Southern Lady Code

by Helen Ellis

  And they did.

  “And they’re all gonna want to hear about that party.”

  And they did.

  Folks still do.

  Laura, aka Trixie, says, “It’s been one of the stories I tell people now, and they can’t believe it happened. If it were 2019 instead of 1983, it would’ve gone viral, made national news, and had a lawsuit or two sprinkled in.”

  Ellen, aka Ralph “Stay Gold” Macchio says, “I wasn’t a fan of Halloween then and I’m really not now. And I thought I came as Pony Boy. Outsiders rule!”

  Me, I’m still friends with all of these women, who despite Papa’s practical jokes, turned out okay. All of us are married. Three of us have kids and three of us chose not to. But we all stay home on Halloween night. We hold the candy bowls. We look through our peepholes. Because sometimes, under exactly the right circumstances, we like to be scared.

  TODAY WAS A GOOD DAY!

  There wasn’t a clown in my closet. A doll did not turn its head to look at me. A music box did not start playing on its own. A pair of shoes wasn’t sticking out from beneath my drapes. A man in a hazmat suit didn’t knock on my door. A snake didn’t jack-in-the-box out of my toilet. A hair on my face was not growing out of my face.

  No one said: “Keep still, this’ll be over before you know it.”

  No one asked, “You’re not from around these parts, are you?”

  No one said, “Bless you!” when I sneezed alone in my home.

  No one slapped me across the face and told me to relax.

  I didn’t yank oxygen tubes out of my nose. I didn’t back out of a room slowly. I didn’t crawl through an air duct. I didn’t chop off and bleach my hair in a gas station restroom. I didn’t carve a pistol out of soap. I didn’t burn off my own fingerprints. I didn’t make a rope out of bedsheets. I didn’t sit on a suitcase on the shoulder of a highway. I wasn’t abducted by a “weather balloon.”

  I didn’t fall to my knees and scream, “Noooooo!”

  I didn’t raise my hands toward the heavens and scream, “Whyyyyyy?”

  I didn’t ask, “Was none of it true?”

  I didn’t answer, “What in the world were you thinking?”

  I didn’t dump my purse over the head of someone texting in a movie theater. I didn’t dump my purse over the head of someone texting in a movie theater again. I didn’t windmill my arms into a fistfight. I didn’t act as my own attorney. I didn’t draw straws in prison. I didn’t pick the lesser of two evil tattoos. I didn’t cut out newspaper articles, tape them to a wall, and connect them with red string. I didn’t reenter society.

  I didn’t say, “You don’t know me!”

  I didn’t say, “There’s someone in here!”

  I didn’t say, “There is too a ghost!”

  I didn’t say, “What’s the worst that could happen?”

  I didn’t choke on a cupcake for breakfast. I didn’t bleed out from a Cling Wrap serrated edge. I didn’t reach into a bag of chips and get bit. I didn’t make a deal with the Dirt Devil and get my soul sucked out by a vacuum cleaner.

  STRAIGHTEN UP AND

  FLY RIGHT

  Congratulations, you are sitting next to the most considerate person on the plane. Seat 17B, that’s me. I’ll fly for up to four hours in this middle seat with my arms pinched to my sides and this mass-market paperback book in my hands. Yes, the print is tiny, but that’s why I wore my glasses. I’ve sacrificed my vanity to make you, Seat 17C, and this guy by the window in 17A more comfortable.

  By the way, before you got here, 17A and I took a vote and closed the shade. The reason I have no fear of flying is that I imagine myself a parrot in a cage under a blanket. Polly wants sensory deprivation! What’s there to see once we’re up in the air anyway? Clouds. Crop circles. Been there, done that.

  17A is already asleep. Isn’t he darling? His head lolls on his neck pillow like a ball-in-cup game. As soon as he sat down and we finished exchanging the same pleasantries that I’m exchanging with you, he drugged himself “with something expired he found in his dead father’s medicine cabinet.” He’s not going to disturb us (or anyone else) until after we land and someone shakes him like a can of paint.

  Pardon me for saying so, but you might have thought to check your carry-on bag.

  Honestly, nobody wants to help you put your bag in the overhead bin. Nobody wants to watch you hoist your bag like a sack of bricks and Barbies onto your seat back, then onto your clavicle, and then into the overhead bin. No, your bag won’t fit that way. It goes wheels out. Now you’ve got a stewardess involved. I mean flight attendant. I mean woman who wants you to—as a Delta employee once begged on my flight out of Atlanta—“Put your tush in the cush so we can push.”

  What’s so bad about waiting ten minutes for your bag to come through on the carousel? I’d rather wait by the carousel than wait in a hot metal tube that smells like Chick-fil-A. What are you so afraid to lose? You can fit your tube top in your purse.

  Neatly. You roll a tube top.

  9F’s handbag looks like a laundry sack. It wouldn’t fit under the seat in front of her, so now a flight attendant is carrying the sack like it fainted and trolling the overhead bins for a hole. 9F is Facebook live-streaming the flight attendant, who is just doing her job. 9F is going to get herself kicked off this flight and delay our departure.

  My handbag sits stiff and obedient under the seat in front of me like a magician’s top hat. It has many secret compartments that hold many secret things. If this plane goes down on a deserted island, I’ll be the last one to sunburn (SPF 50), get sick (Airborne), or eat the pilot (peanut M&M’s). Worried about terrorism and can’t get through security with 3.4 ounces of pepper spray? A knee sock and a roll of quarters goes unnoticed through an X-ray machine; swing it like a chain mace, and you’ve got yourself one hell of a weapon (Charles Bronson in Death Wish).

  See, I told you I was considerate. We should form an alliance before takeoff. In case of emergency, 17A will never know what hit him and everyone else on this flight is too self-absorbed.

  Hear that? 16A has called someone to tell him she’s boarded the plane. If these are the last words she chooses to tell her significant other before possibly tumbling out of the sky to her fiery death, then 16A is a horrible lover. It’s like going to bed with a man and talking dirty about your dust ruffle.

  I kiss my husband good-bye before I go to the airport, and then I call him when I get to my hotel. In between, I read my book. But he doesn’t know that. A secret to our happy marriage is: I keep an air of mystery. Where am I now? Who am I talking to? Did I poison 17A? Just kidding! It’s like I’m an international spy. Or an air marshal.

  And I am.

  Do you know how many times I’ve seen something and said something?

  Three times. And it’s about to be four.

  They’ve made the announcement to turn off our phones, but 15D hasn’t complied, so we’re all going to die. I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but it’s going to happen and we are all going to perish pointing and yelling at him.

  But you’re the one on the aisle, so go ahead and gesture to a flight attendant about how 15D is endangering us. Go on. You’ve seen something, now gesture something.

  No? Okay, I’ll do it.

  Boy, that flight attendant is really laying into him; but 15D deserves it, and I’ll admit I get off on watching him pay for his crime. For the rest of this flight, I’ll revel in 15D’s chastisement like other women might delight in a lap dance from Channing Tatum. Are you getting a contact high from sitting next to me, an everyday hero?

  I’m a national treasure. I’m like a wheat penny. I may look small and out of circulation, but if we find ourselves iced into a mountain, altitude sick, and bartering for oxygen masks, I’ll work. You can count on me.

  The pilot says we’re not
taking off for another twenty-five minutes. This doesn’t bother me, don’t let it bother you. You didn’t bring a book (or a fistful of pills like 17A), but today’s planes are like day cares or hospitals: there are TVs eight inches from all of our throats. Look, they’ve got HBO. Find something to watch in which women have hair as long and as wavy as washboards and erections outnumber dragons and zombies.

  Don’t be embarrassed. We’re all adults here.

  Except for that crying baby. It’s somewhere behind us, I don’t know its seat. See how I’m not craning my neck to give an infant the stink eye. I told you I was considerate. It’s not the baby’s fault that it’s crying. It’s not the parent’s fault either. Babies cry. Don’t complain. No plane was ever delayed because a baby was crying. No plane ever crashed because a baby was crying. So, face forward and pump up the soft-core pornography volume.

  The pilot is making another announcement. He’s paused your candlelit sex scene (and everyone else’s marathon of The Real Housewives of Detroit Argue Next to Decorative Pillows) to tell us we’re grounded for another half hour. He’s turned off the “Fasten Your Seat Belt” lights. If we need to use the restroom, now would be a good time to go.

  You’ll want to go to the restroom right after me. I was not put on this earth to straddle a commode. I wipe down a toilet seat like I’m giving it a tetanus shot.

  I’m back. Why didn’t you follow me? Did you peek out the window? Did you finger my book? Just kidding! See? I’m hilarious. My sense of humor will be a ray of sunshine if our plane death-spirals into the frozen tundra.

  You know what else will be a comfort? My lips against yours. My husband has given me permission to kiss whomever I want if my plane goes down. I am the kind of woman who always imagines kissing my seatmate, be he man, woman, or child of eighteen. Let’s be serious. If I’m going to be identified by my dental records or a Q-tip swab of DNA, I’ll kiss a sixteen-year-old. And that sixteen-year-old will die happy and thanking me for showing him the ways of womanhood. “The ways of womanhood” is Southern Lady Code for tongue. So, brace yourself! Once this plane is at a ninety-degree angle, I’m going to ride you like Slim Pickens rode the bomb in Dr. Strangelove. Yeehaw!

  I told you I’m the most considerate person to sit beside. I told 17A the same thing. If he were awake, he would confirm this.

  HALLOWEEN PEOPLE

  I RSVP’d yes to a Studio 54 party because I’d been to one of the host’s parties before and it was my idea of a good time: me and my husband surrounded by fifty to sixty fabulous forty- to sixty-year-old gay men.

  I told my husband, “I’ll buy a wrap dress and do my hair like Jaclyn Smith.”

  My husband liked this idea.

  He asked, “But what will I wear? I gave away my Mr. Kotter wig when you Marie Kondo’d the apartment.”

  I said, “A fat tie or baseball shirt with an iron-on? Don’t worry, we’ll think of something.”

  But we did not go to this party because I chickened out.

  No matter how much I want to be, I am not a dresser-upper. Don’t misunderstand. I’m put together. “Put together” is Southern Lady Code for you can take me to church or Red Lobster and I’ll fit in fine. My closet has dresses, skirts, slacks, shirts, and blouses. I’m put together enough to know the difference between shirts and blouses. A shirt is stiff. A blouse billows. See, I’m educated, but there is a level of dress-up that reminds me of Halloween. And I don’t do Halloween. I do Christmas.

  In this world, there are Halloween people and Christmas people. Halloween people trick-or-treat, enter costume contests, and march in parades. Halloween people like to be seen, but Christmas people like for you to come over and see what they’ve done to their place. We decorate our houses. We dress up trees. I am the kind of woman who has more tree skirts than skirts. My sister makes me a new one every year to match my tree theme. See, I have tree themes. I am a Christmas person.

  I want to be a Halloween person, but I don’t like costumes. And, to me, a costume is anything I have to buy to attend an event: a wrap dress (Studio 54 party), a hat (Kentucky Derby party), or something that bares my upper arms (ball, benefit, or banquet). I don’t want to shop for anything with a “th” sound on the invite either. You know, the sound Daffy Duck makes when he lisps, Youuu’re dethpicable!

  After the Studio 54 party, we got an invite to our friend Nicho’s fiftieth.

  I almost RSVP’d no right away because it was black tie.

  Black tie is the dressiest of dressing up.

  The last time I wore black tie was for Nicho’s fortieth birthday party, which was black tie, but also a masked ball, which is dress-up on top of dress-up. For that, I bought a $300 red satin cocktail dress from a SoHo boutique. For my mask, I bought a pair of two-dollar black glittered sunglasses from Ricky’s (a Halloween store). Party guests who’d special-ordered Mardi Gras masks from New Orleans or outbid strangers on eBay for masks from the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut said my sunglasses were cheating. They let me slide because of my red cocktail number, but I didn’t ace the dress-up test. Now it’s been a decade since I dressed up and I worry that if don’t pick the right outfit I’ll be turned away at the door.

  It’s happened before. At twenty-five, my husband and I were turned away at Lexington Bar & Books, which has a jacket-required dress code. I was cold and he’d wrapped his suit jacket around my shoulders. To be allowed in, they offered him one of theirs. I’m sure it was navy and nondescript, but I remember it as clownishly shameful: neon plaid and twelve sizes too large. We left.

  My husband urged me to RSVP yes to Nicho’s black tie party. He said, “We’re not going to a restaurant; it’s our friend’s birthday. Nobody’s going to turn us away. Come on, we can’t not go because we don’t have anything to wear.”

  By we, he meant me.

  My husband owns a tuxedo. To prepare for Nicho’s party, all he had to do was let out the waist an inch. Me, I had to commit to go and gamble that I could find something appropriate to wear. I’d given away my red dress because I’d honestly thought I’d never go to a formal event ever again.

  My friend Karen said, “It’s okay, it’s not your lifestyle.”

  It’s true. My lifestyle is writing, poker, puzzling, movies, dinner with friends, housework, and naps. If these were clues on The $100,000 Pyramid the answer would be “Things You Do in a Retirement Home!”

  But dressing up is Karen’s lifestyle. She was born and raised in New York City and tells me her grandmother used to wear cardigan sets and Ferragamos to sit in her own living room. Karen inherited clutch purses, jewelry, and furs from her grandmother. Like ghost sightings in mine, good taste runs in her family.

  Having good taste is different from being put together. You can be put together, but not have good taste. But you can’t have good taste and not be put together.

  Women with good taste wear skinny headbands with a pair of animal ears for Halloween. This year, from the bangs up, Karen was a leopard. But that doesn’t mean she’s a Halloween person. Karen’s apartment is decorated like Jonathan Adler’s take on Versailles, so she is a Christmas person. When she offered to take me shopping, I jumped at the chance.

  Karen said, “I’m a good friend, so I’ll tell you what doesn’t look good on you.”

  I reconsidered my decision.

  She asked me for a budget.

  I bid high: five hundred to a thousand dollars.

  She said, “I’m a good sale shopper.”

  Karen led me into a cornstalk maze of markdown racks at Saks, and I wanted to flee. But shopping is fun for Karen. It’s a special skill like cup stacking or texting two hundred characters a minute. She strolled right over and plucked a Stella McCartney burgundy velvet tuxedo jacket out of a haystack.

  She said, “If we can find pants to match, what would you think about wearing this instead of a dress?”

  I
was instantly relieved. I’d thought black tie meant an empire-waisted Kate Winslet from Titanic. Something with gloves up to my armpits. Or something with feathers. If a tuxedo was okay for my husband, it should be okay for me. But the option had never crossed my mind. When did I lose my fashion sense?

  I had it in 1975 on my first day of school. As proof, I keep framed photographic evidence on top of my chest of drawers. In the picture, I’m four years old and wearing a lime-green gingham jumpsuit with a ruffled collar. I have a bowl haircut and a lick-the-bowl smile. My Mary Janes are planted on shag carpeting, and I am staring straight into the camera. I have the look of Scout Finch with the confidence of a drag queen. Maybe Mama dressed me, but I am ready to walk into kindergarten like it’s the House of LaBeija.

  As a teenager in Alabama, the eighties were easy. You matched. You matched everything. You matched your shoe color to your clothes color. You matched your eye shadow to your top. Clinique’s Black Honey lipstick went with everything, so to further accessorize you dipped your arms into wooden bangles or elastic bracelets with plastic gems. Maybe you wore a headband—not a skinny one, but one as puffy as a Shrinky Dink. The headband was fabric and matched your purse, which came with reversible slip-on covers so they could match more. It was easy. Turquoise went with turquoise. Blush went with bashful. There was a book that told you if you were a Winter, Spring, Summer, or Fall. You looked forward to dressing up for homecoming and prom.

  But at some point after high school graduation, I lost my coordination.

  Mama blames Boulder, Colorado.

  I came home from college in a prairie skirt and Reeboks. I was a waifish, yet sporty Laura Ingalls Wilder. Mama pulled over the car on the way home from the airport to give me a talking-to. She said, “Helen Michelle, this is the South. We roll our hair and we wear lipstick.”

  Me, I blame the nineties. It’s hard to bounce back from grunge. The grunge theory was: swimming in clothes makes you look skinny. Or: inner beauty is badass. I honestly can’t remember. All I know is that after Doc Martens and flannel shirts, it’s hard to wear stilettos and Spanx.