But I couldn't stop the thought that, really, what exactly was I saving them for? When would I ever need a two-hundred-dollar Jessica McClintock dress again? It was a roast-goose-with-chest-nuts dress, Puccini at the Music Center, gold rims on china. I looked at Rena in her shiny red blouse, unbuttoned to the third button, high heels, and jeans. Niki, setting up kitchen appliances, magenta hair and black polyester. Yvonne, round as a watermelon in her purple baby doll dress with a swirl pattern from the sixties, sadly arranging the baby furniture, posing a worn teddy bear in the high chair.
Why couldn't anybody ever hang on to anything? You never believed in sentiment, Mother, you saved only your own words, one picture of my grandmother and one of your 4-H cow. Only Claire could hold memory. It was the present that she couldn't sort out.
"Someone gave it to me," I finally said to Rena. "So?" Rena looked up from her hangers. "You're lucky, someone gave to you. Now you sell, get money out." I stood there, sullen, my arms still full of T-shirts. "You want car?" Rena said. "Artist college? You think I don't know? How you think you pay? So this dress. Pretty dress. Someone gave. But money is .. ." She stopped, struggling to find the words, what money was. Finally, she threw her hands up. "Money. You want remember, so just remember."
So I did it. I marked a price on my crimson velvet dream. I marked it high, hoping it wouldn't sell. I marked them all high. But they sold. As the sun got warm, the hard bargainers left and the couples came, lazily, arm in arm, old people out for a stroll, young people. The T-shirts, the pants, the jackets went. But by afternoon, the crimson dress was stilhunsold. People kept asking Rena if it was really one hundred dollars. «' •
"What she say," Rena replied in her deep voice, implying helplessness.
"It's a Jessica McClintock," I said defensively. "Never been worn." My mistake, for anticipating there would be a future, that the dream would just go on and on.
I could still remember how I looked in it when I tried it on at the store in Beverly Hills. I looked innocent, like somebody's daughter, somebody's real daughter. A girl who was cared for. A girl in that dress wasn't a girl who had a beer and a cigarette for lunch, who lay down for the father on carpet pads in an unfinished house. It wasn't a dress that knew how to make a living if it had to, that had to worry about its teeth and whether its mother would come home. When I showed it to Claire, she made me turn for her like a ballerina on a music box, her hands clapped to her mouth, pride flowing from her like tears. She believed I was that girl. And for a moment, so did I.
All day, I helped them on with it, slid the satin lining over their sweaty shoulders, zipped it up as far as it would go without straining. After the fifth woman had tried it on, I started not caring so much. At about three, a group of girls came around, and one of them kept looking at the red dress, holding it up to herself. "Can I try this on?"
I took the plastic off, slid the dress down her arms, over the pale downy hair, pulled it along her body, zipped the back as she held up her dark ponytail. It looked just right on her. As it had never looked on me. I'd never seen the girl before. She didn't go to Marshall. She probably went to Immaculate Heart or the French School. A cared-for girl, someone's daughter. I held it for her as she went to the 7-Eleven to call her mother. Fifteen minutes later, an attractive older woman showed up in a butter-yellow Mercedes, black linen slacks, suede moccasins with horse bit buckles. I helped the girl into the dress again, and the woman gave me the hundred, a single crisp bill. They were going to a cousin's wedding in New York. The dress would be perfect. I could tell from the mother's expression that she knew exactly what it was worth.
We went on until five, then started breaking it down, loading up the van and Niki's pickup truck. All my things had sold. I sat on the fender of the van and counted my money. I'd made over four hundred dollars.
"See, not so bad," Rena said, balancing a box of plates on her hip. "How much you get?"
I mumbled it, ashamed, but also a little proud. It was the first money I'd ever earned.
"Good. Give me hundred." She held out her hand. "What for?"
She snapped her fingers, extended her hand again. "No way." I held the money behind my back. Her black eyes sparkled with bad temper. "What, you think you sell all by yourself on streetcorner? You pay me, I pay Natalia, Natalia pays landlord, what you think? Everybody pay somebody."
"You said I could keep it." "After pay me."
"For Christ's sake," Niki said, looking up from where she was arranging cheap clothes on a blanket on the ground. "Go ahead and pay her. You have to." I shook my head no.
Rena shifted the box to the other hip, and when she spoke, her voice was harsh. "Listen to me, devushka. I pay, you pay. Just business. When was last time you had three hundred dollars in your hand? So how I hurt you?"
How could I tell her? What about my feelings, I wanted to say, except what was the point? With her it was all just money, and things that could be traded for money. She'd stolen something from me, and even got me to do the selling for her. I couldn't help wondering what you would do, Mother. It didn't apply. I couldn't imagine you at the mercy of Rena Grushenka, in the parking lot of Natalia's Nails, selling your clothes, crying over a dress. I didn't know what else to do, so I held out the hundred, the red dress hundred, and she snatched it from my hand like a dog bite.
But as I sat in bed, listening to the noise and laughter and occasional crash from the living room, I knew that even you had to pay someone now, for your pot and your inks and the good kind of tampons, dental floss and vitamin C. But you would come up with a compelling reason, a theory, a philosophy. You'd make it noble, heroic. You'd write a poem about it, "The Red Dress." I could never do that.
Out in the living room, someone put on an old Zeppelin album. I could hear them singing along in their thick accents, the churning of Jimmy Page's guitar. It was four in the morning and I could smell melting candle wax, dripping in great pools on the tables and windowsills. I didn't need Claire's candle magic book to see burning house written there. It was why I slept in my clothes, kept my shoes by the bed, money in my wallet, most important things in a bag by the window.
You'd think they'd try to get some sleep — the next day we were going to the flea market at Fairfax High, to sell our sambo statuettes made of bottlecaps, trays painted with botanical nightmares, never-worn baby clothes, and all the moldy Reader's Digests. But I could tell, they wouldn't sleep until Monday. I hoped I wouldn't see anyone I knew.
I turned over the page, started another canoe. Silver on black. The door opened, Rena's friend Misha stumbled in, posed, playing air guitar along with Jimmy, his plump red lips like an enormous infant's. He was practically drooling. "I come to see you, maya liubov. Krasivaya devushka."
"Go away, Misha."
He staggered over to my bed, sat down next to me. "Don't be cruel," he sang, like Elvis, and bent to drool on my neck.
"Leave me alone." I tried to shove him off, but he was too big and loose, I couldn't find anything solid to push against.
"Don't worry," he said. "I don't do nothing." He lay down on the bed next to me, spread out like a stain. The alcohol reek was a miasma, it reminded me that there were snakes that stunned their prey with their breath. "I am only so lonesome."
I called for help, but no one could hear me over the music. Misha was heavy, he rested his head on my shoulder, slobbering on my neck. His weepy blue eyes so close, one heavy arm around me.
I hit him, but it was no use, he was too drunk, my fist bounced off his flesh, he couldn't feel anything. "Misha, get off me."
"You're so beautiful girl," he said, trying to kiss me. He smelled of vodka and something greasy, someone must have brought a bucket of chicken.
My knife was just under my pillow. I didn't want to stab Misha, I knew him. I'd listened to him play bottleneck guitar. He had a dog named Chernobyl, he wanted to move to Chicago and be a blues guitarist, except he didn't like cold weather. Rena gave him this haircut, the bangs slightly crooked. He wasn't a bad man, but he was kissing my closed mouth, one hand groping under the blanket, though I was fully dressed. His fumbling hand found nothing but vintage polyester.
"Love me a little," he begged in my ear. "Love me, devushka, for we all going to die."
Finally, I got a knee up and when he shifted I hit him with my drawing board and slid out of bed.
In the living room, most of the people were gone. Natalia was dancing by herself in front of the stereo, a bottle of Bargain Circus Stoli clutched by the neck in one hand. Georgi was passed out in the black armchair, his head leaning against its fuzzy arm, a white cat curled in his lap. A cane chair was knocked over, a big ashtray lay facedown on the floor. A puddle of something glistened on the scarred leathertop coffee table.
Rena and her boyfriend, Sergei, lay on the green velvet couch, and he was doing it to her with his ringers. Her shoes were still on, her skirt. His shirt was open, he had a medallion on a chain that hung down. I hated to barge in, but then again, Misha was her friend. She was responsible.
"Rena," I said. "Misha's trying to get in bed with me."
Four drunken eyes gazed up at me, two black, two blue. It took them a moment to focus. Sergei whispered something to her in Russian and she laughed. "Misha won't do nothing. Hit him on head with something," Rena said.
Sergei was watching me as he kneaded her thigh, bit her neck. He looked like a white tiger devouring a kill.
When I went back into my room, Misha had passed out. He had a bloody cut on his head from where I hit him. He was snoring, holding my pillow like it was me. He wasn't waking up anytime soon. I went to sleep in Yvonne's empty bed. The stereo stopped at five, and I got a restless hour or two of sleep, dreaming of animals rummaging through the garbage. I was awakened by a man pissing in the bathroom across the hall without closing the door, a stream that seemed to last for about five minutes. He didn't flush. Then the stereo came back on, the Who again. Who are you! the band sang. I tried to remember, but I really couldn't say.
25
WE SAT IN THE KITCHEN on a dreary Saturday, sewing leather bags for crystals. It was Rena's latest moneymaking idea. Niki played demo tapes of the different bands Werner booked, but they all sounded the same, skinny white kid rage, out-of-control guitars. She was looking for a new band. "This one's all right, don't you think? Fuck!" She jabbed the needle into a finger, stuck it into her lipstick-blackened mouth. "This sewing's for shit. What does she think we are, some fucking elves?"
We were smoking hash under glass while we worked. I let the smoke fill up under the little shot glass that Niki stole from the Bavarian Gardens, it had an upside-down Johnnie Walker printed on it. I put my mouth down to the edge, picked up a corner of the glass, and sucked the thick hash fumes into my lungs. Yvonne didn't smoke, she said it was bad for the baby.
"What difference does it make?" Niki said, putting a chunk of hash on the pin for herself. "It's not like you're going to keep it."
The corners of her mouth turned down. "You think that way, I don't want you taking me to baby class," Yvonne said. "Astrid'lltakeme."
I started coughing. I tried to do Butterfly McQueen from the childbirth scene in Gone with the Wind. "I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no babies," but I couldn't get my voice to go high enough. I thought of Michael, he always did Butterfly better than me. I missed him.
"At least you have good thoughts," Yvonne said.
Childbirth. I shuddered. "I'm not even eighteen."
"That's okay, they don't serve liquor," Niki said, throwing a finished bag on the pile. She picked up another one that was all cut out and ready for sewing.
Stoned, I traced a rising smoke pattern into a scrap of leather with an X-acto blade. I was good at this, better than my mother used to be. I could do a crow, a cat. I could do a cat in three cuts. I did a baby with a curl on its forehead and tossed it to Yvonne.
The door banged open behind us, letting in a rush of cold air. Rena came in with a roll of dark green suede tucked under her arm. "Georgi sell whole thing, trade for lamp," she grinned proudly. "Nice, huh?" Then her gaze landed on me, etching designs into the leather. "What, you crazy?" She grabbed the doeskin away from me, thumped the back of my head with the heel of her hand. "Pothead stupid girl. You think is cheap?" Then she noticed the design and frowned, her lower lip pouted out. She held the scrap up to the light. "Not bad." She tossed it back to me. "I think it sell. Do all bags. We make money on this."