Gone with the Wind
(disclaimer: I could never write such a beautiful book and I do not own Gone with the Wind)
The girl, sitting alone in the crowded ballroom, smoothed her white organdy dress with apprehensive fingers. She looked up every now and then, her pale blue eyes searching for something she couldn't find, tracing the outlines of the fading summer sun on the grand windows.
Ella Lorena Butler crossed her feet, uncrossed them, fidgeted with her dark hair, found quiet solace in looking at handsome boys, the boys who would never ask her to dance. Ella, with her large, beautiful eyes, tiny waist, and silky chestnut hair, had never been asked to dance.
She had found her niche, sitting near the older chaperones supervising, not feeling she had to talk, only to watch tactfully the couples with whom she should have been a part of. Oh, life was not fair, especially when your own mother ruined your coming out.
Ella's sixteenth birthday was to have been one of great celebration. The South was piecing back together again, filling the gaps that the cannonballs of the War had left in its great cities. Atlanta, thriving again with its back supported by the proud and faithful matrons, had finally risen on its feet to greet a new day.
But her entrance into the famed society of Georgia's most flourishing city was not to be. She had been scorned by those who had had their backs turned to Mrs. Scarlett Butler, Ella's mother, ever since she'd been the cause of her previous husband's death, even since she went into business and opened up a lumber mill worked by leased convicts and free darkies.
Nothing was worse than her mother's past sins, the city thought, and they straightened rigid backs and were wont to snub anyone with connections to the Butlers. So it was that Ella found herself always on the fringe of society functions, looking on longingly at the colorful dresses and fluttering fans. "Oh, how I wish I could be one of them," she would sigh to herself, glancing down modestly at the hard, polished floor.
The only reason she was here tonight was because this was the large and much-anticipated ball held by the Merriweather-Picards, one of Atlanta's most prominent families. All of Atlanta (and all of the entire state of Georgia, for that matter) seemed to have been invited.
And even Ella Butler, outcast by her mother's wrongdoings, was in attendance.
She had not wanted to go, of course, knowing beyond a doubt what she would be doing during the ball. Certainly not dancing. Did she want to make an example of herself?
"Wishes, only wishes," she thought now. "Why should I be silly enough to think that anyone halfway respectable would want to dance with me?" Ella shook her head sadly, mulling over the long-enduring predicament. She knew she looked fetching, in the brand new white dress from England that her uncle Ashley had sent her. It is the latest fashion here, he had written. All the girls in their pretty frocks—but not half as pretty as you will look, my dear! Mammy had done her hair with all the fashionable curlicues, as well, using a pretty lilac ribbon to accent her eyes.
Ella rested her chin in her hand in a most unbecoming way, slouching for a moment in her chair.
From behind her came a sudden giggle, and Ella straightened, embarrassed, feeling her white skin tinge with pink. She blushed much too easily, her mother said. A little modest color now and then would do, but at tiny moments like this, it was too apparent that she was ashamed of her position.
Isabel Picard stepped lightly around the chaperones' chairs and smiled spitefully at Ella.
"Well, if it isn't Miss Butler." Her thin mouth puckered, as if she smelled something, and Ella shrank down in her seat. Isabel obviously thought herself the belle of the city. And certainly, boys seemed to find her attractive. But there was nothing to Isabel besides her cutting remarks and her crafty ways. She was rich, she was thin, she always wore the most beautiful dresses of anyone, but that was all she seemed to have.
Ella had never been allowed to play with Isabel, who was also sixteen, growing up. It had seemed as though there was an invisible divide, a rift started long ago between Ella's mother Scarlett and Isabel's grandmother, the stout old matron Mrs. Merriweather. Ever since that long ago day when Ella's stepbrother Wade had not been invited to Raoul Picard's birthday party because of his mother's associations, the Butlers and good society had were split apart forever.