Sunday, January 6, 1957, Elvis Presley made his third appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. For me it was quite a different night from his first appearance, when all the in-crowd and their boyfriends were here to cheer him on.
This time only Mama and I perched in front of the dope machine, which didn’t put her to sleep tonight. She leaned forward on the edge of her easy chair, her eyes sparkling with excitement.
“I think you’ve learned to like Elvis—and the TV,” I said.
She waved a hand to hush me. “Ed’s about to introduce him.”
He was in the middle of “Hound Dog” before I realized what was different.
“Look, Mama, they’re only showing him from the waist up!”
“They’re censoring his performance.”
“He’s still gyrating, though,” I said. “You can tell by all the applause and screams from the audience.”
“You can’t keep a good man down,” Mama said with a naughty smile.
I bounced on the red couch. “Listen, listen! He’s going to sing ‘Peace in the Valley.’”
“A gospel song?” Mama said. “That’s a switch. Wonder if he can do it.”
“That’s where he learned, singing gospel music in church.”
When Elvis finished, Ed Sullivan came out, his hand extended.
“This is a real decent, fine boy.”
The crowd went wild.
I loved Elvis’s little knowing smiles at the audience and the fact that he was still moving and jiving, whether his lower part was visible on camera or not. Elvis was indeed a fine man. I wondered if I would ever see him again.
February 14, 1957, was a bad day for me.
It was bad for my chemistry teacher too. Miss Glovina Armstrong, whose appearance—from her salt-and-pepper flat top like the boys wore, right down to the top of her white socks and tennie-pumps—screamed “old maid schoolteacher.”
That morning, our school’s star Dilbert, Eugene Hoffmeyer, arrived ten seconds after the bell rang for third period class to begin, and that set her off. I was not sure what set off the queasiness in my stomach. The breakfast I swallowed too fast because I was late leaving to pick up the carpoolers, or something more worrisome?
Eugene skidded through the door and crashed into the lab desk I shared with Maylene McCord.
“Ouch!”
Clutching his knee and hopping on one foot in circles, he slammed into the blackboard, just beneath the giant slide rule.
Miss Glovina rubbed her elbows against her waistline and glared. She performed that action several times every day during our class, and rumor was she did it in other classes as well. To what end, no one had yet divined.
“Eugene Hoffmeyer, kindly remove your backside from my periodic table of elements and take your seat before I give you a tardy slip for detention hall.”
“Oh no, Miss Glovina. It’s Valentine’s Day. I can’t stay after school. I was late because I couldn’t get my sousaphone to fit in the case and because the band director, you know, Mr. Nesbitt—”
“Spare me your palaver, and give me the common name for acetylsalicylic acid.”
“Come again?” sputtered Eugene.
“Quickly, who knows the answer?” Without drawing a breath between names, she called the role, rapid-fire, allowing not a millisecond between one name and the next: “Louise, Mary, Helena, Diane, Ladonna, David, James, Frank, Maylene . . .”
Maylene gave a start and opened her mouth, but Miss Glovina had moved on. “Ju—”
Before she could bleat my name, I shouted through her droning litany, “Aspirin!”
She stopped and stared at me. “One intelligent student in this entire class? Is that all we have?”
“I’m smart, Miss Glovina,” Eugene said. “You don’t give a person a chance to think.”
Again she rubbed her waistline with her elbows.
“I don’t when there is no apparent evidence a person has the capacity to perform that act.”
Eugene slumped.
“See if you can manage to find that little bottle of acetylsalicylic acid in plain view on top of my desk and fetch it to me so I can numb the pain of having to deal with you for the next . . .” She wheeled to check the wall clock. “Forty minutes.”
“Would you like me to get you a glass of—”
“No!”
Eugene handed her the bottle of aspirin and slunk to his seat. She popped two, dry swallowed, stood tall, and frantically jabbed at her waistline with her elbows, at which time a pair of salmon-colored, old-lady panties slipped from beneath her dress and draped around her white socks. With a sigh, she stepped out of them, dropped them in her pocketbook, and snapped it shut.
“Now, as I was saying . . .”
The class covered their faces and shook with silent laughter. I’d have joined in, but my stomach chose that moment to convulse. Clapping my hand over my mouth, I tore out for the girls’ restroom. Down the hall, across the dark-brown tiles I dashed, saliva welling in my mouth. Shoving the door with both hands, I barely made it past the lavatories to an open stall before my breakfast flew out in a splash. I heaved and spat until the last of the food gave way to yellow bile and dribbled to nothing.
When I could get my breath, I realized I was on my knees hugging the who-knew-when-it-was-last-cleaned toilet. Fighting not to gag at the thought, I got up and, stooped over like an invalid, made my way to the sinks. A little cold water splashed on my face made me able to return to chemistry class.
Miss Glovina gave me a sharp look when I slipped back into my seat but said nothing, for Principal Younger, who had been on my heels out in the hall, summoned her to the door.
“Are you all right? You’ve got puke on your pretty blue blouse,” Maylene whispered, handing me a hanky.
“I’m fine.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Probably a touch of food poisoning,” I whispered back.
“Hope you feel better,” she said and patted my arm.
I forced myself to smile back at her, just as I had been forcing myself to respond to her for weeks. Whenever possible, I focused my attention on other members of the in-crowd without appearing to snub Maylene. I no longer hung on her every word, or took her into my confidence, like I had before she and Farrel went to the Christmas dance together. My aim was to give her the impression we were still friends and never let her know how I much I hated her.
At first, after the night they betrayed me, I’d vowed I would not run with the in-crowd again, but on second thought, I’d decided that to pretend nothing was wrong would be the best course of action. If I totally cut myself off from them, I’d be in Nowheresville again. So, to all appearances, I was still the same Julie—still in the carpool, still going everywhere with them, still pretending Farrel hadn’t broken my heart.
At last the bell rang for the end of class. In the hall, Eugene jostled my arm.
“Happy Valentine’s Day, Julie,” he said. “I know Rhonda has my ring, but I guess I can still give my other girlfriends a valentine, if I want to.”
He thrust a crumpled envelope into my hand and speed walked away from me without another word. Inside was a card covered with hearts that said:
“Roses are red, they’re pretty, it’s true,
But no rose on earth is as pretty as you.”
It was signed, “Almost all my love (Rhonda has some of it), Eugene.”
Word that Miss Glovina had dropped her drawers spread so fast it nearly set the schoolhouse on fire. During first lunch, Bubba John Younger swiped a key from the rack where his father, Principal Younger, kept spare keys to all the teachers’ rooms. Knowing that Miss Glovina took pride in not carrying a load of clutter tucked under her arm in a handbag like the other female teachers did, Bubba John sneaked into the chemistry lab while she was at lunch and pawed around in her old black purse with the frayed handles. By second lunch, the salmon-colored, old-lady panties fluttered on the flag pole right beneath the Stars and Stripes.
In Advanced Junior English class, Miss Bolenbaugh, on tiptoe, danced around the room holding a copy of Macbeth in one hand and flailing her other like a nymph who had missed one too many ballet classes.
“‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more,’” she warbled. “To translate these famous lines into a modern rendition, let us say that, with his prize on exhibit beneath our flag, Bubba John now struts his hour upon this high school stage, but when his father gets after him with the razor strap this evening, no doubt Bubba John will fret his hour, seeing stars and accumulating stripes of his own.”
That afternoon, I had another bout of nausea. Mercifully, I felt it coming on soon enough to get permission to go to the girls’ room rather than having to dash out of study hall with my hand over my mouth. Still, I barely made it to a toilet before throwing up again. My thoughts ran to the conversation I’d had with Maylene about it being a touch of food poisoning. But I’d only had toast with mayhaw jelly for breakfast and nothing since. That couldn’t have given me food poisoning.
“Hi, sis. What cooks?”
I looked up, startled. Carmen stood inside the wooden swinging doors of the restroom. She walked along the row of sinks to stand beside me, and we fell into our typical pose, side by side, fascinated by our duplicate faces in the mirror.
“I pinch myself every morning when I wake up,” she said. “I’ve got a sister!”
Taking both my arms, she turned me to face her.
“Hey, how come you’re so pale? Cramps?”
My memory jolted as hard as my stomach had moments before. A fact I’d been trying to ignore out of existence reared and planted its feet in full consciousness. Under the running water, my fingers twitched as adrenalin shot through me.
“Here,” she said, digging into her purse. “Take a couple of aspirin.”
“Acetylsalicylic acid,” I murmured, drying my fingers on my skirt and letting her shake two into my hand.
“You fracture me! You’ve been in old lady Armstrong’s class too long.” She grinned. “Love her step-ins hanging on the flag pole. In my class, she had a mad spell and shoved the sliding part of the giant slide rule so hard it flew out the open window. Hit the lawn boy on the head and knocked him clean out. I gotta split, or I’ll be late. Listen, what do you figure folks think, now that they know about us?”
The news we were sisters had spread like bubonic plague through town. Mama thought folks had known all along and had scraped up the decency to keep their mouths shut about our dirty laundry. I hoped so, but I had my doubts. When did people ever keep quiet about anything?
“Maybe they’ll eventually forget about it and get interested in some other scandal,” I said to Carmen.
She nodded. “I hope so. I’d like to be normal and not under the small-town microscope. I’d better tinkle while I’m in here. Hope the aspirin works.”
I moved toward the door, so weak I wondered if I could make it back to class.
“Oh, listen,” she called out from a stall. “Eugene Hoffmeyer stuck a valentine in my hand that he meant for you this morning. You should have seen the look on his face when I told him I was Carmen. He snatched that valentine back so fast! To think, I had to tell him I wasn’t you. Don’t that beat all?”