Swan Place by Augusta Trobaugh

me.
    “I thought I told you to change out of that good dress,” Aunt Bett said. Then she added, “Dove, honey, when I bring you dresses to wear, you gotta take good care of them. You’re more’n welcome to the clothes, because you’re of a size right in between my Darlene and my Cassandra. But I gotta have those dresses back in good shape, for passing along to Cassandra.” I didn’t mind Aunt Bett telling me all that again, even though I’d heard it so many times. Every single time, in fact, that she handed down anything of Darlene’s for me to borrow.
    “Yes’m,” I said. “In just a little minute, please?”
    She looked resigned. I looked right at Roy-Ellis, saw the misery in his eyes, and how his hair was hanging in his face, and him holding that glass of iced tea and knowing how much he wanted a beer.
    “Roy-Ellis,” I said so carefullike. “You don’t need to find anybody to take care of us. I can do it. You know I can do it. ‘Cause I been doing it all along. All the days when Mama was doing hair –”
    “But she was here, if you needed her all of a sudden,” Aunt Bett interrupted.
    “But she wasn’t here on Saturday nights,” I explained to Aunt Bett, and then I looked right at Roy-Ellis and added, “And you weren’t either, and I did just fine, all by myself.”
    Aunt Bett looked away. Roy-Ellis’s eyes went dark and sad, probably because he was remembering Mama’s spangle dresses and her laugh and how she sang honkytonk songs.
    “I can do it,” I whispered to him, like maybe my saying it louder would hurt him too much in that bruised place behind his eyes.
    “Well,” Aunt Bett relented after a minute or so. “Maybe she could, Roy-Ellis. At least until you find somebody. I can take Molly and Little Ellis while Dove’s in school, and she can get them on her way home in the afternoons.” She looked me up and down, as if she was measuring how big I was. “And I’m just down the road such a little piece, she could practically holler to me from your own front porch, and I’d hear her. Like if she got scared or something.”
    Me? Scared? That’s what I was thinking, but I didn’t say a single word.
    “Thanks, Bett,” is all Roy-Ellis said, and I knew I’d won.
    “Now you go on in there and take off Darlene’s dress and be sure you hang it up,” Aunt Bett said to me. And I hummed Mama’s honky-tonk song while I did exactly as Aunt Bett said.

Chapter Four
     
    Roy-Ellis went back to work on Thursday morning, and I walked Molly and Little Ellis down to Aunt Bett’s before I went back to school. And I guess it felt good to do something completely usual, like going to school. Of course, everybody knew about my mama passing on, and all my teachers—especially Miss Madison, my English teacher—were even nicer than usual to me. I really didn’t expect any of the girls in my school to be nice to me, ever. Because our town has only one school for everybody, and girls from the other side of town—where the houses had real lawns and perfectly painted front porches with matching rocking chairs on them—mostly stayed together and didn’t pay much attention to any of us from the far side of town, the ones who lived in houses where the gray paint was wearing off, and the front porches mostly had begonias growing in rusted cans. So those girls from the nice side of town just clumped together, sitting together at lunch, and walking around with their arms around each other’s waists at recess. Sometimes they all gathered in the shade of a big tree and squatted together, whispering and giggling. But the girls like me mostly didn’t talk much to each other, and we certainly didn’t draw attention to ourselves. We just sort of blended into the background and avoided having anybody notice us, in particular.
    But in my secret heart, I really wanted to be like those other girls, because they were so pretty and wore such nice clothes. They liked each other and chattered and giggled together,