I had her now. Aint Hat, the old bat, was curious about Elvis. That meant she liked him but would die before she’d admit it.
“Do you want me to?” I turned on my innocent face. “I thought it might not be good manners to open it in front of you. That’s why I left it out there on the doo . . . commode.”
She sighed. “At least you’re making an effort.” She patted my hand. “Go ahead, Julie, dear. Open your letter. I wouldn’t mind hearing what Mr. Presley has to say myself.”
Mama E’s mouth flew open, and she burst out laughing.
“After all, Elizabeth, times are changing. Hurry up, Julie. I always did want to read a letter from a king.”
Chapter 19
MINT JULEPS IN THE AFTERNOON
I didn’t want to open Julie’s letter from Elvis any more than Mama E wanted me to, but Aunt Hattie’s eyes brightened as she eyed it. There was no excuse I could give for not reading it to her. Mama E and I exchanged looks that spelled doom. Taking my cue from a slight shrug of her shoulders, I slipped a fingernail under an edge of the flap and slid it across the envelope, taking care not to tear it, and not to let Aunt Hattie see that my nail polish was chipped.
A little thrill wiggled through my innards as I withdrew the folded note. Elvis Presley had touched it, held it in his hands, written it to me! I paused. Actually, he had written it to the real Julie, but for now I was she, as Mama E had taught me to say. It got my goat when she answered the phone and the person on the other end asked for her. She always said, “This is she.” Drove me nuts. I told her, “It don’t sound right.” For which I was given a hearty scolding and made to write, “It doesn’t sound right” two hundred times.
“Hurry up,” Aunt Hattie said, nudging my arm so hard it caused me to leave a tiny rip in the last inch of the flap.
“Cool it!” I exclaimed. “I’m keeping it for posterity, and it’ll be worth a lot more someday if it’s intact.” Maybe it could be glued back and Julie would never know it had been opened.
“Speaking of which, are you still ‘intact,’ young lady?”
“Intact? You mean . . . ?”
I could feel the flabbergasted look on my face. Never in all my born days had I heard anybody talk like that. And these folks I was hobnobbing with were supposed to be high classed. Maybe I wasn’t squatting in such tall cotton after all.
“Well?” Aunt Hattie’s bifocals made her scrutinizing eyeballs the size of walnuts.
In for a penny, in for a pound, I thought.
“If you mean have I had sexual intercourse, the answer is no.”
I thought to goodness she’d fall out on the floor.
When she caught her breath again, she said, “We don’t use language like that in proper society.”
“What do you want me to call it? IT?”
“Call it what Elizabeth has taught you to call it.”
Mama E said, “Petting gone too far.”
“In the backseat of a car?” I asked.
Aunt Hattie drew herself up. “Or anywhere else?”
“The answer is still ‘no,’” I said and flipped open the note Elvis had sent.
June 12, 1957
Dear Juliet,
Aunt Hattie interrupted. “What’s this Juliet business?”
I sat there in a clueless state.
“He calls her that,” Mama E said, automatically reaching for her cigarettes that were no longer there. I couldn’t help snickering at the defeated look on her face.
Aunt Hattie poked my arm. “Read on.”
I am still out in California shooting Jailhouse Rock, but we’re taking a break, so I have a minute to write to you. In only two more weeks I’ll be moving into Graceland. Mama and Daddy and Grandma are already living there.
On June 28, I’m doing a benefit appearance in Memphis at Russwood Park for St. Jude’s Hospital. There’ll be other celebrities appearing with me: Lou Costello, Jane Russell, Ferlin Husky, and even that gorgeous actress, Susan Hayward. (She’s not as gorgeous as you, however.) I wish you could come up for it. Ever been to Russwood Park? Maybe you know, that’s where the great Babe Ruth played ball.
Can you believe I am a real celebrity now? I remember not too long ago having a pig sandwich with you at the Old Hickory in El Dorado. These are dazzling days for me, but you have no idea how often I wish I was back there in that little town that so represents America, just having fun with the gang. You’re so lucky to live there. Everything I wished for that night has come true. That’s how I know I was right when I got the notion you were my good luck charm. I’m even a movie star now! Jailhouse won’t be released until the fall, but you gotta put it on your calendar and see it. This summer you can see me in “Loving You.” It’s scheduled to be released in early July.
Listen, honey, I gotta run. They’re getting ready to shoot a real important scene of mine. You take care, you hear? And write! Send it to Graceland. 3764 Highway 51 South, Memphis, Tennessee, and Mama’ll hold it for me till I get there.
As always, remembering,
Elvis
Everybody was quiet when I finished. I knew Mama E felt the same way I did—like Julie had died or something, and we were here reading a letter meant for her that we had no business seeing. Even Old Aunt Hat, in her ignorance of the situation, kept silent for about a minute and a half.
“Well, well, well,” she said at last, smoothing the lap of the polka-dotted dress. “He sounds like a fine young man. That letter has made me revise my opinion of him. He must be a good person to have for a friend.”
She patted my arm. “And I’m glad to hear that you’re a nice, honest girl with high moral standards. Your grammar could use a little touching up, but I’m sure we can attend to it.”
With that she began the struggle to get to her feet from the couch, which wasn’t low, but for an elderly person with maybe arthritis or something the cushiness made it not the easiest seat to get up from. I reached out to steady her.
“I don’t need any help,” she said. “I’m going to take a nap. Wake me up if I sleep longer than an hour, Elizabeth.”
At that very minute, the telephone rang. Mama E jumped, and so did I.
“I’ll get it,” I said, bounding past Aunt Hat to the extension in the breakfast room.
“Hello.”
I wasn’t expecting the voice that answered me. My knees went flimsy, and before I could get a grip, the one word that could taint all my efforts popped out of my mouth.
“Julie?”
Mama E’s face registered shock, and Aunt Hattie, I’m sure, nearly dropped her drawers.
The next instant, my brain performed emergency resuscitation on my tongue and shot lifesaving words out of my mouth.
“This is Julie. I mean, this is she.”
A look of pride accompanied by relief came over Mama E’s face. Her efforts to polish me up had not been in vain. Aunt Hattie looked confused but said nothing.
“Carmen, what’s going on?” Julie demanded over the phone.
“Can I call you back later? My Great-Aunt Hattie just got here from New Orleans.”
“Oh my God,” Julie said. “But I need to talk to Mama.”
“Not possible at the moment,” I said, throwing a smile to Aunt Hat. “It would be rude of me to talk on the phone now. Maybe while she’s taking her nap I can call you back.”
Julie’s voice sagged. “Oh. Okay. Carmen, is everything all right?”
“I hope. Till later, then.” And I hung up.
Mama E looked like she was about to have a stroke, and Aunt Hat looked pleased enough to call the lawyer and leave more than a little to Elizabeth. She hobbled the rest of the way through the den, left a kiss on my cheek when she passed me in the breakfast room, and went for her nap.
When we heard the click of her door shutting, I staggered to a couch and fell on it, totally wiped out. I had just survived what Aunt Hattie would call a situation similar to the siege of Atlanta. I hoped with flying colors. I looked questioningly at Mama E, w
ho, slumping in her easy chair and fanning herself with her hand, looked none too able herself to plow the south forty, like Scarlett O’Hara.
I squirmed. “Did I do good?”
“You mean, did you do well? Yes, except for a few close calls. Was that Julie on the phone?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“As soon as we hear Aunt Hattie snoring, we’ll call Julie back. Did she sound all right to you?”
She hadn’t, but I didn’t want to tell Mama E. It might upset her so much it would be the last straw, and the last straw could not fall now.
“She sounded fine. We shouldn’t risk a call back with Aunt Hattie here. She mustn’t pick up even a fragment of the conversation. After all, it isn’t every day the opportunity comes to inherit a little something, is it, Mama E?”
“What did you call your mother?” came a voice from the dining room.
My heart paused, then fluttered. How much of what I’d said had Aunt Hattie heard?
“She called me ‘Mama E,’” Elizabeth said, picking up the ball and running with it. “I forgot to offer you a toddy, Auntie,” she said, obviously to distract her. “Would you like one? It’ll help you fall asleep.”
“That’s what I came back for,” she said. “The Champagne they served on the train had a moreish flavor.”
Elizabeth’s smile was too bright. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you Champagne, but how about a mint julep?”
“If you have the silver goblets to serve it in,” Aunt Hattie said.
Elizabeth got up and headed to the kitchen to dig out the Kentucky bourbon.
“I have the ones my mother left me, engraved with an L for Lawrence.”
“Thank goodness they aren’t engraved with an M for Morgan,” Aunt Hattie said.
My temper flared. “Would an M change the flavor of the booze?”
Both Aunt Hattie and Elizabeth raised one eyebrow at me.
Being like Julie was harder than I had ever imagined, but I had to keep working at it so in the eyes of everyone I’d do more than be like her, I’d be her.
PART THREE
I, JULIE
Chapter 20
THE TRUTH COMES OUT
I hung up, disappointed enough to cry. Phone calls were restricted, and Miss Oldenburg, the matron, had a list of people each girl was permitted to be in contact with. Only two phones for our use in the home made for a constant line of girls in the hall, where the phones sat out in the open, affording no privacy. Curious ears could always overhear every word of a girl’s conversation.
I’d expected Mama to answer, so it was a shock when Carmen picked up, and more of a shock to learn that Aunt Hattie was there. I instantly remembered she was coming for a visit, but so much had happened since I came here, it was a wonder I remembered anything about my past life, as I refer to it now.
I’d so wanted to hear Mama’s voice that, when Carmen abruptly hung up, I came close to sliding to the floor and sobbing. But already I was at the point of needing help to get up again, and there was no help anywhere in this hell hole. If Mama knew, it would kill her.
That first evening when Mama had brought me here, the matron was on her best behavior. She had escorted us into the designer-decorated visitor’s salon, where girls are allowed to go if and when they ever have a guest.
“I’m Olivia Oldenburg, house matron. We are so glad, Mrs. Morgan, that you’ve chosen Happiness House as the place for Julie to complete her term.”
Mama seemed encouraged and relieved as she reached to shake hands with Miss Oldenburg. By the time we’d finished having coffee and cookies, Mama was pouring out her upset over my pregnancy to this skinny woman who wore a black dress with long sleeves that looked like funeral attire and from whose French twist not a hair went astray.
It wasn’t until Mama kissed me goodbye and the heavy oak door was closed and locked behind her that Miss Oldenburg revealed to me the realities of Happiness House.
“All right, Julie, get your bag and follow me. I’ll take you to the sleeping area,” she said, her drawling friendliness changing to a tone of brisk, no-nonsense when we were alone.
Even though I hadn’t brought many items of clothing with me, the bag was heavy with school books so I could keep up with my class, my address book, two extra pairs of shoes because my feet were already swelling, and a few cosmetics to keep my spirits up. Mama had said, “If you let yourself go, you’ll become depressed.”
I struggled up the first flight of stairs with Miss Oldenburg throwing impatient glances over her shoulder at me.
“Couldn’t we use the elevator?” I asked.
“That’s for delivery men and the help. Exercise will be beneficial for you and the baby.”
So I’d struggled on with my bag. As it turned out, there was no help and no delivery men either. The elevator was for parents or visitors who insisted on seeing the accommodations.
Miss Oldenburg got aggravated enough with my slow pace that for the last half of the third flight of stairs she gave me a hand.
“This bag is so heavy, one would think you were planning on making this your permanent home,” she chided as we lugged it over the top step.
The door of one room was open off the hallway, and I automatically headed toward it. Inside, curtains of flowered chintz hung over the two windows, and a matching bedcover decorated the single bed. A private bath adjoined the room.
Miss Oldenburg jerked my arm as I took a step inside.
“That is only the model room.”
She had led me into a long dormitory space two doors farther down the hall. At least twenty beds, ten on each side, lined the walls, with about six feet of space between the two rows and about three feet between each bed. Stopping midway into the room, she pointed to a small, iron bedstead with a thin, unmade mattress on a set of springs.
“I’m supposed to share a room with only one other girl. That’s what my mother is paying for.”
She jerked her chin up at my astonishment and gave a snort.
“Dream on. If you’d read your documents carefully, you’d have seen that was never stated. Sometimes there are only two girls in here, but this time of the year we usually have a houseful. Lots of lovey-dovey goes on during the cold months, and that, unfortunately for you, is the case. Yours is the last available bed. If you don’t want it, you can call your mother and have her come back and get you. I have a waiting list a mile long.”
I was too stunned to speak.
She tapped the toe of one high-heeled shoe.
“Staying or going?”
“Staying,” came out, sounding half strangled when I answered, dumbfounded at the extent to which we’d been misled.
“Then make up your bed. You’ll find clean sheets in the laundry room next door. It looks like someone has absconded with the pillow. Look around, and when you find a bed with two, help yourself to one.”
“Where are the other girls?”
“In the rec room. They’ll be here before you know it. The bell for lights out rings at nine thirty.”
She walked, business-like, to the door, and the fading echo of her heels clacked out of the room.
The springs had squeaked when, left alone, I sank down on the bare mattress. I don’t know how long I sat there, staring ahead without “seeing” anything.
How could this ever have happened to me?
I was in with the popular girls. I made good grades. I was from a good family. Even though Mama and my father were divorced, and my father was a drunk who had sired an illegitimate child, like Mama said, we had good bloodlines.
The answer came swiftly in the form of the memory of that night when I told Farrel, “I’m ready.” With it came, at long last, the recognition of my ignorance and the naiveté that had allowed me to trust him. I put my hand on the bulge in my belly, the consequence of my terrible need for acceptance and love. I had brought this on myself. It was done and could not be undone.
In reality, Farrel bore half the blame, but that wasn’t the way
the world looked at it. The girl bore full responsibility to use the only surefire birth control in existence—the word “no.” And following that dictum was the undisputed rule that failing to use that little word would bring all the blame down on her head. Farrel would never bear any culpability, and he would never suffer the consequences I had to suffer.
That thought had brought the remembrance of Frances lying in the coffin, so pale in her red dress. Maybe I would have been better off had I gone the route she went and was now lying in my own coffin.
Beneath my hand, there came a movement. For a moment, I didn’t understand, and then a thrill the likes of which I had never known went through me. My baby had moved. The doctor had said it would move sometime between sixteen and twenty-five weeks, and then the child would become an inescapable reality for me. Now that had happened. The baby was a real person, and it was alive because I was alive. At least I was half alive.
That was what had saved me on that awful day and helped me to get the sheets and make up the bed so I wouldn’t collapse on the stained mattress.
Chapter 21
HAPPINESS HOUSE
When the girls came into the dorm from downstairs, someone commented that the empty bed was filled. Another said, “She’s dead to the world.”
I was faking. If I pretended to be asleep, I wouldn’t have to deal with them when I was so tired. Besides, I wanted to be a fly on the wall and listen to what they had to say. It proved disappointing. The rest of their talk was broken pieces of conversations, and not much of that except from the girl who’d taken my pillow.
“Pilferer,” she said.
“What?” asked another.
“She a pillow thief,” the girl said.
“Didn’t you steal hers?”
“Watch yourself,” the accuser said. “There was nobody in that bed then.”
The approaching clack of Miss Oldenburg’s heels, followed by her police-woman’s voice announcing “lights out” prevented my sneaking a peek at the true pilferer.
In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis Page 13
