Free When the Saints by Sarah Mian Page B

Except Daddy got even meaner and Ma got harder with him. They were fighting all the time and we just scattered. We’d come home to eat sometimes, but we were each of us hatching escape plans. Bird and I started working construction when I was fifteen. Poppy had older boyfriends she’d crash with. Eventually Daddy pissed off the wrong side of the dock. He had a line on some grade A dope, convinced a few businessmen to give him a fuckload of money, bought as much as he could, then sold it to a skipper headed to the States. He skimmed so much money off the top there was no way he was getting away with it. He gave them back even less money than they’d put up, the moron. Next day, a gang showed up at the house with knives, axes, you name it. Daddy took off and they went after him, told Ma they’d be back for the rest of us. She was afraid if she called the police, they might find something of Daddy’s in the house to pin on her and she’d wind up in jail with no way to keep after us. So she phoned that old friend of hers, Bev, and got her to come pack us in her car and bring us to Jubilant. Bev dropped us at the Salvation Army and told Ma to lose her number. After a few months, we got enough money together to buy that trailer. Bird and I used to hitchhike back andforth to sneak Ma’s things out of the house and bring them to her. We did that for years.”
    “What happened to all the money?”
    “Fucked if I know. You know Daddy can’t hang on to a dollar to save his life. He probably blew it all in a week.”
    I ponder it. “You should have saved Ma’s good dress.”
    “What?”
    “Her yellow dress. It’s still hanging in the closet.”
    “You went in there? It ain’t safe, Tabby. The floor’s ready to cave.”
    “It was like you all evaporated.”
    “Spooked you, did it?”
    “It takes a hell of a lot more than that.”
    The marquee appears ahead: KLASSY LADYS, $6. Behind it, on the facade of the blue warehouse, is a painted silhouette of a busty woman bending at the waist with her hands on her hips. She’s naked except for a bonnet tied around her neck.
    “Why the bonnet?”
    Jackie looks up at it and shrugs. He finds an empty coffee cup on the floor and spits into it. “Why not, I guess.”
    A soft rain is now falling on the thirty or so cars in the lot. We park, and when we walk in, a few men whip around to make sure I’m not married to any of them. The stools and walls are painted neon blue and there’s a permeating stench of vomit. The woman dancing around the pole isn’t even trying not to look pissed off about it. We seat ourselves in the corner and wait for a server. After five minutes, a woman in fringed leather underpants struts over with a tray. She sprays our vinyl tablecloth and wipes off the red wine ring left by the last customer.
    “Evening, madam.” Jackie tilts his hat back. “We’ll take two glasses of your finest vintage.”
    She snaps two beers open and parks them in front of us. “Anything else?”
    “Poppy Saint working tonight?”
    “No.”
    “She around lately?”
    “No.”
    “You know where she’s at?” He’s doing a bad job of looking casual, tapping his foot like crazy.
    “He’s her brother,” I interrupt, “not some jealous boyfriend. She’s got a sick kid she needs to know about.”
    She hesitates. “We ain’t allowed to tell customers nothing about the dancers.”
    “We just want to know what nights she dances.”
    “She ain’t danced here in a while.”
    “Then she’s not a dancer.”
    Jackie looks up at her from under his long lashes. “You got kids?”
    She drops her shoulders. “Poppy’s here on weekends. But you ask anyone about it, they’ll say she don’t work here no more.”
    She walks off and Jackie examines his bottle to see if anything’s floating in it. “Now what?”
    “I guess we come this weekend and you go into the backroom.”
    “Fuck that.” He almost drops his beer. “All I need is one person to see me go back there