Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell (6 page)

But there was something about people wanting me to fail that bothered me. If Brandi Lyn and I resigned, they would win. Mizz Upton would win. Ashley could claim victory. It would serve as proof that we weren't good enough, and I was NOT ready to accept that judgment yet, no matter how rebellious I was. No way was I going to let Mizz Upton and Ashley beat us out so early in the game. No way.

Instead, I was going to invoke another version of the Southern belle. They wanted a Magnolia Maid? Fine. They'd get one.

A
steel
one.

“Mizz Upton, I do so hate to say this,” I said, dripping my sweetest drawl onto every word. “But Brandi Lyn and I regret that we are unable to resign at this time.” I stood up and pulled Brandi Lyn to her feet.

“Excuse me?” Mizz Upton looked horrified.

“We do?” Brandi Lyn gaped at me.

“We do. Brandi Lyn, she's trying to scare us. She can't make us quit.”

“This is no scare tactic! I am doing what is best for the organization.”

“Well, I have a hunch that the Jaycees and Mr. Walter Murray Hill would have quite a different opinion. They elected us to the Court, what, three nights ago? I don't think that they would be so happy to hear that you are strong-arming poor innocent girls into believing they aren't, in your personal opinion, good enough, when the judges clearly decided we are.”

“Don't you dare talk back to me, Jane Fontaine!”

“Fontaine
Ventouras
. I'm sure you recall that my mother—gasp!—married a non-Bienvillite, Cosmo Ventouras? And with all due respect, I'm not talking back, Mizz Upton. I'm just saying that we'll leave when the Jaycees themselves invite us to leave. Until then, we'll be showing up for any and all rehearsals and other events that you have planned for us. Come on, Brandi Lyn.” I put my arm around her and led her out of the house, but not before Mizz Upton got her last word in.

“Fine. But I am filing probation reports first thing tomorrow. And if you don't follow every single rule, meet every single expectation to a tee, I will have you out of here before the first magnolia blooms at Boysenthorp Gardens, so help me, God!”

“You're so brave. Oh my stars, Jane, you were so brave back there.” Brandi Lyn and I were still in the middle of our grand exit, me walking a mile a minute in my John Fluevogs, Brandi Lyn teetering along as fast as she could in her Payless specials. “I never could have said what you did. I wanted to, but I couldn't do it.”

“Yeah, well, this is my specialty: bringing authority figures to their knees.” I sparked up my first cigarette since the day's activities began. “Jesus, what a bitch! You didn't deserve that, Brandi Lyn.”

“Well, thank you. You're so sweet. But please don't take the Lord's name in vain.”

“Don't take the Lord's name in vain? Are you for real?”

“The Ten Commandments are.” We were in Bienville, Alabama, for God's, uh,
goodness'
sake. Of course she was for real.

“Okay, okay, you're right. I'm sorry.”

As we brought our speedy grand exit to a halt, Brandi Lyn put a hand on my arm. “Jane, that's terrible what Mizz Upton said back there. About your mother. I'm so sorry. I didn't realize until today that she had passed.”

“Thanks, Brandi Lyn.”

“It must be hard.”

Brandi Lyn's bright blue eyes grayed over with compassion. It wasn't the “lost little lamb” look that I had just learned was one hundred percent fake. It was so real, that expression in her eyes. And I didn't feel obligated to respond, to pretend, to decree, “I'm fine, everything's okay.” Brandi Lyn never knew my mother. She just knew
me
. She cared about
me
.

All of a sudden I felt the warmth of her hand melting the icy fury that had been flowing through my system. A river of rushing rapids piled up behind my eyes, and two slow, quiet streams escaped down my face.

Quick, Jane,
I thought.
Change the subject before you flood the entire neighborhood!
Yes, yes, that was a very good idea indeed. But first I took Brandi Lyn's hand in mine and squeezed it—tight—and nodded. She squeezed back and pulled me into a hug that seemed to last forever.

Not so good for flood control. Not at all.

I took a deep breath or twenty-five thousand, then slowly extricated myself from Brandi Lyn's embrace. I took a shaky drag off my cigarette. “So, um, tell me, what in the world is a five-year plan?”

Breathy with excitement, Brandi Lyn informed me that a five-year plan was this really amazing thing where you thought about what your goals in life were and how you were going to achieve them with a series of well-thought-out deadlines and mini-goals! She had perfectly mapped out her life for the next five years:

Brandi Lyn stopped there because she had reached the five-year limit. “I'll have to assess my progress about halfway through, of course,” she said.

The thought of so much industry and planning gave me a headache. I lit yet another cigarette. “You've thought that far ahead?”

“You have to set goals, Jane, if you're going to achieve anything in life.”

“Me, I can't think beyond, like, ten minutes from now.”

“Let me help you with that! I just love brainstorming and planning and figuring out ways to achieve goals!”

“Uh, sure. I'll let you know when I feel like getting my life on track.” I puffed again on my cigarette. “But how 'bout you and me work on a five-week plan instead?”

“That's a good start! What do you want to do?”

“Declare war on Mizz Upton.”

“War!”

“Not shoot-a-gun, fire-a-cannon kind of war.”

Brandi Lyn was baffled. “Then…?”

“A war to be the most perfect Magnolia Maids ever!”

Brandi Lyn sighed with relief. “Well, that's obvious. Of course we want to be the best Magnolia Maids we can be, right?”

“You do. But I've only just now decided to.”

“So why's it got to be a war?”

“Brandi Lyn, Mizz Upton's going to be after us now. You heard her say it, right? She's declared war on us. If we're going to make it through, we're going to have to be not just good Magnolia Maids but perfect Magnolia Maids. Fight fire with fire. And to do that, you and I, we're going to have to change. We need a makeover.”

“I don't mind change! Change is good. And I
love
make-overs!”

I laughed. “Someone in B'ville who believes in change? Thank Go—goodness.”

“Thank you, Jane.” Brandi Lyn waved at someone over my shoulder.

I turned to see JoeJoe pull up in his perfectly maintained monster of a Ford truck.

“This makeover idea sounds great! Now I've got to get home and work on my finances. Honestly, I thought the dresses cost about seven hundred dollars, not seven thousand! My goodness! I've got some thinking to do!”

She hopped up into JoeJoe's truck and greeted him with a big kiss. She was about to shut the door, when suddenly I got an idea. “Hey, Brandi Lyn! Will you come to the Episcopal Church with me on Sunday?”

She gasped in delight. “Oh, Jane, you have a church home? I'm so happy for you! I'd love to!”

I watched the truck kick up dust as it sped off.
Now
that's
a sweet girl,
I thought.

I flopped down, exhausted, at the dinner table and laid there like a gravy-soaked biscuit. “I need some money.”

Grandmother raised an eyebrow. “More than your allowance?”

“Whatever it costs to get a tattoo lasered off.”

Grandmother raised the other eyebrow. “You have a tattoo?”

“On my shoulder, right exactly where the back of my dress has to come down, and Miss Dinah Mae is having a conniption fit over it.”

“I don't recall signing any sort of permission form saying that you could get a tattoo.”

“You don't need one when you have a fake ID.”

“Remind me to search your room for it tomorrow.”

I laughed and dove into the roast beef and mashed potatoes that Charisse had whipped up for us. So much better than boarding school barf-a-roni.

“Other than that, how was your first day?”

Hmm. How was my day? What should I actually tell her? Under normal circumstances, I would go ahead and confess all. Tell her exactly what had happened, that I was in serious Magnolia Maid danger and that Mizz Upton had declared war on me and Brandi Lyn and that I had declared it right back. After all, Grandmother knew every bad thing I had ever done to get kicked out of boarding school. None of this would be news to her. It would seem like just another notch in the old bad-girl bedpost.

But she was so thrilled that I had been selected for the Court, so delighted that I was following in the footsteps of a long list of Fontaine women. No doubt she would be deeply upset if I told her what had happened. She would be on the phone with Mizz Upton, Mr. Walter, the chamber of commerce, the higher echelons of Bienville government, anyone affiliated with the M&M Organization in about two seconds flat demanding to know why I had been treated this way. Did I want to stir up that kind of trouble? Jane B.M.M.—before Magnolia Maids—would have leapt at the opportunity to up the drama quotient. But Jane A.M.M.? I couldn't do it.

“My day was… well, I decided to take your advice and act sweet. And I made a new friend. Two, actually. And we learned all this cool stuff about the dresses, and the city, and…”

Grandmother cleared her throat and uttered a most suspicious “Hmmph.”

I giggled. “Now Grandmama, what you just did there? Not exactly what I would call a ladylike utterance.”

She shook her head. “What goes on in your own home doesn't always have to be ladylike. And when one is shocked by the behavior of another, a ‘hmmph' can be a most appropriate expression.”

“Well, what's so surprising?”

“You truly managed to avoid making waves today?”

“Maybe I've decided to turn over a new boat.” Her eyebrow raised even higher. “No, seriously I have, Grandmama!”

Her eyebrow lowered but the suspicion still played around her lips. “What a lovely turn of events this is, then.”

I continued eating and trying to act like I was the sweetest girl in the world, but her gaze lingered on me until I couldn't take it anymore. “Okay, okay! It was not that fun! But it's true I tried to be sweet, and I did make some friends, kind of. But Mizz Upton can't stand me, and do you have any idea how much work we have to do?”

Grandmama slapped the table with a giggle. “There's my girl! Oh, you had me scared there for a minute!”

“I have to learn all this history, and we have to plan these lame events, and the dresses! Do you have any idea how much they cost?”

“Don't you worry about the money, darling.”

“That's great for me, but Brandi Lyn, she's freaking. And the girls! There are some serious snobs up in that joint! One in particular.”

I waited for a reprise of Grandmother's “be sweet” lecture, but to my surprise, she chuckled. “That's exactly how Cecilia felt.”

“
My
mother? Really?” My jaw dropped mid-chew, and a piece of roast beef fell out. Talk about manners unbecoming a Magnolia Maid.

“Oh yes. Well, she didn't word it in quite the unladylike way you did.”

“Sorry.”

“But she considered some of the girls quite snobby. She would come home with the most horrendous stories of bitchery.”

“Wow. I thought Cecilia was all light and perfection.”

“We always think that about our parents. It's never true. Cecilia behaved herself most of the time, but she nearly gave me a heart attack or two. And she could be quite critical of the organization.”

“Then what in the world did she see in it all?”

Grandmother got a mischievous look in her eye. “After supper, let's go up to the attic, why don't we, and I'll show you.”

Mother's Magnolia Maid dress was pink. Close to twenty-five years old, it looked as if it had been worn yesterday. Grandmother had stored it on a mannequin made to size and hidden it away in the cedar closet so that pesky moths and color-stealing sunlight couldn't get to it. Tiny white rosettes trailed around the arms and the bodice, meeting in the V of the sweetheart neckline Miss Dinah Mae had talked up that afternoon. The thing was voluminous—there was enough fabric there to clothe a dozen orphans! Seriously, the skirt trained out
six feet
behind the dress! It must have billowed beautifully as Mother floated through Boysenthorp Gardens on a sunny June day, twirling her parasol and winking at cute boys.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. “Oh my God. She was the queen, wasn't she?” I pointed at the long train and the rosettes. We had learned that afternoon that the queen's dress could be any of the Court's favored pukey pastel colors, but what distinguished her from the other Maids was the addition of the white rosettes, uh, “magnolia-ettes,” the excessively long train, all-white accessories, and a tiara worn at indoor appearances.

Grandmother nodded and pulled the dress off the stand. “Try it on.”

All I could do was stare and think: that was my mother's? That thing? It was just so weird to think of her in that dress. To think that she had had a body that fit into it. I know that doesn't make any sense. Of course she had a body. Of course she had clothes. Duh. But there was something so… mystical about the fact that this had been her dress. And that today I had spent all day getting measured for my own. Somehow it made me feel
connected
to her.

I slipped out of my tank top and jeans and into the bazillion layers that made up the skirt. When I got the last one on, I could barely move. “Grandmama! This thing weighs a ton!”

“It's all that taffeta.”

“No wonder those antebellum belles were always fainting and fanning themselves.”

Grandmama buttoned me into the bodice. She led me over to an antique mirror in the corner and we studied the reflection. The dress was just a little bit big for me, especially in the chest, but it was weird. I looked so different. I barely even looked like myself. “This is so crazy! It looks like I stepped out of another era!”

Grandmama nodded. “Cecilia always said she felt like she was wearing history. How she loved to put on that dress and go to her appearances! That girl could talk on and on about the South and Bienville's place in Gulf Coast history. You know, she met your father in this dress.”

“She did?! How come I never knew that?”

She shrugged, puzzled. “I guess with everything that happened, it's just a story we forgot to tell you.”

I leaned into the sound of Grandmother's voice as she recounted how it had happened. Bienville was hosting a shipping convention that year, and hundreds of ships had come in from around the world. The Maids were playing hostess down at the wharves, when the man who is my father arrived from Greece with his father. The Ventouras family was huge in the international shipping industry. They had tankers and barges all over the planet, and they had come to Bienville in search of the next big oceangoing vessel. The minute he met my mother, though, my twenty-one-year-old father lost all interest in ship buying and fell madly in love.

“Your mother, she had lots of boys calling around the house all the time, but she loved this Cosmo from the moment they met. He came over to the house every afternoon for a week to court her. I was entirely against it, of course.”

“Really? Why?”

“They were so young and he was going home to Greece in a few days and I just didn't want her to get her heart broken. Of course, the fact that he wasn't American, and even worse, not Southern, quite upset your grandfather.”

“Aw, that's so sweet, Grandmama. Looking out for your daughter.”

Grandmother laughed. “She didn't listen to a word I said. Every night she snuck out the window and met him down at the Dew Drop Inn.”

My jaw dropped again. “Okay, now you're saying she was a rebel? Like me?”

“Well, she was in love, honey! They carried on the entire time he was in town. After he left, they became pen pals.”

“What's that?”

“Back in the days before e-mail and FaceSpace and all that, people used to write letters by hand and send them in the mail.”

“Oh, yeah, those things you put stamps on. I've heard about those.”

Grandmother studied me in the dress and sighed. “Most days I think you don't look a bit like her, but now…” A tear formed in the corner of her eye. “Just think. If Cecilia hadn't worn this dress, she never would have met your father and they never would have married, and you never would have ended up here with me today. My darling girl.”

Shoot, I even wiped away a tear at that.

We both studied me and the dress in the mirror. “Would you like to wear it? As your Magnolia Maid dress?” she finally asked.

I stood there, dumbfounded for a moment, then quickly shimmied the bodice off my shoulder. “No, ma'am. No, thank you. Too many ghosts.”

Oh, Sweet Jesus and Junipers! I just realized: the first time I see Luke Churchville, I MIGHT BE WEARING A MAGNOLIA MAID DRESS.

HORRORS!!!!!!