Bio: Esmerelda Jones was born in the bush fringes of Perth, Western Australia 1951. She has written ever since she was a child. Her interests are: Victoriana, knitting, pioneer living, antique dolls, anything old.

Esmerelda reads the crystal ball. She is a Sagittarian gypsy by heart.

 

Ruby, Pearl, Opal

 by Esmerelda Jones

In the goldrush days of Australia, sisters Ruby, Pearl, and Opal danced their way through mining shanty towns for the lust of money.

Crushed together in calico tents, they would sit wide-legged on their black tin trunks and comfort each other with tales of dreams that would never be. As the spirit lamp fizzled out, so did another fantasy of becoming rich, and they awoke to the slap of another morning.

“Legs up higher!” hollered sweaty, coarse men as the whiskey frothed from their leering lips.

Ignoring everything except the pay, the girls promised each other never to marry, separate, or have children. True to their word, they would flash for cash, heading for the nearest bank as they fled each town.

The account grew with grubby loot, the girls kissing each note and ordering it to triple its value.

Nostalgic songs were given a full melancholy as they darned silk costumes and starched wilted laces.

“How long must we go on?” one of them would repeatedly ask.

Little by little the face grease got thicker, the lips redder and the shadowed eyes lied in a masquerade of youth. Their stash increased and so did their greed. Age was of no concern to their customers, who were ready for anything resembling a woman, so veiled from the wrinkled truth, they cranked themselves up for each tarty show.

In a town where your spit fried on the road, they pitched their tent. Washing themselves with a limp flannel and bowl of reddish water, they peeked out to see what the bellowing was, and met their haunted selves.

A wagon of beautiful belles direct from the city pulled up in front of the hotel. The girls had always saved money by living in a tent, but these delicious dames arrived as boudoir kittens.

Viewing from behind the potted palms that night, Ruby, Pearl and Opal saw themselves smartly outdone. Unlined, lustrous faces beamed a saucy energy to the crowd, and money flew from wallets and pockets.

Opal sighed. “We’re done. No one will want to see us after this lot. And it will be the same everywhere we go.”

With a bitter sadness that only a wiped-up showgirl knows, they returned to their hole and began removing their makeup for the last time. In plain cotton nightgowns they gripped each other and cried.

“We’ll have to live off our savings.” Ruby rubbed the wetness from her pasty cheeks.

Opal was hypnotized by the lamp flame as she dragged the brush through her thinning hair. She feared the end of money-making more than the beefiest man she’d met. “Will we have enough?”

Before the darkness moved into light, they had packed. Down the raw road the three silhouettes trudged wordless. Their map was simple, but it would take several months . . . and then they would stand on the verandah of their childhood home, coddled by memories. Perhaps they still had parents? Or maybe the old, respectable home had turned to dust as they had.

 

©John Taylor