Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage

fingernails.”
    I was not sure what an odalisque was, but the word “harim” (why not “harem”?) gave me a clue. And I had to read on, to find out what they were taught to do with their fingernails. I read on and on, maybe for an hour, and then let the book fall to the floor. I had feelings of excitement, and disgust, and disbelief. Was this the sort of thing that really grown-up people took an interest in? Even the design on the cover, the pretty vines all curved and twisted, seemed slightly hostile and corrupt. I picked the book up to put it back in its place and it fell open to show the names on the flyleaf. Stan and Marigold Vorguilla. In a feminine handwriting. Stan and Marigold.
    I thought of Mrs. Vorguilla’s high white forehead and tight little gray-black curls. Her pearl-button earrings and blouses that tied with a bow at the neck. She was taller by quite a bit than Mr. Vorguilla and people thought that was why they did not go out together. But it was really because she got out of breath. She got out of breath walking upstairs, or hanging the clothes on the line. And finally she got out of breath even sitting at the table playing Scrabble.
    At first my father would not let us take any money for fetching her groceries or hanging up her washing—he said it was only neighborly.
    Bet said she thought she would try laying around and see if people would come and wait on her for nothing.
    Then Mr. Vorguilla came over and negotiated for Queenie to go and work for them. Queenie wanted to go because she had failed her year at high school and didn’t want to repeat it. At last Bet said all right, but told her she was not to do any nursing.
    “If he’s too cheap to hire a nurse that’s not your lookout.”
    Queenie said that Mr. Vorguilla put out the pills every morning and gave Mrs. Vorguilla a sponge bath every evening. He even tried to wash her sheets in the bathtub, as if there was not such a thing as a washing machine in the house.
    I thought of the times when we would be playing Scrabble in the kitchen and Mr. Vorguilla after drinking his glass of water would put a hand on Mrs. Vorguilla’s shoulder and sigh, as if he had come back from a long, wearying journey.
    “Hello, pet,” he would say.
    Mrs. Vorguilla would duck her head to give his hand a dry kiss.
    “Hello, pet,” she would say.
    Then he would look at us, at Queenie and me, as if our presence did not absolutely offend him. “Hello, you two.”
    Later on Queenie and I would giggle in our beds in the dark. “Goodnight, pet.” “Goodnight, pet.” How much I wished that we could go back to that time.

    Except for going to the bathroom in the morning and sneaking out to put my pad in the garbage pail, I sat on my made-up cot in the sunporch until Mr. Vorguilla was out of the house. I was afraid he might not have any place to go, but apparently he did. As soon as he was gone Queenie called to me. She had set out a peeled orange and cornflakes and coffee.
    “And here’s the paper,” she said. “I was looking at the Help Wanteds. First, though, I want to do something with your hair. I want to cut some off the back and I want to do it up in rollers. Okay with you?”
    I said okay. Even while I was eating, Queenie kept circling me and looking at me, trying to work out her idea. Then she got me up on a stool—I was still drinking my coffee—and she began to comb and snip.
    “What kind of a job are we looking for, now?” she asked. “I saw one at a dry cleaner’s. At the counter. How would that be?”
    I said, “That’d be fine.”
    “Are you still planning on being a schoolteacher?”
    I said I didn’t know. I had an idea that she might think that a drab sort of occupation.
    “I think you should be. You’re smart enough. Teachers get paid more. They get paid more than people like me. You’ve got more independence.”
    But it was all right, she said, working at the movie theater. She had got the job a month or so before last Christmas, and she was really happy then because she had her own money at last and could buy the ingredients for a Christmas cake. And she became friends with a man who was selling Christmas trees off the back of a truck. He let her have one for fifty cents, and she hauled it up the hill herself. She hung streamers of red and green crepe paper, which was cheap. She made some ornaments out of silver foil on cardboard and bought others on the day before Christmas when they went on sale in the drugstore. She