Free Glass Boys by Nicole Lundrigan Page A

shake for effect. When she wanted more, Eddie waved his half a hand, three fingers lost to frostbite, cautioned, “Too much, and trouble’ll find ye.” Pincer grasp towards her chest. “They’s still there, mind you. Me fingers. Ye just can’t see ’em.” “Yeah, yeah,” she’d always reply. “Just like everything else.” He never expected much in return, just a few minutes’ work. “Let’s make it quick, Mr. Quick,” she’d slur as she pushed her hand past the band of his trousers, tugged and tugged.
    The day before Wilda left, her mother received a package of luxury fabric she had ordered to sew a fine dress for the rever end’s wife. Wilda untied the string, tore the brown paper off the box. Inside was a silky heap of material, aqua paisley print on a cinnamon background. She ran her hands over it, in among the cool ripples, and was certain it was a sin to clothe the over stuffed carcass of Mrs. Hatcher in something so divine. After smoothing the fabric on the kitchen floor, she lay on top of it, blue chunk of chalk in her hand, and traced an outline of her body. While her mother was at the neighbor’s house letting out an old gown for a “boom-boom” wedding, Wilda used those sharp thin scissors, worked the machine with her feet, and made herself a dress.
    She was trying to squeeze her arm into a too-tight sleeve when her mother arrived in the kitchen, dropped her basket at her feet. Crying out, she knelt on the floor, scooped the slivers of material in her hands, looked at Wilda, who had the fabric pinned to her clothes, draped over her shoulder. “Jeeesus, good Jeeesus. ’Tis ruined. Do you know what that costed? Why oh why oh why?” Wilda replied coolly, “I wanted to make something. Have something new.” “Something new?” Shrill crow in the room, flapping up now from the floor, beating the air with her arms. “Something new? You don’t deserve nothing. Let alone something bloody new.” Her mother reached across the table, clutched a pair of pinking shears in a clenched fist, and raised them in the air. Wilda curled her arms around her head, loose seam on the sleeve splitting. “Go easy, they says. Go easy.” Her mother struck Wilda’s head and back with the handles of those shears. “After what you seen happen to your father. They says. No one goes easy on me. No one helps me make bloody ends meet.” Over and over again. Pain coming to Wilda in the most magnificent colors behind her closed eyes. “You stupid, stupid girl. You was born stupid. Born stupid. Do you think no one knows what you does? Going ’round like a drunken whore? Bringing shame down on me?” Through a clenched white beak. Wilda cried through her forearms, but her mother only saw fit to strike her harder. “You coulda helped him. Coulda found me. Stead of jus runnin’ away.” Her mother collapsed then, shears lost in a fold of her skirt.
    Down the alleyway, Wilda heard silly laughter, and she turned to see two women slipping out of a house, the doorway invisible from her current angle. She stood, crushed her cigarette against a slab of stone, and moved towards it. Found a black door, no bell, no neat sign to the left or right. Somebody lives here, she thought, but pushed open the door, descended a steep staircase, and arrived in a dark open space, low ceilings, walls coated in red paint, a stretch of wooden bar, a few cheap tables, linoleum floor, chairs and stools. The smell of smoke and something else made Wilda’s heart beat a little faster.
    She walked over, stood beside a woman at a nearby table, hunched over a paper tray of limp fries. “What’s this?”
    The woman leaned her head backwards, rolling chins. “What’s what?”
    â€œThis place.”
    â€œNothing for you to be concerned about.” Three fries poked into that black hole all at