What Miss Lena Prays For

MISS LENA GOES into the dressing room, closes the folding three-way mirror, gets down on her knees, and prays. I wonder if she’s really praying for customers, as she tells me, or if she’s praying for bigger things, like peace in Yugoslavia, where she is from and which she calls Yugo, or maybe an end to homelessness. It seems to me you shouldn’t waste a prayer on attracting customers.

As always, as soon as Miss Lena starts praying, a customer comes in. I help the woman find a dress for her cousin’s wedding; she’s a size fourteen but insists on trying on eights. I cut the tag out of a fourteen, tell her it’s an eight, and boom! it’s sold. When the next customer comes in, I go to get Miss Lena.

“Miss Lena,” I say, knocking on the fitting-room door and turning my ear to hear her, “there’s a customer here for you.”

“You go ahead and help her, dear,” she says, exactly as usual.

We earn an hourly wage plus commission. The commission nearly triples your salary. I make the most money of anyone on the floor, but it’s only because I work with Miss Lena, in Petite Dresses, and she spends a lot of her time praying. Also, unlike me, she isn’t multi-tasked and can’t do two things at once, like help another customer while the first is trying on a dress, or answer the phone while she’s ringing up a sale.

“I already had someone,” I whisper to Miss Lena. “Sold her that Andrea Jovine in size fourteen.” I feel like I’m talking to a friend who’s locked herself in the bathroom.

The door opens and Miss Lena pokes her head out. “Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll pray for more. You take this one, and I’ll take the next one.”

“OK,” I say, and then I tell myself that if she doesn’t take the next one, I’ll just ring up the sale under her number.

Promising to ring a sale under Miss Lena’s number has turned into a bad habit lately. I’ve considered dropping the practice altogether, so I don’t feel like such a shit all the times I don’t keep my promise. Once, I swore with all my might that I would do it; I said, “No matter how expensive the dress, I will ring up the next sale on Miss Lena’s number, and if I don’t, may God give me AIDS and herpes, and scabies all over my face, and make me infertile.” And then the next customer who came in had just gotten divorced and lost twenty pounds, and she was going crazy, buying everything she saw. I even had to follow her down to Sportswear, where she bought a bunch of Ellen Tracy, Anne Klein, and Adrienne Vittadini. She wouldn’t buy Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein, though, because they’re men. “I hate men,” she told me, throwing another sweater onto the stack of clothes in my arms. I had to use a rolling rack to hold all she was buying. When I went to ring up her bill, she left me her credit card and went off to lunch because she knew it would take an hour to punch everything into the register, remove the alarm tags, and bag it all.

Miss Lena was so excited for me she hugged me from behind and said, “God is smiling on you today. You must have done something nice for Jesus.” I stood there with my finger poised over the keyboard, trying to decide whether to punch in her sales number or mine. “What are you waiting for?” Miss Lena said. And I said, “How about if I read the codes to you, and you do the register?” She said OK, of course. So it was her who punched in my sales number. I didn’t have to do it; I didn’t have to go back on my promise. The next sale I made, an $89 dress marked down from $179, I punched in Miss Lena’s number, but I didn’t feel good about it; I knew I had gotten away with something.

By the time the second customer is ready to try on dresses, Miss Lena has finished her prayers. I lead the customer to the dressing room where Miss Lena was praying, and find that she has left the mirrors closed, as usual. This bothers me, because it’s evidence of her personal, private activities — like an unflushed toilet or dirty laundry on a bathroom floor.

“If you need any help in there,” I say before closing the door, “just call for Miss Lena, and she’ll assist you.” I look to see if Miss Lena overhears this, and I’m glad to see her smiling warmly at me.

Miss Lena is thin and pale with stark blond hair (naturally blond), bright blue eyes, and full lips. She wears sack dresses that tie around her waist, and pulls her hair back into a tight bun. She’s about fifty and has never married or had children. Miss Lena’s face is as smooth as a paper plate — no lines or wrinkles anywhere. It’s the skin of a nun or someone who’s lived underground her whole life. I look at her and think, Man, if I had those natural good looks, what I wouldn’t do with them. But Miss Lena does nothing with her looks. I think she has no sense of them at all. There is not a speck of makeup on her face; she’s like one of those Merle Norman cosmetics “before” pictures, only without the bad skin.

I, on the other hand, am a carefully crafted piece of work. I pluck my eyebrows, wear green contact lenses, and have had my teeth whitened and my nose straightened. Every eight weeks, my hair is cut, styled, and dyed the color of honey. I am skinny because I eat only every other day. (Some people think this is an eating disorder, but I swear it isn’t; it’s just the best way to stay thin.) Men turn their heads and check me out. They offer me seats on the train, strike up conversations, ask me for dates. Women aren’t fooled, though — I’ve never had a girlfriend say, “Gee, I wish I looked like you.”

I am the only American who works on the dress floor. Besides Miss Lena from Yugo, there is Miss Liaskis from Greece and Miss Michelle from France. (In this store, all the salesladies are called Miss, whether they’re married or not.) Our manager, Miss Dani, has lived in California her whole life but was born in Germany. And the sisters, Miss Braughn the older and Miss Braughn the younger, are from Canada, but everyone assumes they’re Americans. They find this insulting.

I’m also the youngest person and the newest employee on the dress floor. All the other ladies have been here at least ten years. Miss Lena’s been here for sixteen. Aside from Miss Lena and Miss Liaskis, the salesladies don’t really like me. They think I’m snotty, or that I think I’m smart or something because I’ve been to college — even though I haven’t graduated yet and am taking a year off to work. They also hate me because I sell the most.

Miss Liaskis works in Formal Dresses. She dyes her hair red and wears long, diaphanous skirts — just what you’d expect a Greek woman to wear. She’s in her sixties and is good-natured and kind, but just can’t move fast enough to make the sales. She’s always getting the codes on the register confused, punching in the department number when she’s supposed to punch in the dress class, or the price when she’s supposed to punch in her sales number. About three times a day, I have to go over to her register and help her out of a jam. The other women just ignore Miss Liaskis; they don’t want to lose any sales while they’re busy helping her.

The other day, Miss Liaskis actually started crying at the register. She had a big sale, three designer dresses, and she just couldn’t get the numbers straight. The customer was a regular who’s always impatient and treats us like hired help or something. When I walked up, this customer was tapping her nails against the counter and saying, “Look, if you can’t do it, I’ll just give it to someone else to ring up.” I cleared the machine, grabbed the ticket, and punched in those numbers so fast I was finished before the woman had time to open her wallet for her credit card. When the sale was done and the customer was walking off, I looked over at Miss Liaskis, who was wiping away streaky, black-mascara tears from her cheeks. Her nose was red and her shoulders were still quaking from the cry.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I rang it under your number.

”I know you did,” she said. “You always do.”

I felt kind of bad when she said that, because sometimes when I’m having a great day, just standing at the register raking in commissions, I think, I ought to throw a sale dress or something Miss Liaskis’s way. But I never do.

Miss Michelle works in Contemporary Dresses. She makes the most money after me. She’s from France, but you wouldn’t know it. She’s not beautiful or elegant the way you’d expect a French woman to be. She sucks on hard candy all day long, and her teeth are brown and silver. The reason she makes so much money is because she yells at customers. She says things like “Hey, you, walking out of that fitting room! . . . Yeah, you. I showed you that dress, so if you want to buy it, you bring it to me.” People are always so shocked to find this tiny, gray-haired lady with a ball of candy in her cheek yelling at them that they do exactly what she says.

Of all the people on the sales floor, the only ones I really dislike are the Braughn sisters in Designer Dresses. I guess I forgive everyone else for whatever they do, because at least they seem to be true to themselves — they’re just being who they are. But the sisters . . . well, the sisters are full of shit. They both dress beautifully, and sort of float across the sales floor, helping only the customers they consider worthy of their time. They’re heiresses of some sort, so they don’t really need the money. Neither one likes to help people who are unattractive, overweight, or poorly dressed — that is, unless they have hoards of money. The sisters take the attitude of volunteers: You can’t tell me what to do, because if you don’t like the way I work, I’ll just leave. That kind of thing. They pretty much ignore me, and I ignore them.

Once, though, when I snagged a customer who was getting off the elevator, I caught Miss Braughn the younger glaring at me, and she mouthed the word slut. I was sort of shocked, as she’s so prim and proper and not the type of person you’d expect to use the word slut. After I’d finished helping the customer, I went into a fitting room and mouthed slut over and over again in front of the mirror, to see if it could be mistaken for any other word, the way vacuum looks like fuck you when you mouth it. I wanted to tell Miss Lena what Miss Braughn had done, but I don’t think I could say “slut” to her — although, being from Yugo, she probably doesn’t even know what it means.

Miss Dani, our manager, hates customers, is tired of her job, and lets us do whatever we want. She spends her days in the stockroom talking on the phone or trying on the new inventory. She’s as wide as she is tall, so everything looks bad on her, but she wears it all anyway — velvet suit-dresses with rhinestone buttons, suede skirts cut just below her ass, and silky dresses that cling to her like saran wrap. Her hair is cut short atop her big, rectangular head, and she wears a lot of makeup. If this were anywhere but San Francisco, she would go through life unnoticed, but here everyone thinks she’s a man in drag, so she’s constantly being hit on by gay men who like transvestites. They come in the store and ask for her, and she blushes and shoos them away.

When the customer I have promised to Miss Lena emerges from the dressing room, she buys three expensive, full-price dresses. The sale is about four times what the size fourteen was. I ring it up for Miss Lena, then secretly slap myself on the cheek for thinking that if I had given the first sale to her, this big sale would be mine.

More customers come, and I get so busy it’s closing time before I know it. As I’m clearing out the register, Miss Lena separates the receipts and adds them up (deducting the returns) to see how much we’ve each sold. I’ve sold twice what she has, and half her total is from that one big sale I donated to her. I jam the point of my left heel into the top of my right foot as punishment for having originally regretted giving her that sale. My eyes tear up from the pain, but I feel better.

I can’t wait to get home. Today is a no-eating day, and I want the rest of it to pass quickly so that I can wake up tomorrow and start chowing down. I’ve already planned what I’ll have for breakfast: a sesame-seed bagel with butter and cream cheese, and a mug of coffee with whole milk and four teaspoons of sugar. My roommate, Renee, thinks this day-on/day-off diet is crazy. She thinks that I should just eat the same amount of food but spread it over two days. She says I need to be more sensible. Well, I’ve tried sensible, and sensible doesn’t work. This does. In fact, I plan to write a book about my day-on/day-off diet. I’ve made some notes and even bought a book on how to find an agent. I’m just waiting until I have the time to write.

Tonight Renee says she wants to go out to the Triangle, the area of bars and clubs around Union Street. It’s in the straight part of town, the best place to meet guys. Renee has already eaten a Weight Watchers lasagna and is dressed for the clubs. I keep on the same outfit: a red leather miniskirt, tight black turtleneck, and pointy, black, evil-looking pumps.

At the Blue Light Cafe, Renee has three glasses of wine to my one. That’s one of the benefits of the day-on/ day-off diet: not only do you save money on groceries, but on “off” days you only have to have one drink and you’re hammered. In fact, “Saving and Partying” is the title of Chapter Two.

Renee makes out with some ponytailed guy on the dance floor. I spend the night talking to an Arab guy who seems to have a lot of money, but I can’t be sure — you’re never sure until you see the guy’s car. Later, the Arab guy, whose name is Ahmad, walks Renee and me to her car. On the way, he stops at his BMW to get his Filofax. I give him my phone number before saying goodbye.

Renee swerves all over the place on the way home, but I feel safe because today Miss Lena told me that she includes me in her nightly prayers. Renee says Miss Lena is just a crazy religious nut, but I think she has a closer connection to God than most people. I mean, no normal person could be that pretty and just ignore it. Even if she only wore lipstick, she’d make Grace Kelly look like a dog.

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