that's what I say!

"I had thought my real chance [of getting "in" with the popular girls in junior high school] would come from going to charm school at the Women's Club last spring, Friday afternoons for six weeks, but I got barred because I didn't have a mother, a grandmother, or even a measly aunt to present me with a white rose at the closing ceremony. Rosaleen [our housekeeper] doing it was against the rules. I'd cried till I threw up in the sink.

"'You're charming enough,' Rosaleen had said, washing the vomit out of the sink basin. 'You don't need to go to some high-falutin school to get charm.'

"'I do so,' I said. 'They teach everything. How to walk and pivot, what to do with your ankles when you sit in a chair, how to get into a car, pour tea, take off your gloves....'

"Rosaleen blew air from her lips. 'Good Lord,' she said.

"'Arrange flowers in a vase, talk to boys, tweeze your eyebrows, shave your legs, apply lipstick...'

"'What about vomit in a sink? They teach a charming way to do that?' she asked.

"Sometimes I purely hated her."


from The Secret Lift of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, p. 9-10.