Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell (2 page)

I clambered to a sitting position. “She's not dead.” I pointed to Brandi Lyn's chest. “See?” Walter and JoeJoe studied her chest, which was infinitesimally rising and falling with each slow breath.

JoeJoe cradled Brandi Lyn in his arms. “Oh, thank God. Stay with me, baby, stay with me.”

“I'm sure she'll be fine, young man.” But Walter looked worried, and who could blame him, what with his esteemed pageant being all ruined? “Is there a doctor in the house?” he yelled again.

As I struggled to catch my breath, something flashed before my eyes. Not my entire life, but one specific big thing: Luke Churchville, the best friend I ever had, the boy of my seventh-grade dreams, the one who had been taken away from me… he just might be in the audience. Watching this whole insane scene play out.

Yikes. How awkward.

“Well, I think my work here is done,” I announced as I picked myself up.

Then I saw what could only be Brandi Lyn's mother (maybe because she cried, “Brandi Lyn! Momma's come for you, chile!”) barge onto the stage. As tiny as Brandi Lyn was, her momma was an Amazon. Giant arms, trunks for legs, even her hair managed to be bigger and blonder than Brandi Lyn's, if that was at all possible. The woman was a tank.

And the tank was heading my way.

I had three choices: Get mowed down. Curl up in a ball and hope for the best. Or get the hell out of the way.

I got the hell out of the way.

I leapfrogged forward like we used to on the playground (which I will tell you is a lot easier when you're five and wearing OshKosh B'gosh, instead of seventeen and constricted by a tight cocktail-dress bodice and four-inch Manolos). My maneuver was possibly the most unladylike, awkwardly bizarre performance that has ever occurred on the Bienville Civic Center stage, but it did the trick. Brandi Lyn's momma's foot stomped mere inches from my face, but I was safe and free. If you call landing face-first in front of hundreds of people, your dignity completely and totally demolished, “safe and free.”

Super awkward.

Next thing I knew, not one, not two, but
twenty
doctors ran up onstage. There were so many doctors in the house that night that if somebody elsewhere in Bienville had stubbed a toe, they would have bled to death. While the doctors argued over what was wrong with the girl and peppered Mrs. Corey and JoeJoe with questions, I took the opportunity to park myself backstage behind the rainbow flats for the upcoming production of
The Wizard of Oz
and light up a smoke. Yes, a smoke. Didn't I mention earlier that I was the world's single worst candidate for the Magnolia Court?

“Excuse me, I don't think you're allowed to smoke in here.”

I turned to see one of the other finalists—the one I had nicknamed “the Reader” during orientation because she had had her nose stuck in a book the whole time. Now the Reader was hiding deeper in the shadows of backstage than I was. Interesting. I took a deep, lung-poisoning drag and headed her off at the pass: “I KNOW you're not allowed to smoke in here. Hey, aren't you the girl who was trying to sneak offstage earlier?”

The Reader blushed. “Yeah, sorry. Was that distracting?”

“Are you kidding? It was hilarious! But what's up with that? Do you have someplace to go?”

The Reader glanced down at her hands. “I hate being onstage. I thought that if maybe I could just make it to the edge, everyone would forget I was there. I could just disappear into the darkness.”

“I take it it's a good thing you didn't get put on the Court then?”

The Reader nodded vigorously. “A very good thing.”

“Congratulations, then.” I stuck out my hand for a high five. “My name's Jane, by the way.”

“I know. Our mothers were on the Friends of the Library board together.” It didn't escape me that she said it matter-of-factly. With none of the usual Poor Little Orphan Girl pity. I took it as a good sign.

“Really? My mother knew yours?” Jeez. Mom died seven years ago, and the Reader remembered her from even before that? I barely remembered what I ate for breakfast. And if the Reader knew who I was, then I should know who she was, but I didn't. Except… “Oh! Caroline! But didn't you used to be…” I stopped, mortified as I realized I was on the verge of barreling into a faux pas as big as Brandi Lyn's mother.

Caroline supplied the answer. “Thinner.”

“No, no, that's not… Well, you look great.” Caroline shrugged and I felt like a jerk because obviously she didn't look great—she looked great plus fifty pounds. Not that I like to judge people by their weight because I think that's so unfair, but how do you backtrack after that? Talk about the weather?

Caroline went pale. “Oh no, I was afraid of this.”

Shoot. “Look. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. It's just me and my big mouth.”

“No, not that.
That
.” She pointed toward the wings where I could just barely make out the silhouette of Walter Murray Hill getting berated by a woman I had nicknamed the “Bobbed Monster” in my head.

Caroline sighed. “I knew Mother would be furious.”

“Oh, that's right! The Bobbed Monster… uh, Mizz Upton is your mother!” Martha Ellen Upton had introduced herself at orientation as the Official Etiquette Mistress and Head Advisor of the Magnolia Maids. She then immediately launched into a lecture on how “any girl can be a Southern belle, but Magnolia Maids are the most perfect Southern belles of all. And if you're going to be a Magnolia Maid, we
will
, capital W-I-L-L, require perfection.”

Wow. No wonder poor Caroline had put on fifty pounds.

“What's she giving old Walter a hard time for?” I asked.

But Caroline was gone. She had scurried deeper into the wings. “Her short list!” she called over her shoulder. “The judges didn't follow her short list!”

“Short list? What's a short list?”

Turns out that Mizz Upton wasn't simply in charge of Magnolia perfection, she was also in charge of compiling a short list of names to recommend to the judges. Interesting. According to Caroline, Mizz Upton's ideal candidate was a definite type. She lived in the kingdom of Old Bienville High Society, attended either First Presbyterian or First Episcopal Church, and was educated at either the St. Andrew's Preparatory Academy or the St. Peter's School for Girls. Her family was historically significant in the community and/or filthy rich, preferably both. Sure, a few girls from more humble beginnings did dare to try out for the organization, and Mizz Upton took a look at them, too, but without the right pedigree it was highly unlikely they would make it far up the Magnolia Maid ladder. Mizz Upton pored over all three hundred–plus applications, evaluating GPAs and extracurricular activities and reading each and every two-page personal statement that each girl wrote extolling her qualifications as a Magnolia Maid. From those, she culled a list of finalists who interviewed with the judges and delivered a three-minute speech on some aspect of Bienville history. Out of all of this she concocted a “short list” of the five most Magnolia-worthy candidates, plus a few recommendations for alternates, and handed it off to the judges. Every year for the past decade, the judges had followed her suggestions as if they had been sent down by God Himself. The new Court always consisted of five new Maids and one alternate that Mizz Upton herself had preapproved.

Until this year.

Three of the five girls the judges had just named to the Court were absolutely, positively NOT on Mizz Upton's list. Which was why she was having a conniption fit over there with Walter Murray Hill.

“Which three? Who wasn't on the list?” I asked.

Caroline looked away.

“Don't worry. You won't hurt my feelings. I know I wasn't anywhere near her top fifty. And I'm thinking that the fainting beauty over there”—I nodded at Brandi Lyn and her tank/mother and her EZ Lube boyfriend—“wasn't exactly A-number-one high, either. But who else?”

Caroline remained silent, as if spilling the family Magnolia Maid secrets would cause her instant death.

“Can you at least tell me who
was
on the superspecial, creamy-delight short list?”

Apparently, answering that question was safer, because after a moment, Caroline pointed across the stage to a group of girls in the midst of a hysteria fit bigger than Mizz Upton's. “They were,” she said solemnly.

Katherine DeVille. Ashley LaFleur. Courtney Lennox. Mallory Ross. The belles of Bienville Place. One of our town's more
prestigious
addresses, Bienville Place was a small court of only four houses. Allegedly, Bienville Place was the spot where the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne, sieur de Bienville, set up his first shack and declared it a village during his pirating and pillaging days. But I guess Bienville was too small even back in the 1700s because old Jean-Baptiste didn't stick around long. He went on to found more notable cities along the Gulf Coast like Mobile and New Orleans. Smart guy.

Anyway, of course Katherine, Ashley, Courtney, and Mallory had all been on Mizz Upton's short list. Those girls had been gunning for Magnolia Maid status practically from birth. Okay, since they were five. Seriously, Ashley and Mallory figured it all out during a rainy afternoon session of dress-up. They were playing in Ashley's mother's closet when Mallory got the idea to put necklaces in their hair to look like tiaras and play beauty queens. Ashley suggested they play Magnolia Maids instead, to which Mallory agreed, and after a very brief argument and a pinching fight that Ashley won, it was determined that she would be queen and Mallory would be first lady-in-waiting. The following year, Courtney and Katherine moved to Bienville Place, and they joined in the pageant game as second and third ladies-in-waiting.

How do I know this? They told me. When I was eight. I was over at Ashley's house—our mothers were on the Junior League together so they were meeting to plan some fund-raiser or charity event—and Ashley informed me that they would let me play M&Ms with them as long as I understood that she was queen, her three little BFFs were ladies-in-waiting, and I was just a maid.

“Why?” I asked.

“'Cause that's the way it is,” Ashley replied.

“Well, what if Mallory wants to be queen?”

Mallory chirped up, “Oh no, Ashley's the best choice for queen, Jane. She has it all planned out. She knows what charity we're going to work for and which fund-raiser we're going to throw.”

Ashley nodded. “And I have the recipes picked out for the cookbook, too!”

I didn't buy it. “I think we should play rock, paper, scissors, and the winner gets to be queen.”

Ashley scowled. “No. We are the belles of Bienville Place”—yes, one of their fathers nicknamed them that—“so it's our rules, right, girls?” Her girls all nodded. Enthusiastically. “So are you in or what?” Ashley had asked me. Even back then, Ashley was the D-Girl.

Oh, you know. The D-Girl. The Dictator Girl. The one in charge. The girl who tells everyone else what to do.

But even back then, I wasn't the kind of kid who played well in a dictatorship. I defied Ashley's orders by skulking off to read a book. She's been annoyed at me ever since.

And boy, could that girl hold a grudge. Within seconds of running into her at the Magnolia Maid Pageant Orientation I could tell she still hadn't let it go. The orientation session was held on a Saturday afternoon in late April. Henry, Grandmother's handyman/butler/chauffeur/lifesaver, dropped me off and I walked in by myself, wending my way through the chatting Maid-hopefuls. As I approached each cluster, conversation ceased, then picked up again with a low whisper after I passed.

“Who is that?”

“She looks so familiar….”

“I remember her! She did cotillion with us.”

“Jane Fontaine Ventouras, that's who it is!”

“Oh my God,
she's
back in town?”

“Isn't she the one whose mother died of—”

“I heard she had to leave town because she was pregs.”

“No! Really? She would have been sooooooo young!”

“It's what I heard.”

“Last
I
heard she was at some boarding school in Texas.”

“No, she got kicked out of that one. She's been in Massachusetts, my mom said.”

“Why is she here?”

“She's back for senior year.”

“Oh my God, what is she wearing?”

I looked down at my black tank top and butt-hugging skinny jeans. They certainly were not anything that could be categorized as “garden party casual.”

“My daddy would never let me out of the house in jeans that tight!”

“I can't believe her arms are bare!”

“Sooooooo inappropriate!”

“She has on an inch of eyeliner!”

Normally, I don't give a petunia about looking inappropriate. And at orientation, I was actively trying
not
to be a Magnolia Maid. But I couldn't help that this gauntlet of gossip made me uncomfortable. So I focused on trying to ignore it as I searched for some quiet corner.

One stare was impossible to block out, however. It was so fiery, so strong, that it burned a hole in my back. I knew without looking who it belonged to… Miss Ashley LaFleur.

She looked me up. She looked me down. She subtly jutted her chin in my direction, silently pointing me out to the other Bienville belles. “I am sooooooo sorry, Jane,” she drawled, “but the tryouts for America's Top Street Walker are down at the docks.” Ashley sneered, and her minions laughed.

I sashayed over to the Fab Four and didn't even bother to hide the fact that I was studying them right back. It seemed that Queen Ashley had circulated her own memo about attire, and I suspected it looked something like this:

TO:
My Little Minions

FROM:
Your Leader

DATE:
The First Day of the Best Year of Our Lives

RE:
Total and Complete Magnolia Maid Domination

Girls, girls, girls, it's the moment we have all been waiting for since we first played Magnolia Maid dress-up in my mom's closet all those years ago. We are going to be Magnolia Maids for real! To be the part, we must look the part, therefore, the dress code for orientation is as follows:

Dress:
simple linen sheath in the pastel color of your choice, to be purchased in the Belle Department at Dillard's. I call pink, so y'all can fight over pukey peach, bleh blue, yucky yellow, and gross green. Choose wisely, girls—when we get elected these will be the colors of our Scarlett O'Hara dresses!

Panty hose:
Yes, panty hose. I know it will be ninety degrees outside with eighty-five percent humidity, and that panty hose will raise our internal body temperature to two thousand and five, but our mothers did it, our grandmothers did it, so help us, God, we will do it! Terrifying Taupe by Anne Klein.

Jewelry:
I don't think I need to put this in writing, but pearls. Pearls, pearls, and only pearls. If you don't have real ones yet (
Katherine!
), snag from mother or grandmother.

Hair:
shoulder-length, flipped up on end. Straight and sleek. Held back with your choice of headband: tortoise shell or linen that perfectly matches your dress. ABSOLUTELY NO CURLS. (Mallory, have Mavis house-call morning of and straighten yours out.)

Accessories:
These are the key ingredients in establishing ourselves as a unit! All our accessories must match perfectly!!!!!! So my mom put Burberry plaid pumps on hold at Waldorff's. The dominant color of your shoes will match your dress, but then we will all match with the backup pattern colors: brown, red, and black. Because we'll look like a group, they'll take us as a group, get it? Isn't that genius? Ditto for bags. Burberry clutches that match shoes.

Makeup:
No drugstore brands, girls, even if they do look exactly like department store, and I can tell the difference, so don't even try (
Courtney!
). M.A.C. eyeliner and eye shadow that match dress. Pout lip gloss from Smashbox. Brown mascara by Estée Lauder.

Any questions, please see me, but there better not be any questions because this is the perfect plan, so please execute it to a tee. Speaking of executing, any rule breakers will be immediately executed.

Kidding!

Not!

No, I am! You know I love uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu all!

Yours in Magnolia love,

Ashley

“Thanks for the info, Ashley,” I replied. “I'll have my driver take me there.” I unlocked my phone and perused the screen as if I had just gotten a text. “Oh, darn. This is so sad.”

The girls looked at me. They were curious even though they never would have admitted it in a court of law.

“It's from the Easter bunny.” I pouted for effect. “He wants to know when he can get his eggs back.”

I stalked off, grinning as I listened to the confusion that ensued as D-Girl and her minions tried to figure out what in the world I was talking about.

“I don't get it,” Mallory said.

“Was she saying we look like Easter eggs?” asked either Katherine or Courtney. I wasn't sure which.

I could almost hear Ashley's blood boiling as she exclaimed, “That bitch!” But she swallowed the “itch” at the last minute when Mizz Upton walked in, so it just sounded like, “That biiiiiiiii…”

Alas, Ashley's Operation Easter Egg, brilliant a plan as it was, had just bitten the big bunny. She and her minions now huddled in the center of the pageant stage mourning the fact that while Ashley and Mallory had made it on to the Court, Courtney and Katherine had been passed over in favor of me, Brandi Lyn, and Zara. It was a shocking turn of events.

“It's not fair! Y'all should have made it!”

“No, y'all are so pretty, you deserved it!”

“Don't talk down about yourself. You're as pretty as we are.”

“Prettier!”

“But we're has-beens!”

“They've broken us up!!!!!”

“Our lives will never be the same again!”

Snivel, slobber, wail, gnash, hiccup. I'd say it was a six-Kleenex-per-girl meltdown.

“This is one for the history books,” I said to Caroline. “Ashley LaFleur not getting her way.”

Caroline nodded. “I do feel sorry for Katherine and Courtney, though. They wanted it so badly.”

“One of them can have my place.”

The girls onstage weren't the only ones upset by the selection of the Maids. Down in the audience, heads were wagging and astonished expressions plastered a majority of the faces. The Lennoxes and the DeVilles were fit to be tied. Mr. and Mrs. Lennox were having a heated discussion with the judges. Mr. DeVille struggled to calm down his wife, who was crying almost as much as her daughter.

Ashley finally managed to extract herself from the pain and wiped off her running Estée Lauder mascara. She glanced across the stage, to where Brandi Lyn was being revived by the sea of doctors. She glared at Zara, who looked decidedly uncomfortable as she lingered at the front of the stage talking to a stylish couple who I thought were probably her parents. Then she pursed her lips, set her jaw, and turned back to her girls. “Wipe your tears and fix your lipstick, girls! I don't know who those, those…” She racked her brain for the appropriate insult. “…
creatures
think they are, but this is an injustice to the entire city of Bienville and to the legacy of our founding father. They are
not
taking what belongs to us.”

It took a few minutes, but Ashley's rich, white, upper-class, well-dressed, landed-gentry minions bucked themselves up and set across the stage to fight for their rights.

“Ooooh, this is going to be good,” I said to Caroline. I just couldn't resist. I tossed out my cigarette and followed.

“Uncle Walter? I'm sorry, Mr. Hill?” Ashley called into the wings.

Walter waved Ashley over, looking delighted by the interruption to Mizz Upton's haranguing. He instantly swept Ashley into an affectionate hug. “Ashley, my sweet girl! Congratulations.” He glanced at Mizz Upton, who was doing her best to paste a perfect, poised expression on her face but it only made her look like an angry lemon. “Let's get out of this darkness, okay.”

Walter Murray Hill is the kind of Southern man who punctuates his sentences with “okay.” He's not asking a question, or asking permission. He's saying, “Okay, this is the way things are going to be. Whether you like it or not.” This time he meant that he was moving far, far away from the blustering Mizz Upton and the girls better follow. They did.

“What can I do for you ladies?” Walter Murray Hill asked when they all arrived at the rear corner of the stage.

I lingered close enough to eavesdrop, yet far enough away to appear uninvolved. Ashley beamed. Gone was her righteous indignation. In its place was eyelash-batting sweetness as she played the simpering Southern belle card. What a chameleon in pearls.

“Yes, well, thank you, Uncle, Mr. Hill. Being a Magnolia Maid is such a tremendous honor for me, and you remember my friend Mallory?”

“Geoff Ross's daughter?” Walter shook her hand, squeezing her upper arm with his other hand in the process. “Oh yes. Your grandfather gave me my first job out of college. Fine man. Glad to have you on board.”

Mallory nodded her head so hard it nearly flew off. “Yes, sir, it's such an honor to be honored like this. With this honor, I mean.”

“Mallory!” Ashley jabbed her in the side.

“Oh, sorry, babbling. I'm just so excited about getting to play a part of Magnolia Maid history. Oh my gosh! I get to wear the dress!”

Walter nodded. “You girls are going to have a big year, yes, you are, being Bienville's ambassadresses to the world.”

Ashley clutched at his arm. “Well, that's just it, Mr., oh, whatever, Uncle Walter. We thought, well, it's such a big responsibility. The entire future of Bienville rests on our shoulders, and it's so important that we represent the city well, so that, we, you know, do a good job of recruiting new business and giving our city a beautiful face.”

“And what a beautiful face it will be.” Walter Murray Hill, swear to God, actually
pinched
her cheek. “And you girls are real important to Bienville these days. You know we're trying to rebuild the economy, what with everything that's gone wrong with the oil spill and all. You beautiful girls are gonna help attract some more business. Get some international factories in here and such. That's what's gonna happen, okay.”