Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen Read Online Free PDF

wrinkle out of that linen. I envied all the ironing Ruthie Morgan got to do, all the pretty white napkins and her daddy's big, square handkerchiefs.
    My daddy didn't much believe in ironing. He said if you couldn't wash and wear it, it wasn't worth buying. Even at the Sunday dinner table we wiped our hands on paper napkins Daddy bought by the hundreds at the Shop Rite.
    Once I tried ironing one of Martha Ann's dresses, the one she was planning on wearing to Emma Sue's tenth birthday party. Mrs. Roberta Huckstep always felt obligated to invite at least one of the preacher's daughters, and thankfully for me, Martha Ann was her favorite. She told Emma Sue that Martha Ann was a lovely young girl, but she had to wonder if my mama's tragic accident, as she always called it, had left me scarred. She said that it was fortunate for Martha Ann that she was barely four at the time and would have been too young to have been damaged by the tragic-ness of it.
    Scarred or not, if Martha Ann was going to a Huckstep party, I was determined she was going to look just as pretty as the birthday girl and all her prissy little friends. Unfortunately, by the time I was done ironing, the dress had a big brown burn mark on the back. I told her nobody would notice, even though I knew I was lying. I tried tying the sash so it covered most of the burn, but it's hard to shape a bow as big as that one needed to be. Martha Ann wore that dress anyway, never letting on that she was upset with me.
    At least the Lord left us one female in our lives who was willing to teach us some of the more womanly things we needed to know. Gloria Jean Graves was the most feminine woman I knew, and she lived right next door. When Daddy worked late, Gloria Jean took care of us, but, more important, she was the one we went to when we needed help making cookies for a Valentine's party or our hair fixed smooth and neat for our annual school picture.
    She was the one who taught us how to shave our legs without drawing blood and to put on a pair of nylons without causing a run. And she was the one who told me what to do when my period started, the mechanics of which I would never have been able to discuss with my daddy.
    Gloria Jean insisted we call her by her first name. She said Mrs. Graves made her sound too old, like one of those blue-haired grandmamas with one foot in the grave. Gloria Jean was definitely not our grandmama. She was real handsome but in a different way than any of the other women I knew. She looked more like she belonged in the television set with all the other beautiful people. Nothing about Gloria Jean was simple or plain.
    God Almighty only knows the true color of Gloria Jean's hair. She went to the beauty parlor every other week, without fail, and had it colored a bright, beautiful shade of auburn. Your hair, she said, was your crowning glory, and it should be given the proper attention. Every day she'd tease and pile her hair on the top of her head and then spray it in place. Not even the wind blowing before a thunderstorm could knock a hair on her head loose. She kept a small bottle of Aqua Net in her purse because a girl, she said, had to be prepared for any emergency. She would even spray it on her skirt if it started clinging to her nylons.
    One Fourth of July, she stuck real-live lightning bugs inside her hair and then covered it all with netting. Her head glowed like some kind of fancy firecracker till all the lightning bugs choked on her hairspray and died. She paid Martha Ann and me fifty cents apiece to pick all those poor little bugs from her hair. Nope, nothing about Gloria Jean was ever simple or plain.
    Her face was made up with all sorts of pretty colors, all the time. Martha Ann and I spent the night with her once and when she tucked us into bed her eyelids were blue, and when she called us to breakfast the next morning, her eyelids were green. Looking at her face was kind of like looking at a rainbow.
    She painted everything, including her