Buster Midnight's Cafe by Sandra Dallas Page A

had her pick of the houses in Butte. She surely had turned into a beauty and might have become a movie star on her own without being a prostitute first. She didn’t have any choice in it though. She became a prostitute because of her mother. Her mother didn’t tell her to do it, of course, but she was the cause of it just the same.
    By the time Buster turned into a fighter, we had it figured out about Mrs. Kovaks. Things were hard for her by then. She drank all the time, and she started taking laudanum. The Finlen fired her, so she had to work in some crummy little hotel down near Venus Alley. Then she lost that job, too. So May Anna went to work after school as a waitress at the Pepsin Drugstore soda fountain, but that didn’t bring in much. She figured if she could just hold out until she graduated, she would get a job at Hennessy’s selling gloves or maybe as a receptionist in a doctor’s office because she looked so good in white.
    Then things got worse at her house. Mrs. Kovaks kept on bringing men home that she picked up, and me and Whippy Bird heard a lot of fighting and yelling over there when we passed by. Sometimes May Anna came to school with her face bruised. Chick said you’d think May Anna was big enough to keep her mother from beating her, but me and Whippy Bird knew it wasn’t Mrs. Kovaks that hit May Anna. She never said anything to us, but we knew those men weren’t coming home because of Mrs. Kovaks.
    In fact, one day we saw a big Packard stop in front of the house, then heard the driver honk two or three times. “Hey, toots,” he yelled. “Come on out.” Poor Mrs. Kovaks came running with her hat and her pocketbook, but the driver waved her off. “Not you, honey. I want the young one.” A few minutes later May Anna came slowly down the stairs and got into the Packard. It might seem like she was two-timing her own mother, but the truth was, those men were generous, and the Kovaks were desperate. Sometimes men gave May Anna money for going out on dates or jewelry that she could pawn.
    Another time, we saw May Anna jump out of a car with her blouse mussed up and her lipstick smeared. When she saw us, she said, “Why, I don’t know what got into him. He said he was taking me out for ice cream so Mom could take a nap. Men!”
    “Men!” Whippy Bird agreed.
    May Anna might have made it if Mrs. Kovaks hadn’t gotten so sick. We always thought she took the laudanum to keep from remembering Jackfish, but that wasn’t so. She took it to cover up the pain. One day me and Whippy Bird and May Anna walked into the Kovaks house and found Mrs. Kovaks all curled up on the floor, just crying from pain. I ran the block to our house for Ma, who didn’t even take off her apron. The minute she saw Mrs. Kovaks, she shoved me and Whippy Bird out the door and said, “Minnie, dear, I’m sending the girls for the doctor. Did you fall?”
    “Don’t bother,” Mrs. Kovaks whimpered. It took her a long time to get it out. “It’s the cancer.” I could see the tears that came to Ma’s eyes. Me and Whippy Bird had tears in our eyes, too. Ma put a hand on May Anna’s arm then turned to me and Whippy Bird and asked what the hell were we doing there when she’d told us to get the doctor.
    Mrs. Kovaks was right about what was wrong. We didn’t know how long she knew about the cancer. Maybe she just guessed. May Anna said Mrs. Kovaks’s mother died of it, that it just seemed to pass down in the family.
    The doctor wanted Mrs. Kovaks to go to the hospital, but she said they didn’t have the money. So he gave May Anna a prescription for medicine and promised to stop in every day, which he did. Ma fixed their dinner every night. She slipped in and set it on the table. When May Anna thanked her, Ma replied, “Why it’s a pleasure to have a family to cook for now that Mr. Commander’s traveling on union business and Little Tommy’s on the night shift. You know I never did learn to cut back recipes. You’re just