Free The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan Page A

sitting slumped on a bench. There is no more to the picture than a few lines of charcoal, a few dashes of pastel, but the exhaustion of the girl is there, in the ribs heaving with each breath, the late night and bellowing father of the evening before, also the long hours at the barre, striving to balance a second longer or land a little softer, the aching thighs rolling open even at rest. I step out from behind the flimsy screen. “You should go,” I say to Antoinette, to Charlotte, holding her neck long, her arms en repos, waiting for Monsieur Degas to look up from the table, the rubble he is picking through.
    Antoinette takes a long breath. “You’re sure?”
    “But we’re here now,” Charlotte says, her voice telling how close she is to stamping her feet, with Monsieur Degas not yet having noticed her grace and Antoinette already standing up from her chair to leave.
    So as not to change my mind, I undress in a hurry, eyes glued to the exhausted girl, to the thinness of her limbs, to the softness of the pastel highlighting the ridge of her collarbone. I inch out from behind the screen, clutching at my nakedness.

Antoinette
    I n the lobby of the Ambigu, I blink away the sunshiny day outside and see old Busnach striding over all high and mighty to scold me about missing yesterday. I feel the urge to sneer, but thinking better than to fuel his flame, I wrap my shawl tightly, warming myself against the sickness lingering from yesterday. It don’t come naturally, swallowing sneers and holding my tongue, but I’ve got to. Along with a regular wage, the Ambigu means afternoons in the company of Émile. I let my breath out slow, but old Busnach only nods his head and thanks me for sending my sister with the news that I was not well. “The rest don’t bother,” he says.
    Today we are rehearsing like it is the real opening night, with costumes and the stage all set up like a washhouse for the second tableau. There are tubs and hot water and steam rising up and dirty linen and clotheslines that work and my own arms plunged up to the elbows in suds, and I cannot help but think of the money spent making something those theatergoers could find in pretty much any shabby street.
    L’Assommoir is mostly about the pitiful life of a laundress called Gervaise, and the tableau with me onstage covers the part where she finds her lover, Lantier, is gone off and then fights with Virginie, who lured him away. When we were first rehearsing the brawl, Busnach wanted Virginie down on the floor, soaking wet and drawers ripped open, and Gervaise paddling her bare rump with one of those beaters for thrashing linens clean. It is what Monsieur Zola wrote, or so says Busnach, and he is always going on about L’Assommoir being a naturalist play and needing to be exactly true to life, just like the book. Always, he is reading out such and such a page and being a stickler about every last thing, drivel like the first bucket of water wetting only the shoes of Virginie. I was wanting to tell him I been to the washhouse a hundred times and never once did see a woman getting spanked with a paddle on her bare rump. But there won’t be a paddled bare rump, not with the censor bureau breathing down the neck of Busnach. Even so, with the dousing and the name calling and the blow that brings blood to the ear of Virginie, the theatergoers are going to be applauding on their feet. Already opening night is sold out, and not a speck of doubt, half those tickets were bought on account of all the fuss over the washhouse tableau.
    We are starting at the top of the tableau, with the authentic actresses scrubbing away and the three real actresses—the ones with speaking parts—calling back and forth, waiting for the entrance of Gervaise. But Monsieur Busnach is not happy. No, he is shaking his head and clapping his hands sharp. “We need another line up front. You ladies,” he says, and I know he is addressing the authentic actresses because he calls the real