Upside Down in a Laura Ingalls Town

by Leslie Tall Manning

  I thought about my makeup, hidden away on an attic eave. That old cowgirl Martha had been right—there was no need for it out here. By the time half my chores were done, streaks of black and tan would be dripping down my cheeks like mime paint. I was Brooke Decker disguised as Plane Jane disguised as Dirty Girty, and I would be for a while.

  I dried myself off and re-dressed. On my way back to the cabin, the trees heard me sigh. I sighed because I was dirty, no matter how hard I scrubbed, even with the old lady soap I’d bought at Murphy & Sons. I sighed because even though I brushed every day with that chalky toothpaste, my teeth felt like they were covered by a thin film of plastic. I sighed because minutes after my nooks and crannies were clean, they filled with dirt again. I sighed because I would feel this way until mid-September, with a camera catching me nearly every time I let out a stinky, miserable breath.

  On Friday morning, just after breakfast, a knock came to our door. The three of us raced to see who it was, seeing as how visitors weren’t exactly lining up to say howdy to the Deckers. It was Nanny, the Millers’ fake slave, standing with Rusty behind her, the early sun barely making a dent in the shade of the porch. A bright pink dress lay stretched across her arms.

  “Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Decker, sir, but Miss Prudence ask me to come down here and see if Miss Brooke will come for tea today.”

  “She has chores,” Dad told her. “They can visit during church—”

  “Oh,” Nanny said, shaking her head nervously. “Miss Prudence say I got to do Miss Brooke’s chores so’s she can go visit.” I briefly wondered if Nanny had used that amazing slave dialect during her Charlotte interview.

  “Brooke can do her own chores,” Dad said.

  Nanny’s face filled with worry, like she truly believed she’d be punished if she didn’t obey orders. She held up the dress. The bottom fell to the floor in a swooping wave. “Miss Prudence say I got to help you dress, Miss Brooke. She want you lookin’ nice when you go on up there.”

  I couldn’t give a rat’s ass about seeing Prudence, but I was dying to wear a different dress, and I’d get to see inside that awesome house.

  “Dad?” I pleaded.

  “No one is doing your chores for you, and that’s the end of it.”

  Rebecca Lynn said, “I can milk Gretchen and brush Willow. The animals like me.”

  “That’s a lot of work,” Dad said.

  “I’ll make the beds before I go,” I said.

  Rebecca Lynn added, “Laura Ingalls would do it for her sister Mary.”

  For the first time ever, my little sister’s brown-nosing was working in my favor.

  “You will pay your sister back,” Dad told me.

  I squealed like I’d just been invited to the prom and kissed my dad on a bristly cheek.

  Rusty followed Nanny and me up the ladder and sat at the top of the rectangular hole, his camera panning the room.

  “This is nice,” Nanny said, standing in the center so she wouldn’t hit her head on a beam.

  “I have to share it with my sister and my dad. Which totally blows. My sister kicks in her sleep and my dad snores like a grizzly.”

  Nanny laughed. Her teeth were straight and white and her smile was beautiful. Her skin was beautiful, too. She would have been one of those women perfect for the 1800s because she didn’t need any makeup.

  “I help you turn them mattresses so’s you can get dressed,” she said as she pulled the quilt from my bed and placed it on Dad’s. “You gotta wash that tickin’ or the dirt’ll start growin’ bugs.”

  “Bugs?” We already had the world’s supply of black flies in our kitchen, and no-see-ums swarmed around the outhouse no matter how much lye we threw into the hole.

  “Invisible bugs that make your skin itch. Next time you does your laundries, you boil them sheets.” She demonstrated how two people together could lift the mattress, shake it up and down, and turn it over. She said if my sister helped it could be done. “If you don’t shake it so a few days a week, your bed will get lumpy. Before you knows it, the straw will poke at you like a porcupine.”

  As we flipped the mattress, something beneath the ropes fell to the floor. Nanny held it up for me to see, accusing me with her eyes. “What is your corset doin’ under here?”

  “I hate it.”

  “You don’t be wearin’ a special fine dress without one.” She laid it on the bed next to the dress.

  I turned to Rusty. “When we’re done making the beds, I’m going to get undressed. Maybe you could film my sister collecting eggs instead of me in my underwear. I’m still underage, you know.”

  As Rusty let out an indifferent snort and headed back down the ladder, I said under my breath, “Perv.” Nanny didn’t respond. She was really good at pretending Rusty was invisible. I wondered if I would ever be able to do the same.

  “How do you know about this mattress-flipping thing?” I asked her after we’d flipped the larger mattress.

  “I learnt it.”

  “Just for the show?”

  “So’s you can visit with Miss Prudence.”

  I helped Nanny lay out the quilt on my bed, and then went to my Dad’s. “I hate having so many chores.”

  “Well, there’s lots of things I hate, but I still has to live with ‘em.”

  “You could always make up an excuse to leave.”

  “I gots a contract with the Millers.”

  What she meant was she had a contract with Hollywood, like the rest of us. I lowered my voice. “Why are you really doing this?”

  “So’s you have time to get ready for tea.”

  “I mean, why are you doing this?” I fanned out my arms. “Why are you here? What made you want to be a slave for four months? I can’t imagine going that long—”

  “Listen to me now. I gots strict orders not to talk to you about nothin’ that don’t have to do with helpin’ you get ready for tea.”

  “Orders from the producers?”

  “Orders from the Millers.”

  “But that doesn’t make any sense. They can’t tell you what to—”

  “Enough!” she said, tightening her jaw and pressing her lips together. Her eyes became black marbles in the dim room. Her fun slave accent vanished. “Do you want to go for tea or not?”

  I nodded.

  “Fine. Then let’s just do what we’re expected to do.”

  I didn’t understand why she was getting so upset, but her accent disappearing in a flash made me uneasy, so I dropped it.

  Once the quilts were back in place, Nanny held up the pink dress while I slipped out of my ugly one. On top of my slip, I tied up the corset. Nanny held out the dress for me to step into and pulled it up over my shoulders.

  As she buttoned up the back, I said, “This would look perfect with a hoop.”

  “Get yourself one.”

  “They’re too expensive.”

  “Thatta be the truth. Maybe one day I shows you how to make one.” She looked around the room. “Got a hairbrush?”

  I grabbed the soft bristled brush from the rafter where it sat above the tiny mirror. “Sorry my hair is so greasy,” I said, embarrassed.

  “Use some vinegar.”

  “Vinegar?”

  “Lotsa white ladies uses the vinegar. But I has my own recipe: almonds and citronella oil. Takes that grease away and smells fine. Leaves your hair feeling soft. I can make up a paste for you.”

  “Really? That would be awesome.”

  She finished brushing my hair, twisted it into those stupid Princess Leia donuts, and spun me around to tie my bonnet.

  “Are Prudence’s curls natural?” I asked.

  “No ma’am, she uses a curlin’ iron.”

  “What? How—”

  “I put the iron in the fire, and then I curls her hair.”

  “Oh.”

  “It takes time to do it thatta way.”

  “I wish I had that kind of time.”

  “Cut up some rags.”

  “What for?�
�

  “You cut ‘em into strips and tie ‘em up in your hair like so. Then you sleep in ‘em, and in the mornin’ you gots curls.” She placed a warm hand on my cheek. “They’s some red roses growin’ on your fence. Take a petal or two and rub ‘em on your cheeks. Smell good and you look alive too.”

  I was growing with excitement thinking about the rose petals until I remembered what covered my feet. I was at least an inch taller than Prudence, so my hideous black boots stuck out like a pair of rotting logs.

  Nanny followed my gaze. “I got some extra material for some trim, if you want it.”

  For some reason, the more I pictured fixing up my new dress and curling my hair, the more I thought about Wendell Murphy. Even those silly sideburns started to seem appealing.

  “You thinkin’ about a boy, now, ain’t you?” Nanny asked me.

  I grinned like an idiot. “No.”

  As she followed me back down the ladder, I thought to myself, Nanny is one smart cookie.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Rusty and his pet camera followed Nanny and me up to the blue mansion. The hill wasn’t so steep, but it was long, and the air was crazy humid, so by the time we reached the house, my armpits were sweating profusely beneath the pink dress.

  We walked up the front porch steps. They were much straighter than ours, and there were six instead of three. Nanny rang the doorbell. I felt like a trick-or-treater.

  The door was opened by a pretty older version of Prudence. And a larger version: Mrs. Miller was pregnant. Her round belly stuck out like she carried a watermelon. Her long, ruffled smock dress was straight out of an antique costume catalog.

  “You must be Brooke Decker,” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I’m Mrs. Miller. Won’t you come in?” She turned to Nanny as we stepped through the doorway. “I want to take a bath this morning, and I want the water warm, not like yesterday when you tried to boil me like a shrimp.”

  Nanny nodded and quickly made her way down a hallway toward the back of the house.

  Beneath my feet lay a beautiful green and black Oriental rug. Painted portraits hung on top of striped wallpaper, and framed prints of flowers lined the staircase. A round table with scrolled legs sat in the middle of the foyer with a vase of white roses on the marble top. Above the table hung a fixture with oil lights instead of modern bulbs. The entryway was bigger than my entire cabin.

  Jealousy rose up in my throat.

  “The dress fits you well,” Mrs. Miller said, closing the door behind Rusty and me.

  “Yes, ma’am” was all I could think to say. To my right a pair of French doors led to a parlor straight out of Southern Living magazine. A painting of a hunting dog with a pheasant in its mouth hung over an ornate white mantel. A small piano sat against one wall. Dark furniture—a tall desk, a bookshelf, and a coffee table—matched the wood trim of the two old-fashioned sofas facing one another, each one covered in pink velvety material. In the corner by a large window sat a wide love seat with an ottoman beside it. A leather book lay open on the seat.

  “Prudence waits for you in her playroom,” Mrs. Miller said. “It’s up the stairs, first door on the right.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said again. “Thank you.”

  Rusty trailed behind me and Carl passed us coming down as I made my way up the wide sweeping stairs, one hand lifting the long dress, the other gripping the beautifully polished railing. I felt like Scarlett O’Hara. Without the hoop, of course. At the top of the steps ran a long narrow hallway. Three doors on the right and three doors on the left were all shut, and if it weren’t for the open door at the opposite end allowing sunlight to spill into the space, it would have been as dark as our cabin.

  Curious, I walked to the end of the hall, the floorboards slightly squealing under my feet. I pushed open the back door and stepped onto a porch, with stairs leading down to a stone path below. Halfway up the path sat an outhouse. Beyond the outhouse was a large stable. A few yards behind the stable, an apple orchard stretched as far as I could see. In the middle of the orchard sat an unpainted wooden outbuilding on short stilts. Smoke made its way out of the chimney.

  “Is that where Nanny lives?” I asked Rusty, not expecting an answer, and not getting one.

  A girl’s humming entered the hallway, so I headed back to the playroom door. I reached out my hand and touched the doorknob. The humming stopped, and Prudence’s voice slipped under the door: “A lady always knocks.”

  I was suddenly standing inside the pages of Great Expectations, picturing beyond the door a long banquet table covered in spider webs, moldy food, and a decomposed wedding cake.

  I tapped lightly against the wood.

  “Entrée vous.”

  The instant I opened the door, light and color attacked my senses. Four windows stretched from the hardwood floor to the incredibly high ceiling, two on the opposite wall and two facing the front, and each framed by ruffled peach curtains, lace ones beneath, letting in the sunshine. The floor was partially covered by a large blue and peach Oriental rug more elaborate than the one in the foyer. A writing desk sat in one corner, and a chaise lounge in another, a pretty quilt folded across the back. An open toy chest sat in front of one of the windows. Dolls of all kinds—ceramic, stuffed, naked, dressed—were scattered about. Four of the dolls had been set up in fancy clothes at a tiny table near the desk, a miniature tea set ready. A bookshelf with glass fronts held onto at least fifty leather-bound books. A white mantel like the one in the parlor was lined with colorful glass figurines, everything from horses to elk to elephants.

  And then there were the walls. The bottom half was wainscoted and painted a lighter shade of peach than the curtains, but it was the top half that really got my attention. Growing up in a Southern river town, filled to the brim with Colonial and Victorian houses, I’d seen wallpaper that would send the average girl tripping. But these walls weren’t wallpapered. They were hand painted. On one wall sat a knight on a white horse heading up a sage-green hill toward a castle in the distance. On the next, a king and queen sat on thrones, their crowns covered in sparkly jewels. On the third, a mermaid floated on a giant seashell in a bright blue-green ocean. But the fourth wall was insanely awesome. It depicted scenes from different fairy tales and fables. I spotted Cinderella standing on a staircase with the clock at midnight behind her; Snow White in her red cape; the Evil Queen gazing at herself in the mirror; Rapunzel leaning out the window of a high tower, her long golden hair reaching the ground and curling around a tree trunk.

  A chandelier was suspended from the ceiling’s center, and beneath that a table larger than the one for her dolls sat covered with a starched white table cloth, a chair on either side. The chairs were covered in dark purple velvet, and the wooden backs were scrolled like they belonged in King Arthur’s Court.

  The black man I’d seen at the wagon’s helm on Sunday stood next to the table, wearing a black suit and bow tie. He held no expression and his hands were folded behind him.

  In one of the chairs at the table sat Her Highness.

  Rusty scanned the scene, and Prudence smiled at me as I crossed the threshold. “Please, shut the door behind you.”

  She wore a dark green dress with a big bow tied in back and a hoop skirt that forced her to sit on the very edge of her chair. The ruffle on a pair of frilly bloomers could be seen peeking out from beneath the hem. Pale blue satin slippers covered her feet, and a big green bow, not a bonnet, was pinned to the side of her curly head. To go with her dress she had added white gloves that met her elbows. All she was missing was a white cane and a lamb.

  I was shocked. Impressed. Pissed off.

  Mostly pissed off.

  “If you leave your mouth open,” Prudence said, “the flies will think you’ve got honey inside. Come.” She motioned to the empty chair with a gloved hand.

  I shut my mouth and walked over to the table. The man pulled out my chair.

  “Thank you,” I said as I sat across from m
y hostess.

  “Tea, Josiah,” Prudence told the man.

  Josiah leaned over and poured dark tea from the dainty porcelain pot into each of our cups.

  “Sugar, Miss?” Josiah asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “I mean, yes, please.”

  He raised the lid from a small glass bowl in the table’s center and picked up a pair of tiny tongs, plunked one white piece into my cup, another into Prudence’s.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  He nodded and stood upright again, like a fake Halloween butler.

  “This is sa-weet,” I told Prudence.

  “You haven’t had a sip yet,” she said.

  “Not the tea. This house. This room. All of this.”

  “Most girls would have thanked me for inviting them here.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Thanks for the invite. And thanks for the dress.”

  “I see you’re wearing your corset.”

  She picked up her cup with her pinky in the air, blew on the tea, and sipped it. I tried to imitate her, silly as it looked and stupid as I felt.

  “Josiah,” Prudence said. “Crumpets.”

  Josiah went to the writing desk and picked up two small china plates. He placed one in front of each of us.

  I stared at my plate.

  Prudence laughed. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had a crumpet before.”

  “These are English muffins.”

  “That’s silly. They aren’t muffins at all.” She turned to Josiah. “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  Josiah bent over and removed the lids from two tiny white bowls. I picked up the little knife from the center of the table and started to dip it in the butter. Josiah looked confused.

  “No,” Prudence scolded me. “Let him do it. It’s his job.”

  The man bent over again and spread a tiny bit of butter on my English muffin crumpet thingy. “Jam, Miss?”

  “Yes, please,” I said uncomfortably. “Thank you.”

  “You don’t have to offer him a thank you,” Prudence said as she nodded for Josiah to give her jam. “He doesn’t expect it.”