Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell (18 page)

I think it's pretty safe to say that the Bienville County Jail had never seen anything like the sight of six little Magnolia Maids, in varying stages of Magnolia dress, trudging in to the county jail.
Swish, swish, swish.
The officers at the front desk stared, the good citizens filing reports gawked, the folks bailing out their loved ones gaped. Bonnets are very useful, it turns out, for covering your face when you're doing the most humiliating walk of shame ever.

As we were escorted into Cell Block 3, two “ladies of the evening,” who had been picked up earlier in the red-light district, greeted us from the next cell over.

“What the hell?” asked Lady One, eyeing our ridiculous getups. “Y'all come through some time travel machine or something? Which a' you is Scarlett?”

Lady Two shook her head. “Uh-uh-uh,” she uttered, looking at Zara. “Girl, what you doing wearing that plantation dress? Shoot.”

Thank God they put us in our own cell.

Having had a few run-ins like this before, I knew our situation wasn't as bad as it could have been. I tried to cheer up my completely down, suddenly sober crowd. “At least they didn't book us.”

No one responded.

“Seriously, y'all. They didn't take our mug shots, didn't fingerprint us. We should be happy.”

“Shooooot,” drawled Lady Two from the other cell. “She right. Y'all fine, long's they don't fingerprint you.”

Caroline spoke from the corner of our cell. “It doesn't matter. My mother's still going to kill me.”

“She's going to kill all of us,” added Mallory. “There's never been a Maid arrested before! Not even during the civil rights marches of the sixties!”

“Look on the bright side. We'll definitely go down in history, then.” I snorted. Gallows humor.

Mallory looked like she was going to burst into tears. “It's not funny!” she cried.

“Oh my God, my scholarship! Sorry, Lord.” Brandi Lyn's hand flew to her chest and she looked heavenward in apology. “No one gives scholarships to girls who have been arrested! How am I going to pay for college?”

I heaved a sigh. “Clearly, you girls haven't been in trouble much. Let me break it down for you. The City of Bienville can't afford to have the pristine Magnolia Maid name sullied. They can't afford to let this go on our permanent record. It would be a humiliation to them. They're gonna let us go with a hand slap, I will bet you money.”

“I'd bet on that,” called Lady Two from the next cell. “Bunch a' white girls ain't gonna have no problems getting their sorry selves out a' trouble. Hey, sugar, you wanna spare a smoke?” Of course I handed her a cigarette. We were going to need allies if we were going to be in jail long.

Zara glared at me. “Excuse me, Miss America's Most Wanted,” she spat. “But do you have a crystal ball hidden underneath that antebellum dress forecasting the outcome of this situation? I'm sorry, but I think the rest of us are a little worried here.”

“Worried? Who's worried?” I asked.

“I am.” Mallory furrowed her brow.

“Me!” Brandi Lyn raised her hand.

Caroline scratched at her arm. “I have hives.”

“Can I ask you something?” Zara asked.

I shrugged. Might as well.

“Did you even think about me? About how I felt? Or any of us? Because if you had, you might have thought about how terrified I was. I nearly wrecked back there! And then when I heard that siren. I was the one driving the car! I was shaking to death! All I wanted to do was get out of there and go home and then he was gonna let us and you had to go and pick a fight!”

“What do you mean pick a fight?” I spluttered. “I was just saying we didn't need an escort! Ashley's the one who pissed him off!”

“Well, I would expect that from Miss Name-Dropper-Holier-Than-Thou over there, but you? I thought you had more sense than to pick a fight with a cop! But then that's your specialty, isn't it? Picking fights.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please. I don't pick fights.”

“That's all you do.”

“No I don't.”

“Well, you kinda do.”

I swiveled around to find Brandi Lyn actually agreeing with Zara. “What? How?”

“Well, remember how you wouldn't let me quit when Mizz Upton said I should? And then you declared war on her? That's kind of picking a fight, isn't it?”

Caroline nodded. “And you tried to get me to change my queen vote to Brandi Lyn as part of your ongoing fight with Ashley.”

“You get into a fight with Ashley every chance you get,” said Mallory.

“Except tonight,” replied Zara. “When the two of you actually joined forces to insist we go find those lame boys!”

“Zara, I…” I went silent. I was what? Sorry? Tipsy? Annoyed? Misunderstood? Some combination of all the above?

“You done it now, girl!” cackled Lady One from the next cell. “Gone crazy after boys! You should be ashamed of yo'self.” She pointed at my silver earrings. “You wanna let me have those earrings? They sure is pretty!”

I shook my head. “You know what, you guys? That's not fair! How can you say I'm just all about picking fights? I have worked really hard for the Magnolia Maids! I spearheaded the fund-raiser idea. And I've been there for you all personally, too! Brandi Lyn, I got you that makeover, and Caroline, I tried to cheer you up about your mother, and Mallory, well, I gave you advice on how to deal with the Ashley/Jimmy/Katherine situation. I think y'all should be a little more appreciative of me!”

Somewhere in the middle of that, Ashley's mouth hit the floor. “What? Jane, you gave Mallory advice?” She whirled on Mallory. “You knew? And you asked Jane about it? You told me you had no idea!”

Uh-oh.

“Well, I… I… I…,” Mallory stammered.

“You kept that information from me? And let me suffer the worst humiliation of my life?”

“I wanted to tell you, I really did!”

“How could you not?”

“I was scared.”

“Scared? Of what?” Ashley screamed, sounding scary.

Mallory shrunk back against the wall. “I love you to death, Ash, but you're always so… Everything's such a big deal with you.”

“What do you mean ‘everything's such a big deal' with me?” Ashley screeched, making a big deal of everything. Mallory zipped her lip. But it was too late. The lid to Pandora's box was off and Ashley was not, I repeat
not
, backing down. Mallory soon found herself tearfully confessing that there was indeed some truth to what James had said that night on the bay. Everything always had to go Ashley's way and the fits she threw when it didn't were known the whole state over. Ashley denied it, of course, saying that Mallory was overreacting, which spurred Mallory on to a dissection of the history of Ashley's demands starting with part 1: The Ken and Barbie Years, through to part 7: Birth of a Magnolia Maid.

Mallory's venting was like lice in kindergarten—contagious. While she built up steam with each installment of the Ashley Must Have Her Way Show, Zara laid into me even more for not backing down and letting her handle the cop situation as she saw fit.

Brandi Lyn tried to play diplomat. “Y'all! Stop it! We're supposed to be sisters in Magnolia Maid love!”

Everyone groaned.

“If we were ever sisters, it's all over now!” Ashley retorted.

“Y'all, hush!” Caroline begged. “We're going to get in even more trouble!”

“How?” Zara replied. “We're already in prison! What else can they do to us?”

At that moment, Mallory shouted, “AND I already had a dress picked out for tryouts when you e-mailed us saying we had to coordinate and that pink was
your
color!
I
wanted to wear pink! But nooooooo, Ashley had to get her way and wear pink!”

Oh, wow. Had Ashley really sent that memo straight out of my devious imagination? Of course she had.

Then, above the chaos, a little voice wailed. “I have to quit the Magnolia Maids!”

Girl by girl, we all turned to the source of the cry: Brandi Lyn.

“What?”

“Huh?”

“Why?”

Through tablespoons of tears, Brandi Lyn blubbered out that making the dress herself had turned into a disaster of epic proportion. “Have y'all ever tried to sew on taffeta?”

We all shook our heads. Not a one of us knew how to sew.

“It's impossible! First, it was taking forever, and what with all the extra hours I've been putting in at the Krawfish Shack to pay for the fabric, I simply could not find the time to work on it! But then I was up late sewing the other night, and I was half asleep and I made a mistake and made a mess of the ruffles on the skirt, and, and ruined yards and yards of fabric.” She started gasping for air. “And I'll have to start all over again and buy new material, but there's no way I can afford it. So I'm going to have to quit!”

“So that's why you've been throwing back the cosmos all evening,” I said.

“I'm sorry, y'all,” wept Brandi Lyn. “I'm so sorry. Caroline, you'll have to take my place.”

Caroline leapt off the jail bench. “No, what? No!” She swayed precariously.

“Oh, don't faint, Caroline. We've already done that once.” Brandi Lyn and I rushed to her side and helped her sit back down.

“You can't quit, Brandi Lyn! I can't be a Magnolia Maid!”

“You can! You're beautiful! You'll be great!” Brandi Lyn tried to keep a brave face, but her lip was trembling like a California earthquake.

“I'll faint. I'll fall down!” Caroline's arms and chest turned red and blotchy. Poor thing, now she really did have hives! “I'll look like a whale in the dress!”

“We all will,” I said, not very helpfully.

“People will laugh at me. My mother will yell at me. Oh my God, my mother.” She didn't even have to go into detail on that one. We knew what she meant. “Please. Please, y'all. You can't let Brandi Lyn quit. I'm begging you.”

That's about the time old Walter Murray Hill walked in.

We all live with expectations, whether we realize and acknowledge them or not. Our expectations define the way that we think our world should be, the way things should go. Some expectations are obvious. When you walk into a restaurant, you expect someone to serve you a plate of food. When you go to school, you expect to be bored out of your mind (I mean, learn something). You go to a shoe store, you expect them to sell shoes, not handguns.

So when you get dragged into the Bienville County Jail for drinking under age, what do you expect from the authority figure who shows up to bail your behind out? An endless lecture and punishment up the wazoo. And if you're a Magnolia Maid, you expect to be kicked off the Court, then sent home for more punishment from your God-fearing, authority-respecting Southern parents.

Me, I was convinced we were going to be fine, but the girls were terrified. The minute Uncle Walter showed up, Ashley dropped the catfight and switched into full damage-control mode. “Oh, Uncle Walter, I don't know why that officer stopped us!” “Yes, we did each have a little teeny-weenie drink but all those big bottles must have been Daddy's, I don't know where they came from! I'm so worried that Zara's in trouble, Uncle Walter. Please say it isn't so!” Of course, she was trying to cover her own butt, but she was at least covering everyone else's in the process.

Mallory also went into hysterics mode when Uncle Walter came in. She was so panicked about losing the opportunity to wear her antebellum dress and represent Bienville that she wept uncontrollably as we were escorted into an investigation room. “Please don't kick us off the Maids. Please don't take this away from us! I'll just die if you take this away from us! Just die!”

The rest of us remained quiet.

There were only four chairs in the interrogation room (just like in the one Kyra Sedgwick uses to interview people of interest on
The Closer
—God bless her and her totally fake Georgia accent). Walter Murray Hill gestured for us all to take a seat, and everyone did except me and Zara. We repaired to opposite corners, like prizefighters waiting for the bell to announce the first round.

Standing at the head of the table, Walter Murray Hill loomed above us. “Girls. Maids,” he corrected himself. “This is a night that will go down in Magnolia Maid history.”

“I knew it!” weeped Mallory. “No Maid has ever been arrested before. We're the first ones. It's a travesty!”

“It is true that this is the first time I have ever in my life gotten out of my bed in the middle of the night to bail a bevy of Magnolia Maids out of jail. I have on more than one occasion bailed out my sons and their wayward friends, but you girls.” He shook his head. “I thought y'all had more sense than this, okay.” One by one, we hung our heads in shame.

Walter Murray Hill sighed deeply. “Maids, I knew changing up the Court was going to be hard. Many of my acquaintances and colleagues told me time and again that the way things were was fine. ‘Walter, why go rocking the boat, okay,' they said. ‘Let's run things the way we always have.' To those people I have said, Bienville's ready. We can do it. Let's leave the past behind. Move into the future.”

Mr. Walter paused and looked us each in the eye. “But I may have made a mistake here, okay. I did not take into consideration how hard this was going to be on you all. Ashley, Mallory, your expectations about what this year was going to look like were not met, and you've had a hard time bonding with the other girls.”

They nodded, though their agreement lacked the fervor and anger of their initial reaction at the pageant all those weeks ago.

“Zara.” Walter Murray Hill turned to her. “You being a newcomer to town, and Jane, your having been away so long, well, it's affected your ability to fit in. Brandi Lyn, I sure am sorry to hear about your money situation. That's a real issue, it sure is, and I didn't take that into account when I approved you. Caroline, I know it's not easy for you, what with your mother being the sponsor.” He sighed again. “I kept thinking, though, this group of girls, they're interesting. Modern. They're going to be able to do a lot for us here in Bienville. You proved that right with the fund-raiser, that's for sure. And I thought with time you'd all be able to pull it together. But what happened tonight…” He closed his eyes. “Tells me I made a mistake. A big one. Do you have any idea how many rules in the handbook you just broke?”

I raised my hand. “Four. Drinking while wearing the dress, driving while wearing the dress, wearing the dress on an outing not approved by the organization, getting arrested while wearing the dress.”

“That is correct, Jane. And one of those is a crime. Do you have any idea what I've just had to do to convince the police not to book you? Mizz Upton was right. This is the most unfit group of Maids I have ever encountered. Which is why I'm considering disbanding the organization for the year.”

Boy, when he said that, you could have heard a hoopskirt drop, it was so quiet. We were all a little shocked by Walter Murray Hill's announcement. This was so much more serious than what I had seen coming.

And we may have been completely and totally mad at each other, but there ain't nothing like a group of Magnolia Maids on the verge of being disbanded. No way were we going to let this end now.

“No, Mr. Walter, please don't!”

“We'll never do anything like this again!”

“I know we're difficult, Mr. Walter, but we can do this!”

“We are modern!”

“The fund-raiser is only the beginning of what we are capable of!”

“We can live up to your expectations!”

“Are you kidding? We can surpass them!”

We were such a whirling dervish of ferocious persuasion, Walter Murray Hill couldn't keep up with us. He held his hands out to shut us up. “I hear you! I hear you! I want to give you all another chance. I want this to work, too. But there are going to be some ground rules, okay.” He cleared his throat. “Number one. I do not—repeat DO NOT—want Martha Ellen Upton to hear word one about this. I do NOT want it in the gossip columns. I've talked to the boys out there about making sure this thing stays private, and they've agreed. You girls do your part and keep your mouths shut. Don't tell a soul. I mean anyone. Not your parents, your siblings, your friends, your boyfriends. The first phone call I get with somebody asking about Magnolia Maids being hauled to jail, I will disband you. Do you understand?”

We couldn't yell “Yes, sir!” fast enough. This was really good news, and we all knew it. The fact that Mr. Walter was powerful enough to control the small-town gossip mill was going to make life a whole lot easier.

“Number two. You girls are going to sponsor an alcohol-education course for teens as one of your charity events, and you're going to actually take the class yourselves.” Oh, I had to hand it to Mr. Walter. Make it look like we were helping the community, when we were really saving ourselves from a future as lushes? Genius.

“Number three. I need you to elect a queen by Saturday, okay. Number four. If anything else happens like this again…”

“We know,” said Ashley.

“We'll be the first Court in history to be disbanded,” said Mallory.

“Exactly. Now don't you ever let me catch you here again.”

As he escorted us out of the police station, Walter Murray Hill chuckled. “You know, Maids,” he said. “You girls have spark and passion. You remind me of the first girl who ever asked me when was I going to integrate the Court.”

“Really?” Mallory leapt on this information like a rooster on a hen. “A Maid asked you to integrate? I never knew that!”

“A queen, as a matter of fact. She said, ‘Mr. Walter, how can we say that we truly represent the city of Bienville, which is a wonderfully diverse place, if we only have wealthy white girls on the Court? It's just not right, Mr. Walter,' she told me.” Melancholy invaded his words as he shook his head. “I've heard her voice in my head every one of the twenty-five years it's taken me to get up the gumption to do it.”

“Who was she?” Mallory asked. “The maid who asked you?”

Walter Murray Hill put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Cecilia Fontaine. Jane's mom.”