Girl in the River

By Patricia Kullberg

It’s the middle of the twentieth century and Portland has fallen into the hands of gangsters. Newly orphaned Mae Rose wanders the rain-stained streets alone, on the lam from a knife wielding pimp, mustering her own worst impulses to survive. As Mae rises in Portland’s gritty sex industry, she’s pursued by a district attorney who wants to ensnare her for more personal reasons. Meanwhile, Dr. Ruth Barnett, queen of Portland’s nightlife, runs a lucrative abortion service and it is she who eventually provides the refuge that Mae seeks. After the war, both women are caught in the cross hairs of anti-vice crusader Dottie “Do-good” Lee. Their survival will depend on their ability to outsmart the cops and politicians who no longer protect them.

Girl in the River is a portrait of the intimate lives of women during one of the most corrupt periods in Portland history. It’s an unflinching look at the power dynamics of sex. A glimpse into the work life of a call girl. An improbable love story. The tale of post-war assaults on reproductive rights. And a tribute to two remarkable and remarkably different women who shaped the lives of Portlanders during those tumultuous times: Dr. Ruth Barnett and Mayor Dorothy Lee.

Praise for "Girl in the River":
Kullberg has crafted a wonderful look into Portland's history, and how women in particular may have navigated the tricky business of building a life against the backdrop of mid-twentieth century legal systems, power-plays, poverty and health care.
Monica Drake, author: "Clown Girl" and "Studbook"

An extraordinary page-turner of a novel, featuring crooked cops, sensation-minded reporters, moralistic politicians, and always-vulnerable women who turn out smarter and craftier than all the rest. A fabulous read!
Rickie Solinger, Biographer of Dr. Ruth Barnett

"Girl in the River" brings history to life in a riveting story with a feisty working-class heroine whose feelings, attitudes, and choices accurately reflect the times within which she lived as well as her individual biography. Kullberg’s marvelous evocation of time and place captures the constrained range of possibilities which shaped the lives of women from the 30’s through the 50’s and allows us to appreciate what feminist struggle since then has (and has not yet) achieved.
Johanna Brenner, Author: "Women and the Politics of Class"

Swept out from under the rug of history in Patricia Kullberg’s revealing "Girl in the River" are an array of important figures on both sides of the trades, most notably the prominent abortion doctor Ruth Barnett, known as much for her parties as for her work, and if you doubt the author’s portrayal of the circles within circles of the Portland establishment in those years, see Google—they are almost all there. Your guide to this illicit world and its demise in the changed atmosphere of the 1950s is an astute but vulnerable fictional call girl, Maebelline Rose, whose inability to deceive either herself or others makes her a perfect companion. Enticing both as history and story, "Girl in the River" is also a timely reminder of how much remains at stake as the battle over women’s bodies continues. May the desperation brought to life in these compelling pages never come back to us.
Elinor Langer, Author: "Josephine Herbst" and "A Hundred Little Hitlers"

"Girl in the River" starts with a bang and hums right along—like one of those hardboiled film noir movies. Kullberg sets the story of Mae in the tempestuous period spanning pre- and post-World War II. Smart and raw, full of sassy dialogue, the novel touches on issues of morality and justice, propriety and decency. The 1930s and 40s may have been a simpler time, but the corrosive impact of the corruption this novel explores is all too familiar.
Maryka Biaggio, Author: "Parlor Games"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia Kullberg
• Release date: Aug 20, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310457036

Patricia Kullberg

Patricia Kullberg is a former primary care physician who devoted more than two decades of her career caring for homeless, disabled, undocumented and otherwise marginalized persons in downtown Portland.She is a life-long resident of Portland where she lives with her husband. Through Write Around Portland she facilitates writing workshops at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for women and also serves as volunteer board operator at KBOO community radio.She has published a number of award-winning articles on health and medicine. Girl in the River is her first novel.

Book preview

Prologue

NOW THAT THE WAR WAS OVER

July 1951

Even after a good stretch of untroubled time, a girl might fret over which one of her mistakes was the worst ever. Until one day, it struck her, when the biggest mistake barged back into her life. Bill Warsham was his name. Mae studied his princely profile, and a chill slithered up the back of her neck as though he were skulking behind her, not bunched into a corner of the reception room with a scrawny guy scribbling on a pad, all their four eyes as big as seventy-eights. Poor Billy; he hadn’t even spotted her yet.

Police had shoved Mae up against the wall in a line with Dr. Ruth, another woman pressing her hands over her face, and a wide-eyed girl still buttoning up, who was surely dismayed at the turn her day had taken. Slapping batons into their meaty hands, two cops fenced them in. Out in the middle of the room, an officer had collared a fourteen-year-old, a spoiled brat if Mae had ever met one. She twisted in his grip.

Lemme go, you goddamned jerk! You know who the hell I am?

Another flatfoot brandished his stick to force Virginia away from the reception desk, while some clown rifled her drawer. A photographer spun around like a one-eyed dog in a meat house. Bulbs popped and flashed the room white. Chairs were overturned, magazines scattered, a vase of glads knocked over and puddled onto the floor. The doorknob had smashed a fist-sized dent into the plaster when the whole gang burst through the door. No cause for that. Place wasn’t locked. It wouldn’t have hurt these officers of the peace to step in like gentlemen. Mae scanned the room. Who was in charge of this circus, anyway?

A man in an olive uniform and black-visored cap stepped in front of Ruth and planted his feet wide apart. Dr. Barnett.

Ruth stood erect in immaculate white, from surgical cap to polished oxfords. She flattened her palm against her bosom. Sheriff Shrunk. What an honor.

Warsham turned. His gaze landed on Mae and his mouth dropped open.

She shot him a narrow-eyed, nostril-flaring smile. Billy.

He colored. His reporter pal drove a quizzical look at him. Mae stared Warsham down, and then turned back to the interrogation of her boss.

Where are your lists? the sheriff asked Ruth.

Where’s your search warrant? Ruth said in her reasonable tone.

Don’t get legal with me. I want the names of all the girls you’ve butchered. He flung his hand through the air as if to evoke a vast mass of women.

I don’t butcher women.

The names of the doctors who send these girls to you; where are they?

"In the phone book, Sheriff. Look under physician."

His smile was not so nice. He nodded to the policeman at the desk. The cop upended Virginia’s drawer. Pens and pencils, a rat tail comb, emery boards, a tortoise shell compact, and a menstrual belt spilled over her desk. He jerked open the file cabinet; sent bills, receipts, carbon paper, and catalogs into the air; then tipped over the cabinet.

Surging into the back, the raiding party dragged everyone along but the patients. In the surgeries, they shoveled the instruments into a duffle bag—speculae, curettes, forceps, sounds, suction cannulas, including Ruth’s most prized surgical tools, the ones she had made to order. She watched grim-faced. They swept everything out of the cabinets—basins, drapes and sheets, jars of alcohol, hydrogen peroxide, and Churchill’s iodine. Shattering onto the tile floor, glass jars filled the rooms with fumes.

When they stormed into Ruth’s office, the men’s eyes popped out at the sight of her massive, hand-carved Chinese desk. A pudgy cop cleaned out every one of the nine drawers onto the floor. He stuck his hands into the spaces, crouched down to poke and rap the underside.

Got to be a hidden drawer. I’ll find it.

He raised his stick over his head.

That’s enough, the sheriff said.

It was the same scene back in the lounge. First, the sound of sucking air as if the men were a pack of rubes that’d never seen anything but stick furniture and sheets over windows. Then they sacked it.

Sheriff Shrunk. The force of Dr. Ruth’s words commanded a brief silence. This is an outrage.

Grunting and cursing, the men pried off the brass grille that had been built over the radiator, which took them forever. The grille popped off and there they were: those tools Ruth’s predecessor had left behind. They were crude and obsolete. Ruth, in a preposterous fit of paranoia, had worried the instruments would fall into the wrong hands and be employed in do-it-yourself abortions. Better than a knitting needle, Mae had joked. Ruth had shot her a dark look before she’d stashed them behind the grille.

The fat cop unraveled the oilcloth packet, held the tools aloft, and gave them a triumphant shake—a fistful of shiny steel instruments, long and thin-tipped. A flash lit up the room.

Mae shook her head. Sonuvabitch. She should have quit when Leonard told her to.

*****

I didn’t expect it to be that professional, Bud said.

It was the day after the raid on Dr. Barnett’s clinic. Deputy D.A. Bill Warsham gazed out the window of his office in the County Courthouse, his back to Bud Crick, reporter for the Oregon Journal.

You’d been told, he said. Hell, you’d been there.

Never back in the surgeries.

Bill’s window framed the imposing peak of Mt. Hood and, on a good day, filled him with the confidence that he himself stood on that pinnacle with massive ridges of glistening white sloping away from his feet, possessed of a perspective afforded only those who were above it all—a view that revealed what was necessary and what was not and in which moments those judgments needed to change. When, for example, the business of getting rid of babies was no longer required or desirable, especially now that the war was over.

You saw the place, Bud said. Spotless, orderly, brilliantly lit. Smelled like soap and hot water.

With his handkerchief, Bill wiped the smudge from Bud’s palm off his window. It’s a surgery, not a back alley.

"It was an abortion parlor. And those furnishings? Bud snorted. Oriental rug in the office and that emperor’s desk. Darn near got smashed all to bits."

The reporter looked scrubbed and relaxed in a pressed shirt and bowtie in a godawful shade of orange. He’d plucked the alabaster statuette of Lady Justice off Bill’s shelf.

What’s your point? Bill said.

Bud gripped Lady Justice by her feet and swung her through the air like a baseball bat. What’s eating you?

Bill grabbed a newspaper clipping off his desk and held it up. It was a shot of Dr. Barnett’s lounge, three overstuffed chairs, a coffee table, and a big X drawn over a brass grille and, as if that weren’t enough to draw the reader’s attention, a curved arrow pointed at the X, which marked the concealed compartment where police had discovered the hidden instruments of their evil trade.

"That’s The Oregonian, Bud said. Not the Journal."

It’s cheap. Bill tossed the clipping back onto his desk.

Bud smirked. After we scooped ’em, what else could they do but go cheap?

Dr. Barnett’s surgical equipment was in plain view. She wasn’t trying to hide a thing.

Only guilty people hide stuff.

Our job is to clean things up, not smear a bunch of filth around in the papers. Or smash up a medical office.

Bud held up his hands. I’m on your side. Remember? He sauntered over to Bill’s desk, picked up a framed photo and studied it. Evelyn sure is a good-looking lady.

Before he knew it, Bill was running a finger around the inside of his starched collar. Last thing Evie did every morning, right after she pecked him on the cheek, was cinch up the knot in his tie. He always left it there, figuring she knew best how to wrap a man’s neck.

A puzzled look spread over Bud’s face. That nurse of Dr. Barnett’s—Mae Rose—you seemed to know each other.

Bill had spent half the night twisting in the sheets and testing out ways to dodge the hard pitch of Bud’s inescapable curiosity about Miss Rose. We worked together one summer at Norbert’s Hardware. When we were still in school.

Norbert’s?

Remember? Out on Thirty-ninth. Closed years ago.

Bud’s eyes lost focus for a moment, no doubt to pop that fact into a mental file labeled Abortion Nurse Who Smiled at Bill Warsham. He must have had a thousand files stacked in his brain. Bud had a prodigious memory.

"Billy, Bud said. That what she called you?"

You know, teenage girls, always making up a nickname.

What’d you call her?

Rubbing the tired pouches under his eyes, Bill picked up the clipping again and studied the picture of the brass grille. Maybe Bud had a point. They’d concealed a packet of surgical tools. The guiltier they looked, the worse it would go for them and the better his position to assist Miss Rose. To earn her gratitude. To make her see things his way.

He looked up and shrugged. Mae. What else would I call her?

Part 1

WHAT FAVOR DID HOPE EVER DO FOR HER?

Chapter One

By the summer of 1933, Herbert Hoover had been kicked to the curb and Franklin Roosevelt was singing Happy Days Are Here Again. But if the country was in a party mood, the folks of the North Santiam river valley hadn’t been invited. Around these parts, the Depression had settled in like the wet cough of a consumptive. The country byways leading in and out of Mill City, where Mae lived with her mother, were dotted with shacks, rusted out shells of cars, and piles of trash next to blackened fire pits abandoned by restless men who tramped the roads searching for some place better than the last, where they could bend their backs to work and make a buck.

Mae was sick of being sixteen—the stupid boys and silly girls, sneaking around at midnight, smoking and smooching down by the river under the rail bridge, as if they were getting away with something. Mae had no friends because she didn’t want them anyway. Not since Glory Ann’s mother, whose eyes had dried up and gone blind before she turned twenty-five, had declared at the church bazaar, in that loud, blind person’s voice of hers, that hell would freeze over before she’d let Glory Ann go play with Mae at the Rose Home for Mill Hands and Lumberjacks.

Mae liked to troll the roadsides near town with a vine maple stick to poke through the garbage. Only trash would want to pick through trash, her mother grumbled. Mae shrugged and tied her oat-colored hair back with a grosgrain ribbon to keep it out of the filth as she sifted through the discards. At least the stuff came from somewhere else. Mae had never even ventured as far as Salem, thirty miles down the road, where crooks who called themselves politicians made up the rules everyone else had to play by, except them. According to her ma.

Mae never found much—rusted tins, a single stocking stiff with dirt, a comb with five teeth left, a nub of a pencil too small to grip, a leather pouch half-eaten by a rat, a month-old flyer from Hood River seeking cherry pickers.

One day deep into August, Mae spied something red winking in the sun. When she scooped it up, she found the spiky, broken-off heel of a woman’s patent leather pump. She’d never seen such a shoe, except on the pages of the occasional Vogue that landed in Mill City and got passed around like a relic from another world. Mae ran her finger along its tapered edge and struggled to come up with an explanation that did not involve some hideous fall from grace.

She carried the heel back home. Grandpa Rose had built the Rose Home on the triangle of land where Alder Street took off uphill from River Road. He must have fancied himself a southern gent, her ma carped, because the rambling wood structure boasted a three-sided verandah, two-story columns that framed the front door, and an upstairs balcony. All white, which, especially once the paint started to crack and peel, gave off entirely the wrong impression. In the far back corner of the yard, where a big leaf maple had taken over with a forest of leafy shoots, on a mossy bed under the arch of a sword fern, Mae laid the heel to rest.

The next day she had no yen for trash-picking. She hurried through her garden chores, pinched back the tomato vines, sprayed the beets with dilute Castile, and knocked baby slugs off the lettuce and squashed them with a flat rock and no mercy. For the neighbor lady, who’d eaten out of their garden many a lean summer, Mae picked and delivered a basket of beans, cukes, and summer squash. Mrs. Barth had lived alone in a one-room shack for more years than Mae could remember, and Mae had never once seen her without a knit shawl clutched around her gaunt frame. Never saw any evidence that there ever was a Mr. Barth.

After visiting old lady Barth, Mae dodged her mother’s gaze to escape upstairs. As the river breeze wafted through her window, she stretched out on the threadbare chenille of her bed with her book, A Love So True. The afternoon was wearing thin by the time she reached the good part. She curled her toes and turned the page.

…a leaden, relentless tread. Emma clutched the bedclothes to her pale, swan-like neck. Her naked body trembled beneath the thin cotton of her nightshift. The hard knock of boots rose ever higher, coming at last to a halt at her door. Slowly, the knob turned. The door swung open.

Mae! her mother called.

Just then, a brilliant shaft of sunlight shot through the window and onto the intruder’s face. Emma gasped. Two years away had burnished Daniel’s features into a devastating—

Mae! Get yourself down here!

Inna minute, ma!

—handsomeness. Dark, glossy curls framed his high forehead. His eyes—

Not in a minute! Now!

—radiated a cerulean blue. He gathered her up into his strong, sinewy arms. His moist—

Dammit, girl!

Mae shuddered and squeezed her eyes shut.

Maebelline Claire Rose, you answer me!

Coming!

Mae creased a corner of the page and shoved the book under her pillow. She lazed down the steps, sauntered across the hall through the odors of sawdust and stale tobacco their boarders had dragged in, and then pushed through the swinging door into the steamy kitchen.

Her mother stood at a long slab table with a two-handed grip on a wooden spoon plunged into an enormous bowl and whipped it around in sway with her bosom., Dark-haired Lilly Rose had a kewpie-doll face and was plump as a muffin. A blueberry muffin, a boarder had once told Mae, after killing a half bottle of bootleg and long before Mae had enough years to grasp how a man might consume a woman like food. Soft and chewy, he’d said. Just like you gonna be some day.

Baskets of dirt-crusted potatoes and onions sat on the table amid a scatter of knives, cups and spoons, a pepper grinder, and double-bladed rocking chopper—everything dusted with flour and splattered with grease. The bins of cornmeal, flour, and sugar gaped. On top of the cast-iron stove, a giant pot rattled its lid. The scents of hickory smoke, herbs, roast chicken, and stewed fruit watered Mae’s mouth.

Lilly had pinned her iron-curled hair back and plucked her eyebrows into thin arches. Make-up was too dear for her mother to waste on those hours the men were gone, but her naked face looked more washed out than usual, as if her blood had decided all on its own to go color some other part.

Without breaking her arm-stride, Lilly started in on Mae. You somehow forgot it’s Saturday night? You think you can dawdle around while I do all the work?

Told you I’d set the table.

Gene Autry’s croon floated out Lilly’s Zenith, stashed on the shelf above the flour bin. The final strains—be mine forever more—faded into the announcer’s voice who reported a disturbance in a camp up in Portland, where some hot-head found that his wife had run off with another man. The shanty towns are nothing but a breeding ground for violence, said a police spokesman.

Shut that blame thing off, Lilly said. Heard enough about those bums in their Hoovervilles.

Mae twisted the knob.

Lilly patted her brow with her hanky. What’re you doing up there all the time by your lonesome?

You want me to peel those potatoes?

Lilly turned a sharp gaze to her daughter. She stepped over, grabbed a fistful of Mae’s hair to turn her face this way and that. Why’re you so red in the face?

Let go my hair.

Lilly released her grip and laughed. Finding yourself with your hand?

You’re crude.

Her ma grabbed the peeler and tossed it to Mae. You got no idea what crude is, Miss Hoity-Toity.

Lilly was that kind of woman about whom things were said. Years ago, those things were sometimes flung out of a mouth before the speaker saw Lilly’s round-eyed girl edging around the corner of the candy counter at the general store—hush now, big ears coming. Men said Lilly had appetites in a manner that confused Mae about whether appetites were the kind of thing a woman was supposed to have or not. Ladies said Lilly Rose set no kind of example for her child, which made Mae wonder about what kind of example no kind of example would be. Mr. Goshorn, who ran the Mill City General Store where folks clustered to gossip, insisted there’d been a steady man way back when—the girl’s father. But when Mae rushed back home to ask her ma if she had a pa after all, Lilly slapped her face, burst into tears, and wouldn’t come out of her room for hours, even though Mae wept and pleaded on the other side of the door.

By the time she turned twelve, Mae understood what all that talk meant and that hardly a lick of hope or joy resided in any of it, just a lot of getting by, especially once the Depression collapsed the timber trade and the their number of boarders shrank by half. At thirteen, Mae grew a fascination in the various ways men’s pants fit their bodies, about the same time she noticed the eagerness that took hold of her ma on a Saturday night. Lately, it seemed to have petered out. Mae told herself she didn’t care one way or the other and buried herself in the small, soft books she sent for, which arrived wrapped in brown paper and string. Never once had she wheedled a word out of her ma about her father. Bet you don’t even know! Mae would yell at Lilly, prepared to duck whatever her ma found to hurl at her.

Mae gripped the peeler, leaned against the sink, and hacked at the potatoes. Brown strips flipped through the air and landed on the yellow-stained porcelain. She never thought about her father anymore. Instead, she made guessing games of which guy would win her ma on a Saturday night. Coarse and vulgar, all of them. Nothing like the man who would one day come for Mae. He’d wear a pressed silk shirt, trousers with a crease, and shoes without a scuff. His scent would be spicy, his face smooth, and his fingernails clipped and clean.

*****

Dinner that night at the Rose Home was a boisterous affair of wild boasts, off-color stories, insults traded back and forth, dripping forks shoveled between tobacco-stained teeth, and guffaws that spewed bits of food clear across the table. The men had reached the end of a six-day stretch of pulling timber on the green chain for the Santiam Lumber Company, a job that made a man old before his time and, if he had no luck, short a finger or two. But it produced a regular envelope of cash, which was more than most men could brag about once Hoover was done dragging the country into ruin. The men were ripe for a night of boozing and whoring.

Except for pin-head Willy Doern, Mill City’s imbecile, who spent his days either running errands for Mr. Goshorn for pocket change or propping up the pillars of the general store, as he had been convinced the roof would cave in if he took his hands away. His sister, who lived seventy-five miles up north in Portland, sent Lilly the fair sum of forty dollars every month without fail for Willy’s room and board and never once bothered to visit.

Lilly and Mae loaded the table with steaming platters of mashed potatoes, roast chicken, boiled green beans glistening with butter, and fresh-from-the-oven cornmeal muffins. Mae kept the coffee mugs topped off with Lilly’s bitter brew and made sure the commotion didn’t buffalo Willie to the point he couldn’t grab his share. Her mother was pale-powdered beneath rouged cheeks and earlobes, her eyes made large with mascara, her mouth painted into a Cupid’s bow. She filled the men’s water glasses, laughed at their randy jokes, and slapped their greasy hands away from her breasts and buttocks. Mae dodged the gropes and ignored the rude offers.

The clock chimed eight before the last of the belching men wandered off. Carrying a tray of dishes, Lilly backed through the swinging door into the kitchen and let them down with a crash. She leaned onto stiff arms and bowed her head.

You alright, Ma? Mae asked.

Lilly lifted her head. Weariness had unsettled her powder and rouge. Her eyes were washed with red. Be a dear and clean up this mess, will you?

Yeah, sure. When had Mae ever not cleaned up on a Saturday night?

Lilly stared across the room. I got to go freshen myself.

Later, when Mae shouldered into the pantry door with an armload of baking powder, salt, and lard, she heard her ma murmuring. That’s all fine and well, George, but you know room and board don’t cover everything. George, the longest resident of the Rose Home, must have been thinking he’d earned rights.

Without making a sound, Mae backed into the kitchen. She lit the gas lamps, switched on the battery-operated radio to the wild swoop of Benny Goodman’s clarinet, sashayed to the sink, punched the rubber stopper into the drain, and tossed in a handful of powdered soap. From table to sink, she hummed and practiced her swing steps while pretending she wore a pair of fine, patent leather and spiked heels, as she dumped armloads of dirty dishes into the sink.

Evening, Miss Mae. Willie Doern shuffled his feet just inside the door, palms pressed to the sides of his pants.

Mae wiped her hands on her apron. How’re you doing, Willie?

Pretty good. He darted his gaze at her, as if too long a look would burn his eyes.

Those men leave you here all by your lonesome?

Willie wagged his head. I don’t mind.

You looking for company?

You always so nice to me.

Mae pulled back in mock surprise. Why wouldn’t I be? You’re the nicest fella I know.

He ducked his head, and his lips quivered into a smile. Miss Mae, you remember that way you … showed me?

Sure, Willie.

You do that again?

You got two bits?

Willie dug into his pocket, produced a handful of coins, and held them out.

She crooked a finger at him. C’mere.

Willie shambled sideways to Mae, hand outstretched like a beggar. His pecker tented the front of his overalls. Mae picked out a quarter and dropped it into her pocket.

Maybe the third time Willie had pestered her about touching her breasts, the idea struck her to let him look. You treat Willie kind, her ma had told her. He can’t help who he is. For sure this wasn’t what she meant, but what other kind of outlet did poor Willie have? It did no harm. Besides, Mae could use the quarters to buy her paperbacks and wouldn’t have to beg off her ma or swipe the grocery money, which her ma was sure to catch onto.

You remember the rule? Mae held up a warning finger. No touch.

Yes, Miss Mae, no touch.

He looked away as she lowered the bib of her apron, unbuttoned the front of her dress, and cupped her breasts out of her brassiere.

You can look now. Silently, she counted to ten as Willie’s face went red, his lips wet and trembling. He grabbed himself in front as his other hand crept up through the air.

A gasp came from behind and Willie’s eyes went huge. Mae whirled around.

Her mother brushed past her and smacked the rising hand of the dumbstruck Willie with a wooden spoon. Get out!

Willie scrambled across the room, sending the far door into a wild swing. Mae darted around to the other side of the slab table, tugging up her brassiere. The wooden spoon cartwheeled through the air, a pitch so wide of its mark that Mae didn’t bother to duck. It hit the wall and clattered to the floor.

The door from the hallway cracked open. Lilly? George’s voice.

Lilly kicked it shut. Not now!

Mae gripped the edge of the table, ready to push off in any direction.

Lilly glowered at her. What do you think you’re doing?!

Nothing.

You call that nothing?

Mae shot off her back-talk smile. You do it.

He pay you? Willie gives you money to look at your titties? Lilly leaned way over the table. Her rouge had spread into a deep flush.

Mae fumbled at the half-done buttons on her blouse.

How much?! Lilly roared.

Mae shook her head.

You know what that makes you? Do you?! She raised a long, straight arm and pointed at Mae down to her fingertip. A slut! A cheap slut!

Mae thrust out her chin. Don’t you think you should get back to George?

Then, the only sound in the room was the throaty in and out of air, the sound of breath-catching and hard-thought thinking and the draining away of hot blood. Lilly groped under the table for her step stool, dragged it out, and collapsed onto it. Come here, Mae.

What?

Just come here.

Mae inched around the table. Breathing a quiet series of sighs, her ma sat like a kettle done steaming. When Mae reached Lilly, her mother pulled her onto her knee, held her there with an arm around her waist, as if she were two years old. Mae hunched her shoulders and jammed her hands between her knees. It felt unbearably hot and prickly.

Lilly pushed the hair back from Mae’s face. You’re pretty, Mae. Sometimes I wish you weren’t. Mill City’s no place for a pretty girl.

She brushed Mae’s face with the back of her hand before letting it fall away. I’ve been no kind of good mother to you.

Never once had it occurred to Mae that Lilly might trouble herself over that.