life left in it.
Making things do was the modus operandi for Charlotte and her mother. Their apartment was small and devoid of any charm, but it was located on a convenient bus line and the rent was cheap, so, like everything else, it had to make do.
If it wasn’t pretty, however, at least it was clean. Not a spot marred the old linoleum or the bland brown carpeting. Neither was there a stain on Charlotte’s old skirt or a button missing from her blouse. The pale green Formica in the kitchen might have been ugly, but it sparkled. As did Charlotte’s unpolished nails and polished shoes. And anyone who entered the narrow lobby on Harlem Avenue would tilt his head and sniff with closed eyes toward the delicious scents simmering behind apartment 2B.
“I have a good feeling about this party. You might meet someone,” Helena said with smug satisfaction. “I prayed to St. Jude.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes and turned her back to slip into an old red wool dress.
“A woman needs a man to look after her,” her mother continued. “And she must take care of him and his home. And his children. Matrimony is a holy state. A sacrament. Yah…I pray for that for you.” Her voice rose with emotion. “I don’t want for you to be alone and unhappy.”
Charlotte squeezed her hands around the hanger. In the mirror she saw herself as her mother refused to see her: an ugly, thin, twenty-year-old destined to be a back room accountant and live with her mother in this dingy apartment for the rest of her life.
“Mom,” Charlotte said, wrapping an arm around her mother’s shoulder. At just this moment, she needed to receive comfort as much as give it. “Don’t worry about me. I can take care of myself—and you. We won’t be alone. I love you.”
She bent to kiss her mother’s cheek, thinking that each time she did so, there was less fullness to her face. Her mother stiffened, patted Charlotte’s arm, then gently pushed her away.
“You better get dressed now. Pretty, okay?”
Charlotte pulled back quickly. “Pretty…” she repeated, scorched by the word. She slipped the dress over her head, groaning as the tight waistband barely squeezed over her bust then cinched her waist. Either the wool dress had shrunk or her bust had grown, because the bodice felt like a vise around her chest. Looking up she caught the grimace on her mother’s face.
“You no can wear that dress to party!”
“It seems a little small, I know….” Charlotte tried stretching the fabric out from her chest.
“A little? I can see your…you know!”
“What?” Charlotte spun around to look at herself in the full length mirror. The dress clung to her long slender frame like a second skin, outlining her full breasts in scarlet, voluptuous detail.
Her mother flushed, pointing frantically. “Ach. The tips! They stick out—like coat hooks!”
Charlotte flushed as red as her dress. Her nipples did indeed protrude from the fabric. Mortified, she hunched her shoulders forward, but it was no use. Her breasts would not be concealed. Oh, Lord, Charlotte sighed with exasperation. Why did she have to have such big ones? In the dim light of a vanity lamp, she studied her figure, appalled. Her breasts were full and her waist was small; a figure most women dreamed of.
But she was unlike most women. Her figure was her nightmare. It attracted male attention—until they raised their eyes.
“You must wear something else.”
“I don’t have anything else! Except my church dress, and I’m not going to wear that old brown thing to a fancy party. I just won’t go.”
“No, no, you go. Maybe a jacket. To cover yourself. Is a sin to provoke.”
Provocation was the last thing she wanted. When Charlotte tried on a somber black suit jacket over the offensive dress, her mother visibly relaxed and nodded in satisfaction.
“It will do. You can wear jacket so nice. Like your father.”
“I hope he didn’t have a chest like this,” she muttered.
“Don’t talk like that about your father! He was a fine man. A fine man,” her mother repeated, smoothing out her sweater like ruffled feathers. “From a fine family in Warsaw. What grand house they had. And servants! And his mother—oh, such a lady. There was a woman who never had to lift a finger.”
Charlotte turned away and slipped off the jacket. It didn’t flatter the dress but, like everything else, it would have to make do. They were poor, had always been poor. What value was there in coming from a family that had once upon a time been wealthy? It was just another fairy tale.
“You are so like your father,” her mother continued wistfully, happy in her memories.
“But I don’t look like him.”
“What you know how he looked?”
Charlotte shrugged. Even as a child she’d thought it odd that there were no photographs of her father. All her classmates had albums full of relatives. She hadn’t even one.
“You told me he was handsome.” Her comment floated between them, like a challenge.
“You are smart like him,” her mother amended, picking at her sweater. “And you have his nose. A strong, noble nose. Still, you have my eyes, your grandmother Sophie’s eyes.”
Listening, Charlotte’s gaze traveled in the mirror up from her full chest, beyond her thin shoulders and long neck to her face. It wasn’t often that she suffered the study of her own reflection. Staring back were the large, wide, vivid blue eyes under dark, finely arched brows that resembled her mother’s. And the straight, narrow nose of her father.
“But from whom,” Charlotte asked bitterly, “did I get this grossly sloping chin and these drooping lips? Who do I have to thank for these fine features?”
“Hush, Charlotte,” her mother pleaded, her face ashen.
“You got your looks from God.”
Charlotte swallowed her retort and lowered her head, ashamed for the angry thoughts she’d just had about God. Besides, she didn’t want to upset her mother with useless anger. After all, what choice did her mother have but to accept her only daughter’s ugliness as God’s will? Charlotte’s own daily prayer was that she herself could accept the face.
“Someday,” her mother said, beginning the phrase that was more a prayer in this Polish Catholic house than the Our Father. “You will meet Someone. A fine man who will love you for all your good qualities. And you are a good girl, Charlotte.”
Charlotte pressed her lips together and turned away from the mirror. There would be no Someone. Not for her. “The jacket won’t fit under my coat,” she said. “I’ll carry it.”
Her mother closed her mouth and looked wearily at her hands. “Yes,” she said softly. “The jacket will be fine. Nice girls don’t need to advertise.”
Charlotte forgot her jacket. In her mind’s eye she could see the black wool lying on the bench beside the front
