The Darling Dahlias and the Silver Dollar Bush

As it turned out, though, her mother already knew. Ouida Bennett, who lived across the alley and two doors down, had hurried over right after breakfast with the news. Mrs. Bennett was Twyla Sue Mann’s second cousin, and had heard about the wedding the night before.

Sally-Lou met her at the kitchen door, wearing her usual gray uniform dress, nicely pressed, and a white apron. “She took it real hard,” Sally-Lou said in a half whisper. “She’s in her bedroom, layin’ down with a wet washrag on her head. She done tol’ Mr. Dunlap she ain’t comin’ in to work at the Five an’ Dime today. You can go in, if’n you want, Miz Lizzy, but it ain’t gonna be good. She’s gonna give you a right big piece o’ her mind.”

Lizzy had been a toddler when Mrs. Lacy hired Sally-Lou as a live-in maid and baby-minder. The girl was only fourteen, gangly and black as night, but she was already a good cook and housekeeper. She had raised two brothers and knew how to make even a stubborn little girl mind when she was told to do something. Still, Sally-Lou was young enough to play games and sing songs with her young charge and Lizzy had grown up thinking of her as a friend. And when her mother got angry about something or other (she seemed to do that a lot, as Lizzy got older), Sally-Lou was not only a friend but an ally and a staunch defender. If you didn’t know her, she might seem so meek and mild that a good hard breeze would pick her up and carry her off. Looks were deceiving, though. When need be, she was as strong as a stick of stove wood and as feisty as a young rooster.

But Sally-Lou no longer lived in. Mrs. Lacy, through her own bad management and several foolish ventures, had lost all her money in the stock market. She would have lost her house, too, if Lizzy hadn’t stepped in and bought it from the bank so that her mother would have a place to live. (This was not an unselfish act. Lizzy couldn’t bear the thought of having her mother move in with her.) To make ends meet, Mrs. Lacy, who had always enjoyed being creative with bits of lace and beads and feathers, had begun working in Fannie Champaign’s hat shop.

But when Fannie closed the shop and went to stay with her cousin in Atlanta, Mrs. Lacy swallowed her last vestige of pride and went to work for Mr. Dunlap at the Five and Dime—hard work, because she had to stand on her feet all day behind the counter. She didn’t really make enough money to keep Sally-Lou, but she couldn’t lose face with her friends by letting her maid go completely.

So she cut corners elsewhere and paid Sally to come in one morning a week. Now, Sally-Lou was living with her cousin Danzie over in Maysville and working on Tuesday mornings for Mrs. Lacy and the rest of the week for Mrs. George E. Pickett Johnson—although Lizzy wondered what was happening now that Mrs. Johnson had left town.

When Lizzy went into her mother’s bedroom, she saw that the curtains were drawn across the bedroom windows, darkening the room. Mrs. Lacy, a woman of substantial shape and size, was lying flat on her back with a cloth over her forehead. She pushed herself up on her elbows when Lizzy came in.

“Why did you let him do it, Elizabeth?” she cried petulantly. “Why, oh why oh why?”

“I could hardly have stopped him, now could I, Mama?” Lizzy asked, lightening the question with a chuckle. But it was the wrong thing to say.

“Stopped him? You drove him to it!” Mrs. Lacy cried, balling her hands into fists. “I know you did, you wicked, wicked girl! He would have married you at the drop of a hat, if you’d only had the sense to say yes. But you didn’t, and now that girl is pregnant and—”

With a loud, lamenting groan, she fell back on the pillow and flung an arm over her eyes. “You didn’t even have the grace to tell me about it. I had to hear it from Ouida Bennett, that old busybody. She positively gloated over it when she told me.”