Mama broke down and bought more cigarettes. After several nights of chain-smoking while calling homes for unwed mothers, she finally located one within a day’s driving distance in a small town near Dallas, Texas. It wasn’t her first choice, but it was the cheapest, and more important, it would take me at the end of March, when I would be going into the fifth month. Most homes only took girls six months along.
Risky as it was, Mama’d had to let me go back to school. There was no alternative. It was the state law of Arkansas that all kids must go to school—unless they’re pregnant. Then they’re not allowed to go.
When not on the phone at night, Mama spent her time pouring over a medical book she’d sneaked out of the law office where she worked, looking for an illness she could say I had come down with that would allow her to credibly stay in El Dorado while I was incarcerated. She’d lose her job if she stayed out in Texas with me, and she had to have her job to pay the fees for keeping me in the home. Even if she could have taken several months’ vacation, she couldn’t afford to stay in a hotel for so long.
“It could be polio,” I suggested, looking up from my homework one evening. The scent of early daffodils drifted through the open windows of the den, making it hard to concentrate. “You could say I’m in an iron lung and can’t have any visitors.”
“Don’t even think of such a thing!” she said, pulling at her hair with both hands. “It wouldn’t work anyway. Nothing will! I’m at the end of my rope trying to think of a credible disease.”
She got up from her chair in the den and sauntered into the breakfast room, where I sat at the table studying my French lesson.
“Maybe you could ask Claudia for the name of a suitable illness,” I suggested.
“Don’t make light of our situation. In the first place, no explanation on earth will convince Mavis MacAfee that I would leave my little chick alone and sick way out in Texas, no matter what the disease. I know Mavis. She’ll see through that in nothing flat, and it’s only a small step from there to concluding you’re in a home for unwed mothers.”
“Then I may as well stay here and have the baby.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Julie. We’ve been over and under this a hundred times. You cannot, must not let anyone know the truth.”
“Someone might already know,” I said, pulling up my blouse and tugging down the waistband of my skirt. “Look.”
Mama stared at my slightly increased waistline. “You’re showing!”
“Only a little. My clothes still fit. Pretty much.”
“What are you now? How many months?”
“Four. Maylene McCord asked me today if I’m putting on weight.”
“God help us!”
“She’s just being Maylene,” I said. “She’d say that if I went from a hundred and fourteen to a hundred and fifteen.”
“What are you up to?”
I dropped my gaze back to my French book. “A hundred and twenty.”
“Julie!
I laughed. “It’s only five pounds.”
Mama wrung her hands. “This isn’t funny. We have to do something, now.”
She went into the kitchen and, lighting a cigarette, leaned on the edge of the sink and stared out at the finely tended yards of our neighbors, while my own eyes glazed over with scenes from that day at school. Maylene and I’d had a conversation longer than two minutes for the first time since she and Farrel went to the Christmas dance.
We’d been assigned to work as a team selling ads for the high school yearbook, and Mrs. Snyder, the journalism teacher, had given us permission to go to town during sixth period and try to persuade some of the local businesses to buy an ad.
El Dorado had bustled with shoppers on this first day of spring.
“Folks must be buying their Easter dresses already,” Maylene had commented as she circled the square looking for a parking space. “Which is surprising, since it’s still a month away.” She turned a conspiratorial face to me. “I know what let’s do.”
“What?”
“Don’t be so enthusiastic, Julie.”
“How can I be enthusiastic when you haven’t said yet what you want to do?”
I watched her silently count to ten. “Now,” she said, exhaling, “I’ve made a vow not to be impatient with you anymore, no matter how rude you are to me.”
I looked heavenward. “Just tell me your idea.”
“Let’s look for our own Easter dresses.”
“Let’s not.”
“Jeez, Julie, you are so disagreeable these days. Oh, there’s a space. Right in front of that new store, Earl Allen’s. I’ve never been in there. Have you? I hear they have nifty threads for the teen set.”
We had peered in the window of the new clothing store, and instantly I saw she was right. Bright skirts and tops in the latest fashions clung to sleek mannequins. Inside, the racks against the walls vibrated with color. A small section of high-styled shoes was on display. A guy who looked to be in his thirties moved swiftly from the back of the store to greet us.
“Welcome to Earl Allen’s, young ladies. I’m Earl, the owner, and I have some perfect little numbers for both of you.” He looked at me. “What are you? Size six?”
“I hope so.”
His eyes switched to Maylene. “You can’t be an inch over an eight.”
Maylene bristled. “She and I are the same, size six.”
“We’re not here to buy clothes,” I said, putting my splinted hand on Maylene’s arm. “Would you buy an ad in the high school yearbook?”
“But first, we have to try on some of the clothes,” Maylene cut in, edging away from me. “I can tell already they’re just precious.”
Earl’s smile had lit up the store. “Sure, I’ll buy an ad, but first, to the dressing rooms. Sorry, I only have one vacant right now, but it’s a big one. Do you mind sharing?”
“Not a bit,” Maylene said, pulling me along behind him to the back of the store.
She closed the curtains to the dressing room, and I watched in disbelief as she worked at unbuttoning her dress. She scowled at me.
“Don’t be a party pooper.”
We could hear Earl snatching garments from the racks.
“I can’t afford to buy anything,” I said to Maylene.
“We sell on credit,” Earl called from outside the curtain. “Have a look at these.”
Maylene stuck her arms through the closure in the curtains and gathered a pile of the cutest clothes I’d ever seen. Earl laughed at our coos of delight. In spite of my resolve, I couldn’t help grabbing up a navy sundress in a soft cotton fabric with a pattern of little yellow stars. With it came a flowing, see-through coat of thin cotton in the same color and pattern.
“That’s fantastic!” Maylene said, turning covetous eyes on the outfit. “If you don’t buy it, I will. Try it on. I’ll help. It’ll take you all day to get it on by yourself with that broken finger.”
The last vestige of my willpower evaporated, and in a jiffy I was stepping into the gorgeous dress.
“Take your slip off,” she ordered. “That dress doesn’t need one, and it’ll only clump up underneath if you keep it on.”
Mesmerized with excitement and forgetting everything except the fabulous outfit, I had wriggled out of the slip and had the dress above my head when her voice stopped me.
“You’re gaining weight, girl.”
The dress slipped from my good hand. She stood, staring at my waistline. Nothing was there, like an obvious bulge, to betray my condition, but my waist was definitely bigger. Most people would think I had simply put on a pound or two. I had sucked in and tried to twist away from her sharp eyes, but a mirror on both walls glared with my reflection.
In a split second, I knew I had to play it down.
“Too much cornbread and black-eyed peas.”
“Step in it. I’ll zip you, if it’s not too tight, that is,” she said, picking up the dress from where it lay in a soft heap on the floor.
Even with an extra inch around my waist, the dress fit, and I looked fabulous in it. Turning sideways and back, I preened in the dressing room mirror.
“Put on the coat,” Maylene said, holding it so I could easily slip my splinted hand through the gossamer sleeve.
“Step out here and let me see,” Earl said.
In the big three-way mirror, the outfit had lifted me out of teenage cuteness and into young adult glamour, despite my heavy saddle oxfords.
“Get those things off,” Earl ordered, thrusting a pair of navy silk heels into my good hand. “Sit down. I’ll get you into them.”
Back in front of the mirror in the latest-style, pointed-toe heels, my first thought was of Farrel. What would he think if he saw me looking like this?
Maylene must have read my mind, for she called from the dressing room, “Farrel’ll go ape when he sees you in that!”
I wanted to yank her “crown of glory” ponytail out by the roots.
“It’s a miracle,” she said, coming out of the dressing room in a pink number made of the same soft cotton. “We can throw away those scratchy screen wire petticoats.”
I had to admit, she looked great.
“You should buy that.”
“I fully intend to. And I’m buying yours, if you don’t.”
Not in ten lifetimes would I let that happen. Hesitantly, I turned to Earl.
“If my mother pitches a fit . . .”
“You can bring it back. Go ahead, try on some others. I’ll go fill out the paperwork for the yearbook ad.” We heard him murmuring to himself as he walked away, “I can tell already, the move from Little Rock here to Arkansas’s oil town is going to put me in fat city.”
I had bought the dress. Maylene bought the pink one for Easter. I couldn’t imagine where I’d ever wear mine. It was way too mature-looking for our teenage scene. I didn’t even know if I’d be able to get into it again, after the baby.
“Better skip dinner tonight,” Maylene called when she and the rest of the carpool dropped me off after school.
That night at the table doing my homework I still hadn’t told Mama about the dress. She had been at work when I got home, so I’d quickly hung it in the closet underneath my raincoat. I didn’t have many wants anymore, except to wake up some morning and be like I used to be before Farrel—innocent again and this pregnancy just a terrible nightmare. Now, with the dress, I had just one more small desire—a crazy one, in light of the wish to be innocent, but nonetheless—I wanted Farrel to see me in it.
At the sink, Mama dripped water over her cigarette butt to put it out and turned.
“Julie, what are we going to do?”
“I’ll think some more about it and tell you tomorrow. Right now there’s something else I have to tell you.”
“Lay it on me. After what you’ve plunked down on our doorstep already, I can take anything,” she said with false bravado as I headed for my closet.
I returned to the breakfast room and held up the new dress. Her eyes grew misty.
“Oh, my poor darling.” She looked it over from where she stood at the sink, then moved toward me, her arms extended. “It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
“Thanks, Mama, for not murdering me. I can take it back. The salesman said so. I couldn’t resist having it, even for just one day.”
“You won’t take it back. I won’t let you. I’ll pay it out.”
“He said you could.”
“And we’ll keep it here, for when you come home. We’ll make sure you get your figure back, and someday, you’ll wear this. Go try it on for me.”
I dabbed at her cheek with my napkin, still folded on the table from dinner, but her tears did not stop, even when I reappeared in the beautiful dress.
The next night I opened the door to what I knew was Carmen’s knock and invited her in. I thought Mama would say “What’s this all about?” but she didn’t. She politely offered Carmen a seat—in the den.
This time I was the one who made the announcement, having finally decided to force the issue.
“This is my life, Mama, and I think Claudia and Carmen are right. Unless I stay here and keep the baby, Carmen and I have to change places. It’s a way out, and it’s our tough luck that there is no other way.”
“But what if people see through it?” Mama asked in an anxious voice.
“We’ll just have to make sure they don’t,” Carmen said. “Ain’t it gonna be fun to try?”
Mama shook her head. “Yes, ain’t it?”