Prettiest Doll (2 page)

“Get your butt in here, Olivia Jane,” Mama called from the kitchen.

Mama's a big woman, but she didn't used to be. When she was my age, she was skinny as a rail. “And I ate everything, Olivia Jane,” she always says. “Didn't matter what I ate. I was all knees and elbows.” She has pictures of herself to prove it.

She has blond hair like I do, but she perms it. Perms are old-fashioned and also bad for your hair. Mama's hair would look better straight, but she got used to perming it when she was a teenager and can't stop. I wonder if it'll be like that for me, if I'll get used to doing things one way and then keep doing them even after it's not in style anymore. I bet my kids will roll their eyes when I'm not looking.

Mama was sitting at the kitchen counter looking at cookbooks. I knew without her saying anything that she was looking at cake recipes. She likes seeing how different cookbooks tell you to do different things. She likes changing her favorite cake recipes to make them more her own. Mama is definitely a perfectionist when it comes to cakes.

“Olivia Jane, just look at yourself! ” Mama said, peering at me over her reading glasses.

I looked down at my black hoodie and jeans and black socks. I looked fine to myself.

“How you gonna practice in jeans?” Mama said.

“I just got home. I haven't had time to change yet.”

“Well, get a move on!”

I could hear her grumbling as I rounded the corner and headed down the hall to my room. Saying things like “Honestly!” and “I ain't got all day!” Which made me feel bad, because Mama does work hard, harder than just about anybody else's mama I know. Still, I knew it wasn't being tired or rushed that was making her grumpy. It was just the sight of me: stick-straight hair, plain jeans, no bright colors, nails without polish, no false eyelashes or mascara. It's hard for Mama to look at me when I look like everyone else. She won't admit it, but I know it's true.

The afternoon sun was almost gone, but my room was still hot. I slid open my window a crack for breeze. Then I went to the closet and pulled out my pageant evening wear. Mama bought it new off eBay. “That's a pronghorn antelope just for you,” she said when the box arrived in the mail. I knew that meant the dress had cost five hundred dollars, which is what Mama charges for some of the big game and exotic sheep.

I held the dress against me and looked in my mirror. It was a pretty dress. I'll say that. A burgundy satin bodice, sleeveless, to show off my nice arms. And a burgundy sash with a removable flower. We'd probably keep the flower on. It was more feminine that way, Mama said. The skirt was tea length, white with four layers: white satin attached to a netting for fullness, another layer of white satin, and then two layers of fluffy white tulle. The outside layer had delicate burgundy flowers sewn all around. And the whole thing came with matching burgundy satin gloves and a hair band with a crown of burgundy flowers and burgundy and pink ribbons down the back.

Mama says burgundy is a good color because it makes the judges think of Christmas.

I stared at myself behind the dress, imagining what it would look like on. Even when I heard Mama calling, I just kept staring. Then, finally, when I knew I couldn't put it off anymore, I slipped out of my jeans, unzipped my hoodie, and stepped into the skirt. The satin felt cool against my skin. The netting was stiff and crinkly, like tissue paper.

Then I stared at myself in the mirror some more. It was the weirdest thing. I wasn't there. I had disappeared. Suddenly I couldn't catch my breath. It was like being underwater or buried in the ground, the feeling I had—that I was invisible, that I could scream and no one would hear.

“Olivia Jane, for Lord's
sake!
" Mama called.

I stared and stared. All I could see were burgundy flowers and folds of white tulle, like a snowy field. I felt fear and anger surging through me, and all I could think was that I was in there somewhere, under all that snow, and somehow I had to get out.

LIKE this,” Mama said. “Like this.”

She stood where the kitchen blends into the dining room, arms carefully at her sides. I could tell that, in her head, she was wearing a gown with petticoats and tulle, and gloves, and maybe diamond earrings, which I knew she'd always wanted. She was not thinking of herself in her blue sweatpants and faded pink Creech's Bakery T-shirt.

“Careful steps, like this,” Mama said. “And smile.
Smile.”

We'd done this a million times before. Maybe two million. I knew all about pageant walking and twirling.

“And then you stop, like this. And then put your foot here. You see? Just like this.” Mama waited until I looked down at her feet. She was barefoot. Her toenails were yellow and cracked and unpolished, because she was too fat to bend forward to paint them.

“And then you turn. Like this. Smiling the whole time. Over this shoulder and then over this one. Like this. See?”

I sighed. I couldn't help it.

“Well, you're so dang smart, I guess you don't need any help from me!” Mama sounded mad, but I knew she wasn't. She just wanted me to want to watch her.

“We've done it so many times!”

“Not
right,”
she said, lowering herself onto one of the chairs. “Don't matter how many times you do it if none of them's right.”

“If I do it one more time, can we please eat?” I was so tired. And I still had homework.

“One time
right
,” she said.

I hauled myself up to standing. The netting on my dress was making me itchy. And I was afraid that maybe I was sweating and getting stains under the armholes.

I went into the kitchen and stood where she could see me from the dining room. I remembered to stand tall and smile. My smile felt fake and pasted on, but Mama was nodding.

“You're just so pretty, Olivia Jane,” she said, all dreamy for a second. Then something in her face hardened up. “Now go,” she said.

I walked carefully, thinking of my arms, my feet, my straight back. Smiling. Looking over my right shoulder, then flipping my head around and looking over my left. Still smiling. Or I thought I was, anyway.

Mama nodded.

“A little stiff. You want to look relaxed,” she said.

“I
am
relaxed.”

“Well, you look like a rubber band, all wound up,” Mama said. But she pushed herself out of the chair. “Okay. Enough for now. We still got three weeks.”

I felt my insides unclench. “Now can we eat?”

“Well, I gotta cook something, don't I?” She shuffled into the kitchen, opened the freezer door, and peered inside. “What do you want, baby? Pizza? Mac and cheese?”

“Pizza. And a salad.”

Mama said for me to make the salad, and to make enough for just me. Without telling her, I tore off enough lettuce for both of us. And cut up an extra tomato. Mama should eat more salad.

 

Mama took a big bite of pizza and said, “You got Miss Denise tomorrow at four o'clock.”

“I know.”

“So you'll come right home after school. You won't hang out with Imogene at the barn.”

“I
know.”

“And you'll practice your song tonight. After you finish your homework.”

I sighed. “It sounds terrible. I sound terrible.”

“That's what practicing is for, right?”

“But, Mama—”

“Olivia Jane, how many times do I have to tell you? Nobody sings good without practicing. Even the real stars practice. Even Reba. And Miss Denise is going to get you a lesson with Mrs. Elsie Drucker. She says we can squeeze in a few lessons before the pageant.”

Mrs. Drucker had taught Brett-Ellis Baker, who is practically a legend in Luthers Bridge. She won every pageant there was to win in southwestern Missouri, and then, to top it all off, she came in third in Junior Miss. She got a lot of scholarship money and now she goes to Mizzou. Mama thinks Brett-Ellis Baker walks on water.

“Mama, about the singing—”

Mama closed her eyes, warding me off. “Olivia Jane, do not start with me.”

“It's so expensive.” Maybe that would sway her.

Mama opened her eyes and reached across the table. “It's worth every penny if it helps you be the Prettiest Doll,” she said, grabbing my hand.

There was so much love in her eyes. And so much wanting. It shut me up, even though the words were right there, just ready to tumble out over my tongue.

“We need those lessons if you're going to win that crown,” Mama said. “And I'll work as hard as I have to to pay for them. It don't bother me one little bit.”

I hate being poor. Mama always says we shouldn't feel sorry for ourselves, because we have a house and food to eat, and that I should stop grousing. So I don't say it out loud anymore. But still.

Mama let go of my hand and straightened up a little. She picked up her half-finished slice and took a huge bite, all the way to the crust.

 

The next day, after school, I walked the three blocks to downtown. It was still only three thirty, so I went to Turner's for fudge.

Turner's General Store is on the town square, across from the drugstore. It's been around since my grandma was a girl, and maybe even before that. Most of the kids don't go there anymore; they'd rather get smoothies at the Bike Trail Café. Turner's doesn't have smoothies. But it has a candy case with almost every kind of candy you can think of. My favorite is the peanut butter fudge, which Merle Turner makes in the back. It's a secret recipe.

I've always loved Turner's. When I was little, I used to watch the popcorn machine while Mama shopped for fabrics and trim for my pageant costumes. I loved the dark oak walls, the narrow aisles, the bins full of buttons and ribbons and sequins and beads, the displays of plastic flowers, the shelves bulging with soft skeins of yarn. I liked walking slowly up the toy aisle, not touching the metal cars, the plastic eggs full of bandage-colored Silly Putty, jacks and little rubber balls, creepy plastic dolls with painted-on faces and tufts of coarse, uncombable hair, tiny troll figures to twist onto the eraser end of your pencil. Teachers hated those trolls.

There was a bin full of marbles, all different colors and sizes. When I was little, I couldn't resist plunging my hands into them, feeling their cool glassiness on my skin. I used to wonder what it would be like to dive down to the bottom of a swimming pool full of marbles and look up at the colors lit from behind by the sun. Could you breathe, under all those rolling balls of color and light? Would there be air down there?

I sat at the counter and Merle Turner didn't even get a menu for me. He knew what I'd be wanting.

“How was school?” he said, rummaging behind the counter for a sheet of waxed paper.

“Okay.”

“You getting ready for another one of them beauty contests?”

“Yeah. But they don't call them beauty contests anymore.”

“Why not?” Merle was hunting around for an extrabig hunk of fudge. He's the kind of man—tall, bald with a gray fringe, sunburned, fingers scarred up from being stuck all the time with fishhooks—who looks like the last thing he'd want to be wearing is a starched white apron, but that doesn't stop him. He has three in the back so if he gets a stain on the one he's wearing, he can switch to a clean one.

“ 'Cause it's not just about beauty. You have to have poise and talent.”

Merle said, “So when's the next one?”

“Three weeks.”

He set the fudge on a plate and put it in front of me. Then he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a little carton of milk. “You ready?”

“I guess.”

He put the carton down by my plate and pulled a straw out of the jar next to the register.

“Don't sound very sure about that.”

“I'm never sure at three weeks,” I said. “I get surer as I go.”

He laughed. “Well, Janie Tatum's sure. She says you're a shoo-in to win.”

He meant Mama. I wished she wouldn't go around town talking me up.

“I don't think about winning,” I said.

“Well, no harm in thinking about it.” Merle set the straw next to my plate and watched as I took a bite of fudge. “Pretty good, huh?”

I nodded, speechless with butter and sugar and peanut butter happiness.

Merle turned away, heading back to the kitchen. “Not too much of that, now. You don't want to be splitting the seams of those costumes they make you wear.”

He's an old man, always nice to me. He's known me since I was a baby. I didn't say anything about how an old man shouldn't be saying anything about my weight or how I look. Because I wasn't even sure it was true. When you do pageants, it's like you're giving people permission to talk about your looks. They don't think it might be embarrassing for you. They think that's all you are.

I took a long time eating and drinking, to make the fudge last. I decided to eat only half of it. That way, I could eat the rest after Miss Denise, as a reward.

After a little while, I felt someone staring at me and slowly turned to look. Two stools down was a boy I didn't know. He was probably ten or eleven, and handsome, for a little boy. A half-finished chocolate milk shake sat in front of him. A duffel bag lay at his feet. Not a school backpack: the kind of thing you could stuff clothes into.

He was really staring.

“What?” I finally said.

“You do those weird JonBenet Ramsey things?”

JonBenet Ramsey was murdered when she was six. She did pageants. It was the first time most people had ever heard of them. She kind of gave pageants a bad name. People started connecting pageants and murder in their heads.

“You shouldn't talk about JonBenet like that,” I said.

“I didn't mean
she
was weird. I mean the pageants.”

He didn't talk like a ten-year-old.