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.