“It looks good on you,” she would say, as she reached for the mirror she kept at the back of the table, but was she ever insincere? On whom did they not look good, her creations, her art?
She enjoyed selling them because she enjoyed making them. Seeing the pieces of clay, wood, shells, and beads transformed into body ornaments that would rivet the gaze, calling attention to a nice feature or disguising a poor one. Whether you were a bare-chested man or a woman fully clothed, Melody knew they added drama. She derived satisfaction from the feeling she got, each time people departed her table with a new possession, that they valued her. They valued her.The dexterity of her fingers pleased her, as well as the shrewdness of each new design; as if she were bringing to fruition something that was already there. Wasn't it Stravinsky who said it? I am merely the instrument.
She enjoyed meeting people. And here on Avenue C there were always new people. Here she was never far from the apartment she had lived in for fifteen years.
Men were on their best behavior here. Posturing, perhaps, even swaggering, but that was all right. If they grew cross, that was later, when boundaries had already been defined.
She shifted in her chair, shook her long, blonde hair, fiddled with her dark glasses. It was the ones who yelled she couldn't take. Or they might get that tone in their voice, that raw, cracked tone dripping with condescension. That was a kind of yelling too, was it not? A kind of violence. Like sarcasm. She didn't appreciate sarcasm.
But everybody's sarcastic, they would say. Show me a person who doesn't use sarcasm.
I don't! she’d reply.
And they would say, oh, sure. Sorry, babe. I only meant to be a little sarcastic.
I only meant to take off one arm, she would think. I only meant to cut your throat halfway.
A couple approached her table. The woman oohed and ahhed over what she saw. The man smiled apologetically at Melody over his consort's shoulder, rejecting blame for her enthusiasms. If he were alone, she knew, he’d act differently, would be equally impressed.
On artfully outstretched fingers, the woman dangled a necklace in front of her beau, who shrugged and reached for his wallet. They left, but not before he’d managed a conspiratorial wink at Melody. See how I take care of my women?Melody adjusted the other necklaces on the black felt to cover the space of the missing one, and reached underneath the folding table to fetch another from a plastic bag she kept in the shade.
Of course, not all men yelled. And they were okay. Whatever their station or job. Or income. Of course she hadn't known many who were rich.
Looks weren’t that important either. Nor age. After all, men learned their habits early.
Between eleven and eleven-thirty she sold seven necklaces. She could tell it was going to be a good day.
Here comes a hot one, she thought, observing a young man with spiked hair clank down the street, striding like he owned the world. At the last minute he veered away from her table. Why? Was he shy?Actually, she found the ones with stiff-bristle hair, looking as if it had been stained with cherry juice or lime slush, rather interesting. Despite the black tee-shirts and trousers, despite the death's-head tattoos and the silver chains and the jackboots, once you got their clothes off they grew polite, even timid. The attitude came off with the trousers. These types she knew how to tease. Offering herself and then coyly withdrawing, working them up until they were almost ready to switch back to their role as storm trooper, before giving them the ride of their life. Afterwards they fell all over themselves with gratitude. Which would last until they grew tired of hearing about the rape.
Once she was awarded a part in an off-off-Broadway play, where she and other actors disrobed in the final act. Her straight-laced family had snubbed her, though her brother had sneaked in one night without telling her and called her up next day to reprimand her. Like her father, he was a yeller.
You're wasting your life! they would all moan, each time she went upstate to visit. As if life were a bag of sugar, and hers had sprung a leak.
It infuriated her, their condescension. How many people did you please today? she wanted to ask her mother. Wasn't that what you taught me? That I should always please people? How many men did you please with your ruined hair and your breastless thorax? While Daddy was humping his secretaries? Do you please your colleagues at the college? Do your deans float down the corridor with gleeful smiles on their faces after coming in contact with you? Or your students? She imagined herself interrogating her mother at a bare table in a precinct station house, inches from her mother’s ear, leaning against the table. She pushed herself off the table and strode around the room a moment. I design these goddamned ornaments, mother! she would say. Your daughter is an artist, don't forget that!
She sighed and stood, stretching. She needed to get some lunch. She could leave the table here, no one would touch it. But she carefully placed her necklaces back into the plastic bag and tucked it under her arm. As she walked around the corner to Rizutti’s for a salad and an egg cream, she was smiling again.
It had happened in Morocco when she was eighteen. Her mother, a student of North African cultures, had been offered an assistant curatorship at the museum in Tangier for a year and she and her father had gone along, leaving her brother behind with an aunt. Her father, reluctant in the first place to leave the factory he owned, had stormed home after six weeks, leaving them to spend the better part of the year without him.
Melody had enrolled at the University, taking Arabic as well as basic introductory courses. Never before had she felt so sought after. Men, young and old, followed her about the City, men with ink-black hair and nut-brown eyes, fascinated by her spun-gold hair. At the student union she’d held court. They kept asking to marry her.
She accepted a date from a young Moroccan naval officer. They planned to see an English film, where he could improve his language skills. He was handsome, muscled, taller than most North Africans. At the Student Union he had been courtly and respectful. Before the movie they’d gone to a restaurant, where he introduced her to a beverage called arak. They somehow missed the opening of the movie and decided to walk on the beach instead.
He took her hand. She did not object. Under a jetty which stretched out into the bay, he bent to kiss her. He was so strong and insistent that she grew frightened. He tugged her down into the sand under the pier, insisting he meant no harm. He only wanted to make her feel good. She continued to struggle as he wrestled her to take off her underpants. Fortunately she had worn a tight panty-girdle which he could not mange to strip off. At last he relented, panting, and said to her: look, honeybun, white princess, we won't do what you fear, but let me make you happy, okay? I can make you happy, I promise. Then I won't bother you no more. I will make you so happy.
By that time he had nudged his face between her legs and begun licking her through the thin, nylon crotch of her panty-girdle. She struggled at first, then grew tired of the effort and, finally, after what seemed like an eternity – conscious only of the surf pounding in her ears – she came. He had been grinding his own hips against the sand while he licked her, and must have climaxed as well, for he grew immediately contrite.
Melody became aware of a group of sailors who had gathered on the beach not far away. Had they seen? She could have yelled, reported her attacker. But this was not America. He might have been court-martialled, might have been hanged. She could hardly have permitted that.
On the way back to her apartment he apologized so profusely she grew tired of it. A block away he left her, and she never saw him again.
I was raped, the story always began, in recent years. No exclamation points, no remorse. Just: I was raped. She recounted it as if it were a story about buying a purse at Macy’s. She told it to every man she saw more than once, and sometimes even on first encounters. (She would start each time the surf began pounding in her ears, not stopping until it was over.)
And why not? For years, after all, she hadn't talked about it at all. Back home in college, she’d grown angry, sullen, begun to lose weight. Her parents had sought a psychiatrist, who recommended thorazine and questions. But when she finally talked about it, again and again, at the hospital in Queens, even her shrink seemed rapidly to grow bored. This is the fifth time you’ve told me this, he admonished her. You must dig back further: the source of your problems is earlier. But she was sure he just didn’t want her to talk about the rape.
She remembered the doctor’s surprise when she told him: I can’t say no.
He’d looked so puzzled. Why not?
Don't you understand, she pleaded, it's taken me a year just to tell you this? Something happens. I try to form the words, but they won't come out. I don't want to hurt them.
What's to hurt?
I can't. I just can't.
He suggested, as a practical matter, that she make it a rule not to have sex until the third date. But it hadn't worked; the only way she could explain the rule was to tell them the reason. And that had discouraged no one.
So that’s when she began telling about the rape. It changed very few outcomes, but it reminded them who she was. I am not to be trifled with. I say whatever is on my mind. Am I to blame it’s always on my mind? If they did not return for a second or third date, well, so be it.
One man had stayed for almost a year, though they fought like cats and dogs. He hadn’t liked that she kept talking about the rape, but stayed anyway. Wasn’t that proof that he loved her? But then he began to see that other woman, Yolanda. Discovering this, Melody grew furious. She saw him briefly one week later, after he had stood all night outside her apartment, begging to talk to her, and finally had the satisfaction of telling him then that she’d been with nine men in seven days. There, Mr. Smarty Pants, she’d offered. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Suddenly, Melody began to cry. Right there on Avenue C, in the waning sun, with her head down on the table among her necklaces. But it didn't last long. Presently she reached into her handbag and fished out a tissue, then a second, and a third, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose, until she was composed again. She laughed, scolding herself for momentary weakness. As her table became popular again, she grew cheerful, selling three necklaces the following hour.
“I love the way the light catches your hair.”
She looked up to find him fondling a necklace he had plucked off the table. He was tall and rugged-looking, wore a black stetson, whose brim was rolled and shaped. A cowpoke straight out of a Zane Grey novel. But though he was stroking the necklace, his eyes were on her hair. She glanced around.
“Moi?” she said, and giggled.
She was playing. She knew her hair was her best feature. Especially in the light. Especially when she had washed it and allowed it to dry naturally. It formed tiny waves, like a crinkled potato chip.
“You remind me of the lady on a bottle of Mahdeen Hair Tonic.”
“Is that good?”
He laughed. “You find them sometimes at flea markets. The old bottles. But I grew up with them. My mother used it on her hair. Which I used to comb for her.”
She thought she saw a glint in his eye, as if a silvered knife-blade had been turned until it caught the sun. Her imagination?
She said: “If you stroke that clay too much, you'll wear it smooth.”
He looked startled; laid the necklace back in its place on the table.
“I like to touch things,” he said. “I get into trouble at museums because I'm always running my hands over the sculpture. The guards object. Pretty things were meant to be touched, don't you agree?”
She found herself reaching for the centerpiece of her own necklace, which lay in the valley between her breasts.
He looked around. Was there a posse following him? she wondered. Was he being pursued by a band of Comanches? He placed both hands on the table and leaned toward her.
“I have some time now. If you wanted to go somewhere. Do you live far from here?”
Well. A bold one, anyway. Did he get that way from riding the range all day? Rebuking those cows from wandering off somewhere? She considered. Her cowboy. He could be her cowboy.
*Unpublished; copyright © 2007.