Caroline Woods - The Cigarette Girl

“Tell me,” she said. “Are you hiring coat check girls?”

He took her in: the gray dirndl she refused to take off, her greasy black braids. “You are not coat check girl material.”

“Not me, my sister. A little blond angel.” In the coat check room, Grete would still have to see what went on in a place like this, but at least she’d be secluded. At least she’d be safe.

Lev sneered. “Mischa is my daughter. Believe me when I say I do not even need to hire a coat check girl, especially this time of year. But I have to keep an eye on her, is that right?” A stream of Russian poured from his mouth, and the girl pursed her lips.

“Let us see if you can even sell a cigarette, eh?” he said to Berni, crossing his arms. She stomped back to Anita and grabbed at her tray. “Let me try.”

“What?” Anita’s left eyebrow, penciled red, rose an inch. “I haven’t taught you—”

The strap was already over Berni’s head. She approached the bar, holding out a single box of cigarettes with a red airplane on the cover; she realized, when she turned to see Anita and Lev smirking at her, that she hadn’t a clue how much each of them cost.

“Josetti, meine Herren ?” she asked men who ignored her. “Smooth and . . .” Every sad face at the bar already had a cigarette in its lips, dropping ash. She moved on to the tables. “Come on,” she told one particularly hard-looking man with great loops of dark skin under his eyes, “you’re making yourself look cheap.”

“Piss off,” he said, looking toward the radio. “I’m trying to listen.”

She tried offering the tins shaped like bullets, the ones with a winged victory goddess on the box, but nobody gave her a second look. She was ready to give up when she felt someone palm her ass as she passed his table. Not a pinch or slap, or even a grab, but a long, slow swipe, covering both sides of her derrière. She whirled around to see a younger man wearing the broadcloth cap, but clearly German, not Russian.

“Relax,” he said, “I’ll put something in your tip bowl.”

Berni reached down and pressed her thumb into his eye.

The other men at his table started laughing as he shrieked, covering his eye, calling Berni every obscenity she’d ever heard, plus some new ones. Lev and Anita came running. “Is there blood?” The man pried his eye open as Lev murmured, “Let me see, let me see.”

“He touched me!” Berni spat. “On my bottom, like he owned it!” She could tell Anita was trying not to laugh. Their eyes met, Anita’s sparkling. Soon the two of them had collapsed into giggles.

“What is this girl’s name?” the man spat. “Better not see her again, Lev, or I swear—”

“Her name is Berni,” said Lev, “and she is only training, mein Herr .” He glared at her with his hand on the man’s shoulder.

“Berni!” Now the man began to laugh, still holding his eye. He whispered something to his companions. “You should not hire another one, Lev, they’re nothing but trouble.”

“No, no.” Anita laughed lightly. “Berni, it’s short for Bernadette, not Bernard.”

Everyone except Berni laughed together now, and she felt a prickle of panic. What were they talking about? “How’s my given name your business?”

“Calm down, honey,” said another man at the table. “When a big girl like you runs around with a Transvestit , well, people are going to get confused.”

“ Transvestit ?” Berni looked from the men to Anita. Anita was hiding her face behind her cupped hand, and her shoulders were shaking, but she made no sound.

The table of men were laughing so hard they’d dropped to their knees. Berni growled. She’d had enough of letting all of them get the better of her. “ Transvestit ,” she said to Anita. “If you don’t tell me what it means, I’ll tell Sonje.”

All color had drained from Anita’s face. Her hands shook as she yanked her skirt down, giving Berni the feeling the joke was on her as well. Even Lev seemed to be in league against them, now that his customers were laughing and happy. “Here,” he said, trying to lift the hem of Anita’s skirt. “Show her. Show her!”

Anita pinched her knees together. Her face became a mask of panic, her eyes wild, and Berni remembered a time she’d seen a group of men in an alley with a cornered dog, kicking it for fun.

She took off running, out the door and into honking traffic. She ran over the mottled lawn of the park, past a group of picnickers opening champagne on a blanket. After a minute she realized someone followed her. She heard a pair of ridiculous high heels slapping the path, heard Anita’s breath wheezing closer and closer behind, but she did not stop. She ran as though lions were chasing her.

She burst into the apartment to find Sonje on the telephone; she took one look at Berni, murmured a goodbye, then hung up. “What is the matter?” she asked, standing up when Anita came close behind, panting. Each breath sounded like a cry.

“I want to leave now,” Berni said. She felt heat coming from Anita. “The men at the Medvedev said Anita was a Transvestit and that I was too. I don’t want to catch what she has.”

“I don’t understand, Berni. Of course you aren’t . . .” Sonje put two fingers between her eyes. “Berni, I—my God, I never did explain, did I? I thought it was obvious . . . my, my.” She tapped the table. “You won’t catch what she has, nicht ? It’s how she was born.”

“This is not how I was born,” Anita said to the floor. “It’s how I made myself.”

“Oh yes, yes of course,” Sonje said.

Berni looked from one to the other, her face and fists growing hot. “Fine, speak in riddles. I don’t care. Just take me back—get me away from—from her .”

Sonje sighed and sat back in her chair, arms crossed. “Goodness, Anita, is there anything worse than aggressive stupidity?”

The corner of Anita’s mouth twitched.

“Goethe,” Sonje told Berni.

Berni stamped her foot and ran for the bedroom. She began gathering her few belongings into her pillowcase: one hairbrush, a pair of underpants. The problems of her previous life seemed so simple now. The sisters, frigid as they could be, had never managed to make her feel so ignorant, so foolish. Why hadn’t she tried harder to cooperate with them?

After a moment she heard the front door to the apartment slam, and then a soft knock at her bedroom door. “Go away,” she called.

Sonje stood on the threshold and watched her for a while. “So, you are leaving already.”

“I am.”

“Your life has not been easy, Berni.” She took a seat on the bed. “I thought you might understand her. Your parents are dead. Hers are alive, but they feel their son is dead.”

Berni covered her ears. She saw the veins in Anita’s hands, her hollow cheeks, the wide jaw and skinny neck. “You let me share a bed with a boy!” she cried. “And the men thought I was, too, since I ran around with a— Transvestit .”

“There is no boy here,” Sonje said softly. “She is Anita. She desires men, same as me, same as you. You don’t call her ‘boy.’ It’s sie .”

Berni’s head spun. Did she desire men? “That’s ridiculous.”

“Bernadette, if you leave us, where would you go? I won’t let you live on the street. And I don’t think you can return easily to the sisters.”

“They’d take me,” Berni said, but she wasn’t sure.

Sonje did not say anything. They listened to the wall clock, which seemed to Berni to grow louder with each tick. Finally Sonje cleared her throat. “I had a chance to attend an academy myself as a girl, a music conservatory. My father was a composer, and to him I was more a protégée than a daughter. After the conservatory rejected me, he would not speak to me.” She picked a thread on the quilt. “He must have known I’d blown the audition on purpose.”