So for those of you hoping for a bit more of the Will Darcy and Elizabeth Bennet romance, this chapter isn't it. Instead it veered off in a whole other direction with Caroline as the focus. We will get back to ODC, though, probably with Chapter 10. I read the first half of Great Expectations when we were in major shut down mode and I noticed this chapter picks up on one of its central themes. Additionally, my ladies' bible study group was reading a book called Be the Bridge to help us explore the history of racism and discrimination in our country and what the church's reaction should be. While I don't agree with the idea that each of us bears collective guilt for what has occurred in our nation, it does have us wanting to understand all our neighbors better.

Given how long this story has been taking, I am now aiming to be finished by Thanksgiving. Thanks for hanging in there.

Chapter 9

Caroline was exhausted. She lay in the bed in a cheap ice blue cotton sleep shirt borrowed from Jane, and some white and blue striped fuzzy socks that were also Jane's. Caroline had been surprised that Jane had so much blue, but the items looked almost new which made sense as they were not Jane's signature light pink.

The twin bed was comfortable enough, but smaller than the king-sized bed Caroline was used to. She was trying to succumb to that pull and drift away, but it was difficult to clear her mind with the whispers and giggles of Anne and Gigi. Caroline felt like she was a third wheel but she also felt unwilling to do anything to inject herself into their fun and face rejection.

In the movies sleepovers always seemed like so much fun, but Caroline never had any at her home growing up, or even friends over at all once she realized how poor she and her mother were. She was too embarrassed to have anyone see their house.

Of course it hadn't always been that way. When Caroline was little, she saw neither deficits in their home or in her mother. While she had awakened bit by bit, that they had less than other people, she never felt poor. The word "poor" was reserved for the people in the trailer park or in the projects, or migrant workers; certainly it did not apply to them.

However, Caroline awoke to the divide between rich and poor when she spent that first summer with the Bingleys at Cape Cod and afterwards what had been acceptable, normal, comfortable, became unacceptable, abnormal, uncomfortable, though as a child Caroline had no way to change it.

Every day when she got home from school, Caroline felt despair in seeing the unchanging landscape of her home. There was the worn snot-green shag carpeting, the threadbare floral sofa with large orange flowers that might have been chic in the 70s but was sadly outdated now, and the orange rocking chair that was gloppy with too many layers of paint.

The rest of the home wasn't any better. The vinyl kitchen floor was scuffed and scratched, and an indeterminate color that might have once been white, but now alternated between cream, beige and tan, and the countertops over the original cabinets had been painted a navy color, with drips of paint dried along the faux oak cabinets that sagged. The cracked tile bathroom was in a shade of diarrhea brown and contained a whitish sink with a rust stain that originated with the rusty faucet; the commode was cracked at the top of the tank and missing a tank lid.

Caroline's bedroom still had fake wood paneled walls, which she had talked her mother into re-painting sky blue for a birthday present, but her mom got the cheapest paint and it still showed a bit of the purple and pink hue bleeding through. Caroline had done her best to cover the walls with her award certificates, but the shiny metal-hued stickers and crisp paper, made her only notice the deficits of the room more: the dingy sheets, frayed quilt, the avocado green wastebasket, the missing section of molding.

And her mother was not much better. Whereas before, Caroline thought her mother lovely with her golden hair, now she saw a woman who had creases around her eyes, stretched earlobes from wearing too many heavy earrings and floppy neck skin. Caroline saw that her mother was being dragged down by life, her looks ground down from disappointment after disappointment. It didn't help that she wore thrift store clothes and dollar store makeup with a foundation that was a touch too pink, and who went far too long before buying hair dye in the grocery store which left mostly dark roots showing through.

At middle school Caroline could pretend she wasn't poor when wearing the clothes Mimi bought her, at least for a while, until it got too cold. Before school started, her mom tried to take her to K-mart for school clothes (as she did every year). Caroline demurred, "Dad bought me so many clothes, I don't need any more." It was a lie of course as Mimi was the one who bought her the clothes (and they were almost all summer clothes), but Caroline didn't really think of it as a lie. Really, it was her father delegating. Whenever Caroline talked about her vacations with her father's family, she always did her best to make it seem like she was her daddy's little darling and hardly mentioned Mimi. She was afraid if her mother knew how things really were, that she would not get to go at all.

"If you are sure," her mother responded, with a look that said she was distressed even though her tone stayed even and calm. "I'm glad your dad wants to get you nice things but just don't forget where you come from. Guys like your father tend to be the out of sight, out of mind type and there is no guarantee you'll go out there again." Caroline was horrified by her mother's prediction, but fortunately it did not come true. However, in looking back at it all, Caroline rather suspected that it was Mimi that made sure she had a plane ticket sent to her every summer.

That first year, eventually Caroline needed a coat, winter clothes and bigger shoes. Back to K-mart they went and Caroline tried her best to hide her dismay at the no-name brands; she wasn't impressed by whomever that Jaclyn Smith was. Whereas before, Caroline had known her clothes weren't exactly the height of fashion, she had never realized how embarrassing they really were. But she also knew that her mother took pride in buying her daughter new things, in not having to shop for her at St. Vincent de Paul and Goodwill.

Caroline only remembered attending one sleepover, when she was fifteen. The whole girls' basketball team was invited to Katie's house for a beginning of the season party. Each girl was supposed to bring a t-shirt for the other girls to decorate with encouraging messages.

When Caroline asked her mother for a t-shirt, her mother's lips thinned and she said, "Caroline, money is tight this month. Remember we had to fix the car radiator?"

Caroline nodded; of course she knew about the expense, but surely there was enough money still left for a t-shirt.

"If you want a new t-shirt, you're going to have to spend your allowance on it." Her mother announced, her face slack and worn.

"But Mom!" Caroline protested.

"Twenty dollars should be plenty for the month. It is way more than my parents gave me." She gave Caroline a serious look, the kind of look that said begging would not get her anywhere. Then she asked the dreaded question, "Did you spend all of your allowance already? You only got it a week ago Thursday."

In fact Caroline had spent it all, all but two dollars and twelve cents, plus her birthday money. She had gone to the mall with a friend, Nina who was half Indian (from India), and wandered around the makeup counters sorting out which company had the best free gift with purchase for the Christmas season and also had an item to purchase that she would really use. She had been thrilled to find a makeup artist at one of the counters who was able to find her a foundation that qualified for the free gift that would actually look good on someone who was fair with red hair.

While Caroline was still testing out dabs of foundation on her inner arm, Nina had wandered around the different makeup counters. When she came back she told Caroline, "You are sure lucky your skin is light; I think I saw a shade or two that might work for me, but I don't know what foundation or powder the black girls at our school could wear."

The makeup artist glanced and Nina and said, "I can find you a shade; You are basically tan and we have shades for that. It might be trickier if you were darker, but our darker tones blend and we have something for every woman." Caroline glanced down at the counter and spotted only two truly brown shades. She didn't see how that could work for all the different shades of African-American women out there, but was quickly distracted when the makeup artist told her, pointing to one of the samples in her arm, "that shade is perfect for you." As Caroline left the store with Nina, she felt triumphant, accomplished, competent in the world of adults and gave no more thought to what other girls might wear on their skin.

Now faced with a mother who obviously expected her to budget better, she was regretting having nothing left in reserve. Her mother took pity on Caroline and let her have the bowl of change that sat on their kitchen counter but all told she was only able to put together about four and half dollars. That put any nice t-shirts out of reach, so her mom drove Caroline to Dollar General and she had to pick something off of the one rack of shirts. There were only two plain shirts, a navy XL that could have fit three of her and a M yellow shirt that was mostly polyester and felt like the paper towels in the school bathrooms, cheap and a little scratchy. There was really only one choice, but as the yellow wasn't her color Caroline considered just not going to the sleepover.

Her mother got tired of Caroline just standing there and told her, "I don't have all day. Get it or don't get it, but I guarantee the other girls will be worrying about their own t-shirts, not yours." Caroline bought the yellow shirt.

However, it turned out there were more things to be embarrassed about, like the sleeping bag her mother pulled out of the attic that had to be twenty-years old with a red bandanna print on the inside and innumerable fuzzy pills on its burnt orange outside. Luckily for Caroline, given that she was one of the first girls to arrive, she was able to quickly stow it in a corner out of view.

Caroline felt awkward being in team captain Katie's house. Katie was a senior, popular with whitish blonde hair. She was one of those girls who was mean that everyone would excuse, the kind of girl everyone tried to find favor in, even though they hated her. At that point in her life, that was who Caroline wanted to be, and maybe still did a bit even now.

Caroline was just a sophomore and had barely made the varsity team. While being on the team improved her status, she feared closer scrutiny from girls like Katie could lead to disaster.

Caroline felt she would feel more at ease if the only other sophomore, Porsche, had been present. Porsche, whose name she knew was spelled like the car as she always told anyone who asked, was at least someone she knew. They had shared a few classes and both sang alto in choir (Caroline had wanted to play and instrument in band, but renting an instrument cost money and the only instrument the school had in large supply were the trombones and Caroline wanted to play something more dainty and as her mom pointed out, "Choir is so much cheaper, why all it requires is a black skirt and top for the concerts"). They had also spent last season on the JV team together. Porsche wasn't exactly a friend, but she was someone that Caroline could talk to for a few minutes without feeling awkward and she had no sense of malice from her.

In class Porsche was always called Porsche, so Caroline was surprised when everyone on the basketball team started calling her "Porch" their sophomore year. She got that it was a nickname, but didn't think it really fit the graceful African-American girl who seemed more dancer than jock when she looped the ball into the net.

Caroline never started called Porsche "Porch" as she did not think Porsche really liked the nickname, even if she did not complain about it. Back when they were assigned partners on an English project fall semester, Caroline had made sure to ask Porsche what she liked to be called. It was one of the first conversations she had with anyone when they were getting to know one another. Caroline had a selfish motive for this, as she always wanted to start the discussion about shortened names so she could let everyone know to call her Caro without having to seem like she was bringing up the topic for herself.

Caroline recalled that Porsche had said, "Just Porsche is fine. I'm a sports car, the best kind of sports car, and not no deck and not the Shakespeare character from the Merchant of Venice, neither."

Porsche hadn't asked what Caroline liked to be called and their conversation had moved in a different direction as Caroline asked, "Why did your parents name you that?"

"My dad's a mechanic and really likes cars. He mostly fixes those economy cars but he has admiration for all the expensive models. He said he wanted us to all know what we were worth."

It was past the starting time for the party when Porsche's older sister, a senior named Mercedes arrived. It had taken Caroline a couple of days on the varsity team to realize they were sisters, although it should have been obvious as there were only a few black girls at their high school, they had similar smiles, and they both had car names. But where Mercedes was very dark, like dark chocolate, and always had thin braids of shiny black, Porsche was more of a cafe au lait color and had straightened brown hair.

When Caroline had asked Mercedes the same question about what she liked to be called, Mercedes said, "Mercedes or Mercy is fine, but if you write Mercy, write it like 'the act of mercy' and not like the French 'merci beaucoup.'" Mercy did her the favor of actually asking Caroline how she liked to be addressed. But other than that, they had hardly talked except for Mercy showing her a better way to throw her hook shot.

Still, Mercedes seemed friendly enough, so Caroline went ahead and asked when Mercy arrived, "Where's Porsche?"

Mercedes grimaced for a second as she crossed her arms, making a flat "x" that cut her blue shirt in two. "The same place as Re'shaun, not here." She looked off into the distance as she stroked at one of her long thin braids.

That didn't seem like much of an answer to Caroline, but it did seem like Mercedes didn't really want to say, so she left it alone.

Soon after that, they were all caught up in decorating one another's shirts, and to Caroline's delight, no one seemed to notice her shirt wasn't as nice as the others or the wrong color. Caroline was feeling better about the whole thing until she noticed how generic the comments were that were being written on her shirt in permanent markers.

Caroline read things like "Win!" "Go Comets" "Make that shot, Caro." One ambitious girl had written every girl's jersey number on the back of each shirt, but Caroline noticed that hers, a "15," was just a quick free hand and not the nicely blocked numbers that Katie and most of the other girls had.

The comments were much longer and more detailed on Katie's shirt as well. Someone wrote "Brains, brawn and beauty"; another one wrote "Team Sweetheart" in a large heart and put a lot of little hearts around it. When Caroline saw that, she wondered which one of her teammates was the biggest brown noser. Another girl had drawn basketballs alternating with her jersey number "21" around the edges of the sleeves.

No one really excluded Caroline, but she felt like no one cared that she was there either and the pizza just settled in her stomach like a lump. After the movie, the girls began arranging their pillows and sleeping bags to sleep on the floor of the den. Katie told Jess and Sara to put their bags by her (she was sleeping across the couch). Other girls were making similar requests and rather than wait for an invitation and be disappointed, Caroline settled herself against a wall, got in her bag and closed her eyes.

She faked sleep so long that eventually she even fell asleep, but roused when she heard giggling and heard someone ask, "Is anyone asleep yet? I heard this thing where you can put a sleeping person's hand in warm water and it will make her pee." Another girl added, "I think Caro is out."

Caroline sat up, "No I'm not!" she declared. The girls moved on to speculating who might be close to sleep. Caroline lay down again, but now found herself wide awake. After a few moments worrying about the hand in water prank, Carolina's mind returned to focusing on her horrible yellow shirt which still had so much bare space. Finally, she got up and by the dim light from the bathroom's cracked door, picked her way over her slumbering teammates to grab her shirt, the first three permanent markers she could find (they were scattered all over the room and it took her a while to even find that many in the dim light from the open bathroom door) and one of the pieces of cardboard the girls had been using to make sure the design did not bleed through.

Caroline retreated to the bathroom, closed the door and flicked on the rest of the lights. She then discovered why it was easier to find these particular markers. None of them were pretty colors, the pinks, reds or purples. Instead, she had a green, a black and a yellow. Caroline immediately put the yellow aside as it wouldn't show up on her yellow shirt. She then examined the markings on her shirt. She was almost certain that the orange "Win!" had been drawn with a hot pink marker, but against the yellow it became orange. Then there was the bluish-greenish number "15" on the back that she was almost certain had been drawn with the blue marker.

Caroline sighed, certain that it really did not matter whether she used the black or green marker, nothing was going to look good on the yellow shirt. She decided, though, that she could at least make it look like she was more popular if she filled it up a little. She drew a daisy necklace below the ribbing with the green marker and made the thin "21" into block lettering with the black marker. She wrote, "Caro Rulz" in a bubbly script and "Take it for 3" with long angular letters. There was still a lot of space left, but Caroline couldn't think of what else to write, so she gathered everything up, turned off the lights and crept out, almost running into Mercedes.

Caroline gave a little squeal. She knew someone was there from the faintly shining eyes, even if it was hard to tell who at first. "Whacha doin' Ca-ro-line?" Mercy asked, almost singing her name. She looked down at Caroline literally from her six foot one inch frame.

Caroline's first thought was to deny doing anything, but before she could, Mercy commented, "Ah, trying to fix your shirt. They made a mess of mine."

"What'd they do?" Caroline asked, suddenly curious.

Mercy didn't say anything for a moment, but then she leaned down and whispered, "Porsche's told me you're okay, so I'll tell you, but not here." She tipped her head to one side to indicate which way they should go. Caroline, happy to have someone paying attention to her at last, followed the taller girl through a door, still clutching her shirt and supplies, and found herself outside.

They walked over towards an old metal swing-set and by the light of the almost full moon, Caroline could see much better than inside. Once they reached the swing-set, floodlights burst on. Off to the side, there was a metal bench which Mercedes walked toward. Mercedes flicked her hand which was holding something white, and a t-shirt unfurled, very light against her dark clothes and skin. Then she laid it out on the bench. Caroline couldn't really tell the colors of the words on Mercy's shirt, but she could make out some of the words that were in darker marker. Caroline found some of the very same phrases that were on her shirt and then spotted and read aloud, "The next Michael Jordan."

"Yeah, that one's okay, 'cause Mike's great, but that's probably the only black person they know." Mercy commented.

Caroline kept looking at the shirt and near the bottom spotted in thick dark block letters the phrase, "Merci, our Nigga." Instead of reading this phrase aloud she exclaimed, "They didn't." Caroline was shocked, horrified, but a secret part of her felt a thrill that she was in the know, that Mercy had confided in her.

"Yeah they did, it's there in black and white. I don't know who did it, but I'ma gonna find out.'' Mercedes said it so quietly, calmly, with no apparent anger.

"Coach'll be mad," Caroline responded. "She might even kick the girl off the team."

"She might, but I'm not gonna tell her," Mercedes responded.

"Why not?" Caroline asked.

"I don't want more people knowing about it. Maybe all the other girls know. Maybe they've all seen it."

"I didn't," Caroline responded. Trying to make Mercedes feel better she said, "I was only thinking about what I was writing and trying to get to the next shirt as I didn't want to miss anyone's shirt. I bet hardly anyone saw it."

"Well, I don't want anyone else to see it either, but I don't want to just throw out the shirt. I like what some of the girls wrote. Which one did you write, Caro?"

Caroline searched for a bit and then touched her own comment, a bit embarrassed by her own generic comment: "Mercy, take us to district and state." At least she felt that the script was nice.

Caroline had a sudden inspiration. "If you don't want to keep the evidence, maybe we can make the bad words into something else."

" I 'spose it's worth a shot," Mercy conceded, looking around nervously.

Caroline took that as permission. Eager to please Mercedes and fix things, she stuck in the cardboard piece and using the black and green markers began transforming the letters into wild looking leaves and grasses, extending the design to ring around the whole bottom edge, darkening portions to obscure the letters that were less easy to transform into shading.

Caroline was pleased with how it all came out, but when Mercedes looked at it closely she was not. "What are you playing at? You think I'm from the jungle or something?"

"No, of course not."

"And now no one will believe me!" Mercedes exclaimed, snatching the shirt. "You're in on it, aren't you?"

"No," Caroline answered at once, hopelessly confused, feeling a sickening twisting in her stomach. She didn't understand why she was now under attack. Grasping for something, anything to say, she blurted. "I am friends with Porsche; I'd never do that to her sister."

"Friends, huh?" Mercedes looked at her with such loathing that Caroline shrunk back. "My sister said you were okay and not friends and she and Re'Shaun skipped this sh*t storm, but I knew better; no one was gonna mess up my senior year even if I didn't get team captain. So what's our brother's name, huh?"

Clearly it was a test even if Caroline feared that even a correct answer wouldn't help. When Caroline and Porsche worked on their project after school in the school library (neither had invited the other home), Caroline recalled that Porsche's brother was the one to pick her up. Caroline knew she had heard his name at least a couple of times, and Porsche had told her how when he was little the kids at school would sing some song about it . . . . She struggled to recall the songs that little kids knew. There was the clean up song, London Bridge, Mary had a Little . . . "Lamb, his name is Lamb."

"Wrong! That's just a stupid nickname." The way she said it was like a buzzer on a game show, harsh and unforgiving. "He's Lamborghini." Mercedes crumpled the t-shirt up into a tight ball as if she could squish it out of existence. "You'd better not say nothing about this."

"I won't," Caroline promised.

"See that you don't," Mercedes glared and then stalked back inside. Caroline expected to hear the door slam, but Mercedes opened and closed it very carefully.

Caroline stayed out by herself until she felt herself shivering. She had no desire to go back inside. Everything was tilted, twisted, backwards. Things that she thought she knew did not make sense anymore. She did not understand why Mercedes was so angry with her.

After that evening, every time Caroline saw Mercedes at basketball practice she tried to stay out of her way. While she still talked with Porsche and tried to deepen their acquaintance into something closer to friendship, she felt wary around Mercedes. Although most of the other girls wore their decorated t-shirts around school, Caroline never did and neither did Mercedes. For Caroline, the t-shirt ended up at the bottom of her drawer, buried but not forgotten.

Lying in the dark, hearing Georgiana and Anne whispering about Will and Elizabeth, Caroline felt an odd sort of numbness. She felt she should care that Will was slipping further away from her, but she didn't. She tried to muster up enthusiasm for doing something, anything to turn Will away from Elizabeth, but it felt like too much of a burden.

Caroline's mind turned back to her conversation with Margaret on the airplane. Margaret had told her that she didn't have to hold onto her resentment. She thought about Mercedes and wondered how much resentment she must have been holding onto, even then as a teenager. With the perspective as an adult, she understood that as an unimportant sophomore she was an easier, safer person to be angry with than team captain Katie and all the rest. Not that Mercedes did not have a good reason to be angry. But having all that anger all the time, being suspicious of everything, that would have been hard.

Caroline wondered what Mercedes and Porsche were doing now. She even had a vague idea of trying to find them on Facebook until she remembered their last name was Brown. Probably the only way to find them would be if they had mutual friends from high school on Facebook, but wondered who that could be.

Caroline thought about how Thanksgiving was supposed to be about gratitude. She should be grateful that her sister and brother took her to the emergency room and missed out on their Thanksgiving meal. They hadn't complained even though it was her own stupid fault.

Charlie had even tried to make things better by acting crazy just for her. He'd walked back and forth in the tiny exam room she was in while they waited for a doctor, trying to imitate a turkey, flapping his bent arms as wings, sticking his bottom out as he bent forward and swayed his head forward and back and making a "bok bok" sound. Despite her swollen face, Caroline had almost laughed; Charlie had sounded like the Cadbury bunny making chicken noises as it laid a creme egg.

"That's not the sound a turkey makes!" Louisa exclaimed while Caroline was still trying to decide if it was worth saying something with her still swollen lips and tongue. "Didn't you learn in kindergarten that it goes gobble, gobble?" Caroline smiled with remembering.

She tried to settle herself down, but more and more thoughts continued to intrude. Just what job opportunity did Margaret have in mind for her? Was she really, at her core, the kind person Margaret seemed to think she was? Was she getting anywhere at all by trying to be as cut-throat as Katie had been. Did she want to be that kind of person anymore?

Caroline gave up on sleep then and sat up, thinking one last trip to the bathroom might help.

"I'm so sorry, Caro," Gigi apologized. "We're being too loud, aren't we?"

"No," Caroline responded with the truth. "Yeah, I heard you, but I've got too much on my mind to sleep. "

Anne whispered something in Gigi's ear. "Oh, good idea!" Gigi exclaimed. "Let's go get some cookies and milk."

Although those were two foods that Caroline almost never ate in her effort to keep her figure, she was tempted more by the offered camaraderie than the cookies. "Maybe just one," she temporized, "but we need to try to be quiet."

They crept out of the guest room. Anne tiptoed in an exaggerated manner as if her only example of how to walk quietly was a cartoon show. Gigi walked more regularly, although softly. Caroline held back a little, walking slower so that she could peer at the people sleeping in the living room. While Gigi and Anne were already entering the kitchen, Caroline observed Will on sofa and Elizabeth on the loveseat, heads near each other, faces relaxed in sleep.

While it was impossible to know if the attraction she had seen between them had advanced while she had been gone, Caroline felt that at the very least they were companionable and comfortable with each other. Caroline had known Will far longer, but he continued to be more standoffish with her. She still felt like an outsider, peering into a lavish shop with items she could never afford. Will Darcy could have been her golden ticket, the win that would have finally made her someone, but she just wasn't sure that is what she wanted anymore, but she had been on her trajectory so long that inertia was still propelling her along the same path.

"Hurry up, Caroline," Anne hissed. Caroline hurried.

Gigi grabbed three little plates and three small glasses, each of which she filled with 2% milk. Normally Caroline would have been looking for fat free milk, or poured herself a cup of water instead. But reasoning that she hadn't finished her dinner, she decided to indulge herself, taking the glass without complaint and actually selecting both a tree and a star.

Anne filled up her plate with so many cookies (a whole leaning Tower of Pisa stack) that Caroline was afraid that if she ate them all she would be sick but also didn't think she should say anything; she was afraid of insulting Anne again and driving her away. Gigi was finally the one to say something: "Now Anne, that's an awful lot of cookies. We shouldn't eat them all and leave nothing for the Bingleys and their other guests. How about you start with two and see how hungry you really are."

Caroline watched as Gigi removed several cookies from the stack. Anne did not complain, but did brag, "That star on your plate, I decorated it myself."

"Very nice," Caroline said diplomatically, studying the sprinkle coated star before taking a delicate bite.