“It is?”
She could find some logic in this. And she agreed that sooner or later they would go all the way. She imagined that once they did it in the natural way, she would also climax when he did.
“So are we engaged or not?” Henry pressed.
“I’m not sure,” Mutzie said honestly, although she felt the pressure to say yes.
“I can’t live with that anymore, Mutzie. I want a yes or a no.”
“I don’t think I’m ready, Henry,” Mutzie said after a long silence. Suddenly she thought of Jean Harlow. What would the beautiful Jean say to this? she wondered. Oddly, by thinking of Jean Harlow, she suddenly confronted the reality of the present. Where was she, after all? On the fourth floor landing of a walk-up apartment house, which smelled vaguely of dust and cabbage. All around her, it looked grimy, dirty and depressing. Henry’s shoes were scuffed and unshined and she noted that there were slick oily stains on his dark pants.
“It’s either yes or no,” Henry pressed. He had stood up and was leaning against the railing. He lit a cigarette and she could see his face light up with the glow of the match. There was Henry Goldbaum. No Errol Flynn, no Clark Gable, no William Powell. Just Henry Goldbaum, who would one day be a cutter and bring
home enough money so that she could live in an apartment house just like this one.
“Then no,” she said, standing up.
“No? How can you say no?”
“I said it,” she said.
“Me?” Henry said, punching a thumb into his chest and blowing out a long stream of smoke. “You turning me down?”
“You asked yes or no. An answer right away. Tonight. So tonight I say no.”
He grimaced, his lips curled in a crooked smile.
“I can’t believe this,” he mumbled, stiffening. He took another deep drag on his cigarette.
“I’m sorry, Henry,” Mutzie said. She had taken out her key and pushed it into the lock of her apartment.
“You’re sorry? Your mother will be pissed.”
“So I’ll be an old maid. A dried-up shiksa prune.”
“You’ll regret this as long as you live,” Henry said, raising his voice, as she shut the door. “Goddamned hooer,” he shouted. She waited on the other side of the door, anger rising. “That again,” she sighed. Then she heard him run noisily down the stairs, banging the walls as he went.
But that night as she lay in bed and the anger began to subside, her feelings were totally different than she had expected. Instead of feelings of anxiety and fear about her future, she felt free, courageous, optimistic. Where was it written that she must settle for less than her expectations? Who said people can’t live the lives depicted in the movies? She had been to the city many times, where she observed the glitter and glamour of people living what seemed to be lives that were lived in the movies. She saw them ride in their fancy cars, dine in fine restaurants, attend the opera and the theater. She read about their lives in newspapers
and magazines. Who said it was not possible for a poor Jewish girl from Brownsville to reach such aspirations?
That was when she decided to become, to literally
become
, what she dreamed of becoming. Nobody would stop her. Not her complaining mother or crabbing father or her teachers or her schoolmates.
For the past two summers she had worked as a file clerk in an office in downtown Brooklyn and had managed to put nearly one hundred fifty dollars in a savings account. She withdrew one hundred dollars. This, she decided, would finance the first phase of her campaign of transformation.
Thankfully, she went through the week without her mother confronting her with hysterical outbursts of recrimination. Her mother’s strategy was to sink deeper into her pouty silent treatment, indulging instead in rhetorical diatribes meant for Mutzie’s ears, but not directly addressed to her. This, thankfully, made it easier for Mutzie not to respond, which only increased the decibel level of the diatribes. The fact that her mother’s reactions were so predictable and clichéd actually made it easier for Mutzie to cope with it.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” she told her mother silently.
Not that Mutzie didn’t love her mother. But the facts were that Mutzie’s mother was old-fashioned, too traditional and uneducated in the ways of the modern world, too isolated, narrow-minded, too bitter and hysterical. To Mutzie’s mother, Brownsville was the universe. She never went to the movies, never read newspapers and magazines and never listened to the radio. Mutzie had tried on numerous occasions to “educate” her mother to this new way of looking at life. But it was impossible. It was too bad that being hurt would be the price of her ignorance.
On Saturday morning, Mutzie went to a beauty parlor on Sutter Avenue carrying a movie magazine.
“Make me look like that,” she told the operator, showing her a picture of Jean Harlow.
The operator, who was a dyed redhead, inspected her carefully.
“So you wanna be a movie star?” the operator quipped.
“I wanna be a person,” Mutzie shot back.
“You prepared for the reaction?” the woman asked. “The men will think you’re a loose lady and the women will be jealous and catty and call you a hooer behind your back.”
Big deal, Mutzie thought. I’ve been called that to my face. Mutzie shrugged.
“Let people who don’t know me think what they want. I’ll still be me.”
“Your mother know you’re doing this?”
Mutzie shook her head.
“She’ll have a shit conniption.”
“That’s her problem,” Mutzie said, steeling herself for what she knew would be forthcoming.
Three hours later, she was, indeed, a different person—a brand new Mutzie. She loved her new look. The operator had even put a beauty mark in the exact same place as Jean Harlow’s.
Then she went shopping for new clothes. You couldn’t wear the mousy clothes she normally wore if you looked like Jean Harlow. Walking up Pitkin Avenue to Hopkinson Avenue, she felt wonderful. People gave her second looks. Men turned around when she went by. Passing a candy store, she noted that some of the men actually whistled. The attention made her feel lighthearted, glorious, conscious of herself and the power of her sex.
Without trying to, even her walk changed. She felt her hips swing more, her shoulders straighten, which emphasized
her breasts. With the remainder of her hundred dollars and some extra credit, she bought clothes more befitting a blonde, including a red dress, a beige shirtwaist, maroon skirt and two tight sweaters.
“Get yourself a pointy bra,” the sales clerk told her, winking. “Throw it at ’em, hon. They love it.” She took the clerk’s advice.
Then she went to a cosmetics store and had the lady make up her face in keeping with her new look: lots of powder, eye shadow and the right color lipstick. It was more makeup than she ever wore in her life, but she was quite satisfied with the results.
“There you go,” the woman at the cosmetics counter said. “The Jean Harlow of Brownsville.”
“Really,” Mutzie said. She felt herself the happiest woman alive.
Her mother was not home when she got back to the apartment, which gave her time to try on her new clothes and admire herself in the bathroom mirror. She had to stand on a stool to see herself full view, but she liked what she saw.
All in all, she decided, she had a pretty good figure, maybe a little too curvy in the rear and bigger thighs than she would have liked, but her legs were well turned and slender. Now that eyeshadow emphasized her brown eyes, they looked bigger than before, more mysterious. Her nose, which had seemed to her longer than necessary, now looked softer and her full angel lips looked lusciously kissable in their shiny coating of cherry red lipstick.
She had always been happy with her breasts, which were upturned and full with nipples that stood out from pink areolas, not the brown kind that many woman had. Of course, her tight jet black bush of curly pubic hair was a dead give away as to her true coloring, but then that was a private place reserved, from now on, only for the man she loved. She actually regretted
that Henry had touched her there, as if somehow it was a defilement.
Her mother’s reaction was actually worse than she had expected. She fumed and sputtered.
“Your father will drop dead on the spot.”
“Isn’t that what you always hoped would happen?” Mutzie said. She had already decided to take a more aggressive stance with her mother to defend her actions.
“On top of everything, a filthy mouth,” her mother said. “Now you look like a real hooer.”
“How original. I’m still a virgin, Mama,” Mutzie said coolly.
“Not looking like that you aren’t.”
“You want a doctor’s certificate?”
“Bad enough for me,” her mother said, waving a finger in Mutzie’s face. “Everywhere I show my face, people will say: Oh she’s the one with that hooer for a daughter. All right. so you’ll make us a laughing stock, disgrace our good name.”
“What good name, Mama? Papa runs a pushcart.”
“I will admit he is no world beater, but he is a man of intellect and dignity. One look at you and he’ll plotz and order you out of the house.”
“Order me? What is this, the Marines?”
Mutzie did not come to the dinner table until her father had sat down and her mother had served the soup. As usual, her father had grunted his arrival, gone to the bathroom, and stripped down to his undershirt, his normal dinner attire.
Mutzie wasn’t hungry and would have been happy to stay in her bedroom, but she had vowed not to be intimidated. However, she came to the kitchen table dressed in her ordinary clothes, not those that she had just bought. No sense in aggravating the situation further, she decided.
Mutzie’s mother had just sat down to her soup, waiting for the fireworks to begin. Mutzie’s father looked up. He had a glazed, preoccupied look on his face.
“You think they’ll get the veterans’ pensions through Congress? Never. Not those hypocritical bastards.”
“You got eyes, Harry,” Mutzie’s mother said, startled by his indifference.
“Eyes? Sure. And I can see what’s coming. We fought their war for them, now what do you think we’ll get.”
Mutzie’s father was in the Army in the World War, but he had never gotten further than Fort Dix before the Armistice. Congress was apparently considering giving a permanent pension to all who had been in the war.
“Take a look at the hooer we got in the house, Harry,” Mutzie’s mother said.
“We’re entitled. But will the bosses allow it? Never in a million years.”
“Nothing is different about her?” Mutzie’s mother asked trying to get his attention.
“What difference? Always the same. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. We’re cattle down here at the bottom. Sheep. Animals.” Mutzie’s father pointed his spoon. “And if they do give us the pension, the real reason will be to lull us into gratitude so that when they call us again for the next war we’ll go like happy little lambs to the slaughter.”
Mutzie’s mother got up from the table and stepped behind Mutzie. She grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her head forward.
“This. Putzvatig. This.”
Mutzie extricated herself from her mother’s grasp and pulled away.
“A bleach blonde hooer. Shmekel. That’s what we got living here.”
“So?” Mutzie’s father asked, a look of puzzlement on his face.
“You can’t see this disgrace coming down on her head? Look at her. A courva we brought up. An old maid courva. She turns down Henry Goldbaum, then she does this.”
Mutzie’s mother was building up a strong head of anger. But her father just looked at her in confusion. He was used to her constant harangues, but this was more serious than most. Mutzie’s mother moved back to her place at the table, but she did not sit down.
Mutzie’s father inspected his daughter with growing interest. His eyes narrowed. When she was little he hugged and kissed her a great deal, but his interest in her had waned once she became a teenager. Not that he didn’t love her. She was sure he did. He had never been mean to her or unkind in any way, nor had he ever beaten her or, for that matter, ever given her any advice, pro or con about life, except in the broadest political terms.
Suddenly her father looked at her and smiled. Mutzie could not remember the last time she had seen him smile.
“You know who she looks like,” her father said. “That actress.”
Mutzie saw her mother rear up like a bucking horse.
“Communist mamzer,” she screamed, picking up the soup plate in front of her and dumping it on her father’s head. The soup, a thick concoction of leeks and barley, ran down her father’s face. Then she stormed out of the room, into their bedroom and slammed the door.
“This woman is meshuga,” her father said, looking at Mutzie, the soup plate still on his head, looking very much the World War doughboy.
Mutzie was not surprised about the effect her transformation had on other people. There appeared to be no middle ground, no
neutrality. Other girls in the school bleached their hair, but none were truly platinum, as platinum as Jean Harlow and cut in exactly the same fashion. None used makeup in such a blatant contrasting fashion and not one had a drawn beauty mark in the exact place on her face as Jean Harlow.
With her tight sweater and pointy brassiere and her new way of walking, she did admittedly attract lots of attention in school and on the street. Of course, she heard remarks, but they were mostly behind her back and she pretended not to hear them. Generally, those girls who were not jealous were polite in their assessment of her new look. Some thought it was gorgeous and said so. A few of her teachers thought it was trashy. They also said so.
Miss Russo, her homeroom teacher was the most outspoken in her criticism.
“I am shocked by this, Miriam,” she told her. “This is not the girl I used to know. You look like a scarlet woman.”
“Would you like me to wear an “A” on my sweater?” Mutzie asked, surprised at her own defensive belligerence, but confident that she had done the right thing.
“At least you remember your Hawthorne, Miriam, but this is not the sweet girl that I used to know,” Miss Russo said.
“Did you really know me, Miss Russo?” Mutzie asked, turning away. There was no point in dealing with such bigotry.