Chapter 9- The Last Day of School Revised
"AND glide... posture, girls, always remember posture!"
All of the members of the Rockford Peaches were "gliding" down the small set of steps while balancing heavy books on their heads. While they were partaking in this task, the other teams were busy with other seemingly pointless duties with their own instructors- which was how it had to be, since fraternizing between teams was just as forbidden as smoking and drinking.
The only time someone in the teams had strayed was when two girls, one from Kenosha, and the other from South Bend, were sitting together, giggling. One of the charm school instructors walked up and grabbed at one of the girls. The girl started yelling, "Hey, I'm not a little kid, so don't treat me like I'm in school!" The charm teacher then proceeded to angrily tell both girls that if either was caught talking to members from other teams again, she would personally tell Ira Lowenstein about their actions. It was the last time any of the girls would be caught talking to a member of another team.
Yeah, right.
The only thing that really changed from that moment was that you weren't likely to see two rival team members openly chatting. If a girl really wanted to talk, they would drop a handkerchief into the girl's lap that they wanted to talk to if she was sitting, or hand them the hand kerchief. If the other girl was willing to risk it, then they would meet in the woman's powder room, and hide in a stall, talking in hushed voices.
Dottie, who was striding down the stairs along with her team members, her hand up to her head to keep the book called, "Miss Nettleworth's Book Of Charm." on her head, never had done that action with another member of another team, though.
As the girls descended the stairs for, quite literally, the 30th time that morning, a few people were looking anxiously over at Marla from time to time, trying not to get caught staring. She was the only one of them that had earned the hatred of the charm school instructors from messing up on, quite literally, everything. She was walking much slower than the other girls, licking her lips nervously, her bulgy eyes as wide as they could go.
Finally, the instructor who had been watching them seemed pleased- as pleased as she could be. She stood up, clapping her heads together. "Ladies, ladies- let's move onto our next lesson before we serve breakfast."
All of the girls were eager to move to the table next to the instructor to plop their books into a neat pile, but they also felt like grumbling. They were all, after all, hungry- and the thought of another seemingly pointless task before eating caused the girls to all feel annoyed.
When they were out of earshot, following the instructor to the next place, Mae's voice could be heard talking loudly enough for the group of migrating girls to hear. "It's part of their plan, you know, to starve us. They'll starve us so that we'll do any damn thing they want us to do- I, I mean, come on, have any of you ever heard of the five different forks they made us learn about?! Where I come from, men don't care or ask if you know what the hell a salad fork is!"
As soon as they hit the area where many dining chairs were, however, no one dared to speak up. They all stood as perfectly as they could, waiting for the instructor to tell them to sit down in the chairs. The instructor turned to look at them, smiled a wide, incredibly fake grin, and then sat down in her own chair with the utmost care, being sure to position her right leg over her other.
"Do as I do, ladies- sit!"
The girls, all practically wanting to yell, Quit treating me like a dog, you bitch, nonetheless sat down meekly. This was one of the more simpler of tasks- it was even one thing that Marla could (usually) get right. That day, the girls, who were trying to inconspicuously watch Marla in hopes that she would do this task right again, felt relief when they watched as Marla, awkwardly but still doing it, sat down as she was supposed to, folding one leg over the other. The instructor, too, seemed to notice Marla's victory over her own nervousness and lack of coordination.
"Good, good, Miss Hooch!" The woman cried, clasping her hands together. Marla gave the instructor a shy look, and as soon as the instructor looked away, walking up the line of girls, she immediately reached to her backside and began to yank as hard as she could on the fabric, a harried, panicked look on her face. Many of the girls, including Kit and Doris, had to stop themselves from laughing.
Doris, however, couldn't stop herself from laughing. The instructor stopped mid-stride, and looked back at Doris questioningly. "Just WHAT, Ms. Murphy, is so funny?!"
Doris, unfazed, continued to laugh for a few more second, wiped tears out of one of her eyes, and spoke, the laughter still in her voice. "Oh, nothin', nothin'- I just love how you're convertin' some of us so well. Not an unladylike act in this whole fuckin' room."
The instructor seemed to be half baffled, and half angry at Doris' words. Her eyes tightened into slits. "Ms. Murphy, what is it you are insinuating?"
"Oh, nothing, nothin'. Let's go on, alright? I could use some breakfast already."
The instructor seemed adamant, for a moment, to get the truth out of Doris Murphy, but she eventually gave up, walking in the same direction she had been. As soon as she turned away, Marla began to tug at the fabric again, much more furiously.-
It was at that time of day in which the youth of noon was losing to night, still bright in the sky, but at any moment, the sky was bound to turn into a bright, colorful explosion- majestic purples, love inspiring pink, and a vibrant, bright gold. Instead of awaiting to admire the sunset that was due to come, the eight people on the green field were busy; running from point-to-point, playing catch with a softball, and whacking away at balls thrown from a scrounged-up automatic tosser.
It was the Peaches who were allowed in the field to practice, much to the relief of Ellen. She spent almost all of her time on field either throwing to anyone who was willing to practice their throwing as well, or tossing her ball on an empty expanse of grass, picking it up every time she threw it by herself. When it was almost sundown, she had managed to talk Kit into remaining as her catch partner. By the time they were done, they had worked themselves into a panting, sweating mess on the grass.
The other girls, other than Ellen, Kit, Dottie, and Marla were named Betty Horn, Evelyn Gardner, Alice Gaspers, and Helen Haley. All of the women got along great that night, not a one of them seemed to have any energy left in them when sunset came. When it became nightfall, they all laid on their back, and talked, staring up at the dark sky as the stars began to poke through the sea of vast darkness.
When they all returned to the boarding house, Dottie slunk down into the lobby with a sheet of her favorite stationary- and the last letter she had gotten from her husband tucked under her plain stationary.
She sat at the only desk in the small room, listening to the noise of the two clocks in the room tick and tock rhythmically. After only minutes into scratching the blank paper with a pencil, she had hit her usual brick wall.
It was always a strange experience to write the letters, Dottie always found. She began with a million things she wanted to tell Bob- anecdotes she wanted to tell from her daily experiences, news about her progression into this strange league with her sister, how she missed him- but she always felt as though she was somehow blocked during the beginning of writing these letters.
She sat there for a long while, pouring over Bob's last letter, looking for just one thing to anchor onto to get into the next sentence. She sat there, barely scratching the paper with her pencil, until she got to look up at the clock closest to her and saw that it was a quarter 'till midnight. Then, sighing, she pushed the folded-up letter into one of the many envelopes she had collected to use in her many letters, collected everything she had brought down with her into a neat little pile, and trudged up the two stories to her room.--
