mama,” Ruth said, feeling sorry for this poor unhappy girl. “It’s lovely. The kind of hair girls would kill or die for. You come over any time, and I’ll see what I can do for you.”

  When the sun went down, Frank and Florence retired to their trailer. Ruth had found the waterlogged copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by the pool, and she figured she’d try to read while she waited for Hank to get off his shift. Sometimes, he’d stay late at the Sky-Vu and have a drink or two with the kitchen staff. She knew more often than not, he was really next door at Pappy’s Showland, catching the strip shows. Other women might be infuriated by their husbands’ wandering eyes, but she also knew that the second she started thinking about that she’d drive herself crazy. They’d stuck together through a whole lot; no hussy twirling a pair of tassels on her titties was going to change that. He had a gypsy heart, but no matter where that heart (or the rest of him, for that matter) strayed, it always came back to her eventually.

  She clicked on her reading light and opened to the dog-eared page. The main character in the story, little Francie Nolan, reminded her of Florence. Same age as her and from back east, too. Maybe she’d like to borrow the book when Ruth was done. Ruth was a slow reader, though, reading just a few pages or two each night before her eyelids grew heavy. Tonight as the words began to swim on the page, she flicked out the light and snuck a peek through the slatted venetian blinds at the trailer across the way. It was dark and still and quiet. She wondered if Florence ever had bad dreams. If her old daddy had any idea what went on inside a young girl’s mind. The neon sign flashed GOOD LUCK, GOOD LUCK, GOOD LUCK. She hoped that at least for Florence, this was true.

  SALLY

  Sally couldn’t sleep at night in Dallas. As much as she hated the attic at Sammy’s, at least there she was inside four solid walls. Sleeping in a trailer felt like sleeping inside the truck. They’d been on the road for so long to get here, sometimes at night when she did manage to find sleep, she woke convinced that they were still moving. That Mr. Warner had hitched the trailer to the truck and was pulling her across the desert. Only the thunderous sound of his snores in the next bed assured her that they were not barreling down Route 66 anymore. The thin metal walls that separated them from the world also did little to keep out the night sounds. Beyond Mr. Warner’s snoring and the traffic on Commerce Street, the otherworldly cries of frogs and toads calling out to each other at the nearby river and the screech owls in the trees haunted her. The trailer practically vibrated with all that night music.

  While she lay awake waiting for sleep that wouldn’t come, her mind raced as she ruminated on what she should do now. Maybe that lady Ruth could help her. Maybe if she told her what happened back in Camden, she’d know what to do. Maybe she’d go with her to find a police officer, a judge, and together they could explain this whole mess. Here was what she knew: she’d been caught stealing, but Mr. Warner wasn’t an FBI man (or was he?). He said he was her real daddy, Bobby Swain. He’d come for her, and her mother had handed her over, lied to her. When she got to this part each time, her heart ached. But no, now her mother had changed her mind and wanted her to come home. Put up a reward for her even. But Mr. Warner had said the reward was because she was a fugitive. Wanted. Not by her mama but by the police. Why did it all have to be so confusing? By the time she got to this part, her thoughts were swirling like the cyclones she’d read about in a book that Sister Mary Katherine had lent to her. Why hadn’t she said something more to Sister Mary Katherine when she had the chance? When she was at least still in the same longitude as Camden. Instead, now here she was thousands of miles from home living in a tin can in a dirt lot between the city and a river. She dream-walked along the edge of the water, peering into the murky depths, only to see Mr. Warner’s crooked smile leering back up at her.

  * * *

  She needed to find out if he was who he said he was. If he was lying to her about being her daddy, then maybe everything else he’d told her was a lie, too. She thought the answers might be inside his valise. It had accompanied them from Camden to Atlantic City and then to Baltimore. She’d assumed at first it was something official. Maybe his FBI briefcase. But if he wasn’t with the FBI, what could be so private? If he was her real daddy like he said, he’d have to have something with his real name on it. Maybe it was where he kept his official papers. A birth certificate maybe? Maybe his marriage license to her mother? All night long, she thought about what she could do. How she might get into that locked valise, and what to do if she found out he wasn’t who he said he was. Or worse, if he was.

  Her mind spun through the night, every night, until her body gave up and fell asleep. Though every morning, she woke up having lost any of the resolve she’d conjured in the middle of the night. All her machinations and plans like hazy dreams.

  “Wake up,” he said one morning a few weeks after they’d arrived. His breath smelled of coffee and cigarettes. She rubbed the sleep from her eyes, blood pounding in her ears. “Sally, wake up. I have something for you.”

  He opened the top drawer of the nightstand where he kept the gun. She felt dizzy and sick. She shook her head, please no, but he only pulled out a small flat box, handing it to her.

  Confused, she hesitated and then took it.

  “Open it,” he said.

  Her mouth twitched. The stockings lay in a nest of pale pink tissue, as slippery as a wish. She lifted them out, and they unfurled. Stockings made for a grown woman, like those ladies on the covers of Sammy’s dirty paperbacks. She felt sick.

  “They’re made of nylon,” he offered. “No seams. I didn’t know what color to get. The saleslady said this is what all the girls are wearing.”

  “Why—” she started.

  Mr. Warner put his hands on his hips and shook his head. “Why, you didn’t forget your own birthday, did you Sally?”

  SUSAN

  On April 16, 1949, Sally’s twelfth birthday, Susan parked the car and unbuckled Dee, lifting her onto her hip. She’d gotten so big. Susan could hardly believe that in just four months they’d be celebrating her daughter’s first birthday. Somehow, being a mother—watching her infant grow and change practically with each breath—made her aware for the first time of the fleetingness of it all. If she wasn’t careful, she knew that this odd longing could have the power to cripple her. Was this what adulthood was? Mourning every lost moment? Still, the baby brought joy to her mother. Wistfulness—that was a better word. The baby was bittersweet.

  Susan had brought one of the new bare root rosebushes they’d just gotten in at the greenhouse: American Beauties. In bloom, they were among the most fragrant and brightest roses the greenhouse sold. She thought she’d help her mother plant the bush on the south side of the house, where the sun would hit the plant nearly the whole day. With her free hand, Susan picked up the pot, closed the car door with her hip, and made her way to the door. She noticed her mother’s tulips, beheaded, and their brown stalks lying in a cluttered heap like a child’s game of pick-up sticks. A small fury burned inside her. Who had done this? Neighborhood kids? It made her worry for the fate of the roses.

  She rang the doorbell rather than knocking, just in case her mother was upstairs. Sometimes Ella took a morning nap when her rheumatism was flaring up. She’d sounded a bit pained on the phone when Susan had called earlier, though she didn’t know how much of that had to do with her joints and how much was because of Sally’s birthday.

  She tried the doorknob. They never used to lock the door, but since Sally disappeared, her mother had taken to locking the deadbolt, not only when she was gone but when she was
home as well.

  Dee wriggled and fussed.

  “Shh, shh,” she said, rocking her back and forth. She set the plant down and dug in her pocketbook for the key to the house. She rang the doorbell one more time before unlocking the door and stepping into the dark foyer.

  Generally, her mother would be sitting at the sewing machine, working. But today the sewing machine was still, and her mother was nowhere in sight.

  “Mama?” she called out as she entered the foyer and flicked on a light.

  The console table, which usually held the mail, the tiered candy dish, her mother’s gloves, and the telephone, was stacked high with packages from the factory. At least three weeks’ worth of piecework, untouched.

  Susan’s heart began to race. She hadn’t been to visit in a while, but she’d only spoken to her mother a few hours ago. Where was she? She didn’t drive. Her knees were so swollen lately, she wasn’t able to walk more than a block.

  Then the smell registered. The sweet, almost cloying smell of a cake baking. The tang of lemon zest strong enough to make her eyes water. It was the lemon blossom cake her mother made every year for Sally’s birthday, the one with the tangy glaze. (There was a photograph somewhere, wasn’t there? One of Sally, tiny elbows propped up on the table, her five-year-old face aglow in the light of the candles.)

  “Mum-mum,” the baby hummed, burying her head in Susan’s chest.

  “Mama?” Susan said, and went to the kitchen.

  Ella was sitting at the table, head in her hands. The cake sat on a wire rack on the small counter, a large yellow chunk of it still stuck in the cake pan.

  “I’ve ruined it,” her mother said apologetically.

  “No, Mama,” Susan said, handing the baby to her.

  Ella looked at the baby like she’d forgotten what to do with her.

  Susan went to the counter and, using a spatula, worked the missing chunk of cake free from the pan.

  “We’ll just put some frosting here and piece it back together,” she said, as she replaced the missing piece like a jigsaw puzzle.

  The baby cooed.

  “Mama, are your hands bothering you again?” The last time she’d been unable to sew because of her hands was a couple of years ago.

  “No,” Ella said. She was studying the baby’s face intently now. Dee chewed on her own fingers and stared back at her grandmother.

  “Can I help you with some of it?” she asked. “The sewing? I saw you haven’t gotten to it lately.”

  Ella still wouldn’t look at her. She was shaking her head, peering intently at the baby.

  “She never cried,” Ella said.

  “No, she’s a good baby. Only cries when she’s hungry,” Susan said, smiling. She went to the icebox and got the milk, searched through her mother’s cupboard for confectioner’s sugar. She bent down and opened the cupboard where her mother kept the bowls.

  “Your father was worried there was something wrong with her. That she was deaf. Or an idiot,” her mother said. “Brain damaged from how long she took to come out.”

  Susan froze.

  “I kept telling him she was perfectly normal, but I was so afraid he was right. She just lay there. As happy as could be. You could do anything, and she wouldn’t make a sound. Not even when she was sitting in a soaking wet diaper.”

  Susan stood up and carefully set the bowl on the counter. Dee was lying contentedly in the cradle of her grandmother’s arm, tiny fists rubbing at her eyes.

  “Bobby would try to startle her, make her cry. He’d pinch her little arms when I wasn’t looking. I saw the marks.”

  Susan felt her chest heaving. She didn’t like to think of her real father. He’d left Ella alone with two children to raise on her own. He’d left them all.

  “And she just took it. He used to say that he could have set her on fire, and she would have just sat there smiling.”

  Susan poured the confectioner’s sugar into the bowl too quickly, and a puff of sugary smoke rose up, making her cough. She drizzled a little bit of milk into the bowl, stirring quickly, until it was the right consistency for frosting. She’d fix the cake, and everything would be okay. She’d clear away the pile of rotting tulips. She’d help her mother finish sewing the pieces and get them set out for pickup. Plant the American Beauties.

  “What’s wrong with a girl that won’t cry even when someone’s hurtin’ her?” Ella said, her voice breaking.

  The sound of it made Susan think of cracking bones. Quickly, she spread some of the frosting on the broken piece and pressed it against the side of the cake.

  “There, Mama,” she said. “Once we frost the top, you won’t even be able to tell.”

  Susan sat down next to her mother at the table and reached for the baby.

  Her mother looked up at her, her eyes glossy with unspilled tears. “Why’d she let him do it? Why’d she let him take her?”

  Susan felt her chest burning. “Mama, what is wrong with you? She didn’t let him take her.” Then, as her mother shook her head, the words escaped, as violent as a slap. “You did.”

  ELLA

  Funny thing, sorrow is. For most of her life, Ella had thought it an indulgence. Like sweets or liquor, a luxury someone like Ella could little afford. She’s always managed to deny her own sadness. Abstain from the self-pity that so many others seemed to bask in. She’d considered herself a sort of ascetic, a martyr, a saint even when it came to misery. But with each day that Sally was gone, her resolve weakened. It was so enticing, the allure of her bed. Of sleep. Of shutting out the world and slipping into the dark corners of her grief. Of embracing it, of just letting it wash over her like water. For the first time, she understood Russell’s inclination to bask in his own delicious misery.

  Nobody knew, of course, about the melancholy days, those flat notes that disrupted the melody of their lives. They were unpredictable, sudden, and somehow always took Ella by surprise. The first time it happened wasn’t but a few weeks after they got married.

  The wedding was at City Hall. Ella had sewn herself a fine dress using an old set of drapes she found in a musty box in the attic of the new house on Linden Street. Russell had rented the house and said that as soon as they were married, Ella and the girls could move in. The wedding was a modest affair on all accounts, a civil ceremony followed by a reception at the house. Ella made the canapés and cake, borrowed a cut-glass punch bowl from a friend. Sally was still just a baby, cutting her first tooth; Ella had spent most of the afternoon trying to get her to stop fussing. But Russell was joyful. They didn’t have any furniture yet, so he and the rest of his band set up in the living room and played for the few guests in attendance. One of the other band members’ wives held Sally as Russell spun Ella around the room. She’d batted at him, told him to stop, but she’d felt a wave of happiness that she was powerless against. Life had been such a damned struggle; it felt good to just let go.

  “It’s you and me against the world, kiddo,” Russell whispered, and winked, his eyes twinkling. Something about this had comforted her. As if she hadn’t just gotten a husband but an ally. In a hostile world, this seemed more valuable somehow.

  But not a week later, after they’d settled into their new life together, the first sour note struck.

  Russell cleaned houses, and he’d once apparently had a whole string of families he worked for. But lately, there seemed to be fewer who could afford to hire outside help. He relied mostly on the businesses: the churches, the schools. Nevertheless, he and Ella both rose with the sun every morning; she cooked breakfast, and he gathered his supplies. After coffee and a long kiss stolen in the kitchen before Susan pattered down the stairs, he took off up the street, a skip in his step, whistling as though he didn’t have a care in the world. But this morning, neither of them woke early. Sally had caught the croup and had been up all night coughing. Ella had spent most of the night sitting in the bathroom, the door shut, the hot shower running to create steam. Her hair was muggy with it. When she finally got Sally to
sleep, she’d curled up in bed exhausted and fallen into a deep sleep.

  Her first thought was that he was dead. What else could explain the fact that he lay still as a stone at the edge of the bed? She shook his shoulder in a panic.

  “Not feeling well,” he’d said, and she’d nearly cried with relief.

  “Take the day off,” she said. “I’ll make some soup.”

  But after three days, he still hadn’t gotten out of bed, and she worried that maybe he was dying.

  “You should see the doctor,” she’d said, though she had no idea what he’d tell the doctor. He didn’t have Sally’s barking cough. When she pressed her wrist against his forehead it was cool. He wasn’t using the toilet any more than usual, either.

  After a week, she started to grow impatient.

  “We need money for the market; we’re nearly out of food. I’ve been mixing the baby’s milk with water.”

  He’d gotten angry then, muttering under his breath as he pulled on his clothes, and headed out the door carrying his cleaning supplies like he was carrying the weight of the world. He was gone the whole day and didn’t come home for supper, either. It wasn’t until nearly midnight that he finally returned to the locked front door. “Ella, let me in!” he’d hollered, and she’d felt her knees weaken: with relief first and then anger. “I’ll huff and I’ll puff…,” he bellowed in laughter.

  She flung the door open and looked down the row of houses to see four or five heads poking out of their own doors, trying to see what the fuss was about.

  “Get inside,” she said to him, pulling at his sleeve as he stumbled through the door, rheumy-eyed and reeking of whiskey. He pulled her into a long embrace in the foyer, holding on tight, until she managed to wriggle free from his grasp.

  “I’m sorry, El,” he said, his unfocused eyes watering. “Everything’s going to be better now. You hear? It’s all gonna be A-OK.” With that he’d reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. Clearly, he’d spent most of his day’s wages at the pub, and his meager offering felt like an insult. She’d plucked the coins from his sweaty palm and wordlessly pocketed them. What else could she do?