Jeepers, where’d she get them weepy peepers? Gosh, oh, get up. How’d they get so bawled up? What can I say, I got a weakness for the wounded. After all, I was born in the wake of one war and died in the middle of another. Life was nothing but “darkest hour” this and “Hoover shoes” that.
When I was alive, the fellas barely asked me a thing about myself. I suppose they saved their questions for gals they fixed to marry. And I doubt wifeys get asked all that much either. All the same to me. The less questions the better. An unwed woman making her own way had to be careful. Heaven forbid I earned more than an able man with a family to support. Funny thing, no one barely had nothing, but still all types had prosty money to spend. Heck, men collecting welfare cheques somehow still found extra for a choice bit of calico. Where there’s a war, there’s a whore, as the saying goes. My guys may have been bent outta shape parting with a dollar or two, but still, they parted. You bet I tucked their money away faster than they could say “peach tree.” Best a woman like me not flaunt her bankroll.
I had it far better than the dykes at the factories. I took up with one or two, so I heard all about the woes of working the line with macho men terrified their jobs were being stolen by women. Lucky me, men never worried I was taking their place. My job was to wail and whoopee them into feeling right again. No man wanted my place, ha!
On the prosty clock, I was always faking a giggle, like a good-time girl ought to do. When I was spending nights with a lover girl, there were always tears. Her tears or mine; sometimes both were one and the same. Sister of the road or homemaker on the sly, summer romance or one-night-stand didn’t matter. An hour on the mattress is all it takes to break the dam. Women hold sadness beneath their knickers. It’s true. Why do they call us bent? Most honest, tender thing a woman can do is make her love come down with another woman. I fell in love with that honesty. I fell in love with saltwater.
For all the love of salt, we still hardly asked each other anything either. All questions lead to the one unanswerable question, “Why can’t we really be together?”
And death. Even worse. Forget questions. No one hears a word. Not a peep. Years come and go like pretty faces. Nothing much happens.
Until now.
This girl here is my Venus in a clamshell, my kewpie doll. My naked angel singing on a cloud of our shared melancholy. Hot damn, I’m a poet and I didn’t know it. Starla, she calls herself. That’s poetry too. I’ll still call her Dollface.
I hear Dollface, and Dollface can hear me.
I have touched her, and she has touched me.
As long as I have to remain here, I say, she stays with me. She’s game to stay. Not even a week ago, she was a headless chicken running from me. Now she calls my name. Now she moves over in her bed like I am flesh and blood on the sheets beside her. Now she speaks to me.
“What else do you like, besides that Ink Spots song?” Her eyes are glassy and black from crying. My stars, the messy kohl she wears. In my day, you’d never see kohl run like that.
“Oh, I liked all the jazz bands that played the Crystal Ballroom. The bigger the better. Glenn Miller had a twenty-piece band,” I say, my mouth moving like my teeth are still sharp, like it’s possible for me to chew the fat as we are.
“Etta. Tell me something else that you used to like.”
I have to think about it, as unaccustomed to questions as I am. “Rocky road ice cream. Two scoops on a waffle cone. And cinnamon suckers.”
“What else? One more thing.” She stirs, and the cheap Crystal Beach flag pendant coils close to her throat. She wears it for me—only reason to wear something so ugly. Clever doll. I bet she knows I’m stronger under the stunt or the painted park sign when she holds a strip of ride tickets or when she wears that pendant.
“I liked the pictures,” I tell her. “Scary ones. Werewolf of London and 39 Steps and The Black Cat. I’ve seen The Black Cat half a dozen times.”
“I know that one,” says Dollface. “The Black Cat. Bêla Lugosi, right? ‘Come, Vitus … Are we not both the living dead?’”
Oh, little enchantress. What memories, what comfort she gives me reciting lines from Universal pictures. Makes me wanna grab that pendant close to her throat. Squeeze her for more tears. I wonder if I might taste her tears, if she’ll make me that whole again? Whole enough to taste.
“If you could wish for something …” She places a finger on the middle groove of my upper lip. A single finger, but the touch is too much. I can’t make out who recoils first. Her eyes widen. Her hands tuck back into her sides. “I mean, like right now,” she stammers. “If you could … wish for something right now, what would it be?”
She yowls like a stepped-upon cat. I must be riled by the question, as I grab her too hard. “Dollface? Where are you?” Light fails. Her voice is too far away to hear. And much too far for me to answer her.