The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [46]
She scrubbed the rough parts of her heels and her knees and especially her elbows. She made the bath take a long time.
She ran naked into the middle room and began to dress. Silk teddies she put on, and silk stockings. She even wore one of Etta’s brassieres just for the heck of it. Then very carefully she put on the dress and stepped into the pumps. This was the first time she had ever worn an evening dress. She stood for a long time before the mirror. She was so tall that the dress came up two or three inches above her ankles--and the shoes were so short they hurt her. She stood in front of the mirror a long tune, and finally decided she either looked like a sap or else she looked very beautiful. One or the other.
Six different ways she tried out her hair. The cowlicks were a little trouble, so she wet her bangs and made three spit curls.
Last of all she stuck the rhinestones in her hair and put on plenty of lipstick and paint. When she finished she lifted up her chin and half-closed eyes like a movie star. Slowly she turned her face from one side to the other. It was beautiful she looked--just beautiful.
‘She didn’t feel like herself at all. She was somebody different from Mick Kelly entirely. Two hours had to pass before the party would begin, and she was ashamed for any of the family to see her dressed so far ahead of time. She went into the bathroom again and locked the door. She couldn’t mess up her dress by sitting down, so she stood in the middle of the floor. The close walls around her seemed to press hi all the excitement. She felt so different from the old Mick Kelly that she knew this would be better than anything else in all her whole life--this party.
‘Yippee! The punch!’
‘The cutest dress--’
‘Say! You solve that one about the triangle forty-six by twen--’
‘Lemme by! Move out my way!’ The front door slammed every second as the people swarmed into the house. Sharp voices and soft voices sounded together until there was just one roaring noise. Girls stood in bunches in their long, fine evening dresses, and the boys roamed around in clean duck pants or R.O.T.C. uniforms or new dark fall suite. There was so much commotion that Mick couldn’t notice any separate face or person. She stood by the hat rack and stared around at the party as a whole.
‘Everybody get a prom card and start signing up.’
At first the room was too loud for anyone to hear and pay attention. The boys were so thick around the punch bowl that the table and the vines didn’t show at all. Only her Dad’s face rose up above the boys’ heads as he smiled and dished up the punch into the little paper cups. On the seat of the hat rack beside her were a jar of candy and two handkerchiefs. A couple of girls thought it was her birthday, and she had thanked them and unwrapped the presents without telling them she wouldn’t be fourteen for eight more months.
Every person was as clean and fresh and dressed up as she was. They smelled good. The boys had their hair plastered down wet and slick. The girls with their different-colored long dresses stood together, and they were like a bright hunk of flowers. The start was marvelous. The beginning of this party was O.K.
‘I’m part Scotch Irish and French and--’
‘I got German blood--’ She hollered about the prom cards one more time before she went into the dining-room. Soon they began to pile in from the hall. Every person took a prom card and they lined up in bunches against the walls of the room. This was the real start now.
It came all of a sudden in a very queer way--this quietness.
The boys stood together on one side of the room and the girls were across from them. For some reason every person quit making noise at once. The boys held their cards and looked at the girls and the room was very still. None of the boys started asking for proms like they