Never Sit Down in a Hoopskirt and Other Things I Learned in Southern Belle Hell

by Crickett Rumley

  As we all clamored for gloves and hats, Officer Detroit continued. “Now, folks, this is very important. If you see anything that happens to look like oil, DO NOT touch it. If you find anything that has a sheen to it, or anything that looks like this…” He held up a photo of a ball of black, sticky-looking stuff. “It’s a hazardous substance. If you are even the least bit suspicious, call me or Officer Meeks here on over and we’ll take care of it. And if you find any wildlife, birds or turtles covered in oil, same thing.”

  Mr. Walter turned to me. “Jane, how are y’all going to do this?”

  I stepped forward. “So, as everyone knows, we have gotten donations for every twenty feet of beach that we clean up. If you look out in the sand, some of us got here early—thank you, Caroline, Zara, and Brandi Lyn—and put up posts that mark every twenty-foot segment. So I’m thinking every Maid should take a segment with her dandy and get cleaning. Then move on to the next available one when you are done.”

  Teddy Mac raised his hand. “Where should we start?”

  “Uhhh… on the gulf side? Since that will likely be hit first? Is that okay with you, Officer Meeks?”

  “Makes sense. You can work your way into the bay.”

  But Andrew Lancer had another idea. “Or we could have more fun with it.” He spread his arms wide and gestured at the far ends of the beach. “Why not have half the group start on one end and the other half start on the other, and we race to the middle?”

  “Ooh, that sounds fun!” Mallory chirped.

  Officer Meeks frowned. “I don’t know about racing. Could increase the chance of heatstroke and injury.”

  “I concur,” chimed in Mr. Walter. “We don’t want any injuries, okay.”

  Luke kicked at the sand, avoiding looking in my direction. “It sure would make the time go faster.”

  Everyone looked so bummed. And he was right. Why not try to have some fun while doing this truth-be-told odious task? “I agree,” I said. “What if we set some ground rules? No running. Everyone has to take scheduled breaks?” I beseeched Mr. Walter with a glance.

  Mr. Walter looked at Officer Meeks. “This certainly is an enthusiastic crowd. What do you think, Dale?”

  Officer Meeks gave in. “All right. No running, no sprinting, no jumping. Mandatory ten-minute breaks every half hour. Deal?”

  “Deal!” we all screamed.

  I turned to the crowd. “We need team captains!”

  Andrew Lancer raised his hand. “Me versus Luke.”

  “I’m on Lancer’s team!” shouted Ashley.

  “Me too,” screamed Mallory.

  “No, no, no.” I put one hand on my hip. “Nice try, Lancer, but last I checked, you aren’t a Magnolia Maid. Girls? It’s got to be two of us.”

  Lancer stepped back. “Just trying to help.”

  Ashley raised her hand high. “Me!”

  “And you, Jane,” said Brandi Lyn, “since you organized the whole thing.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that challenge.”

  Ashley scanned the crowd. “I get Mallory.”

  “Brandi Lyn!” I motioned for Brandi Lyn and JoeJoe to join me and Teddy Mac.

  “Caroline.” Oh, well that was good. Not being picked last had to be good for Caroline’s self-esteem. But that meant that Zara was on my side. Which I would normally be over the moon about, but it also meant that Luke was on my side, which meant… uh-oh.

  While Lancer, Ashley, James, and crew were high-fiving and congratulating themselves on how awesome their team was, my team had just landed in Awkward-ville. We were all just staring at each other like, gee what do we do now? What with Zara knowing no one, JoeJoe not being part of the crowd, me and Luke avoiding each other like the plague… what a perfect day it was going to be.

  Lancer held up his hand to get everyone’s attention as he outlined the stakes of the race. “First team to the middle marker gets… What do they get?”

  “Pizza bought by the other team at Picklefish,” Luke interjected.

  “You’re on!”

  Then we all took off running despite Officer Meeks’s warning.

  When my team arrived at the end of the beach along the gulf, we all slowed down and surveyed the scene. It was nasty. Trash everywhere. “This must have been brought up by the storm the other night?” guessed Brandi Lyn.

  “Might as well get started,” I said. “Come on, everybody. To your stations.”

  Each pair took a segment of beach and we were off. Once we got down to business, I had to admit that I wasn’t really into it. Picking up trash is mindless but really not that much fun. Plus, I was so weirded out by Luke being there (not to mention his lackluster hello) that I couldn’t even focus. Darn it, couldn’t Mallory have given me a little heads-up? This whole thing was so wrong. Luke was making polite chitchat with Zara, but I could tell he was studiously avoiding me. You would have thought I killed his favorite dog. Where was that sweet boy I used to know on Magnolia Street?

  A few days after Cecilia died, Cosmo sat me down at the house on Bird River and broke my heart. “Jane. My darling. You know I need to travel a lot on business.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “I can’t leave you here by yourself. So your grandmother and I have talked and you are going to go live with her now.”

  “At the house on Magnolia Street?”

  “At the house on Magnolia Street.”

  I just sat there a moment. He was leaving? Without me? “But Daddy, I want to go with you.”

  “I want you with me, too, agapemenee mu, but I’m on business all the time. I live in hotels and airplanes. Those are terrible places for a little girl.”

  “Why can’t you do your business here? Can’t people come meet you here?”

  “Honey, we’re so far away. Bienville is at the end of the world as far as these people are concerned. And our company is growing, Jane. It’s very exciting. I need to be on the move.”

  I threw my arms around him and hugged him tight. “I won’t be a bother. You can have your meetings and I’ll sit in the corner and do my homework!”

  “And where will you go to school? There’s no school on the airplane.”

  “We’ll find a tutor. Please, Daddy.” I sniffled.

  He sighed. “We’ll have visits. You’ll come visit me in Greece, see your grandparents. Or in London. We’ll get you a passport and you can fly all by yourself like a grown-up young lady. That would be very exciting, right?”

  I nodded, but really the answer was a big fat no. Owning a passport and traveling on an airplane by myself didn’t sound nearly as good as having my daddy with me. But what choice did I have?

  “Just promise me I won’t lose you, too, Daddy, please.”

  Funny thing is, when I think about the expression on his face now, I swear it was like his heart was breaking, too. He swept me into his arms. “I promise, agapemenee mu. I promise.”

  He sold the house, moved me to 505 Magnolia Street, left town. Grandmother fixed up one of the formal bedrooms for me on the second floor, making it kid-friendly with flowing curtains and cheery yellow walls and a four-poster bed with a canopy fit for a princess. In the sitting room, we set up a play area complete with a bright-colored rug, shelves filled with board games and books and puzzles. I did a lot of puzzles.

  We built a life together, Grandmother and I. My whole routine changed. Walking to school with Grandmother in the morning instead of being driven from the river house by Henry. Getting picked up again in the afternoon by Grandmother, who claimed she just loved all the exercise she was getting now that I lived with her. Going home to play with Luke rather than reading to Cecilia. That’s something I had done a lot at the end, when she couldn’t turn pages or talk anymore. A Wrinkle in Time, all the Harry Potters and Lemony Snickets, The Boxcar Children, we loved those. Funny to look at it now, all those are stories about orphans of some sort, which is essentially what I became. I wonder how Cecilia felt, hearing me read those books and knowing that she soon would be leaving
me motherless?

  Early mornings with Grandmother, late afternoons with Luke. Those were my favorite times of day. School, however, sucked.

  After Cecilia died, no one would talk to me. All the girls in my grade just ignored me, including Alexandra Maxim and Maria McBride, the ones I had been closest to. They didn’t pick me for their kickball team. They didn’t invite me to join them in the cafeteria, only made small attempts at polite conversation. It was like I suddenly had some contagious disease that they would all catch if they were nice to me. Grandmother tried to explain that it wasn’t my fault. They felt uncomfortable about my mother passing away and they didn’t know what to say to me, didn’t know how to handle me. “Give it some time. They’ll get over it,” she said.

  In the meantime, it was a pretty lonely experience. I couldn’t wait to get home to Luke. Each day after snack, I would sit reading in the window seat of the music room, one eye trained on his driveway, expectantly waiting for Mrs. Churchville’s SUV to pull in, home from picking up Luke at the private boys’ school across town. He would burst out of the car and over to my house always ready with a plan. “Let’s build a tree house!” “Wanna go over to Le Moyne Park and play catch?!” “Hey, Jane! My dad just got me Grand Theft Auto! You ready to lose, sucker?” Each afternoon, Luke swept into my lonely existence like a tidal wave of fun. We raced, ran, chased, played through every corner of every yard in our block on Magnolia Street. We were best friends. He didn’t treat me like I was a pariah. He was always there. Always. Afternoons with Luke made me feel like a normal human being. Every once in a while, if suddenly I looked a little sad, he would say, “What’s wrong, Jane? Everything okay, Janie? Want a Coke? Want a hug?” and he’d give me a Coke or a hug or a noogie and say, “All right, ditch the tears, Janie. Time to ride bikes!”

  Luke Churchville was unbelievably sweet to me when nobody else was.

  I couldn’t imagine where that Luke had gone.

  By eleven in the morning, we had made some progress with our trash duty, but it was slow going because the beach was so wide. And we were starting to realize that Officer Meeks had been right about the dangers of cleanup duty—it was hot, sweaty, grueling work. The humidity had kicked in big-time, so during the next mandated break, my team and I waded—shorts and T-shirts and all—into the shallow waters of the gulf. We all figured that since the oil had not hit shore yet, we might as well enjoy the water while we still had the chance!

  “Hate to say it, but this cleanup kinda sucks,” someone said.

  “Yeah,” someone else replied.

  “Are we ever going to finish?”

  “I think the longer we work, the longer the beach gets.”

  Then silence. That was the way it had been most of the morning. Each pair did some chatting on their own, but there had not been much interaction. We were a bit of a mismatched group. Or you could just say we didn’t know one another.

  JoeJoe broke the tension, pointing to the next section we needed to clean. “Beer cans, beer cans everywhere and not a drop to drink.”

  Luke grinned. “Nice one.”

  Dear Lord. That grin. Did it have to be so adorable?

  Teddy Mac gestured at the other end of the beach, where Team Ashley was taking their break. “Hey, why are they having more fun than we are?”

  It was true—Ashley’s team seemed to be having the time of their lives. Even from a distance, it was obvious that she had lost her bad attitude, what with the boys being there and all. Although to be honest it looked like she was getting her boyfriend, James, to do most of the work for her. “Oh, James, could you pick up this bucket and move it for me? It’s too heavy.” “Eww! That is so disgusting! James, will you come get this?” James played the chivalrous gentleman at every juncture and did Ashley’s bidding without an iota of complaint. He must really love her, I thought. Meanwhile, on more than one occasion I saw Lancer swing Mallory up on his shoulders, he-man style, then run into the water with her. At that moment, Caroline and her cousin Jules competed to see who could run farthest into the bay before they fell into the water.

  “Ahh, the in-crowd,” I said. “Always knows how to turn any situation into a party.”

  “So, Jane, if they’re Team In-Crowd, what are we?” Zara asked. “Don’t we need a team name?”

  “How about the Outcasts?”

  “The Unwanted.”

  “The Throwaways.”

  “The Redheaded Stepchildren,” JoeJoe added. And with that we all laughed.

  “Clearly, we have a winner,” I announced. “We are the official Redheaded Stepchildren, even though not a one of us has red hair.”

  That turned the tables on the day in a big way. Suddenly, everything became a game for Team Redheaded Stepchildren. When JoeJoe found a lone Air Nike, Luke took a picture with his iPhone and put it up on his Facebook page asking if anyone had seen the other one. We entertained ourselves by posting more pictures of gross and lost things on our Facebook accounts. A disgusting bag of King Chicken leftovers now covered in maggots. Ewww. A deflated basketball. Some poor baby’s dirty cloth diaper. Ewww, ewww, ewww. Our howls of laughter drew the attention of Lancer. He barreled on over. “What’s going on? Too much laughing, not enough working.”

  Zara showed him a picture she was putting up on Facebook for her friends back in DC to see. It was of a handmade dollhouse she and Luke found settled amongst the beach grass. Colorfully painted like a Victorian house on the outside and covered with tattered wallpaper on the inside, it was completely devoid of furniture and dolls. Kind of sad, really.

  To my surprise, Lancer was actually affected. “Some poor little girl is missing her house, isn’t she?” He yelled over to his crowd, “Guys, let’s get some chatter going!”

  Within about twenty minutes, everyone was posting. Mallory had set up a Twitter account called “Magnoliariffic” and started tweeting about how much we had already cleaned and how much more we had to go. We were all getting comments and feedback and postings—a lot of support—which gave me an idea.

  “Hey, everybody,” I called out. “Gather round! Let’s make our posts work for us. Write something like ‘there’s still time to help.’ That people can come on down and donate or put on some gloves and get to work.”

  Ashley’s eyes lit up. “More hands on deck? Love it!”

  I gasped. “Ashley, did you just agree with me?”

  “Yes, but word to the wise. Don’t get used to it.”

  Everyone got busy on their smart phones and within half an hour, no lie, we had a CROWD! Brandi Lyn and JoeJoe’s friends lived nearby and used the beach all the time, so they were the first to show up. Then more friends and friends of friends drove down from town, and suddenly there were tons of people out grabbing gloves and bags and joining in. The power of social networking, I thought. We might be able to finish this endless project after all. A few folks asked if they could give us some more money, so JoeJoe cleaned out a plastic toy bucket somebody had salvaged and Brandi Lyn made a sign that read, DONATIONS HERE. It started filling up with dollar bills and change, and Zara’s friends up north started pledging to send some cash our way. I was a wee bit surprised to see Katherine and Courtney show up, even if they had dropped their lawsuits against the Magnolia Maid Organization, but they kind of just ignored Team Redheaded Stepchildren—typical!—and joined Team In-Crowd for the pickup. Our fund-raiser was turning into a big ole B’ville social event, so obviously they needed to make an appearance.

  Total news flash! And this time I mean that literally! The local news actually came to interview us. Midway through the day, the Local News 7 van pulled into the parking lot, and reporter Maven Rice started interviewing various bystanders. Lots of folks talked about what a great thing we were doing for the city. Then Mr. Walter dragged Ashley and me toward Maven. “It is your duty as team captains to give her the story, okay.”

  Maven stuck the microphone in my face. “Ms. Fontaine Ventouras, how did you come up with the idea of a beach cleanup as a fund-r
aiser?”

  For the second time that day I blanked. What was happening to me? “Well…,” I floundered. “We really, thought, we wanted to help our community and… um, this seemed like a good idea….”

  Ashley, however, transformed herself into a passionate public relations expert. “Well, Maven, I think the question is, how could we not do this type of fund-raiser? As Magnolia Maids, we are Bienville, and Bienville is its natural resources. Our resources are threatened so we have to defend them.” My jaw dropped. Go, Ashley! “And we are so grateful to everyone who has turned out today and supported our cause. You all have been wonderful.” She waved to all our fans off camera, eliciting a giant cheer. Damn, she was good when she wasn’t being all angry and vindictive.

  Maven nodded. “On another note, I understand that you girls have yet to elect a queen?”

  Ashley and I exchanged glances. “That’s true,” I said.

  “That’s very unusual for this stage of the Magnolia Maids process, is it not? Tell me, what is the holdup?”

  Ashley and I didn’t even look at each other this time. What in the world were we going to say? “Well…,” she started.

  Miraculously, I found my sea legs and finished her sentence. “There’s no holdup here, Maven. What’s happening is that this year’s Court is a very diverse Court. Unlike previous years. We are from different parts of town, different schools. Two of us have just recently moved back to the area. So we are taking our time to get to know each other before we select a queen.”

  Wow. That fine excuse burst out of my mouth like a cannonball at the circus. I hesitated to even look in Ashley’s direction in the event she was balking at my answer. To my immense surprise, she was nodding right along with everything I said, even adding to it. “We just want to make the right decision,” she said. “We need the best leader possible to guide us through all the appearances and events in the year to come.”

  Maven beamed at us. “Well, so far, it looks like you’re doing a great job as a team. Good luck, Maids.” She looked back into the camera. “I’m Maven Rice for Local News 7. Back to you, Chuck.”