Justine chatted with Georgette and Mavis all the way across New Orleans as they debated which of their would-be saviors was the most handsome. Justine thought it was Charles, which prompted Georgette to say, “Shoulda known you’d go for the bookworm type.” Mavis cast a vote for Martin and his muscles.
Georgette was decidedly in favor of Jerry. “I worked with him for a while at the City Park plant. He’s always smiling, and he’s always got a kind word for everybody. And nobody ain’t ever built a machine that Jerry couldn’t make sing.”
“Since Jerry hasn’t given me the time of day,” Justine said, “I will generously give him to you.” The other women laughed at her silly joke, and all of a sudden Justine felt like a social butterfly, albeit one who was very, very tired.
She’d enjoyed her time with Georgette and Mavis, and she had thoroughly enjoyed Mavis’s three giggling toddlers, but she was ready to be cocooned in her room the very instant Mavis parked in front of The Julia Ladies’ Residence. Her rooming house was one in a row of old townhouses that had seen better days. Its handmade bricks were cracked and the black paint on its shutters was peeling, but it had a sound roof that Justine was happy to have over her head.
Exhaustion overwhelmed her as she stumbled out of the Buick’s rusty blue passenger door. She was glad for the chance to pause on the sidewalk, waving goodbye to Mavis while Georgette crawled out of the back seat. Then she plodded up the old stone stairs and through the rooming house’s front door.
Georgette looked as tired as Justine felt, but she managed a few sentences. “I don’t hear no water running in the pipes. Both the downstairs and upstairs bathrooms are empty, I bet. Go upstairs and get clean, and I’ll do the same down here. Then I’ll come up with that can of milk. And the tea bag. I’m real excited about that tea bag.” Then she vanished down the hall and left Justine alone in the rooming house’s shabby parlor.
The Julia Ladies’ Residence was not actually on Julia Street, but Julia Street was in its general vicinity. Justine could see it from the front steps if she tried hard. The fact that The Julia Ladies’ Residence had been named as if there were any prestige still associated with Julia Street in 1944 said something about the rooming house, and it wasn’t good.
The Julia provided the necessities, and only the necessities, in exchange for its modest room rent, which bought four walls, a ceiling, a floor, a bed, a chifforobe for clothes storage, a bathroom down the hall, and nothing more. No, actually, that wasn’t true. There were amenities. Justine was trudging right past some of them. She moved through the parlor, where you could entertain a gentleman caller, if you didn’t mind an audience and if the man was willing to be gone by nine. In front of her was the shared kitchen, which had a refrigerator where you could keep food if you never cared about seeing it again.
You could even pay for maid service, if for some reason you had extra money for such things but were still willing to live at The Julia. A room the size of Justine’s could be cleaned in ten minutes with a mop, a washrag, a bucket, and some soap, so that’s what she did. The money she saved on maid service went toward getting her sheets, washrags, bath towels, and carbon-encrusted work clothes washed at the laundry down the street. She washed most of her nicer clothes and her unmentionables out herself in the bathroom sink.
As she climbed the stairs, Justine was thinking that “unmentionables” was a silly word. When a thing existed, people needed to be able to talk about it. A thing that couldn’t be mentioned was a thing that flickered in and out of existence depending on whether somebody was looking at it.
This idea was so much like the paradoxes that had kept her parents and their friends up all night that it made her smile. For one instant, she could hear them yelling and laughing and talking over each other in excitement, and it felt like no time had passed at all. For as long as she managed to hang on to the idea of underwear that both did and did not exist, her parents were real and physical and alive. Pondering things like paradoxical underpants had kept Justine’s mind distracted through many an hour on assembly lines, but years of rejection handed out by her less scholarly schoolmates—not to mention their hated nickname for her, “Justine Brain”—had taught her to keep thoughts of underpants in Schrödinger’s boxes to herself.
One of her parents’ friends—was it Gloria?—was a passionate devotee of Erwin Schrödinger’s work, so Justine had a working knowledge of his imaginary cats and their deadly boxes. She had worked her way through a thought exercise where she took the cat and the vial of poison out of one of Schrödinger’s boxes, then put in a pair of underpants and a cigarette lighter to keep company with the radioactive source and the Geiger counter. Could she ever know whether the underdrawers were burned to a crisp or untouched? Probably not without opening the box and collapsing their parallel realities. Pondering this question collapsed the loneliness of her own reality, at least for a while. This was why she loved physics so much.
She slid her long, old-fashioned key into the keyhole and unlocked the door to her room. Justine worked six long days a week, so she mostly just slept there, but she spent her few non-working hours combing through her parents’ old books and her own. Fate had stolen her chance to go to college, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t have an education. She kept her books on shelves she’d built of boards and bricks that she’d found at the dump. The makeshift shelves held all of her valuables, which mostly consisted of books and food. Food would never outweigh books for Justine, but she’d learned the hard way that it’s brutally hard to feed yourself when money’s short and everything worth eating is rationed. Without a refrigerator of her own, or even an icebox, she’d found that it was well-nigh impossible, but she managed.
In short, Justine lived on food that came in cans and boxes. She cooked it on a hot plate, and she usually ate it alone but not tonight. She was embarrassed to admit to herself how happy she was to have someone who wanted to share a meal with her, someone who could be a real friend. Mavis, too, could be a good friend, and she would never have met Mavis if Georgette hadn’t introduced them.
She hoped she’d done the right thing when she slipped three dimes into Mavis’s purse to help her pay for the gas she’d burned while driving to The Julia. For all she knew, those dimes were a slap in the face to a woman who had done her a big favor.
Great. Now she was going to worry about the dimes all night.
***
The rooming house’s upstairs bathtub was old and its finish was worn, but it was deep. And the water was hot, even if it did make a preternatural racket when it ran through The Julia’s ancient pipes. Justine always bought the least expensive soap she could find, because she didn’t like to feel guilty about using a heckuva lot of it. The cheap soap and her cheap scratchy washrags did an excellent job of peeling off each day’s carbon dust.
She hurried to dry herself and put on a clean blouse and dungarees, because she was hungry enough to smell the tuna sitting in its can behind her closed bedroom door. She hoped Georgette had been quick about her bath, too.
Once Justine was back in her room, she’d hardly had time to hang her bath towel to dry when a knock sounded. She let Georgette in and immediately got an answer to her question about the dimes. Georgette set the tea bag and evaporated milk next to Justine’s hot plate, while simultaneously saying, “You done a nice thing. I saw. Good for you for helping Mavis out without making her feel embarrassed.”
“She left her handbag sitting on the front seat between us,” Justine said, admiring the tea bag. “It wasn’t hard to sneak a few cents in the outside pocket.”
“Yeah,” Georgette said, “Mavis can drive me around all she wants once the war’s over. Right now, her kids need milk and bread, and they can’t wait for groceries till their mama gets her next paycheck. When I saw you slip her that money, I said to myself, ‘I knew I liked that one.’”
“Yeah? Well, I saw you save me from a long car ride with Sonny. Not to mention that heavenly cool washrag you handed me. Thank you. I’ll wash it and get it back to you.”
Justine had wiped at herself with that little bit of terrycloth all the way home. After a while, she’d probably just been moving black dust around, but the damp cloth had soothed her, body and soul.
Her new friend said simply, “You’re welcome. I know I like a washrag on my face at the end of a long, hot day, so I thought you’d enjoy it.”
“I did,” Justine said, grabbing a saucepan. “You’ve gotta be hungry. I’ll go down the hall and get some water for the macaroni, then we can get this feast started.”
***
While Justine was gone, Georgette opened the package of elbow macaroni and found a measuring cup on the shelf where Justine kept her food. She carefully measured out two servings and not an elbow more. Then she found a can opener and got the lid off the tuna without spilling a drop of its tasty oil.
She knew it would take Justine just a few minutes to fetch the water, but that left enough time for Georgette to look at her new friend’s pretty books. Their covers called out for her to touch them. Wrapped in beautiful materials like burnished leather and a rainbow of linen, their spines were stamped with shiny gold titles like The Physical Principles of the Quantum Theory and The Theory of Spectra and Atomic Constitution. Georgette’s encounters with books had been limited to worn-out schoolbooks, paperback romances, and The Holy Bible. She’d never seen anything like Justine’s library.
Georgette thought that words like “quantum” and “spectra” were beautiful, but they were as incomprehensible to her as the titles of books from foreign countries. And some of Justine’s books were from foreign countries. Their gilt-inlaid titles said things like Einführung in die Theorie der Elektrizität und des Magnetismus, which she thought was probably German. Georgette knew people back home in Des Allemands whose grandparents spoke German. One of hers spoke French, two spoke English, and one spoke Choctaw, but nobody in Georgette’s family spoke German. She couldn’t read a lick of Choctaw, but she could speak it. As for the written word, she would have had a shot at understanding what Justine’s books were talking about if the words printed on them had been French, because her French-speaking grandfather had handed her down a few treasured picture books in that language.
She pulled Introduction to Theoretical Physics off the shelf, since the word “introduction” suggested that it was a place to start. Inscribed on the inside cover, she saw the name “Isabel Byrne” and she supposed that this must have been Justine’s mother’s name. She’d heard that Justine’s parents were dead, both of them, which she thought was about the saddest thing she’d ever heard. She didn’t know what she would have done without her own parents to help her get started in the world. What must it be like to have a mother who owned such books? And to lose her so young?
Georgette hurriedly slid the book back into place, afraid that Justine would come back and see her handling her mother’s things.
***
The bathroom was just down the hall and around a corner, but it was in use. Justine hovered in the hall until her turn came, then she filled the saucepan and headed back to her room.
Georgette was waiting for her with a measuring cup full of macaroni.
“Have you been working at Higgins long?” Justine asked, dumping the noodles into the water and setting the pot on her hot plate.
“A coupla years. I remember seeing you at the St. Charles plant right when I started, so I’m thinking you got more seniority than me, but not much, because I’m thinking we’re about the same age. After a while, they sent me to the City Park plant. I worked there till they sent me out to Michaud to be a Carbonite, same as you.”
Justine heard pride in her voice when she claimed the company nickname for Carbon Division workers. Justine felt the same way. Their jobs didn’t seem like much next to building a boat or plane, but there was still something special about being hand-chosen for the Carbon Division. The long bus trips to her new job would go quicker now that she had Georgette to talk to while they rode.
And Georgette was quite a talker. Justine found her easy to be with, which was a relief. Justine hadn’t been popular with her classmates, and she’d never been sure whether they’d shunned her because she was smart and gawky, or because she wasn’t worth knowing.
When the macaroni was done, Justine drained the cooking water into a mixing bowl, leaving the noodles in the pot. Then she dumped in the tuna and stirred in the milk, holding back enough to give them both a splash for their tea. The fishy concoction looked horrendous, but it smelled good.
She set the pot back on the hot plate to warm everything up again, and said, “I guess you’re like me—you rented a room downtown…sorta downtown…just so you could walk to work at the St. Charles plant. And now you’re working as far east of the city as you can get without falling into Bayou Sauvage.”
“The Julia seemed like a good place to be,” Georgette said. “Back when I was working in town, it was close to work, like you say. When I first got hired, it was hard to know where I oughta live, since I ain’t from around here. You can’t be surprised about that, ’cause anybody can tell it by the way I talk. I ain’t never ever been to a city, nor been this far from home, before the day I took this room. To tell you true, I’m from so far down the bayou that Des Allemands is a big town to me.” She put her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I told you that.”
Justine shrugged, trying to make the motion say that it wasn’t even worth mentioning that Georgette wasn’t a big city girl.
Georgette lowered her voice and said, “Don’t you tell nobody this next thing, now.”
Stirring the milky tuna-and-macaroni, Justine mumbled, “Yeah, sure,” not sure what kind of revelation to expect. It must be truly embarrassing, because the woman was blushing, but Georgette had already admitted that she’d never before traveled thirty miles from home. Justine didn’t care that Georgette had lived her life way out in the country, but Georgette obviously did.
With her eyes on the toes of her saddle shoes, Georgette made her confession. “Don’t you tell nobody, but I like the bus ride. To work, I mean.”
Justine, who was heartily sick of sitting in a stuffy bus full of people after just two weeks of doing it, couldn’t think why anybody would like that long ride. She blurted out, “But why?”
“I just like it. I can handle a boat—I took my pirogue to school every day, soon as I was old enough—but I never rode in many cars or buses before I moved into town.”
Justine wished with her whole self, right down to the soles of her feet, that she could take back that “But why?”
Georgette didn’t seem offended. Mostly, she just seemed intent on saying out loud something that she’d been keeping to herself for two weeks.
“I like the sound of the bus motor and the way the tires hum on the road. I like the feel of the warm wind coming in the window. I even like the smell that comes outta the tailpipe and the smell rising up off the hot blacktop road. I like the pretty old buildings in the French Quarter, all pink and beige and cream like flowers, and I just love it when we stop on a street corner and let people get on the bus. It gives me time to sniff the coffee smell coming outta people’s windows and the fish smell coming from the docks and the sweet fruit smell coming from the markets. I like seeing the shops and the office buildings while we roll through the new part of the city. Then the countryside comes, and the bayous make me think I’m back home for a few minutes. I see the white waterbirds flapping into the sky and I wonder if my mama’s looking out the back door at a flock of birds just like ’em, rising up outta the switch grass behind the house. And then the bus runs around a bend, and I see the big Michaud plant straight ahead, looking so new and up to date. Working for Higgins makes me feel like I’m a part of the wide world, and the bus ride is what takes me there. You understand that feeling, don’t you?”
Justine nodded.
“Taking this job woulda been worth it,” Georgette said, “even if I never got paid a penny, because Papa brought Mama to come help me pick out a place to stay. That means she finally got to see the city, after a whole life of raising babies. I love my mama, and I want a husband and a family someday, but not now. I don’t want to live like she lives for my whole entire life. Am I wrong to want to live in a beautiful place like this for now? What if I never get another chance to be my own boss?”
Now that she’d gotten the words out, Georgette looked embarrassed enough to run and hide, but Justine thought she was the one who should be embarrassed. Many evenings, she’d sat in her little room and remembered a childhood spent in her parents’ comfortable modern home. She’d tried not to be bitter about having to live in one room in this aging Victorian heap, but most of the time, she had failed. And all the time she’d been feeling sorry for herself, Georgette had been looking at the same shabby rooming house and seeing something else entirely.
In Georgette’s eyes, The Julia Ladies’ Residence was beautiful.
Justine looked at the floor, time-worn but still made of mahogany. The boarded-up hand-carved fireplace and the plaster moldings on her room’s soot-stained walls showed that this had once been a fine home. A mansion, even. Georgette still saw it that way. Tears of shame pricked at Justine’s eyes.
“I don’t think you’re wrong,” Justine said. “To wait to get married, I mean. If I can have what my parents had, then I want a husband and a family. But I listen to the women we work with, and they tell me that their husbands don’t want to hear what they have to say. They want wives who look good and talk sweet the whole time they’re putting a nice dinner on the table and cleaning up afterward. If there’s nothing more than that on offer, then I’ll earn my own way, thank you very much.”
“Now you’re talking,” Georgette said.
Justine ran her hands through her damp hair, loosed from its ponytail. “Maybe life as a housewife isn’t in the cards for me, anyway, since I’m not much of a cook, and I don’t like to clean. And I sure as heck can’t do those things while looking sleek and put-together. Look at this stuff!” Her fingers were trapped in tangles of carrot-colored curls. “It’s not possible for me to look like a movie star wife. I’ll just have to be happy living all by myself in one room. And I will, as long as it’s mine.”
“If it makes you feel any better, you got a friend downstairs.”
Now the tears were really coming. Justine mumbled, “That sounds good.”
As much as she liked her new friend, she wasn’t willing to let Georgette see her weep openly, so she grabbed the mixing bowl where she’d dumped the water from cooking the macaroni.
“I’m gonna go get rid of this,” she said, although she knew and Georgette knew that this chore could wait until after they ate.
She pointed blindly at the shelf where she stored her plates and silverware, saying, “Go ahead and dish out the casserole. I’ll be right back.”
And then she fled.
***
When Justine returned, carrying an empty mixing bowl, her manner was briskly normal. Georgette wasn’t fooled. She’d seen Justine’s tears, and she knew what they were. They came from a hundred different hurts that never seemed to stop piling up. Today, some of those hurts had come from spending time with the odious Sonny, but some of them had come from having to live without parents like the ones who had left those beautiful books behind.
While Justine was down the hall, dumping the macaroni water, Georgette had carefully spooned fishy mush into neat piles on two of Justine’s plates. The plates matched each other, with a spray of wheat and sunflowers adorning the center of each plate, and they weren’t chipped or scratched. Unless Georgette missed her guess, these plates had come from Justine’s childhood home, and so had the simple and sturdy silver-plated flatware. Probably the saucepans, too.
Georgette had laid their meal out neatly on a wooden table tucked into the corner of the room. It had so many scrapes and scars beneath its green paint that Georgette couldn’t imagine it in the same house as the pretty china. Justine must have walked out of her home with the things she could carry, and no more.
“That looks really nice,” Justine said, surveying the table. “Oh, wait. I forgot to get us some water to drink with our dinner. We should save the tea for dessert.”
Justine grabbed two amber pressed-glass tumblers and disappeared again. Georgette thought the tumblers looked like the kind of glassware that came free in flour sacks and oatmeal boxes. Her own mother treasured a set of ruby-red glasses and plates that she’d spent years plucking out of her cornmeal. Little Georgette had loved to sit in her mother’s lap and listen as the neighborhood women traded glassware, each of them haggling hard to achieve the dream of an entire table set with pieces that matched. Maybe Justine’s mother had done the same thing, but Georgette doubted it. More likely, Justine had eaten her way through many boxes of oatmeal to earn her amber tumblers since she moved to The Julia.
When Justine returned with the glasses full of water, they settled themselves in two folding wooden chairs, both of them as green and as battered as the table. Georgette said grace, then they dug into the hot tuna casserole as if it were a gourmet meal and neither of them had a care in the world.