Note: Written for Stretch's fic contest, based on picture #2, i think, if that means anything to you. :-)
The Follies Girl
"What about this one, Grandma Hettie?" I ask, pointing at the next clipping in her scrapbook. The newspaper is yellowed, the ink blotchy. In the picture, her face is almost completely in shadow, and she is frozen in mid-step, her arms full of parcels, but I'd recognize the self-assured posture of my grandmother as a young lady anywhere.
My grandma is Mehitabelle Svenson. Did you ever hear of her? She was once pretty well known, and still has the scrapbooks to prove it. Each one is filled with publicity shots, newspaper clippings and love-notes from her many admirers. Yes, men flocked to see Mehitabelle, the follies girl of the 1890s. I revel in her stories. They give me hope.
My grandma laughs at the picture. "Oh, I remember that hat," she says, her eyes crinkling. "Now, you might think that I might have gotten that hat from one of my gentleman callers." She leans in as she speaks, lowering her voice as if she's confiding a deep dark secret. "Gentlemen were always bringing me gifts. Flowers, of course, but also gloves…shawls…why, I had more jewelry than Calvin Coolidge, put together!" She laughs, and I shake my head, all the while smiling. I don't always get my grandmother's jokes, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. "And hats! But this hat here was from my dear friend Medda.
"Medda was convinced, quite erroneously in my opinion, that the only colors she should wear were pinks and mauves. I tried to tell her, time and again, that with the color of her hair (like a sunrise, it was), she should go for more blues and greens. Pinks were better suited to my ivory complexion and raven hair.
"Well, one day, this young chap gave her this hat. Perhaps he agreed with my personal tastes, because this hat was the most luscious periwinkle blue. And I swear the color would have suited her rosy complexion to a T.
"But, she refused to wear it. So one day, when I was at her home for tea, I remarked that the hat looked awfully lonely. It sat on her hat stand, with her dozens of other fluffy, flowery hats. A single blue hat in a whole garden of pinks and mauves. Well, she stood right up and marched over to the hat rack, lifting the hat up and bringing it back to me.
" 'Vould you like to offer me a trade?' she asked me in that ridiculous 'Svedish' accent of hers, gesturing to my own orangey-pink hat. Or was my hat pale yellow that day? All I know is that the color didn't suit her a bit! But Medda was insistent that it would suit her much better than that gorgeous periwinkle one. So, I ultimately agreed to a trade.
"And I wore that hat for several seasons. It was a very well-made hat."
I'm charmed by my Grandma. She can take one photograph and turn it into a whole story.
"But what does it say under the picture?" I ask, leaning in to read the faded newsprint. That's when my grandmother really starts to laugh.
" 'Fashion don't! Miss Mehitabelle Svenson, of Folly fame, seen on Fifth Avenue in a floral bouquet of a hat in the dead of winter.' Yes, I incited quite a bit of trouble with that fashion faux pas," she says with a wink, a flush of pride on her cheeks.
"They put your picture in the newspaper because you weren't dressed right?" I say, flabbergasted. "But, that's awful!"
"No, it's not. You get your picture in the paper: you're famous. And when you're famous, you get anything you want. That's what's so great about New York." She beams at me. "Plus, you'll never believe it. The following week I got scores of sensible winter hats, all felt and wool, sent to me from a whole slew of loopy-eyed men who didn't want to see Mehitabelle's reputation tarnished by her inability to afford a simple winter hat."
"Were times tough for you, even then?" I ask softly, referring to the poverty that our whole family lived in now, thanks to the stock market crash a few years ago.
My grandmother laughs cheerfully. "On the contrary, times weren't tough at all. I already had more than enough winter hats. I had just happened to be wearing that spring hat that day because I liked it so much. See, even back then, your grandma Hettie was a rule-breaker."
"But if you had enough hats already, what did you do with all the new ones?"
"I wore them, too, probably. Maybe I gave one to Medda. It doesn't really matter."
I frown slightly. I guess it doesn't matter much. They were just hats. And yet, I can't help but think of how I have been wearing the same winter hat for three years and how it is starting to get small on my head. And there had probably been people back then who had the same problem.
I'm quiet for a moment. "But who is that with you?"
My grandmother looks at me, puzzled. "With me?" she repeats, squinting down at the picture. "Nobody is with me. I'm alone."
"No, you aren't. Who's that child? That little boy, whose face is wrinkled like an old man, as though he knows the pain of a hundred years of life, instead of the simple joys that come with only six years of life? That poor child who is weary from working so hard, so he leans against the light pole, looking up at the adults imploringly, wanting them to help him, and yet all the while being completely ignored? Who is he?"
"That's a newsboy," my grandmother explains.
"But who IS he? And why does he look so cold and un-cared for?" I ask insistently.
After a moment of silence, my grandma Hettie answers, staring at the photograph as if seeing it for the first time. "I don't know."