Free Victory Over Japan by Ellen Gilchrist Page A

“Don’t lose that check,” he said. It was still sitting on the edge of the counter. The circle of water was closing in. “Don’t get it wet. It would be a lot of trouble to get them to make another one.”
    When he was gone Rhoda straightened up the house and made the bed. She put all the dishes in the dishwasher and watered the plants. She cleaned off the counters one by one. She moved the watering can and wiped up the ring of water. Then she picked up the check and read the amount. Four thousand six hundred and forty-three dollars. Eight months of freedom at five hundred dollars a month. And forty-three dollars to waste. I’ll waste it today, she decided. She picked up the phone and called the beauty parlor.
    Six o’clock is the time of day in New Orleans when the light cools down, coming in at angles around the tombs in the cemeteries, between the branches of the live oak trees along the avenues, casting shadows across the yards, penetrating the glass of a million windows.
    Rhoda always left the drapes open in the afternoons so she could watch the light travel around the house. She would turn on “The World of Jazz” and dress for dinner while the light moved around the rooms. Two hours, she thought, dropping her clothes on the floor of her bedroom. Two hours to make myself into a goddess. She shaved her legs and gave herself a manicure and rubbed perfumed lotion all over her body and started trying on clothes. Rhoda had five closets full of clothes. She had thousands of dollars’ worth of skirts and jackets and blouses and dresses and shoes and scarves and handbags.
    She opened a closet in the hall. She took out a white lace dress she had worn one night to have dinner with a senator. She put the soft silk-lined dress on top of her skin. Then, one by one, she buttoned up every one of the fifty-seven tiny pearl buttons of the bodice and sleeves. The dress had a blue silk belt. Rhoda dropped it on the closet floor. She opened a drawer and found a red scarf and tied it around the waist of the dress. She looked in the mirror. It was almost right. But not quite right. She took one of Jody’s old ties off a tie rack and tied that around the waist. There, that was perfect. “A Brooks Brothers’ tie,” she said out loud. “The one true tie of power.”
    She went into the kitchen and took a bottle of wine out of the refrigerator and poured herself a glass and began to walk around the house. She stopped in the den and put a Scott Joplin record on the stereo and then she began to dance, waving the wineglass in the air, waiting for Earl to come. She danced into the bedroom and took the check out of a drawer where she had hidden it and held it up and kissed it lavishly all over. Jesus loves the little children, she was singing. All the children of the world. Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious, precious, precious. Four thousand, six hundred and forty-three dollars and thirty-seven cents. A day’s work. At last, a real day’s work.
    The doorbell was ringing. She set the wineglass down on the table and walked wildly down the hall to the door. “I’m coming,” she called out. “I’ll be right there.”
    â€œNow what I’d really like to do with you,” Earl was saying, “is to go fishing.” They were at Dante’s by the River, a restaurant down at the end of Carrollton Avenue. They had stuffed themselves on Crab Thibodeaux and Shrimp Mousse and Softshell Crabs Richard and were starting in on the roast quail. It was a recipe with a secret sauce perfected in Drew, Mississippi, where Earl’s grandfather had been horsewhipped on the street for smarting off to a white man. But that was long ago and the sauce tasted wonderful to Rhoda and Earl.
    â€œI’m stuffed,” she said. “How can I eat all this? I won’t be able to move, much less make love to you. I am going to make love to you, you know