@@CHAP@@ Prologue
@@CHAP@@ Birdie
@@CHAP@@ September 1933
Downtown Drugstore had a bell on the door that made a single tink sound when you opened it. Oxford Pharmacy had two bells on its door so it was more of a ta-tink, though nothing to startle over. But the Gathright-Reed Drug Co. door bore a foot-long strip of brass sleigh bells on its knob, which, when turned, sent metal balls clanging to announce somebody’s coming in the dang store so you better turn around and look see who it is. And if you did, you’d see me.
At the pay counter to my right, a heavy woman was buying something. Pripp, the nosiest of my sister Frances’s many friends. Her blond bobbed hair headed more left and right than down on this humid September morning. “Birdie, hadn’t seen you in a while,” she said. She was paying for a pair of rayons sized, I’m sure, extra-know-it-all.
“Hey, Pripp,” I said and kept walking straight on past her.
I went to the back of the store and stood myself behind the most human-sized rack I could find and picked up whatever thing was closest. It was a tin of men’s Brylcreem. I held it close to my face, hoping it would make me less talkable to. Why the heck do I have to do this—and at a store on the square no less, when all the other girls got to go to the other side of town to buy bedsheets or race records? Deep down I knew perfectly well why: because no one would ever suspect me of such a thing. I was Birdie Calhoun, twenty-four years old, churchy and chinless, kind to all animals and people. I’d never do anything even close to what I was doing.
“I’m just saying,” Pripp said up at the counter, though I could hear her all the way back here, “I don’t think it’s fair for y’all to charge thirty-five cents for my size when you only charge thirty for the regular—” I heard her clicking nickels and pennies at the older lady on the other side of the counter.
“Well, it is near double the rayon,” the lady said. “’Nother way to look at it is it’s a bargain for what you’re getting.”
Behind the display, I waited on Pripp to leave, and also a pimply boy up front who was flipping through a book at the lending library rack. Up every wall of the place, products filled the shelves, colored boxes and tins with signs explaining what they could do for you: For That Movie Star Look, For That Annoying Itch, For the Picky College Gentleman, but what about For the Unmarried Lady Who Does Not Want to Be Doing This One Bit? Where was the little sign for that? The sleigh bells clanged, and I leaned over to see. The boy at the lending rack had walked out. One down, one to go.
At the counter, Pripp hitched her yellow purse strap up on her shoulder, and I held my breath. But instead of walking out, she was looking around—evidently for me—so I put the Brylcreem down as she came my way. There was no logical reason for me to be holding that.
“There you are, Birdie,” Pripp said. She had a smarty-looking smile, close-lipped. Full of guarantee that whatever I said, she would be repeating. “Noticed y’all missed church on Sunday, your spot up front was empty, and Frances has been short on her volunteer hours, I tell you Garnett Pittman is not pleased about that, Frances ought to let us know—”
“She took a trip. Frances and Mrs. Tartt are on a trip,” I said. With Pripp it was all one sentence, so you had to wedge it in when you could. “They went down to Jackson to see about some family.”
Pripp frowned, looking almost offended. “Well, she didn’t mention any traveling trip to me, and Chairlady Garnett needs to know who’s coming in the Orphan so she can adjust up the schedule, after so many little girls got adopted all we got are big girls now, not to mention—”
“I got to do something, Pripp.” My heart felt like it was trying to hammer its way out of my chest. “I need to get somewhere.”