Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [38]
Dorothy looked alarmed. “No, she hasn’t been here. Is she missing again?”
“Yes . . . I turned my back for five seconds and off she goes. If you see her, grab her.”
After the woman left Mother Smith said, “Poor Tot, that’s the second time this week.”
Dorothy shook her head. “Poor Tot.”
Mother Smith turned to speak to Betty Raye, but she had disappeared, leaving most of her breakfast uneaten. A second later they heard the lock on her door click shut. The two women looked at each other in surprise.
“Well,” said Mother Smith.
“Well,” said Dorothy. “I don’t know what to think, do you?”
“No.”
Anna Lee came in for breakfast. “Is she up yet?”
“Yes, been here and gone. You missed her.”
Betty Raye never came back out of her room until it was time to go to the revival and then she slipped out the front door without anyone hearing her and stood on the sidewalk and waited to be picked up by the family. Later, when Dorothy knocked on her door and there was no answer, she went into the room to see if Betty Raye was all right but she was gone. She didn’t mean to pry but she could not help but notice that the dress Betty Raye had arrived in was on the bed and the open suitcase on the floor was empty. Dear God, she thought, that little girl only has two dresses to her name.
Her first impulse was to run downtown and buy her an entire new wardrobe. That night she talked it over with Doc. Throughout the years they had both quietly supplied people with clothes and food or sent them money anonymously when they needed it. But Betty Raye was a different situation. She was a guest in their home. How could they do it without seeming to regard her as a charity case and maybe take a chance on hurting her feelings?
It was a dilemma that tugged on Dorothy’s heart every time she saw her in the same threadbare dress, day after day.
The Revival
EVER SINCE the Oatmans had come to town and appeared on The Neighbor Dorothy Show, Anna Lee, Norma, and Patsy Marie were just dying with curiosity about the revival and having a fit to get out there and see it. All three girls had been raised in town and had never really wanted to go to one, until now. Dorothy, however, was immediately suspicious about their sudden interest in tent revivals.
“Now, Anna Lee, I don’t want you girls going out there and making fun of those people . . . do you hear me?”
“Mother!” said Anna Lee, shocked at the idea. “Why would you think something like that?”
“Because I know how silly the three of you can act.”
Finally, Anna Lee was able to convince her mother to let her go but Ida, Norma’s mother, was adamantly against it. “I will not have you going out there to that thing. There’s no telling what sort of people will come crawling out of the backwoods and start babbling in tongues. . . . Besides, we’re Presbyterians—we don’t believe in that sort of primitive carrying on.” But Norma told her mother that she was spending the night with Patsy Marie and went anyway.
On the second night of the revival Norma got her boyfriend, Macky, to drive them out to the country. They started around six but before they left town Norma made Macky go into the Trolley Car Diner and get them all hamburgers to go. She pointed to the flyer with the map that advertised TENT REVIVAL AND DINNER ON THE GROUND. “I’m not eating anything off the ground; if I got sick my mother would know exactly where I’d been.” As they turned off Highway 78 and onto a dirt road they saw crude signs pointing the way that said THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH, ARE YOU SAVED? PREPARE TO MEET YOUR MAKER, and GOD TAKES ALL CALLS PERSONALLY—HE HAS NO SECETARY. Patsy Marie observed, “They