The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett - 2

W hen I was first brought here to the Orphan, I used to put a pretend play on in my head. In it, my mama would walk in and say, Margot! I have returned! I am here to take you home! I would have her dressed in the yellow outfit she left me in with the red rickrack on the collar, or a snappy slim blue number cut on the bias, her good ruby hair comb fixed to her hair. When I got her dressed up the way I liked with all the things matched perfect, she would lean down and say, I am so sorry I left you, Meg.

Now at this part of the story, I know most these girls here would run right into their mama’s arms. Say all is forgaven, hug her neck, let’s go home. But not in my play. When my mama said this, I liked to yell at her a little first.

Well, well , I liked to say, you sure been eating good. And I might add, I guess there’s plenty for you now that you do not have a little girl to look after , and then I would tell her how it sure got cold when you were gone and how I burned everything that lit and she was a Number One Giant Shitpile for a mama and I had a mind to find myself a new one . Around this time was when her begging and pleading would start. She would begin offering me things like a sack of hard candy or new patent leather shoes, a encyclopedia set with no letters missing, oh I went wild with the goods, and when it cost high enough, I would sigh and say, Fine, I accept your offer. Then I’d flip that big phony Miss Garnett the finger and me and my mama would walk out the door.

Mama had never left me alone at the house before that week. The most she would let me do by myself was walk the mile to school. And down to the colored Negro Ophelia’s house when Mama was at work but she always came to Ophelia’s after and toted me home. Carried me in her arms singing “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love, Baby,” until one day she did not come carry me home.

Course, that was back when I was still only nine. I am eleven now so I do not bother with those old baby plays anymore. My best friend Ava here said at our age we cannot afford to waste time dreaming about what is apt not to happen.

My paper name is Margot but I generally go by Meg. Like I said, I arrived here at the orphanage two birthdays ago. Most folks just call it the Orphan or else the Old Orphan, though I have yet to find where this New Orphan is and believe me I have asked. All it is is a old wood house run by these volunteer ladies in a town called Oxford, which is located up in the top part of Mississippi. They got sixteen of us packed in the place, which is high. I hear it is the hard times. Our numbers will thin come next View Day. That is when folks come look at us and decide do they want to adopt us or not.

Out front of the house, the ladies keep the place fixed up right nice. Azalea bushes, a birdbath lawn ornament I can see when the door is open to the little room they call the vestibule, plant in a pot, that type thing. There is fresh white paint on the inside of the front door, though I have not seen the other side since the day I arrived. They lock us up in here like we are criminals. In the vestibule, there are two clean windows and that big framed sign. If Miss Garnett is not looking, I slip up there and wonder things about that sign until my head starts to hurt.

Such as, who came up with those particular rules in the first place? And is a retarded nature different from your regular ole retard? Mostly what I think about, though, is that leprosy item. Did some leper orphans show up here, so they had to put it on the sign? And which volunteer answered the door to that unusual call, because most these ladies will hightail it out of here if one of us girls so much as sneezes so they do not give it to their own kids at home. I can just about hear that volunteer lady saying, You put what you want on that sign, but I will not operate with lepers. And then another popping her hand on her hip and saying, Or Oriental types either. I wonder what those ladies would do if a retard leper Jew walked in the door. That would be some entertainment for me.

To the right of the sign is what is called the Ladies’ Lounge. We girls are not allowed in there, but I can see in there too when the door opens. Oh they keep that room nice for their satisfied selves. Plush upholstered things to sit on, a silver coffee urn, flowery curtains on the windows, plus they keep tasty food up in that room, I know, I can smell it.

This up-front area is the more attractive part of the Orphan.

Beyond the vestibule is a long plain hall. Looking down it, a person would not suspect much right off. Along the right side of the hall is the toddler room, where they got some pretty good-looking toys, baby doll with a play crib, rocking horse, a whole shelf of books I would like to look at. But somebody separated the toddlers a few years ago from the big girls, so now they sleep and eat in there in a cute little room. On past that is the baby nursery, which is kept very white and clean. Babies are the choicest type orphan so they tend to go quick. Big girls are not allowed in these rooms either.

When a girl gets to be around age seven or so, things change. First off they make you start wearing a long-sleeved dress with a petticoat under that covers you near neck to toe. You’re moved upstairs to sleep in the big girls’ room with the scary water stains on the ceiling from a leak in the roof. The squeaky wire cots up there got lumpy cotton-boll mattresses covered in pee stains of yore. And Lord do not even get me started on what they give us solid-food eaters for meals. In the big girl dining room, it is a gray lumpy meal for breakfast, then for lunch and supper, overcooked peas, a corn cob or a potato half with no salt or butter to speak of, one square of cornbread apiece. If I was offered a box of diamonds or a plate of ham, I would probably take the ham. It is a wonder nobody has starved to death here but a flu or a deadly pox is what tends to kill us, and those generally only take the babies. I guess God is like those charity ladies. He also prefers a baby over a big girl.

But the worst room in this whole place is the office. Miss Garnett put me in here to keep away from the rest.

Why ain’t you up in the school anymore with the regular girls, huh? It is that awful Dorella calling to me, from out in the hall with some other girls. And who you been talkin’ to in there, Santy Claus? Easter Bunny? Huh, Nutmeg? she says and sticks her nasty tongue out at me, white and thick with thrush. Dorella got herself adopted one time but was returned for the reason of Lazy. I bet it was for nastiness too. That gray ring of dirt stays permanent on her neck.

I am like a sitting duck in here for those other girls to tease.

When Miss Garnett stuck me in this dingy little room on a hard chair at a old wood desk, it did not look or smell this bad. Surely not when the bookkeeper lady used to work in here before she quit. In the past few months the mildew odor and spots on the walls have got even worse. As for light there is not but one greasy hot bulb hanging that will burn the print clean off your finger should you attempt to examine how electricity works. The only window in here is boarded up. Five splintery boards going across it that makes me mad to look at. That somebody did that deliberate just to spoil my damn view.

You better watch out at the wash pump later, Nutmeg , Dorella hisses from the hall, and the other girls laugh. I hate that nickname. Dorella is the one that damn gave it to me in the first place.

It was on account of when I tried to explain to her there is something called a FLUSH TOILET hooked up in the Ladies’ Lounge. All we girls got is a outhouse out back. Lord, did Dorella eye me suspicious at this news.

Then where do the crap go? she asked, so I said, The crap goes outside. So she said, Then why they don’t just go outside in the first place like regular folks? I said, Because they can do it in the house now. So she said, That’s disgusting. I think you just tryin’ to make me look stupid , so I said, Well I do not have to try much for that, now do I? Which I thought was pretty good.

But she said, Well I think you’re nuts, Nut meg. And it was like a big bell D-O-N-G-E-D in the Orphan. Ever since then, it has been Nutmeg this and Nutmeg that . Pinning signs on my back that say PROPARTY OF MISIPI INSANE HOSPITUL or NUTMEG! CRAZY AND TASTIE TOO! like I am a damn Christmas cookie. What do they expect? You cannot put me in a little room by myself eight hours a day with nothing to do but count pennies from the donate box or write some View Day cards or dull verses and not expect me to talk to some pretend people. Or sing Christmas carols out of season or stack the chair on the desk and the books on the chair and climb up there to see if my ugly world looks any different. Sometimes I wish that Dorella Pratt would just die of the flu.

She and the rest knew not to mess with me when my old friend Ava was around, though. Ava could attach herself to their necks and give them a Chinese haircut that would ruin their whole week. Ava was brave. One of the first days I got here, Dorella held my head under the water pump and liked to drown me dead and when Ava stepped up and told her to quit it, Dorella said, Who’s gone make me? So Ava shucked Dorella’s underpants off her and dropped them right down the shitter. Dorella had to reach in that nasty hole or she would get the belt for loss of underpants. That was when I knew Ava was the best friend for me. But two months ago she turned twelve and got sent to Biloxi to work at the cannery.