“You’re taking some African dude all over town. I heard you even took him to my brother’s barbershop yesterday,” I heard Clyde say loudly and agitated.
“He’s not some African dude. His name is Mustafa and he needed a haircut,” she said. “And what I do with him is none of your business.” One of her hands fell from her hip. “You lost the right to that information a long time ago.”
“So you love him?”
“Why don’t you ask your little girlfriend if I love him? She seems to know everything else. Better yet, don’t ask her a damn thing about me, because I don’t want my name in her mouth.”
“Jesus, Billie,” he said. “Why do you play so many games?”
“Games?” She flicked her hand at him. “Games are for children. I believe your girlfriend knows about games.” Billie flung her head around to seal her reading of Clyde and turned toward Ms. Kenley and me as she charged down the hall.
“There’s one of our Southern belles now,” I said.
Chapter Seven
“So everyone comes here?” Ms. Kenley, who’d I’d started calling Kayla, said, looking around the dining room floor of Wilhagens at clusters of teachers leaning into the mouths of emptying glasses as they sipped from skinny black straws. Like the other teachers, Billie and I ate dinner at Wilhagens most Wednesdays. It gave us a chance to decompress and, most recently, rag on Ms. Lindsey and Clyde. But most weeks, we just complained about work and the kids—who was bad, who was worse, and who we wanted so dearly to choke.
And it wasn’t because we hated teaching. There were good days when we got their rolling eyes to stop and shine. But the energy it took to even out those times called for dinner and a martini (or two—for Billie).
“Best hole-in-the-wall in town,” I said, pushing away from the table.
“Best cheap drinks in town.” Billie raised her glass. “Notice all of the poor teachers in here!”
We took a quick visual survey of all of the tables on the dining room floor. They were filled with teachers, laughing and drinking merrily as if tomorrow wouldn’t come in just a few short hours. Way in the back near the bathroom was where Angie Martin sat with her cackling crew of idiots at their normal table. When I first got there and rushed to the back to go to the bathroom, I heard one of them say, “There’s Ms. Tuscaloosa herself ! I wonder where her tiara is?” and they all laughed. And just as I opened the bathroom door, I heard Angie mention, “If only she knew her life wasn’t as perfect as she thinks.” At first it bothered me, as I wondered what she was talking about, but then I remembered what Billie always called them—Big Little Girls, meaning they were grown women who still played school-yard games. We had a lot of those in our town. They were unhappily married and happily evil to other people. And I wasn’t going to fall victim to their crap.
“I see,” Kayla said, looking around at everyone. “It looks like the entire staff is here. Aren’t there other bars to go to?”
“If Tuscaloosa has anything, we have lots of bars. It’s a basic requirement during football season,” I said.
“Roll Tide, baby!” Billie hollered and Kayla nearly jumped out of her seat. I laughed and thought she’d have to get used to that in Alabama territory.
“But you can’t beat two-for-one martinis at Wilhagens on Wednesday night,” I said, still laughing.
“And they sure make them strong!” Kayla looked at her glass.
“But, Mrs. DeeeLong here, she can’t partake.”
“Yes, I can.... I just can’t overdo it.” I pushed my empty glass of iced tea to the center of the table. I’d skipped my one martini for the night, but hadn’t told Billie why yet.
“Why?” Kayla asked.
“It’s just a small-town thing,” I replied.
“If certain people see Journey drinking, they’ll go reporting all over town how she’s a drunkard and living life on the edge,” Billie added dramatically. “A life of sin!”
“My father’s a pastor.”
“Of the biggest church in Alabama,” Billie chimed in.
“Oh, a preacher’s kid!” Kayla said.
“Yep, a PK,” Billie continued. “And we have to be careful how Ms. Journey represents herself in public. She could hardly sip a glass of wine until she turned twenty-five without it being in the church newsletter ... and a part of her daddy’s sermon.”
“Really? That must be difficult, living under a
constant spotlight like that.”
I looked down at Kayla’s black stilettos, hanging sexily from her feet where her naked, brown legs were swung out from beneath the table and crossed in a way I’d learned never to do. I bet she had red toenails inside those shoes and red shoes just like the ones she was wearing in her closet at home. And that no one had ever told Kayla that this was the sign of a “wild woman.” While these admonitions were now outdated and certainly overturned, having heard them time and again throughout my childhood made me do a double take each time I saw a red toenail, red shoes, or hoseless brown legs flung out from beneath the secrecy of a dinner table—even when they were my own.