Free Music for Chameleons by Truman Capote Page B

you. Do what I tell you. Walk right in. And if you catch her in the middle of a hump, keep your eyes open: that’s how I got to be a champion humper.”
    The last remark, meaningless to me, ended with a chuckle,but I followed his instructions, and as I started toward the front door, glanced back at him. It didn’t seem possible, but he was already gone, and I never saw him again—or if I did, I don’t remember it.
    The door opened directly into Mrs. Ferguson’s parlor. At least it was furnished as a parlor (a couch, easy chairs, two wicker rocking chairs, maplewood side tables), though the floor was covered with a brown kitchen linoleum that perhaps was meant to match the color of the house. When I came into the room Mrs. Ferguson was tilting to and fro in one of the rocking chairs, while a good-looking young man, a Creole not many years older than Skeeter, rocked away in the other. A bottle of rum rested on a table between them, and they were both drinking from glasses filled with the stuff. The young man, who was not introduced to me, was wearing only an undershirt and somewhat unbuttoned bell-bottom sailor’s trousers. Without a word he stopped rocking, stood up, and swaggered down a hall, taking the rum bottle with him. Mrs. Ferguson listened until she heard a door close.
    Then all she said was: “Where is it?”
    I was sweating. My heart was acting funny. I felt as though I had run a hundred miles and lived a thousand years in just the last few hours.
    Mrs. Ferguson stilled her chair, and repeated herself: “Where is it?”
    “Here. In my pocket.”
    She held out a thick red hand, palm up, and I dropped the necklace into it. Rum had already done something to alter the usual dullness of her eyes; the dazzling yellow stone did more. She turned it this way and that, staring at it; I tried not to, I tried to think of other things, and found myself wondering if she had scars on her back, lash marks.
    “Am I expected to guess?” she asked, never removing hergaze from the bijou dangling from its fragile gold chain. “Well? Am I supposed to tell you why you are here? What it is you want?”
    She didn’t know, she couldn’t, and suddenly I didn’t want her to. I said: “I like to tap-dance.”
    For an instant her attention was diverted from the sparkling new toy.
    “I want to be a tap dancer. I want to run away. I want to go to Hollywood and be in the movies.” There was some truth in this; running away to Hollywood was high on my list of escape-fantasies. But that wasn’t what I’d decided not to tell her, after all.
    “Well,” she drawled. “You sure are pretty enough to be in picture shows. Prettier than any boy ought to be.”
    So she did know. I heard myself shouting: “Yes! Yes! That’s it!”
    “That’s what? And stop hollering. I’m not deaf.”
    “I don’t want to be a boy. I want to be a girl.”
    It began as a peculiar noise, a strangled gurgling far back in her throat that bubbled into laughter. Her tiny lips stretched and widened; drunken laughter spilled out of her mouth like vomit, and it seemed to be spurting all over me—laughter that sounded like vomit smells.
    “Please, please. Mrs. Ferguson, you don’t understand. I’m very worried. I’m worried all the time. There’s something wrong. Please. You’ve got to understand.”
    She went on rocking with laughter and her rocking chair rocked with her.
    Then I said: “You are stupid. Dumb and stupid.” And I tried to grab the necklace away from her.
    The laughter stopped as though she had been struck by lightning; a storm overtook her face, total fury. Yet when she spoke her voice was soft and hissing and serpentine: “You don’t knowwhat you want, boy. I’ll show you what you want. Look at me, boy. Look here. I’ll show you what you want.”
    “Please. I don’t want anything.”
    “Open your eyes, boy.”
    Somewhere in the house a baby was crying.
    “Look at me, boy. Look here.”
    What she wanted me to look at was the