New Orleans Noir

girls. My mother is thrilled, and I am disgusted, but I’m also thrilled, to tell the truth. Louise lives on Octavia Street, and two of the other girls can actually walk to her house. Their houses look almost the same, and I think that’s a message to me that if you want to be the right kind of person, then you should have that kind of house. Brick two-story. A plain rectangle. My mother probably thinks so too, but my father is the manager of a supermarket, and she knows crummy shoes and Rena’s twenty-five dollars a week is probably her limit with her parents.
    Louise and Meryl and both of the Lindas are failing Geometry. For a while, they took turns calling me up for homework help, then I started going over to their houses after school, and finally they quit pretending they could do anything without me. This is how I know people at Newman aren’t smart. For Monday’s homework we have to prove the congruence of the two triangles in a parallelogram. I’m headed over to Louise’s early and we’re going to work on it. She’ll just hand it over to the other three. They won’t be able to do it in Mrs. Walter’s class when she comes at them, and they won’t be able to do it on tests, and from what I’ve heard Mrs. Prescott will threaten them with public school, but at homework time they will think I’m giving them hope.
    My mother has packed me my gold silk pajamas that my grandmother bought me on her last trip to Japan. “Those girls are going to be so jealous,” she says. I think there’s a chance she might be right, though I also think that even gold silk shoes from Japan would not hold up next to nice baby-blue leather Pappagallos.
    I ask her to drop me off and not wait until someone opens the door. We have a 1956 Ford Fairlane sedan. I figure that if no one opens the door I can go ring another girl’s bell. It is better than being seen in a 1956 Ford Fairlane sedan.
    Louise grabs my arm at the door and pulls me in, which is as close as she comes to affection. “We’ll do math right now,” she says, and I think she must see that I’m excited, too, by an idea I’ve come up with on the way over. If Mrs. Silverman sees this little lesson I’ve made up for Louise, she will decide I am the best girl in all of Newman School and should be the only one Louise is friends with. She might tell all the other mothers, and then I’ll be popular. These girls aren’t like me. They definitely plan to grow up to be just like their mothers.
    While I pull my math book out of my overnight bag, I ask Louise to get me a couple of envelopes, please. She looks at me like I’ve asked her to get me cleaning supplies. This is not something she’s ever found necessary. “Mama!” she hollers, and goes running upstairs. Her mother comes down to the kitchen and rummages in a drawer in the butler’s pantry. These two-story brick houses fascinate me. They have rooms that make sense only for rich people who lived a hundred years ago, but they were actually built just ten years ago. I ask for scissors too. Louise’s maid stands at the sink watching us with her arms folded. She’s not doing anything but watching us. Her expression says she could do this geometry if someone asked her.
    My wish comes true: Mrs. Silverman watches as I cut and fold and draw straight lines and prove beyond doubt the congruence of the triangles in a parallelogram. I even cut the envelope into the shape of a parallelogram despite the fact that a rectangle is already a sort of parallelogram, because I figure Louise and her mother aren’t going to follow that extra piece of information. They are as delighted as if I’ve just guessed which card they’ve pulled from a deck. Mrs. Silverman kisses my cheek with red lips, and I leave the mark because no other girl is going to have a print to match Mrs. Silverman’s tonight.
    The maid is still standing at the sink around midnight when I pad into the kitchen to find a way not to cry. We are in our nightclothes, and everyone in her pink shortie pajamas has said how pretty mine are and has examined the little frog buttons closely so she can comment when I leave the room. Silk is so hot, and I don’t want to have perspiration stains under my arms. They will show so easily. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I really don’t. I feel sorry for Carolyn, who of course is not here. I feel sorry for the maid. I feel sorry for everybody. I must look pitiful.
    “What’s a big old girl like you doing in baby