Filthy Sugar Read online

  ADVANCE PRAISE FOR FILTHY SUGAR

  Filthy Sugar brings the Depression-era life of a young, single, desirable woman alive with Wanda Wiggles, a sensuous, curvaceous model and burlesque dancer who is driven by sexual appetite and a desire to stay alive in a world of dire penury. Never downtrodden, despite the many men in her life who use her financially, she maintains a sass, is naughty, and breaks social rules. Underneath this camp and well-researched historical novel is a strong feminist story of the multiplicities of female sexuality, of an unstripped agency and, in the final scene, an empowerment that will leave you clapping and laughing. Masterfully written with the sensibility of a poet, Heather Babcock is a writer to watch.

  —BRENDA CLEWS, author of Tidal Fury and Fugue in Green

  Filthy Sugar is so delicious, it’s positively sinful! Wanda Wiggles will take you to another time and place, but a place where love, lust, greed sex and power are just as heartbreaking and complex as they are today. Wanda Wiggles is a stellar female character — she is a dame not to be messed with! Her heart is as soft as a kitten’s fur but the claws come out when they need to! She’s sensual, sassy and stunning and she isn’t afraid to be her true self, even when that self lands her in some hot water. I hope this exquisitely written debut novel will enjoy the love and attention it deserves. Superb, poetic and cinematic, Filthy Sugar will transport you into another world and you won’t want to leave!

  —LISA DE NIKOLITS, author of No Fury Like That and Rotten Peaches

  Filthy Sugar takes us to the mid-1930s, from the struggles of a working class slum, to the hustle and excitement on and off the burlesque stage. Here, we follow redheaded heroine Wanda Wiggle’s rise and fall from fame in a journey of self-discovery that reveals desires and reserves of strength she never knew she possessed. Erotic, compelling and full of richly textured characters, Heather Babcock’s storytelling is equal parts moxie and poetry—tinted with the heartbroken nostalgia of memory and lost dreams; and sparkling with striking, evocative imagery. More than a backstage pass into this world, Filthy Sugar shines a light on the challenges faced by working-class women. Dancing as fast as they can in order to survive, they must navigate the unapologetic misogyny and hypocritical social codes that govern their bodies and behaviour as they pursue their hopes, dreams, and desires. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn’t it?

  —CATE MCKIM, Life with more cowbell arts & culture website

  With the grit and desperation of the Depression, the forgotten man, the sassy dames, and dirty little secrets sprouting out of dandelions, Filthy Sugar is a dream wrapped up in a sassy pre-Code cinematic adventure and its heroine Wanda Wiggles is all the parts of a swell dame made up of a fine mix of Barbara Stanwyck, Thelma Todd, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell and Clara Bow. Heather Babcock has captured the pure essence of the 1930s with eloquent, colourful words that flourish across the pages. You literally feel as if you are part of the audience in the burlesque house, hooting and hollering as Wanda wiggles across the stage. You don’t need to be a fan of pre-Code movies to enjoy this wonderful debut novel.

  —LIZZIE VIOLET, writer, poet & spoken word artist

  Heather Babcock’s Filthy Sugar is both a sweet and saucy journey behind the curtain. Vicariously through Wanda’s trials, tribulations, and triumphs, we’re taken through the tapestry of a difficult and opportunistic time. The characters are alive, and full of antique and vintage sentiments. The narrative is stark, romantic, and eloquent, while the dialogue all but inspires the crackling of a Victrola sound for every scene. A time-travelled, tantalizing, and tumultuous tale, to be sure.

  —Valentino Assenza, Co-Host/Co-Producer HOWL, CIUT 89.5FM

  Heather Babcock’s novel, Filthy Sugar, artfully takes the reader into the Jazz Age of flirty flappers and boozy philosophers, an era which has always captivated me. Her vivid descriptions and strong use of language take you right into the action, and her knowledge and passion for the period are clearly vast. However, there is also a sensitivity to her characters, and insights into human nature, which are timeless.

  —PAT CONNORS, Toronto poet

  Filthy Sugar is a real time-travelling excursion. Heather Babcock brings alive the era of Trilbys, hoofers, and two-bit scriveners with vividness, imagination and striking description. A good read—and how!

  —JEFF COTTRILL, writer, actor, journalist and spoken-word artist

  FILTHY

  SUGAR

  Copyright © 2020 Heather Babcock

  Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Collective Agency (Access Copyright).

  We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada.

  Filthy Sugar is a work of fiction. All the characters and situations portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Cover design: Val Fullard

  eBook: tikaebooks.com

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Filthy sugar : a novel / Heather Babcock.

  Names: Babcock, Heather, 1977– author.

  Series: Inanna poetry & fiction series.

  Description: Series statement: Inanna poetry & fiction series

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20200204149 | Canadiana (ebook) 20200204157 | ISBN 9781771337175 (softcover) | ISBN 9781771337182 (epub) | ISBN 9781771337199 (Kindle) | ISBN 9781771337205 (pdf)

  Classification: LCC PS8603.A253 F55 2020 | DDC C813/.6—dc23

  Printed and bound in Canada

  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

  210 Founders College, York University

  4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

  Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

  Email: [email protected] Website: www.inanna.ca

  FILTHY

  SUGAR

  HEATHER

  BABCOCK

  INANNA PUBLICATIONS AND EDUCATION INC.

  TORONTO, CANADA

  CONTENTS

  1. Milk and Diamonds

  2. The Dame in the Fox Fur Coat

  3. A Swell Wiggle

  4. Diamonds and Cracker Jack

  5. Better Than a Kiss

  6. Blessings and Dough

  7. Highballin’ Hard Times

  8. The Stone’s Throw

  9. Got to Act Pretty

  10. Christmas Present

  11. Tap Dancing on a Tightrope

  12. Cheap and Vulgar

  13. Joan Crawford Eyes

  14. Blood and Bread

  15. Bed Bug Babylon

  16. Little Piggies

  17. The Bow Tie

  18. Breathless and Reckless

  19. A Business Proposal

  20. Heavy Sugar

  21. Peter Pickup

  22. Lollipops and Tummy Aches

  23. Leaving the Racket

  24. Headlights

  25. Angels with Dirty Feet

  26. How Dry Am I?

  27. Beauty and the Brock

  28. Better than the Movies

  29. Diamonds and Slug Burgers

  30. This Is My Game

  31. Born Blue

  32. Sisters

  33. H
oly Cats

  34. Chili and Cads: They Both Come Back

  35. The Great Wanda Wiggles

  Notes

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  For all of the forgotten dames…

  I call her the Queen of the World Behind the Market: the majestic creature, with her crown of Harlow curls and weather beaten face, plastered across the backside of an abandoned five and dime store. Her dark esoteric eyes keep silent watch over the Market’s grass widows and forgotten men. As they shuffle past her, knees bent and arms laden with parcels and barrels, the Queen smiles. Her painted lips slightly parted as though the people have given her a secret too illicit to keep. Beneath her slim, bejeweled throat, the cigarette advertisement’s original slogan has been ripped away and in its place are the following words, carved into the wall with a pocket-knife:

  A pretty girl

  Without a fighting spirit

  Is like a stray cat

  Without claws

  1. MILK AND DIAMONDS

  IN THE WORLD BEHIND THE MARKET, death is always close, but life is stubborn.

  Birds, mistaking gold stars for the sky, fly into closed windows; their bodies sustenance for maggots and clandestine cats in the garden of faded flappers where young men trample through tobacco Tulips and lipstick Lilies. Where babies are born. And where more babies are born.

  Daddy didn’t trust the automobile. So when the other milkmen traded in their horses for trucks, Daddy doggedly held on to his beast—a gentle white and grey mare named Sadie.

  “Ya can’t trust anything that doesn’t need ya,” Daddy explained to me one day, as he filled Sadie’s feedbag with oats. “This girl needs me as much as I need her. Now what mess of steel and rubber is goin’ ta beat that?”

  That was as most as he ever said to me. Daddy wasn’t much of a talker, but he was friendly enough and well-liked in the world behind the Market. His only enemies were the ‘milk snatchers’: a group of young boys with hard, hungry faces and eyes like broken beer bottles: sharp and empty. “Ol’ one-eyed Joe!” they’d taunt my Daddy; one or two of them jumping in front of Sadie and distracting both driver and horse while the others would steal as many jugs of milk as their scrawny pink arms could carry. My Daddy’s name was Albert, not Joe. It was true though that he only had one eye.

  On a colourless November day—the kind of cool, muffled day where the world feels as placid and dreamy as a silent film without organ music—Daddy spotted one of the milk snatchers, uncharacteristically alone, pulling a wagon full of milk jugs in the direction of Mr. Tootsie’s grocery store.

  “Hey you!” Daddy shortened his reins, calmly bringing Sadie into a trot alongside the boy. “How much Mr. Tootsie payin’ ya for my milk?”

  The boy, startled, broke into a run as my Daddy tapped Sadie lightly on her haunches and charged after him.

  “Come back here, ya mug!” He cried, his buggy whip raised in his tightly clenched fist. “Ya little dime store hoodlum!”

  The kid turned around and threw one of the milk jugs in Daddy’s direction, striking the alabaster forehead of the Market Queen who hit back in an explosion of milk and diamonds.

  Daddy was livid. It was one thing to snatch milk for food or profit, but quite another to so deliberately and maliciously waste it. Red-faced and furious, he dismounted Sadie and ran out into the road, in pursuit of the quickly vanishing boy. The buggy whip jumped from his hand, cracking the cruelly reticent air, as a Cadillac V-16 roadster swerved out from behind Tootsie’s Grocery and flew through my Daddy’s body like a mad bird on a blind night.

  2. THE DAME IN THE FOX FUR COAT

  LESS THAN A MONTH AFTER Daddy’s death, Mama got Evelyn a job working beside her as a seamstress at the glove factory. I wanted to work at the factory, too, but Mama said it would give me a hunchback and jaundice my skin. I said what about Evelyn and Mama said that my sister was lucky, because she didn’t have to worry about being pretty. Mama and Evelyn’s jobs at the glove factory are seasonal though, so I still needed to look for something steadier than my casual taxi-dancing gig. I found a job modelling fur coats at Blondell’s department store, three trolley rides away from the Market.

  Under an opaline sun, I strut up and down the aisles of Ladies Wear, my peep-toe high-heeled shoes keeping in time with the sinfonietta of the wishing well fountain, the cash register bell, and the mechanical cry of “Forty-eight weeks to pay, oh-kay!” from the ceramic ringmaster planted in the centre of Blondell’s marble atrium. I am encouraged by management to approach the male customers, but only if they are wearing a wedding ring or a three-piece tailored suit.

  “Fox fur, like to touch?” I ask as I smooth my hands over the coat, its folds as soft as a rich woman’s flesh. I give the customers my smile, but I keep my eyes to myself.

  “Oh, Henry! Look at the darling thing!”

  Greedy, bony hands claw at my sides. I keep my lips stretched into a smile even though the tiny woman’s rain blue eyes are focused solely on the coat. She pulls at my shoulder, her helmet of lemon-yellow finger waves wobbling as she tries to tear the coat off of my back. I look helplessly at her companion, an older gentleman dressed in a dark blue three-piece suit with a matching silk tie and pocket square. A cashmere overcoat with a mink collar is draped over his forearm.

  “Norma, please,” he says in a stern tone of exasperation. “You’re terrifying the poor girl.”

  “It’s all right,” I say, still smiling. I turn to the blonde woman. “You’re much more slender than I am. You’ll swim in this. Come with me and I’ll help you find your size.”

  As I lead the couple to the fur department, I can hear the blonde chattering behind me.

  “She is right, Henry. I’m much slimmer than she is. Personally, I’ve always found the hourglass figure rather gauche, wouldn’t you agree, Henry? Especially,” she adds, “when combined with red hair.”

  I feel my face burning as I comb the racks for her size.

  “Here you go,” I say, holding out a smaller coat. The blonde snatches the fur from my hands, her eyes avoiding my face.

  “Oh, Henry!” she exclaims, slipping into the coat. “Henry, it’s adorable!”

  She preens in front of the oval mirror and gleefully claps her hands together like a six-year-old child. “Don’t I look grand, Henry?”

  “Exquisite,” her companion answers, his eyes on me.

  I start to feel hot again, but pleasantly this time, as though I am sinking into a warm bubble bath. The man is tall and broad-shouldered with thick, neatly combed grey hair and a jawline that could cut glass, but there is something off about his face. After sneaking in a few glances of my own, I realize that his eyes are two different colours: his right eye is blue while his left is a dark shade of warm honey. I also notice that, unlike the blonde girl, he is wearing a wedding ring.

  “Oh, Henry,” the blonde sticks out her baby-pink bottom lip. “This coat was made for me.” She wraps her arms around his neck. “Please, Henry.”

  “That is an excellent choice?” Ann, my supervisor, suddenly appears at the gentleman’s shoulder.

  Ann’s voice always turns up at the end of her sentences when she speaks to the customers, so that everything she says sounds like a question. The habit used to disgust me until I realized that I do the same thing—when I am afraid.

  “The coat really suits the lady? Let me ring it up for you?”

  The man nods and reaches for his wallet as Ann whispers to me, “Nice work, Wanda. It’s past five now. You can blow.”

  It is almost seven o’clock by the time I reach the World Behind the Market. Under the light of the retiring sun, the falling leaves look like fire. Cigarette butts, broken bottles, and decapitated flowers artfully litter the concrete, as though part of a crude museum piece—remnants of an already forgotten good time.

  An elderly woman, barefoot on the wet pav
ement, plays a ukulele. I dig inside the pockets of my cloth coat and give her the last of my coins. I walk on, looking up at the tiger velvet sky.

  “Please, God,” I whisper. I think of the man with the different coloured eyes. “Oh, please, God.”

  Two men, their hands and faces devastated by years of labour, sit on the steps behind a fruit and vegetable store, slicing giant pumpkins in half. Nearing my rooming house, I spot the skinny rump and docked tail of my neighbour’s Doberman Pinscher and I freeze.

  “You’re not afraid of that dog, are you sister?”

  I turn to face the men behind the store, who are both grinning at me in amusement.

  “Yes, I am.”

  They chuckle at my honesty.

  “Aw, you don’t need to be scared,” one of the men says. His smile is forsaken of teeth, but his eyes are full of merriment. “He’s a nice dog.”

  “No, he isn’t,” I say. “He always barks at me. Look at him.” The Doberman is now in a standing position, a low growl rippling through his body as his eyes fix on me. “He’d rip my throat out if he wasn’t on a leash.”

  “They’d never let him off his leash.”

  The other man stands up and removes his hairnet. “My wife is afraid of dogs, too,” he says kindly, falling in step beside me. “Dogs can sense fear, but that’s nothing; cats can sense danger and that’s much more useful. There you go, sister,” he winks at me as we reach my door. “You’re not in danger anymore.”

  “Wanda, take your dress off.” My mother greets me this way every other evening. I only have one dress suitable enough to wear to work under the fur coat, meaning that it is bland enough not to divert any attention away from the fur and sturdy enough so as not to look cheap. On alternate nights Mama soaks it in the galvanized tub by the stove, which we use for both laundry and bathing. .

  “Mama, you don’t have to do this,” I say. “I can wash it myself.”