Chapter 2
Every morning, the first thing Miss Garnett does is come into the office, where I am made to report directly after breakfast. She noses around looking, like I have harbored a criminal in here.
She leans her bony self over my shoulder to see what I am doing.
Have you finished copying out your Bible passage yet, Meg?
Yes, I tell her. And to irritate her, I like to wait a second to add, Ma’am.
Me and Miss Garnett, we are like oil and water.
She is the lady in charge of the place and generally dresses in a plain, bland-colored number.
Her short yellow hair stays pressed to her head and her face is not ugly, just waxy and flat.
She is also flat across her chest and on her behind.
My mama had all kinds of rounded parts to her and was petite in stature.
I would say Miss Garnett is older than my mama, but I could not say exact since I am not good at guessing the age of people over twelve.
I would get fired if I worked that booth at the fair.
Some time after I was brought here, Miss Garnett got elected chairlady.
That did not just happen out of the clear blue sky.
Miss Garnett has got influence. Since I have that kind of time on my hands, I have put it together how she operates too.
When she is speaking to one of the volunteer ladies here, she looks them right straight in the eye to draw their attention.
If there is a particular point to make, she will slice the air for emphasis.
She slices and slices to where she might as well be slicing her a rib roast. If there is a terrible tragedy or a illness in the volunteer lady’s family or a birthday or the day their mama died, she is sure to remember it.
Miss Garnett does not forget things, and if she cannot pinch you for picking your nose at nine o’clock, she will remember to get you for it at noon.
But what Miss Garnett gets excited most to talk about is somebody she calls the feebleminded woman.
She will stand in the hall and rant on and on about this crazy woman.
And to ensure whoever is listening is listening good, she will stop.
In the middle of a sentence. Then she will go on talking and slicing, and if she had a rope she would probably lasso their damn necks to make them listen to what this feebleminded woman has done now.
And they do listen too. She has got them concerned.
I have wondered right much what this feebleminded woman looks like.
By what I hear, I picture a mean ugly woman with a hunched-up back and ten imbecile children born by ten different daddies, white, black, or blue, whatever you please.
I sort of see them all living in a great big shoe, though I believe that might be from a old picture book I saw.
Miss Garnett says this woman is dragging our great state to a even more sunken level.
Well that must be a low place since my mama always told me the state of Mississippi was full of nothing but cotton, hypocrites, and horseshit, and the best thing a Mississippian could do was get the hell out.
Ask me, Miss Garnett likes rules more than she likes people.
Ava, who was here before me, said when the Big Phony took over as chairlady, she made a lot of new rules.
Such as, big girls were not allowed around the babies or toddlers anymore.
And now, we are not even allowed mail—she put a stop to that too.
Ava said it’s because a letter might make us cry, and that is all these volunteer ladies need added to their day.
And we are sure not allowed to ask where in the hell did my mama or daddy go to.
It was that last rule what gave me the most trouble at the beginning.
When I first got here, I begged every lady on a daily basis, Where is she?
What do you know? Why won’t you tell me?
Oh I threw temper fits. Racked my own brain for where she might have gone to.
I had a list going: Maybe she got in a car accident and is bleeding by the road.
Maybe she got kidnapped and is being held for ransom.
Maybe she decided times were too hard to look after a girl.
Leave her behind for the charity ladies to deal with. That one scared me bad.
Whenever I asked, all those ladies would say to me was, You just count your blessings and be glad you’re here, young lady. And quick as they could, go rock a baby.
Those big girls can’t be helped anyway, they say. Those big girls are past helping.
They say, Poor white trash, they’ll grow up and leave their own babies behind. Do they think I cannot hear them?
Miss Garnett likes to slice her hands and say, It starts with the mother and spreads to the child, unless somebody does something to stop it.
Miss Garnett, she kept her eye on me from the very beginning.
Anytime I was so much as two minutes late to Sunday chapel or that mealy mess they call breakfast, she would pinch me up under my arm where the skin is soft.
So hard my eyes would smart. Or if she spotted me laughing with Ava or having any kind of a time, here came the pinchers.
She did not do the rest like she did me.
Most days she could hardly bring herself to touch the other big girls, like they smelled bad.
Which some do. Ava said it best: The bitch has got it out for you, and that is a flat-out fact.
One afternoon, Miss Garnett came and got me from the schoolroom upstairs.
I love the schoolroom, you cannot beat it for a place to learn.
Most girls here throw a fit that we are made to attend school year-round, with only a few weeks in summer to give the teacher, Miss Spencer, a vacation.
But not me, I would attend school every day if I could.
I even liked to linger after lessons to clean the boards and straighten up the chairs.
Miss Spencer would sometimes let me watch her grade the spelling papers if I did not breathe down her neck.
It is the only decent room in the house for the big girls and has six long wood tables facing the chalkboard with little chairs, too small for the bigger girls but they fit me fine.
I am puny for my age. Color papers line the walls with words and pictures, Apple, Bird, Cat, Dog, so to help the stupid illiterate girls learn to read.
My mama taught me to read when I was four years old, and if you do not count that F I got in Bible art, I have only ever got straight A perfects.
My favorite subject is READING. If I read something worth knowing, I try and learn it by heart, such as a poem Miss Spencer read us that I found just wonderful.
I kept as much as I could in my head for later:
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul and sings the tune without the words …
I am not sure what goes next, but then it goes, Sweetest in the gale is heard and sore must be the storm, that could abash the little bird that kept so many warm.
For some reason, that poem reminds me of my mama’s dark hair flying out the window of our old car. Her hand waving and hair flying.
That day, Miss Garnett caught me by the arm and told me to follow her down to the office.
I thought, Lord, what now. I had never seen a girl go in the little office before, only that bookkeeper lady who they say flew the coop.
Went to volunteer at the Flower Club or something, oh it was a big fuss with the ladies.
Miss Garnett sat me down at the grown-person desk and set a bag of pennies from the donate box in front of me and told me to count.
Even if Miss Garnett treated me awful, I thought she picked me for the task because I have a good head on my shoulders and that is what gets you places in life, sister.
But ended up it was because Miss Garnett takes a special interest in me.
In the future I would prefer not to have a special interest taken in me.
I figured when I finished counting, I could go do chores with Ava like regular.
Oh we could cut up something terrible together, even sweeping a floor or washing shitty diapers.
But Miss Garnett said, Count them again to be sure, which I took a offense to.
I am not like those stupid illiterate girls here who cannot carry the one or read without following a finger.
When I finished and got the same damn number, she said I had to stay in there until supper, copying Old Testament verses.
Couple days later, it was the same damn thing, and a few days after that.
Go on to the office, young lady, add these such-and-so little papers, write this nonsense.
If she caught me sleeping on the job, she would pinch me and tell me to Sit up.
Spying on me from the hall. Even back then I found that little room stuffy, and it was not near the shape it is in now.
That old window wasn’t yet boarded up, the walls were fairly clean.
Now and then she would get up behind me and watch over my shoulder and comb out my hair with her bony fingers, fooling with it and separating it into parts.
My hair runs down my back and turns near white in summer.
She would mutter things I could not make out.
If I asked her to speak up, she would tell me to hush.
It shames me now how much I enjoyed the hair fooling. My mama used to do that on cold nights in front of the fire. Or lean me back at the kitchen sink to wash it, combing it after. I just fall right apart if somebody fools with my hair.