They Gave Me a Check at Twelfth Night, So I Took Their Mardi Gras novel · Chapter 9 of 32
Chapter 9: The Hem
Auguste's niece came to Arabi on Wednesday afternoon in the back of a rideshare, holding a garment bag in both arms like a sleeping child.
I was in the yard hanging Mama's sheets.
I saw a white sedan stop at the curb and a girl get out, long-legged and pale, with her dark hair pulled back in a clip she'd clearly done herself.
She was eighteen.
I had known her since she was twelve and cried at her own birthday because the cake was the wrong blue.
"Aunt Clem," she said at the gate. "I don't know if I'm allowed to call you that."
"You're allowed."
"I took an Uber from the Quarter. I didn't know it was so far."
"It's two miles."
"It felt like more."
She stood there holding the bag, and I saw that she had been crying in the car and had stopped just before the street.
"Come in the kitchen," I said. "My mother makes grillades on Wednesday and she'll feed you whether you want it or not."
Mama fed her.
The girl ate two helpings sitting very straight on the edge of the chair, as she'd been taught to eat in company, and said "ma'am" to Mama, and "thank you" to the fork.
When she finished she unzipped the garment bag on the oilcloth.
Inside lay the Presentation gown, white silk with a boat neck and a long train, eleven thousand dollars from a house on Royal Street.
"The hem's wrong," she said.
"It's two inches too long."
"The shop in the Quarter says they can't do it before Saturday and Mom said I should wear heels to make up the difference."
"What size heels?"
"Four inches."
"You'll break your ankle on the stage."
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