[Section opener]
Meg
July 1933
Chapter 1
Welcome to
The Lafayette County Orphan Asylum for Girls
Founded 1927
We do NOT accept:
Coloreds, Indians, Jews, Mexicans, Oriental types, Twins, Anyone who has or has had Leprosy,
Consumption, Missing Limbs, or Harelip.
No Boys. No Sick Children or anyone of a Retarded Nature.
No Girls Over the age of twelve.
No Women in the Family Way. We do not deliver Babies here.
May the Lord bless you all.
When 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.
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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 got 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. 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
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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 front door, though I have not seen
that side of it since the day I arrived. They lock us up in here like we are criminals. Just inside
the front door, 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 when the door opens. Oh they keep that room nice for their satisfied selves.
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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
prefers a baby over a big girl.
But the worst room in this whole place is the office. Miss Garnett put me in here, away
from the rest.
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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, 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.
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