"Turkish Divorce"
by jemiah jefferson
This was written around the time that I was finishing my thesis at Reed, already distracted by what I thought was a better story. Of course nothing more than this (and a few other fragments) managed to survive, but I might actually still write some really depressing thing about being a junkie in East St. Louis in the year Marilyn Monroe left this earth. As for the title, an Arab divorce means that the husband says "I divorce you" three times. This is not the case here.
Stapleton Hodges returned to the hotel room where his wife was. She was awake now, sitting up in bed, but as twisted up as an abortionist’s coat hanger. "Where you been at?" she asked, her voice small and muffled.
"I went out for a gin-and-tonic," said Stapleton.
Mony stared at him from the gray hollows where her eyes were shacked out. "You ain’t home so much these days, honey," she mentioned, pressing the tip of her tongue against her front teeth.
"I’ve had to go meet up with some men, sugar. You know how it goes. I gotta keep my connections up. I’m in a business. Just like a Fuller Brush man." He laughed and brushed cigar ash from the smooth flannel of his lapel. "Just like a Fuller Brush man," he said again. He sat in the vinyl chair by the window, pulling the broken blind up to let in the afternoon sunlight, and unfolded the day’s form.
Mony let her head fall forward, then pushed back the tangled mop of her hair and fixed the racing paper with a stare. "Stapleton, baby," she started again. "Honey, I’m not doing too well. I’m feeling a little sick, you know?"
Stapleton glanced up.
"You brought anything for me?" Something between a smile and a spasm passed over her cheeks. "I was really hopin’…"
The man smiled and crossed his legs. "You wanna go out, honey? C’mon and put your devil in a blue dress on. Let’s go down to the track. You wanna go watch the ponies run?"
Mony shook her head. "No, baby," she said. "I don’t wanna go see the ponies. I don’t feel up to it."
"You don’t feel up to it? What’s that?"
"Stapleton, baby, I need some shit, you know? You know that. Don’t mess around with me. You know how long it’s been."
He sighed patiently. "I don’t got none right now," he explained, speaking slowly. "What I’m going to do now, baby, is pick me out some colts, and go down to the track and see at least six races. C’mon, I’ll buy you a Pink Lady. How’s a Pink Lady sound?"
"Stapleton, I’m sick, do you get it?"
"Baby, I got a sure thing in the tenth, now, so get on up. Comb your hair and put some lipstick on. Make yourself look presentable. I’ll buy you whatever you want when my pony comes in, how’s that?" He shook his head and kept looking the other way while she dragged herself to an upright position. "Dames, I swear. Just don’t know how to have a good time."
Mony washed her face in cold water and applied a coat of Tahitian Flame lipstick and put on the blue dress and nylons and pumps, and went with Stapleton to the track. She followed him in a mute daze of agony. She didn’t know what day it was; she couldn’t remember the last time she ate something other than cottage cheese and canned peach slices, or taken a real bath, or moved her bowels. Everything had just stopped. She didn’t know how her husband did it; he shot up dope pretty regularly, and did pills too, but he seemed as plump and glossy as when she’d first met him. She didn’t know what she was doing wrong.
Stapleton won on his tenth race at 4-1 and took her to the bar and grill at the track for a victory booze-up. Mony ignored the ill pink froth in front of her and leant towards her husband hungrily. "Could you score?" she hissed in his tiny cologned ear.
"Dammit, sugar, leave a man alone to drink his whiskey, could you?"
"Gimme his number."
"What? Who?"
"The man," she said. She glanced around the bar, looking for listeners. "Shaver."
Stapleton chuckled and inhaled his shot of whiskey. "You don’t even know him."
"I don’t care. Stapleton. Please. Please." When quiet, cracked pleasing failed to have an effect, she grabbed him by the elbow and pinched him in the crook.
He smacked her hard in the face. Some folks looked up, but it wasn’t that exotic. Mony huddled over the table, her nose almost touching the yellow shellacked surface. The pain made her want to vomit. Still bent she slid out of the booth and left the bar and grill, and took the bus back to the hotel.
She took off the blue dress and crawled back into the arms of bed. She sobbed without tears and couldn’t sleep. The hotel sheets smelled like junky sweat, and she pressed her nose into the second pillowcase, inhaling the smell of Stapleton’s hair dressing as if it would ease the knives in her veins.
In an eternity of a few hours the door opened and Stapleton was
there, filling the room with a rich smell of Johnny Walker and cigars
and hair oil, and he gathered up the trembling girl in his arms and
apologized. "I never meant to hurt you, baby, I’d never hurt you
in a million years. I swear on my momma’s grave &endash; look
what I got, baby. Look what I got." And admist her grateful
half-laughs, half-sobs he tied her off with the old elastic from a
garter, cooked her a shot, and gave it to her, and then held her
gently lolling head and kissed the damp freckled skin over her
heart.
When Mony awake it was twilight again, and she was alone in bed. She didn’t feel too bad. The good pure junk, and the ball, had revived her, and she went into the bathroom and took a nice cold bathing in the green tile shower.
Stapleton’s shaving brush and tooth-brush and can of hair dressing were gone from the edges of the sink in the bathroom, and his clothes and valise from the closet. Mony put on her green dress and wandered outside in her bare feet, brushing out her wet, tangled hair. There was no taxicab outside, no smiling Stapleton in a new sharkskin sport coat saying "Get in, we’ve got a bus to catch, and we don’t wanna be late!" That was how it had always happened. It was a warm night, the sunset refusing to give up its colors. There were still heat waves rising from the strip of asphalt leading away from the hotel.
Mony walked barefoot through warm soft dirt to the lobby desk. "Excuse me, please," Mony said to the clerk. "Have you seen my husband, Mr. Hodges? We’ve been staying in 1F."
"Oh, yes. Paid the bill through tonigh." The clerk regarded a thick brown leatherette ledger, and smiled thinly at Mony. "Check out time is ten a.m., don’t forget. Ten a.m. sharp."
"Of course," said Mony, turning away.
She packed her hard-sided ivory-colored suitcase, the same she’d had since her trip to Des Moines when she was sixteen for a funeral on her mother’s side. There wasn’t any money in her pocketbook, no pills, not even an empty syringe or blackened twisted spoon. She had six dresses and one pair of black jersey slacks and an ecru blouse, three pairs of shoes, and the red coat with the leopard collar that Stapleton had bought her after their first date. There were also two handkerchiefs with someone else’s initals on them, and the Bakelite cigarette case and matching cigarette holder.
Mony carried her valise to the bar and grill at the racetrack. She got a booth at the very back in the shadows and smoked one of the last four cigarettes. Leaving her valise under the booth in the back she went up to the bar and targeted the man she knew owned the place, a real crumb named Wilson with a big scar in the middle of his forehead. "Hi Wilson," she said, smiling her best smile. "Remember me?"
"It’s been four days, Mrs. Hodges." He scrubbed at a pint glass with a towel like he was reaming out a rusty pipe. "What do you want?"
"Could &endash; could you use another waitress?" She forced herself to keep looking at him.
"Whassa matter? Your old man lose out there? He pimpin’ you out?"
"I’m not with him anymore," she said coldly. "Can you help me or not?"
"Bullshit, sweetheart. I know your game. I can’t have no junkies working for me. You’d sell me out for a fix. How’d I know you ain’t did that to your old man? Now g’won. Get lost."
Mony wanted to cuss but she only said, "Give me a break. He didn’t leave me one think dime. I don’t even have the dough to catch a bus to the other side of town. A loan. Five dollars. I’ll pay you back in two weeks. Two weeks, Wilson &endash;"
"No, you give me a break. You think I’m sick in the head? Look at yourself. You look like some kind of goddamned Okie. You’re cluttering up the place."
"What? You gonna call the cops?"
"Go turn a trick somewhere else."
Mony spit on the bar. Then she got her suitcase and went outside. It was well dark out now. The track was closed. Mony felt funny. She still didn’t know what day it was. She was good maybe for a few hours before she hit bottom good and hard.
She wandered until she found an open pawn shop and pawned her wedding band and her coral earrings. It was enough for a two-day flop and a fix. The fix was easier to find.