The Right Thing

CHAPTER 10


At school on the Monday after Thanksgiving, Miss Bufkin began assigning roles in the second grade’s holiday pageant. Her class would be performing the Christmas Story, while the other one would provide carols and the stage setting, she told us.

“Now I know all you children want to be good little boys and girls, so there’ll be no talking amongst yourselves while I assign everybody’s parts.” Miss Bufkin waited a moment for our excited whispering to cease.

Mine was one of the first names Miss Bufkin read. I’d be playing the Archangel Gabriel, an unlikely bit of casting by any yardstick. I knew it would be a small part, but at least I wasn’t going to have to be a shepherd like Lisa Treeby: Miss Bufkin’s class was low on boys compared to the other one, and so some of the girls were going to have to stand in for the male roles. Lisa, the tallest kid, was a natural for head shepherd. Roger Fleck, the booger miner, was to be the mean innkeeper who wouldn’t let Mary and Joseph inside the inn before Baby Jesus was born. Joel Donahoe, still deeply tanned from the Pelahatchie work farm, was Balthazar, the black Wise Man, and Laddie Buchanan was a weak-chested Joseph.

Starr was the Virgin Mary.

I was flabbergasted. Why on earth had Miss Bufkin given her the starring role? Ever since school began, our teacher had shown no interest in Starr whatsoever and this was a plum of a part. Still, I reached across the aisle and squeezed Starr’s hand when Miss Bufkin’s attention was elsewhere. Starr looked so happy, but just as amazed as I was because Mary was a big role: she’d be on stage for nearly the whole play. We even had a scene together, when I as Gabriel came to Mary and announced that she was going to have a baby. In her desk behind me, Julie Posey savagely whined to one of her friends that it wasn’t fair. That show-off Julie was the innkeeper’s wife, a practically nonexistent part with no lines except for “They can go sleep in the stable!”

But fair or not, our class was put to work that afternoon rehearsing while the other class got to paint sets, make props, and practice Christmas carols. Outside the cold rains of late November fell on the dead grass, the leaves falling to the ground in wet drifts under the sweet gums and cedars, but inside the classroom was warm and nobody worked on their health booklets but practiced their lines instead. Starr was amazing. It seemed she had only to look at the mimeographed sheets a couple of times and she knew her part cold. In fact, the only other kid who learned their part better was Lisa Treeby. Lisa was so good at memorizing that in two days she knew everybody else’s lines as well as her own, promptly supplying them whenever someone was even a little bit slow remembering their part.

By the end of the week, it came time to try on our costumes. The terror of Fairmont Street, Buddy Bledsoe, and another big fourth-grade boy, Bobby Shapley, hauled the dusty cardboard boxes in from Miss Bufkin’s station wagon, dropping them on the floor in scarcely concealed disdain. Their second-grade Christmas pageant was decades behind them. All of us crowded around the boxes as soon as the big boys swaggered out of the room.

When Miss Bufkin pulled Mary’s blue gown from the heap of costumes, the mystery of Starr’s casting was revealed. The sky-colored robe was made for someone her size—that is, the smallest girl in the class. The white veil looked good over her blond curls, too. Laddie’s long, brown costume kept getting hung up on the wooden donkey’s wheels and making him trip, so Miss Bufkin had to tuck the hem with safety pins: last year’s Joseph must have been a giant. Gabriel’s gold-painted cardboard halo kept falling off my head, and the chicken-feather wings were fairly moth-eaten, but they were still big and fluffy, so for the most part I was content with what I was going to wear. Poor Lisa’s tunic looked like it had been made from a gunnysack. Julie’s dress wasn’t much better, but at least she didn’t have to wear a beard like Lisa did.

The next week, we moved our rehearsals to the school’s auditorium. Pretty Miss Bufkin took to tying a scarf around her throat and wearing a dashing beret like a real director, and in the girls’ bathroom the conversation was of nothing but the makeup we’d be allowed to wear for the play. Being a bunch of seven-year-old girls, we were fascinated with makeup—powder, eye shadow, rouge—but what had us all in a whispering fever of anticipation was lipstick. Lipstick was the flashbulb-popping, red-carpeted threshold between little girls and real teenagers. Our mothers wore it every single day without exception, wouldn’t leave the house without doing up their mouths. We had all been madly impatient for our own tubes of grown-upness even before the pageant had consumed us, and now we were practically on fire.

Of course, Julie Posey already had a pink lipstick in a baby-blue case. Since we weren’t allowed to wear it at school, she didn’t put any on in the girls’ bathroom, but only showed it off to everyone when we went in there before lunch to wash our hands.

“It’s called Pixie Pink,” Julie announced. All of us were crowded around her, ready to throw up with envy.

“But this one isn’t for the play. It’s kind of babyish.” She dropped the lipstick into her purse and closed it with a snap. “My mom’s going to buy me a red one—Revlon’s Fire and Ice.” Julie shrugged off her loyal hangers-on and surveyed her reflection in the mirror over the dripping sink. “We’re going to Beemon’s Drugs this afternoon.” She fluffed her ringlets and squared her hair ribbon’s bow. With a flounce of her skirts, Julie pushed through the big swinging door and left the bathroom.

Starr and I washed our hands in silence as the other girls filed out after her. I caught her eyes in the mirror and made a face.


“Show-off,” we both said at the same time. Linking arms, we left the bathroom, giggling.





Saturday morning came, a day that couldn’t make up its mind whether to storm or merely rain. I’d spent a restless morning inside. After Methyl Ivory fixed me a bologna sandwich for lunch, I sat with it under the sunporch windows on a wicker settee, watching for Starr while I nibbled the sandwich around the edges. Methyl Ivory was running the Bissell Sweeper over the sunporch’s tiles and humming to herself. I was hoping she’d hurry up and leave, for I was on fire to put my scheme into action.

My mother’s purse sat on the kitchen table, just off the sunporch.

Inside that purse was a lipstick.

If Methyl Ivory would only finish her floor sweeping and go away, I planned to borrow my mother’s bright red lipstick, maybe her compact, too. Then Starr could show me how to make up my face for the Christmas play since she already had plenty of pageant experience. I was sure my mother would never realize the lipstick had been out of her purse for a couple of hours because she was upstairs in her bedroom this afternoon, her hair covered in a bandanna, wearing no makeup at all. Engaged in Ladies’ League Snow Ball business, she was making giant snowflakes out of white poster-board sheets, silver glitter, and Elmer’s glue. In fact, I didn’t expect her to come downstairs this afternoon for anything, not until it was time for dinner.

“Mary had a baby, hmm-mmm,” Methyl Ivory sang under her breath. Brump, brump went the Bissell Sweeper as she finally moved her floor cleaning to the front hallway. “She call the baby Jesus, mmm-hmm.”

I eased off the settee with a cautious glance down the hall, then tiptoed in my sock feet across the sunporch into the kitchen. Carefully, I eased open my mother’s black alligator pocketbook. There it was, beside her keys, cigarettes, and lighter: her makeup bag. I slid the brass clasp open, and lying on top of her powder compact was a lipstick in a golden case. It was in my hand when I was startled by my mother’s voice.

“Methyl Ivory?” she called. She was descending the stairs. “Can you bring that up here to the bedroom? There’s glitter everywhere.”

I snapped the makeup bag closed, abandoning the compact. Like lightning, I skidded across the newly swept red tiles of the sunporch to the settee, where I plunged the lipstick under a throw pillow. Picking up my discarded sandwich, I hastily took a bite the instant my mother walked through the door from the hallway.

“What are you up to this afternoon, Annie?” she asked me. Flushing with guilt, I nearly choked on my bologna and Wonder bread, but then she said, “Today’s such a gloomy day, I know. It’s starting to rain again. Are you and Starr going to play here?”

I gulped the bite of sandwich before I lied. “We’re going to Lisa’s house.”

My mother frowned. “Is Mr. Treeby going to be home?” she asked. “I’m sure he’s not going to want you girls disturbing him while he’s working.”

I blushed, remembering the last time I’d been at the Treebys’ house: Lisa’s father hadn’t been working then, but I had no doubt I’d disturbed him as much as he had disturbed me with his picture book.

“Oh, we’ll be real quiet,” I assured her. “We’re going to read Bible stories. Starr’s got a big book of ’em, with lots of pictures and the words of Jesus in red letters. We’ll go by her house to get it before we go to Lisa’s.”

“Well, that’s all right then. You won’t go inside the Dukes house, though, will you?” My mother gave me a stern look. She didn’t have to say anything more. Starr’s house might well have a drunken Mr. Dukes in it.

“No, ma’am.”

“Have a nice afternoon, then, and take an umbrella,” she said. “Remember to be home before dark, Annie. I think I’ll go make myself a cup of coffee.” With a smile for me, my mother went in the kitchen. Quick as a snake, I palmed the lipstick, shoved it into my pants pocket, and went back to looking through the window for Starr.

“Methyl Ivory? Are we out of coffee?” my mother called from the kitchen.

Where was Starr? Down by the Allens’ fence, something big and black finally caught my eye—an umbrella with a somewhat bedraggled Starr waving from underneath it. She was wearing a yellow raincoat that was so long it dragged behind her on the brown grass.

“There she is—I’ve got to go.” I shoved my feet into my waiting Keds, shrugged into my own raincoat, and grabbed an umbrella from the stand by the back door. “Bye.” The screen door banged shut behind me. Hurriedly, I squelched down the hill to the fence. The rain was falling slowly, but by the time I got there, my shoes and pants cuffs were soaked through.

“That’s a really big raincoat,” I observed while climbing over the fence.

“It’s Momma’s—she left it, too.” Starr’s voice was muffled underneath her umbrella. “Did you get the lipstick?”

Thrilled with my successful “borrowing,” I nodded. “It’s a red one.”

We trudged up the Allens’ backyard and angled in the direction of the rental house in case anyone was watching. This subterfuge was necessary to keep my mother from figuring out we had no intention of going to Lisa’s but were headed in the opposite direction. We didn’t dare use the lipstick at my house, and Starr’s poppa was at home and working on his sermon. Starr didn’t have to remind me that he would take a more than dim view of little girls playing with makeup. It was grounds for another whuppin’, I was sure, so we planned to cross Fortification Street and go down to the abandoned garage by the railroad tracks for some privacy.

It was a well-used place, the old garage. Kids from every grade for blocks around the neighborhood congregated there. Perched on the hillside above the railroad tracks like a shabby mockingbird nest on a sumac branch, the rotting wooden structure smelled of the long-collapsed privy in the back, the ghosts of engines and motor oil. It had once been part of a larger establishment, a house probably built back in the days before Jackson’s zoning laws would have rendered a place without indoor plumbing impossible. The old foundation of the house was a great place to play war, though, with its bunker-like, fieldstone sides, the ground littered deep with blackjack oak mast. The garage itself had been spared whatever cataclysmic event—a fire, a tornado, or the family falling on hard times and forced to abandon their house—had transpired. As far as I knew, nobody’s parents had a whisper of a clue as to the garage’s existence, but occasionally there’d be signs some wandering bum had stopped for the night: an empty pint whiskey bottle, the remains of a campfire, a sooty Castleberry’s beef stew can in the middle of the ashes.

That afternoon Starr and I sneaked away from her house and turned onto Devine Street, where we walked to the woods at the dead end. Looking over our shoulders, we slipped between the two huge old live oaks standing sentinel at the slender opening in the trees. The hillside path to the garage was treacherous today, with sodden leaves piled underfoot, the hard-packed earth slippery beneath our shoes. Starr and I tried to make our way through the woods by holding onto bare-branched saplings, but the umbrellas kept snagging on their spiky limbs, and she kept stumbling on the bottom of her yellow raincoat. Finally, we gave it up, slid downhill, and walked the railroad tracks winding through the bottom instead.


“I don’t hear anybody, do you?” My breath misted in the cold. As we approached the garage, the woods were silent. No other kids had claimed it for their own on this rainy Saturday afternoon.

“Nope,” Starr said. “I think we’re the only ones today. C’mon.” We furled the umbrellas and, bending almost to all fours and using the umbrellas like ski poles, we struggled up the steep hillside. The three-sided structure welcomed us out of the gently falling rain. It was darker inside the garage than out, but still there was plenty of light to see the old International truck crouched on its axles atop four cement blocks. Long ago, somebody had removed its doors, too.

We dropped our umbrellas into the bed of the pickup. Starr and I climbed up onto the seat, avoiding the rusty springs poking out of the rotted upholstery, and huddled together in front of the cracked rearview mirror. Outside in the woods, the rain began to fall harder, pelting the leaves and the old tin roof overhead.

“Can I see it?” Starr asked. I fished my mother’s lipstick out of my pocket and handed it to her. “Oooh,” she breathed. “It’s so pretty.” In the dim light, the lipstick shone in Starr’s hand like a piece of pirate’s treasure, smooth and golden. She held the end of the tube higher in an effort to catch the light and make out the name. “It says, ‘Vixen,’ Annie. What’s a vixen?”

“It’s a girl fox, I think.” Starr handed it back to me, and I took the cap off. The fiery red of the lipstick was every bit as warm and lush as a vixen’s brush. I held it under my nose and closed my eyes, the fragrance conjuring my mother in the musty, slightly spoiled air of the garage. Putting the cap back on, I handed the lipstick to Starr. “Here,” I said. “Put some on me first?”

“Sure.” She took it from me with a smile and adjusted the rearview mirror. “Now hold still. You don’t want to mess it up.” I made a pout and closed my eyes.

“What d’you morphadikes think you’re doing?”

The loud, angry growl came from behind us, just inside the garage, as though a rabid dog had snuck up on Starr and me and was ready to bite. With a jolt of alarm, I knew that voice even before I turned my head.

The terror of Fairmont Street was wearing a raincoat, too—a camouflage one like the big boys in the sixth grade wore. In the dark of the garage, Buddy Bledsoe’s shadowed outline loomed as huge as one of the blackjack oaks outside.

“No girls allowed!” He punched his fist into his palm with a meaty smack.

I wanted to scream, and Starr’s face was white. We scrambled out of the front seat, nearly ripping our raincoats on the rusted springs in our haste, but Buddy advanced on the truck with his fists clenched and swinging. Cornered, we retreated until our backs were against the splintered wall of the garage.

Upon us now, Buddy’s face was red and twisted. My sight grew blurry, my breath running fast as a rabbit through the tall grass. Beside me, Starr’s hand groped for mine.

“What’s that you got there?” Buddy demanded. Eyes narrowing, he poked Starr’s shoulder so hard she staggered. “Give it!”

Her voice was quavering, but she spoke right up. “It’s a lipstick. Boys don’t wear lipstick.” My mouth went dry. I couldn’t believe she’d talked back to Buddy Bledsoe like that, but she wasn’t done. “Why do you want it, anyways?” Starr asked reasonably.

“Shut up! Give it to me,” Buddy said, “or I’ll beat the shit out of you.” He grabbed Starr’s left hand, squeezing her wrist. With a small squeak of pain, she let go of my mother’s lipstick and it fell at his feet. Grunting, Buddy leaned over and picked it up. The sight of the golden cylinder vanishing in his big, dirty hand brought tears to my eyes: my mother was going to kill me even if by some miracle Buddy Bledsoe didn’t do it.

But Starr folded her arms, tossed her straggling blond curls, and said, “You’re nothing but a big ol’ bully—picking on girls.”

“Shut up,” Buddy roared and shoved her up against the wall.

Even then Starr didn’t fold. “Stop it!” She pushed back, and when I saw his fist lifted to punch her, I finally found my courage and did something previously unimaginable. I kicked Buddy Bledsoe in the knee as hard as I could, which was considerable since I really was good at kickball.

“Yeah!” I shouted, sounding braver than I had any right to be. “You’re a big old bully. Give it back!”

And in that next instant it was like we were a pack of two. Starr and I fell upon Buddy, swinging and kicking, shouting at him to give it back, give it back right now. Standing up for once was so exhilarating I wasn’t afraid of getting hit at all. Oh, Buddy got in an awkward punch or two, but the close quarters were to our advantage and adrenaline drove us like a gasoline-fueled house fire. I smacked him a good one across his ear, and when he turned to pound his fist on my head, Starr got in a lucky kick to his groin. He fell to his knees on the dirt floor of the garage.

“Aagh,” he moaned.

And then I saw the lipstick. It had fallen out of Buddy’s hand and was lying next to the old truck’s cement block standing in for a front tire. I swooped upon the golden cylinder as Buddy collapsed on his side with an agonized expulsion of breath, his hands cupping his testicles.

“Cheaters,” he gasped. “Two against one.”

“Run, Starr!” I cried. “I got it!”

Her long raincoat flapping like a loose yellow tarpaulin in a monsoon, Starr leapt over Buddy, who was now groaning and rolling around in the dirt. Without a backward look, we ran, leaving our umbrellas and the terror of Fairmont Street behind us. Starr and I slid downhill through the leaves and charged down the railroad tracks in our muddy shoes. Giddy and breathless with victory, we turned uphill, clawing from tree to tree to the edge of the woods on Devine Street. The rain had slowed again, cold silver droplets falling from the bare branches overhead as we emerged from the trees onto the pavement.

Starr and I began to walk homeward in the rain, trying to catch our breaths, before I said, “D’you think he’s going to come after us?”

“Nope,” Starr said. “We whupped him good.” She kicked a rock down a storm drain and grinned.

“What if he goes and gets his gang?” I worried. “What if he tells?”

Starr gave me a sideways look from under her wet hair and didn’t say anything for a long beat. Finally, she said, “Don’t you get it, Annie? Buddy Bledsoe can’t ever say anything about this to anybody. He was trying to take a lipstick away from two little girls, little girls who beat the tar out of him.”

I thought about it for a minute. “You’re right. And we can’t tell either. We were supposed to be at Lisa’s house, reading Bible stories.”

Starr nodded. “I’m going to get into trouble anyways, for losing the umberella.”

Pushing my drenched bangs out of my eyes, I thought for a minute. “Let’s say we gave them to some poor people.” I warmed to my imaginary pair of umbrella-less beggars. “Let’s say they were cold and wet and it was the Christian thing to do.”

“Maybe your folks’ll buy that,” Starr said, “but my poppa won’t.” By now we were at the corner of Gray Street where the rental house stood. We trudged down through the Allens’ backyard, not speaking. The fence seemed higher than usual when I climbed over the wire.


“See you Monday.” I was shivering, ready to go indoors, return my mother’s lipstick, and put this adventure behind me.

“See you Monday,” Starr said. She turned to go home, a little girl lost in a grown woman’s long, yellow raincoat.

That was the last time I saw her.





When I got home, I was cold and wet, dirty and tired. I sneaked in the back door and slipped out of my muddy shoes. Methyl Ivory must have been busy in another part of the house because no one answered my subdued “Hello?” With a weary relief, I went into the kitchen. A pot roast simmered on the stove, filling the air with its good smell. There were snap beans in a colander by the sink, a paring knife and a bowl of red potatoes on the table.

My mother’s purse wasn’t there.

She must have gone out today after all. However was I going to get the lipstick back in her purse now? My stomach plummeted to the linoleum. The lost umbrella suddenly seemed like nothing compared to the trouble I was going to be in when my mother came home. I was too wrung out to cry, so I bit my lip, thinking hard.

The only idea I could come up with was to sneak into her bedroom, leave the lipstick on her dressing table, and hope she never found out I took it. It was a feeble idea—she never went anywhere without making up her face and so was bound to have missed it already—but it was the only idea I had. Lipstick in hand, I plodded up the stairs and down the long, dark hall to my parents’ bedroom.

Their door was shut. I eased it open and poked my head into the room to the sound of someone singing in the adjoining bathroom behind the closed door. My parents must have been going out that evening because draped across the end of their massive half-tester bed was a Christmas-red chiffon gown and a black velvet wrap.

Next to the dress was my mother’s purse.

Holding my breath, praying for grace, I tiptoed across the floor to the bed.

But in the bathroom, the singing stopped. There was the splash of water sloshing, the glug of the bathtub draining. Catching a glimpse of my face in the marble-topped bureau’s mirror, white and dirt-smeared but determined, I opened my mother’s purse and dropped the lipstick inside her makeup bag. I had just snapped the pocketbook shut when the bathroom door opened. My mother came out in a cloud of steam, her hair in a towel, belting her bathrobe.

“Annie!” she exclaimed. “You gave me a fright—and what are you doing in here? You’re soaking wet and filthy. However did you get so dirty reading Bible stories?”



We had an early dinner that evening since my parents were going to attend a holiday cocktail party at the country club later on. While Methyl Ivory served the pot roast and mashed potatoes, Daddy asked me about my afternoon.

“What was your favorite Bible story, Annie?”

I told him I liked the one where Eve took the apple from the Tree of Knowledge without God’s permission.

I could just see her—breaking the shiny red fruit from the hanging branch, knowing it was wrong but doing it anyway, biting into the crisp flesh, the juice running down her chin.

At least Eve got to eat the apple.