We had four days until the hearing at the Collier County Courthouse, and Mrs. Bailey White was beginning to fret. “I do believe that we should provide some new clothes and, um, a little assistance with Bunny’s appearance for the court date,” she said. “I know from my own experience, during my murder trial, that it’s important to look your best.” I’m sure I flinched and I have little doubt the others did, too. I’d never been able to come to terms with Mrs. Bailey White’s past—not fully anyway—but at the same time I was happy for the diversion. Any topic was preferable to the possibility that they would ask more questions about my discoveries in Mississippi. “As a matter of fact, I’m glad you brought this up, Mrs. Bailey White,” Jackie said, interrupting my thoughts. “I’ve been sitting here trying to figure out how we’re going to get her into town for fingerprinting. Mr. Yonce said it was imperative. And I agree. We need to fix her up for court, if she lets us. Maybe we should, um, retrieve her from the, er, swamp, get these things done, then ke ep her in town—maybe just for one night—so that we can be sure she gets to court.” “She could stay here the night before,” Mrs. Bailey White said thoughtfully. “I mean, if she’s willing to.” “I have some clothes that might fit,” Plain Jane interjected from across the room. “Or, at least, we can alter them. Maybe we should all ransack our closets and see what we can come up with.” And so it was agreed, at least by everyone exc ept, of course, Bunny. Jackie even offered to pay for a trip to the hair salon and said she would escort Bunny there if I promised to go along for moral support. But someone had to get Bunny out of Gun Rack Village and into Naples. Jackie still refused to drive in Gun Rack Village, citing wear and tear on the convertible, and I balked at canoeing again. My hands were still sore from paddling Mr. Yonce over there and back. And I didn’t feel like going on foot again, either. I took a chance and left a note for her at the Esso station. I knew that Billy and Marco, the pair of brothers who lived somewhere along the river, were in the habit of stopping by the Esso station almost daily. Bucky, who owned the gas station, was pretty reliable and agreed to give my note to them. Hopefully, the brothers would then deliver it to her. The note was hard to write. How do you tell someone that she needs to get gussied up for court? That her hair and clothes won’t do? That she needed to be fingerprinted at the police d epartment? That we wanted her to stay the night before court at Mrs. Bailey White’s house because we didn’t want to take any chances that she wouldn’t show up? I k ept the note very short. This was one of those “the less said, the better” moments. If it didn’t work, I’d have to hike back there and persuade her to return with me. • • • TO MY SURPRISE, AT PRECISELY two o’clock the day before court, Bunny arrived at the Edge of Everglades House of Beauty, just as I’d hoped. Marco and Billy had not only retrieved my note from Bucky and delivered it to her, they had saved her the long hike into town by giving her a ride. This seemed like a minor miracle to Jackie and me. We’d been nervously waiting at the beauty parlor, flipping randomly through magazines devoted to the latest hairstyles, none of which, to be honest, would look good on anyone we knew. The beauty salon’s owner k ept a radio tuned to WNOG, “Wonderful Naples on the Gulf.”At one point Jackie turned to me and said, “Oh, for Pete’s sake. If I hear that Beatles song ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ one more time, I might have a stroke and die. My kids play it day and night and I hear it everywhere I go.” “I like the Beatles,” I said lamely. “Do you know what Judd said?” Jackie asked. “He said the school principal at the junior high held an assembly and said just two words into the microphone—‘The Beatles’—and two girls screamed.” “Well, aren’t
girls everywhere screaming over the Beatles?” I asked. “That’s the point! It means that the cultural phenomenon known as the Beatles has even reached the end of the earth—that is, Naples.” We didn’t even realize that Bunny was standing right in front of us, listening. She must have slipped through the door while we were having our Beatlemania discussion, which, judging by the look on her face, was all news to her. She sort of nodded and grunted something that might have been “hello.” The sight of Bunny sent a shock wave through the salon. The other women in the salon stopped talking abruptly. Their heads swiveled in unison. Even the ladies trapped under hair dryers were trying to get a good look. Jackie was gracious. “So glad you could join us!” Her words of welcome were scarcely said when the owner of the beauty parlor scurried up to us. “What have we here?” she asked, with alarm. “Of course you meant whom do we have here?” Jackie said sweetly. “This is the woman I was telling you about. As I mentioned before, it’s my treat.” The hairdresser looked doubtful. “I was thinking maybe a bouffant of some sort, though maybe she needs some color first,” Jackie said, taking Bunny’s arm and escorting her to the nearest washbasin. Bunny actually half smiled at the other customers. “I would like a manicure, too,” she announced, and, in one of those peculiar moments of perfect timing, a new Roy Orbison song called “Oh, Pretty Woman” started playing on the radio. To some people, it might have seemed like irony, but to me it was like a little message of love or tip of the hat, meant just for her. “Oh, I forgot to make introductions!” Jackie cried out. “Miss Bunny Sanders, please meet Miss Dolores Simpson. Actually, Dolores’s name is Bunny, too, but I ke ep forgetting to call her that. Shame on me—” “Bunny?!” The proprietor took a st ep back. “Bunny?” she r epeated. “Her name cannot be Bunny. Apparently you have forgotten, Mrs. Hart, that I am Bunny.” Jackie looked confused. “Oh,” she said quickly, “two Bunnies! How cute! You know, I never knew anyone in Boston named Bunny but now I know two Bunnies.” Poor Jackie. She had failed to comprehend that here in the South it is a well-known fact that trouble can ensue when two gals in a small town have the same first name. Southern women are like a bee colony. They just can’t tolerate two queens in one hive. I cupped my hand and whispered a quick explanation into Jackie’s ear. She looked at me like I had lost my mind. “What are you talking about?” she said a little too loud. “Why can’t there be two Bunnies?” You could fault men for all kinds of things, but no man, I felt sure, would have a problem with having the same first name as another. Why, I bet you could have a whole room full of Bobs and they’d probably just call themselves Bob 1, Bob 2, Bob 3, and so on. Or they’d just call each other by their last names. But you couldn’t have two Bunnies in the little town of Naples. For a moment I thought the hairdresser was going to ask us to leave. I could see she was mulling it over, but professional pride or Christian charity got the better of her. “We’ve got us some work to do!” she announced, in what was undoubtedly the understatement of the year. With remarkable speed she shampooed our Bunny’s hair, slapped some goop on it, and led our Bunny to the only available hair dryer, which happened to be right smack in the middle of the row of all the others. Bunny enjoyed being treated like a pampered swan. She even asked for a copy of Screen Idol magazine. No doubt, I thought, to look for photos of Elizabeth Taylor. Only when the manicurist was ready to do her nails— Bunny chose Petunia Pink—did she let go of the magazine. As soon as the dryer was finished, Bunny the hairdresser rewashed our Bunny’s hair, cut, and styled it. Jackie started to say something but did not; she was disappointed, I could tell, that her opinion on what she referred to as the coiffure was clearly unwelcome. This was not going as planned but it would have to be good enough. I was thankful when Jackie paid the bill and we could leave. Bunny’s new hairdo was a stunner: a mile-high
tower of teased tresses reminiscent of cotton candy. Holding her hands so that her new manicure would finish drying, our Bunny did something I’m pretty sure she hadn’t done in years: She smiled the type of full-faced grin that reminded me of a teenage girl getting ready for prom. As we left the shop, however, reality returned. “Bunny,” I said, “I hate to ruin this Kodak moment, because we’re having great fun here. Not to shanghai you or anything but there is something you need to know.” The smile vanished. “Go on,” she said, jutting out her chin. Jackie, meanwhile, pretended to rummage in her purse for her car keys; by prearrangement, she was to stay silent during this part. “Well, uh, it looks like it’s got to come out in court that you were, um, arrested a long time ago,” I said. “And it’s actually a good thing because it means we have your fingerprints from when you were using the name Bunny Ann Mc Intyre. Now we can compare them and prove that you are the same person. And Mr. Yonce says this will be necessary.” I said this so rapidly even I wasn’t sure what I’d just said. Bunny simply shrugged. “Okay,” she said. “But doesn’t that mean we need to get some fresh fingerprints? We’d better get to it.” Here I had worried myself sick about this pending conversation, and yet Bunny had taken it in stride. She was definitely a more complex person than I had thought. We walked to the sheriff ’s d epartment, where our attorney Mr. Yonce was waiting for us. It was half past three on the day before court. We were cutting things very close. With a desk sergeant acting as a witness, a d eputy sheriff fingerprinted Bunny. Her only concern was that it had messed up her manicure. As soon as the prints were dry, Mr. Yonce said they would be examined that night by a fingerprint expert. Our young lawyer certainly seemed to have everything under control, but before we left he whispered to me, “We better hope these are a perfect match. We might win anyway, but this would seal the deal.” • • • THERE WAS ONE MORE TASK: figuring out what Bunny was going to wear in court. Once again, Bunny proved to be a surprisingly good sport. At Mrs. Bailey White’s house we laid out all the possible outfits and let her choose. Jackie had brought a few things from her closet. Plain Jane had purchased some items at a church rummage sale, including gloves and a hat. Mrs. Bailey White offered costume jewelry and shoes. And my contribution was a small makeup kit I bought for half-price during a sale at the Rexall. There was a risk of offending Bunny, of course, but there was another problem as well. None of us wanted to address the fact that Bunny’s artificially enhanced bustline made her figure completely out of proportion. Thankfully, Jackie anticipated the problem by creating what one might call a modified muumuu (although she described it as “reminiscent of what Liz Taylor might wear when she is entertaining at home”). Essentially, she had taken one of her own housecoats, added a little elastic here and there, altered the sleeves, and added a patent leather belt. The result was passably good. Bunny tried it on and seemed very pleased. I had been worried about Bunny’s reaction to the baby but when Plain Jane brought Dream into the room, Bunny sort of half smiled and nodded in Dream’s direction in the way women do when they see a beautiful baby, even one that was the “wrong” color. For all I knew, Bunny might have balked at staying even one night under the same roof with a colored child, but she said nothing. The only thing left was for Bunny to have a good meal, a long hot soak in a bathtub (heaven only knows how long it had been), and a decent night’s sle ep in one of the guest rooms of Mrs. Bailey White’s house. Once Bunny was settled for the night, and Dream had drifted off to sle ep, the rest of us convened for a night cap of rose wine in the parlor. We talked over our plans for the next day when suddenly I blurted out that I had more to tell them about my visit to Jackson “if,” I
said, “y’all are in the mood to hear it.” “Of course we are in the mood to hear it,” Jackie said. “If you feel like telling us now, by all means go ahead.” “Should I get us some warm milk?” Mrs. Bailey White asked. “Forget the warm milk,” Jackie said. “Agreed,” Plain Jane said, adding, “But thank you anyway.” “Can I just get this over with?” I said. I was tired and my nerves too raggedy to be as polite as I should have been. I took a de ep breath while they focused their attention on me. “You know how I told you that I learned from Miss Welty that Mama had run off with Daddy on the day she was to marry someone else?” I said. “Well, there’s more.” “Be brave, dear, what is it?” Plain Jane asked gently. “I learned that I was almost certainly adopted,” I said in a whisper, “and I doubt I’ll ever find out what happened.” “What’d you say?” asked Mrs. Bailey White. “I can’t hear you.” “She said she found out she was adopted,” Plain Jane said loudly. “Oh!” Mrs. Bailey White said. “I’m sorry I didn’t hear you, please go on.” And so I told them the rest of the story, starting with what Miss Welty had said; about my research at the library; the newspaper stories on Mama; and meeting Miss Alice, Mama’s long-ago bridesmaid. I explained how at first I felt like someone had died. I was in shock and grieving like when there’s a tragedy. After that I was angry for a long while. I was so prickly I could have lost my job exc ept my boss, the head librarian, felt sorry for me. For the first time in my life, I cussed often and over the littlest things, like dropping a nickel on the sidewalk and having to bend down to get it. That would just infuriate me. Everything seemed too much, like the world was out to get me in big ways and small. But I also laughed a lot, not because anything was funny but because of the irony of it. I had gone to Jackson to find out about Mama and, oh boy, I’d gotten a lot more information than I had bargained for. Jackie, Plain Jane, and Mrs. Bailey White were listening carefully. After it was clear I was all talked out, Plain Jane spoke up. “You seem to be doing pretty well with this,” she said gently. “Well,” I said, “I’ve had a few months to get used to the idea.” “Dora,” Jackie said sympathetically. “If there’s anything any of us can do —” “Jackie, you make it sound like someone died,” Plain Jane interrupted. “Well, Dora herself said it felt like someone died,” Jackie protested. “Oh, Dora, this really is terribly unfair, isn’t it? I hope we will all see the day when people don’t feel they have to be so secretive about adoption. It seems so much worse not to tell a child! I think if I had adopted any of my children I would have told them from the beginning.” “Well, that’s not what the experts say,” Plain Jane said solemnly. “I was just reading an article about it. It’s better to wait until they’re old enough to understand—or maybe never tell them at all. That’s what it said.” “That’s crazy,” Jackie snapped. “Look at poor Dora here. I think the way she found out is the worst part.” “Ladies!” Mrs. Bailey White said. “Let us be thoughtful!” She gestured to me. I was sinking further and de eper into the seat cushions of the ancient sofa. Plain Jane and Jackie rushed to apologize while Mrs. Bailey White poured me a teeny-tiny brandy and made me drink it. “Now, you listen to me, Miss Dora Witherspoon,” she said firmly. “First, I want to say that you mustn’t spend your life trying to find out more about the past. Some things are just meant to remain a mystery. Second, I don’t know much about adoption but the woman you called ‘Mama’ loved you. She must have, because she raised you right. She’s your real mother. The woman that’s buried over yon in the Cemetery of Hope and Salvation. But since she won’t have a chance to tell her side of this story—well, not until you meet her again in the Spirit World—I think we shouldn’t judge her.” I reached over and squeezed Mrs. Bailey White’s hand, grateful for her wisdom.