New York City had quickly grown on me, and as the rules of southern hospitality demanded, I returned the favor and grew on it right back. It wasn’t at all subtle, like the way you fall in love with the South, real slow on a hot August day, sipping sweet tea from a Mason jar. It was quick. Two shots of Patrón with a Red Bull chaser at the rooftop bar of the Standard Hotel and I was gone. And believe you me, this wasn’t just some one-night stand. It was reaffirmed at the corner bagel shop the next morning. True love schmeared between two halves of my first warm-from-the-oven everything bagel. So long, grits!
From then on I fell in love on a near-daily basis. And lucky me, the feeling was mutual! I think New York City first started falling in love with me on account of my accent; the very accent that I had spent my first weeks swallowing with my morning coffee was just the thing that ended up making people fuss over me. Turns out that people weren’t as judgmental as I first thought. By and by, most folks that I came across found me entertaining. Delightful was actually the word they used most. “Your accent is delightful.” Sometimes it was refreshing, often charming, and once even enchanting.
And just like that, New York was crushing on Sally Ann Fennely. Not on account of my long legs and perfect smile and wavy blond hair, though I’m sure all that opened doors. But it was what I said and how I said it that got me invited in. It meant so much to me to know that it wasn’t just on account of my looks. As soon as I realized it, I began to lay it on heavier than a cow in a cotton field. Sounds pretty charming, right? A cow in a cotton field? Well, guess what, that’s not even a thing. I just made it up right on the spot. That cow in that cotton field was just the kind of thing that had people going on about how refreshing and real I was.
I first noticed the reaction at dinner in the women’s boardinghouse where I live. Yes, there are still women’s boardinghouses in New York City. When word first came in that I’d been accepted at the modeling agency, my mama, who had been pushing me all along, began to backpedal. Suddenly spooked at the reality of me living in the big city, she started Googling statistics on crime rates and the air-quality index—this from a woman who spent half her life with a cigarette dangling from her lips. But my grandma had a plan. She was a big Sylvia Plath fan and told us all about how when Sylvia Plath moved to New York she lived in a women’s boardinghouse, a safe place called the Barbizon. She even wrote about it in The Bell Jar. Somehow this risky analogy worked, as if suicidal Sylvia Plath had the makings of a role model.
The Barbizon was long closed, but there were about ten others to choose from; I ended up renting a room at a boardinghouse on the Upper West Side that supplied two meals a day and had a house mother and a twenty-four-hour doorman. Plus there was a strict no-boys policy. Mama was thrilled, and to be honest, I was happy about it too. I didn’t feel any more grown up or capable of living alone than I had the day before finding out I would be a runway model. The whole setup sounded more like a college sorority than life in the big city—though when I got here, no one seemed very sisterly to me. Well, at least not straightaway.
The first week at dinner I sat with the wrong girls—two other models, who barely introduced themselves and spent the entire meal discussing whether you can really wear black and navy together. (You can.) As the next week began I was late for dinner on account of my neighbor being busted for sneaking a boy up to her room. The matron was in the hallway pitching a conniption fit, and I was too frightened to try and slip by. When I finally made it down, I sat at the only seat available, between two smart-looking girls.
I must have looked a fright, ’cause they came right out and asked me what was the matter. Forgetting my efforts to subdue my southern accent, I blurted out, “That matron is madder than a wet hen!” They started to laugh. At first I thought they were making fun of me. My blushing cheeks must have given it away, ’cause the dark-haired girl, Margot, jumped right in and turned it around.
“What a great expression, ‘madder than a wet hen.’ I have to write that down!”