Prettiest Doll Read online

  “Careful steps, like this,” Mama said. “And smile. Smile.”

  We’d done this a million times before. Maybe two million. I knew all about pageant walking and twirling.

  “And then you stop, like this. And then put your foot here. You see? Just like this.” Mama waited until I looked down at her feet. She was barefoot. Her toenails were yellow and cracked and unpolished, because she was too fat to bend forward to paint them.

  “And then you turn. Like this. Smiling the whole time. Over this shoulder and then over this one. Like this. See?”

  I sighed. I couldn’t help it.

  “Well, you’re so dang smart, I guess you don’t need any help from me!” Mama sounded mad, but I knew she wasn’t. She just wanted me to want to watch her.

  “We’ve done it so many times!”

  “Not right,” she said, lowering herself onto one of the chairs. “Don’t matter how many times you do it if none of them’s right.”

  “If I do it one more time, can we please eat?” I was so tired. And I still had homework.

  “One time right,” she said.

  I hauled myself up to standing. The netting on my dress was making me itchy. And I was afraid that maybe I was sweating and getting stains under the armholes.

  I went into the kitchen and stood where she could see me from the dining room. I remembered to stand tall and smile. My smile felt fake and pasted on, but Mama was nodding.

  “You’re just so pretty, Olivia Jane,” she said, all dreamy for a second. Then something in her face hardened up. “Now go,” she said.

  I walked carefully, thinking of my arms, my feet, my straight back. Smiling. Looking over my right shoulder, then flipping my head around and looking over my left. Still smiling. Or I thought I was, anyway.

  Mama nodded.

  “A little stiff. You want to look relaxed,” she said.

  “I am relaxed.”

  “Well, you look like a rubber band, all wound up,” Mama said. But she pushed herself out of the chair. “Okay. Enough for now. We still got three weeks.”

  I felt my insides unclench. “Now can we eat?”

  “Well, I gotta cook something, don’t I?” She shuffled into the kitchen, opened the freezer door, and peered inside. “What do you want, baby? Pizza? Mac and cheese?”

  “Pizza. And a salad.”

  Mama said for me to make the salad, and to make enough for just me. Without telling her, I tore off enough lettuce for both of us. And cut up an extra tomato. Mama should eat more salad.

  Mama took a big bite of pizza and said, “You got Miss Denise tomorrow at four o’clock.”

  “I know.”

  “So you’ll come right home after school. You won’t hang out with Imogene at the barn.”

  “I know.”

  “And you’ll practice your song tonight. After you finish your homework.”

  I sighed. “It sounds terrible. I sound terrible.”

  “That’s what practicing is for, right?”

  “But, Mama—”

  “Olivia Jane, how many times do I have to tell you? Nobody sings good without practicing. Even the real stars practice. Even Reba. And Miss Denise is going to get you a lesson with Mrs. Elsie Drucker. She says we can squeeze in a few lessons before the pageant.”

  Mrs. Drucker had taught Brett-Ellis Baker, who is practically a legend in Luthers Bridge. She won every pageant there was to win in southwestern Missouri, and then, to top it all off, she came in third in Junior Miss. She got a lot of scholarship money and now she goes to Mizzou. Mama thinks Brett-Ellis Baker walks on water.

  “Mama, about the singing—”

  Mama closed her eyes, warding me off. “Olivia Jane, do not start with me.”

  “It’s so expensive.” Maybe that would sway her.

  Mama opened her eyes and reached across the table. “It’s worth every penny if it helps you be the Prettiest Doll,” she said, grabbing my hand.

  There was so much love in her eyes. And so much wanting. It shut me up, even though the words were right there, just ready to tumble out over my tongue.

  “We need those lessons if you’re going to win that crown,” Mama said. “And I’ll work as hard as I have to to pay for them. It don’t bother me one little bit.”

  I hate being poor. Mama always says we shouldn’t feel sorry for ourselves, because we have a house and food to eat, and that I should stop grousing. So I don’t say it out loud anymore. But still.

  Mama let go of my hand and straightened up a little. She picked up her half-finished slice and took a huge bite, all the way to the crust.

  The next day, after school, I walked the three blocks to downtown. It was still only three thirty, so I went to Turner’s for fudge.

  Turner’s General Store is on the town square, across from the drugstore. It’s been around since my grandma was a girl, and maybe even before that. Most of the kids don’t go there anymore; they’d rather get smoothies at the Bike Trail Café. Turner’s doesn’t have smoothies. But it has a candy case with almost every kind of candy you can think of. My favorite is the peanut butter fudge, which Merle Turner makes in the back. It’s a secret recipe.

  I’ve always loved Turner’s. When I was little, I used to watch the popcorn machine while Mama shopped for fabrics and trim for my pageant costumes. I loved the dark oak walls, the narrow aisles, the bins full of buttons and ribbons and sequins and beads, the displays of plastic flowers, the shelves bulging with soft skeins of yarn. I liked walking slowly up the toy aisle, not touching the metal cars, the plastic eggs full of bandage-colored Silly Putty, jacks and little rubber balls, creepy plastic dolls with painted-on faces and tufts of coarse, uncombable hair, tiny troll figures to twist onto the eraser end of your pencil. Teachers hated those trolls.

  There was a bin full of marbles, all different colors and sizes. When I was little, I couldn’t resist plunging my hands into them, feeling their cool glassiness on my skin. I used to wonder what it would be like to dive down to the bottom of a swimming pool full of marbles and look up at the colors lit from behind by the sun. Could you breathe, under all those rolling balls of color and light? Would there be air down there?

  I sat at the counter and Merle Turner didn’t even get a menu for me. He knew what I’d be wanting.

  “How was school?” he said, rummaging behind the counter for a sheet of waxed paper.

  “Okay.”

  “You getting ready for another one of them beauty contests?”

  “Yeah. But they don’t call them beauty contests anymore.”

  “Why not?” Merle was hunting around for an extrabig hunk of fudge. He’s the kind of man—tall, bald with a gray fringe, sunburned, fingers scarred up from being stuck all the time with fishhooks—who looks like the last thing he’d want to be wearing is a starched white apron, but that doesn’t stop him. He has three in the back so if he gets a stain on the one he’s wearing, he can switch to a clean one.

  “ ’Cause it’s not just about beauty. You have to have poise and talent.”

  Merle said, “So when’s the next one?”

  “Three weeks.”

  He set the fudge on a plate and put it in front of me. Then he went to the refrigerator and pulled out a little carton of milk. “You ready?”

  “I guess.”

  He put the carton down by my plate and pulled a straw out of the jar next to the register.

  “Don’t sound very sure about that.”

  “I’m never sure at three weeks,” I said. “I get surer as I go.”

  He laughed. “Well, Janie Tatum’s sure. She says you’re a shoo-in to win.”

  He meant Mama. I wished she wouldn’t go around town talking me up.

  “I don’t think about winning,” I said.

  “Well, no harm in thinking about it.” Merle set the straw next to my plate and watched as I took a bite of fudge. “Pretty good, huh?”

  I nodded, speechless with butter and sugar and peanut butter happiness.

  Merle
turned away, heading back to the kitchen. “Not too much of that, now. You don’t want to be splitting the seams of those costumes they make you wear.”

  He’s an old man, always nice to me. He’s known me since I was a baby. I didn’t say anything about how an old man shouldn’t be saying anything about my weight or how I look. Because I wasn’t even sure it was true. When you do pageants, it’s like you’re giving people permission to talk about your looks. They don’t think it might be embarrassing for you. They think that’s all you are.

  I took a long time eating and drinking, to make the fudge last. I decided to eat only half of it. That way, I could eat the rest after Miss Denise, as a reward.

  After a little while, I felt someone staring at me and slowly turned to look. Two stools down was a boy I didn’t know. He was probably ten or eleven, and handsome, for a little boy. A half-finished chocolate milk shake sat in front of him. A duffel bag lay at his feet. Not a school backpack: the kind of thing you could stuff clothes into.

  He was really staring.

  “What?” I finally said.

  “You do those weird JonBenet Ramsey things?”

  JonBenet Ramsey was murdered when she was six. She did pageants. It was the first time most people had ever heard of them. She kind of gave pageants a bad name. People started connecting pageants and murder in their heads.

  “You shouldn’t talk about JonBenet like that,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean she was weird. I mean the pageants.”

  He didn’t talk like a ten-year-old.

  “Are you from here?” I asked.

  “No,” he said, turning back to his milk shake. “Just passing through.”

  We ate for a minute in silence.

  “You know, there are a lot of good things about pageants,” I said.

  I didn’t know why I was even telling him anything. Usually, when people made nasty comments about pageants, I just ignored them.

  “Like what?”

  “Like, they give you poise. They make you confident.”

  “Why? Because everyone claps and cheers when you smile?”

  “You have to answer questions. It’s hard, speaking in public, with everyone watching.”

  The interviews are one of my favorite parts of pageants. I like coming up with good answers. I always wish I could be the one asking the questions, though.

  “You can do that in school. Or playing sports,” the boy said. He sucked hard on his straw, not looking at me anymore.

  “Do you play sports?” I asked.

  “No,” he said. He almost sounded mad. I thought we were done talking until he added, “I play chess.”

  “Oh,” I said, getting it now. “You’re smart.”

  “Like there’s something wrong with being smart?”

  I was surprised that he could tell what I thought. “I just meant I get why you don’t like pageants.”

  “Why, because smart people can’t be pretty?”

  What was the matter with this boy?

  “Look,” I said. Then I stopped, thinking how to say it. “Usually, there are different boxes for different kinds of kids. Smart kids, jocks, good-looking girls. Good-l ooking boys are usually jocks, so they don’t need a separate box. All the average kids go in another box together.”

  The boy was staring at me again. “Are you frickin’ kidding me?”

  “I’m not trying to be mean. That’s just how it is. Don’t you know that?”

  After a long pause, he said, “Yeah. I do.”

  “I’m not saying it’s good. I’m just saying that’s how it is.”

  The boy leaned toward me. “But don’t you get sick of being in a box?”

  “Not really.”

  He laughed. “Yeah, I guess it’s easy being in the good-looking-girl box.”

  One of the things Miss Denise always says about pageant interviews is not to let your real feelings show. Smile with your words, she says. Smile, smile, smile.

  “Not easy, but nice,” I said. Smiling.

  “Couldn’t you be in the smart box, too?” he asked. “You seem pretty smart to me.”

  It was a good thing I didn’t have a piece of fudge in my mouth, because if I did, it would have fallen on the floor. No one had ever said I seemed smart. No one. Ever. Not one time.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  “I’ve been in a lot of chess tournaments. You’re just as smart as lots of the girls there. Maybe not all of them,” he said.

  “You look pretty young to be in chess tournaments. How long have you been doing them?”

  “Eight years. Since I was seven.” He sucked on his milk shake, making a gargly, bottom-of-the-glass sound.

  Fifteen. He was fifteen. He looked as though he would only come up to my shoulder. His face was smooth and hairless and just a little chubby, the way boys’ faces are in fourth grade, before everyone starts getting tall. His voice was kind of high.

  I thought, Oh, my Lord, and then, A tenth-grader thinks I’m smart.

  “I didn’t know seven-year-olds could play chess,” I said, struggling to cover up my surprise.

  “That’s what all the smart kids were doing while you were smiling and waving, I guess.”

  I remembered Miss Denise and realized I was late. I slid off the stool.

  “It was nice talking to you,” I said. “I’m Liv Tatum, by the way.”

  “I’m Danny Jacobson.”

  “Nice to meet you,” I said, feeling suddenly shy. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

  I’d forgotten about the duffel bag.

  “Nah,” Danny said. “I just have to pay for this. Then I’m catching a bus.”

  I wanted to thank him for saying I was smart, but I didn’t know how. I didn’t have enough money to pay for his milk shake, but I would have if I’d had any extra change. Something about his being short made it seem okay for me to want to do this.

  “I hope you win your next tournament,” I said, setting my money next to my plate.

  “I hope you win, too,” Danny said.

  three

  MISS Denise lives on a cul-de-sac off Mound Street, in a little white house with a gray roof and a fenced-in covered cement porch. Sometimes I have to wait on the porch if she has someone in the kitchen getting her hair cut, which is her real job. But today, when I knocked, she opened the door almost right away and said, “Come on in, Olivia,” like this was a social call and not something my mama was paying her for.

  The front door opens onto the living room, which has paneled walls and worn beige carpeting. Miss Denise stood next to her maroon La-Z-Boy while I set down my backpack and pulled off my hoodie. She had her arms crossed, but that doesn’t always mean she’s mad. It’s just how she stands, watching even when she doesn’t have to. It’s like she can’t help it, like she’s so used to analyzing every single move you make that she can’t turn off the judging part of herself.

  When I’d dropped my hoodie onto my backpack, she said, “Well, come on now,” and lowered herself into the recliner.

  Miss Denise is in her thirties, with dark bobbed hair and long fingernails painted cherry red. It’s hard to believe she was in pageants when she was a girl, but she has trophies on the little shelf next to the wood stove to prove it: Diablo County Fair Queen, Arkansas’s Ultimate Little Miss, Rock City Firemen’s Festival Princess. Now she’s thick in the middle and her skin is blotchy, but she still knows what she’s talking about. She charges $250 for ten hours of coaching, and if you pay her more money, she’ll go with you to the pageant. Mama was working on saving up for that. She had a couple of mule deer in the freezer at Grandma’s.

  “Let’s see you walk, Olivia,” Miss Denise said, crossing her legs delicately at the ankles. She wore neon green mules with tufts of green feathers across the tops. Her toenails were painted the same red as her fingernails. “Come on now. Like it’s showtime for real.”

  I stood across the room from her and willed myself to concentrate. Walking isn’t just walking, Miss Denise
always says. Walking is also thinking about walking.

  When I was ready, I began to make my way toward Miss Denise. Keeping track of everything in my head: where my eyes were looking, whether my hands were flat at my sides, whether I was smiling. When I’d walked about halfway across the living room, I did my turn. Smiling over one shoulder, then the other. Just like I’d done in front of Mama. Just like I’d done a million times. Then I posed long enough for the judges to look at me. Don’t rush, I told myself. Like Miss Denise always says, the whole point is for them to look.

  When I was finished, Miss Denise said, “Where were your eyes?”

  “On the TV.” Miss Denise has a big plasma TV in the corner. That’s where you’re supposed to focus.

  “No, they weren’t. They were looking down.”

  “I was looking at the TV! At the buttons!”

  “Olivia, you were looking at the ground. Now, where are the judges gonna be? Down on the floor or up here?” Miss Denise put on her pageant face: big, hard smile, eyes upturned.

  “But—”

  “Do it again, Olivia.”

  I sighed. I knew there would be something wrong every time I did it.

  After the next time, Miss Denise said, “Do you need glasses?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because you’re squinting.” She made a terrible face, with eyes all crinkled into lines.

  “I didn’t do that,” I said.

  “Well, now, yes, you did, Olivia, and what am I always telling you about talking back?”

  I sighed. “That part of being a winner is agreeing.”

  “Not agreeing. Being agreeable. And not arguing.” Miss Denise reached for her dental floss, which she keeps on the table next to her recliner, and unrolled a length of thread. She’s obsessed with flossing. “No one likes a little know-it-all,” she said, angling the floss up between her two front teeth.

  I wondered if she knew what she looked like, doing that.

  I waited while she flossed. Finally she said, “Let’s see you do it again.” She was hard to understand, talking with her mouth wide open, working the floss between two back teeth, but I was used to her and knew what she meant.