Chapter 7 – Shopping with Mom

“This looks nice," Mom said, holding up a white jumper with bright sunflowers.

            “Maybe on you.”

            “How about this one?”

            Mom held up a short-sleeved dress, the black half covered in white polka dots and the white half covered in black polka dots.

            “How mod. God, I hate shopping.”

            “Would you watch your language? You have to wear something.”

            Justine whipped through the dresses on the rack, flipping one after the other, not finding anything she wanted to wear, and they’d been at it for what seemed like hours.

            “Why don’t we try skirts and blouses?” Mom said.

            "God, I wish we wore uniforms."

            "I can't believe you'd want to go to a Catholic school."

            “What’s wrong with Catholics? Kennedy was a Catholic?”

Jesse must be Catholic.

“And no pumps. No Oxfords. Only Keds, Mom.”

            “Oh, dear,” Mom said. "We might as well go to Penneys."

            After settling on two hip-hugger skirts with wide belts, three blouses and one dress that wasn't a dress at all but pink culottes with orange paisleys, they went in search of Keds. Mission accomplished, they headed to the restaurant for lunch.

            “I don’t see why I can’t wear pants to school.” Justine hurried to keep up as they walked in the shade of the tree-lined boulevard.

            “I think I am going to melt and pants are even hotter. Aren't you hot in those jeans?"

"Aren't you hot in those panty-hose?"

            "That reminds me—You need underwear."

            "Can’t you give me money and let me buy stuff myself?"

            "Here we are.” Mom dwarfed next to the tall, dark wooden doors.

            Cool air greeted them before the maitre d’, in his red jacket, had a chance to speak.

            “Will you ladies be dining alone, madam?”

            “As you can see, we are not alone,” Mom said.

            “Lunch for two,” he said. “Right this way.”

Justine followed Mom who followed him, winding through the sea of white tablecloths. He motioned for them to sit in a booth with high backs of that same wood. Tall trees with fat jungle leaves stood in emerald-green planters showing off between the tables. The air-conditioning made it feel like an oasis.

            Justine slid into the green leather bench seat of the booth as directed by the man in the monkey suit, trying not to drag the stiff, white tablecloth with her.

            “Justine, elbows,” Mom said, and then, "Why is it when there is no man with you, they say we're alone?"

            "Huh?" Justine put both hands in her lap.

            “What’ll you ladies be having today?” The cocktail waitress wore a short, black skirt that flared straight out with the help of layered petticoats, showing off long legs, black stockings, and high heels.

            "I’ll have an old-fashioned, please. Justine?”

            “Cherry Coke?”         

“That sounds disgusting.” Mom unfolded her triangle white napkin and put it in her lap.

            “I’m all sweaty and cold in here.” Justine rubbed her bare arms.

            “Horses sweat, Justine. Ladies perspire.

            “Ah.” Justine stared up at the arched ceiling, the huge wooden beams, and the chandeliers dripping down. “This place is far out.”

            “This may come as a surprise to you, Justine, but I have read about high schools changing their dress code in order to be fair to the girls.”

            “No kidding?”

            The barmaid’s cleavage threatened to spill as she set the little cocktail napkins down and then the drinks. Naked mermaid toothpicks held cherries on their fins, their arms hooked to the rim of both drinks.

            "Please put this on my tab.” Mom took the pack of Kents out of her purse. “And we’re ready to order, thank you. If you could please send our waiter over.”

“Right away, maam.”

“You said you wished you could dress like the boys and, while I don’t think that would be appropriate, I do think wearing some nice slacks ought to be acceptable.”

            “We just bought me a bunch of skirts.” Justine bit the cherry off the mermaid.

            The waiter arrived in black bow tie and tails, a book of matches in his hand. Mom held the cigarette up. He lit it. Then Mom ordered for them both without looking at the menu.  

            “What was that you ordered for me?” Justine asked.

“You’re going to like everything. You’ll see.”

“Mom.” Her mother seemed to have completely forgotten about Aaron.

“These things take time, though. If women want change, women must be willing to press for change.”

            “What women are you talking about?”

            “For pity sake, I’m talking about you. Arrange a meeting. Form a committee.”

            Justine stopped playing with the mermaid and stared at her mother.

            “That’s what women today are doing, Justine, in order to make things more fair. I could talk to some of the mothers and we could . . .”

            “Talk to the mothers? Of who?”

            “Of whom, dear. The mothers. Pat, Micah, . . . “

            “Mom, god. I’m a senior. You can't be my room mother, man.”

            “Lower your voice, dear,” Mom said. “You’re right, of course. You’re old enough to do this yourself. I can see that. I don’t want to over-mother you.”

            “Does this have something to do with that book you’re reading?”

            “Why does everyone always ask me about this book I’m supposedly reading? I read lots of things. I read about dress codes in a newsletter put out by the National Organization of Women.”

            The waiter brought soup.

            “NOW,” she said to Justine. And to the waiter: “We’ll have another round, please.”

“What’s that?” Justine wrinkled her nose at her mother’s white soup.

“Vichyssoise,” Mom said. “Don’t worry. French onion for you.”

“Looks like sour cream.”

“Have a taste.”

“No, thank you.”

“You should try everything once.” Mom slid her bowl toward her.

Justine tasted it.

“It’s cold,” she said. “That’s weird.”

"If your father were here, I tell you, I wouldn’t have to wait for a second drink.” Mom drained her drink and held the empty glass up to get his attention. “My sister, your Aunt Rosie, sends me things from Pittsburgh. Apparently young women have been staging sit-ins to protest dress codes in many parts of the country."

            “Far out,” Justine said. “You wanta taste mine?”

            “I wish you would enunciate,” Mom said. “Is it good?”

            “Uh, huh.” Justine spooned thick, melted cheese into her mouth.

            “It is the dawn of a new age, Justine, and I want you to be a part of it.”

            “You’re confusing me with Aaron, Mom.”

            “I know who you are, for goodness sake. You feel intimidated. I feel that way, too.”

            “You do?”

            The cocktail waitress set down new napkins and drinks and removed the old ones.

            “I wasn’t even finished,” Justine said, popping the cherry in her mouth. “These mermaids are cool. I’m keeping mine.”

            “I’m so glad we’re having this conversation. You all tease me, but I went to college, you know.”

            “I know, Mom.”

            “What I’m talking about is equal rights for women. All this clamoring for civil rights for the Negro? They killed Martin Luther King, Jr. Then Bobby Kennedy. It’s not over, the fight for equal rights, and it’s not just for the Negro.”

            “Wow, Mom,” Justine said. She sat back to let the waiter remove her soup bowl and place the plate in front of her.

            “Shish kabob. Out-a-sight—”

            “The Democratic National Convention starts today, and women are there, in Chicago, too, influencing the candidates. Your Grandmother Shirley is one of them.”

            “Gramma?”

            "Did you know that women working the same job as a man don’t earn the same salary as a man and the Equal Pay Act passed in 1963.  Boys go through school wearing clothes designed for rough and tumble. Girls wear clothes designed for show. Girls should have the same freedom in school that boys have, the same opportunities. Clothes designed to be pretty make girls think they exist merely to attract a boy.”

            "Have you talked to Dad about all this?”

            “Your father doesn’t take me seriously—yet—but he is a man who believes in equal rights.”

            “I don’t think he cares what I wear to school,” Justine said, sipping her coke.

            “It’s not that he doesn’t care,” Mom said, cutting her lamb.

            “More like he’s oblivious, like Grandpa?”

            “That’s closer to the truth.” Mom smiled and patted her mouth, getting red lipstick on the white cloth napkin. "He’s busy. And his work is important, not just to us but to the community."

            “I know.”

             “He was the one who wanted you in sleepers, not nighties. He was the one who said, ‘Don’t baby her. You don’t baby Aaron.’”

            Justine remembered her father encouraging her to wrestle with him and Aaron when they were little.

“I’m afraid I did raise Aaron to ‘be a little man.’ No wonder he had a hard time at the station. Men aren’t supposed to cry. I tell you to watch your language in one breath and to wear pants in the other. You must be confused. It’s confusing.”

            Justine couldn’t stop staring. She looked like the same woman, her short hair ratted up and sprayed tight around her head. The scoop neck of her summer dress matched the shape of her pearls, which matched her earrings, two pearls clipped onto each lobe. But her cheeks were red with excitement, redder than the rouge, and her eyes sparkled, not the way they did when she looked up at Dad but in a way that didn’t look up to anyone.

            “Let’s have coffee, shall we?” she said to Justine when the busboy came to take their plates.

            “Okay.”

            “We’ll have two coffees and the check, please,” Mom said.

            “I think you raised us better than anyone, Mom.” Justine felt proud of her mother.

            “That’s nice, honey.” Mom reached out and patted Justine’s hand, which was on the table but Mom didn’t seem to care. “These days, things that seem like the right thing one minute aren’t right the next because you’ve learned something you didn’t know before. Just like it seemed okay for Viola to ride in the back of the bus when she lived in Texas, but when she came out to California, we told her she didn’t have to do that anymore. You know, your father pays her more than anyone. And he’s proud of that.”

            “That’s why the Bowdens don’t come over anymore.”

            “You remember that? We were willing to share Viola for half the week, but that Sam Bowden refused to pay Viola what Walter paid her. Your father told Sam it was only right to pay her a fair living wage. Of course Sam didn’t see it that way.”

The same thing Aaron said the field workers wanted.

Your father decided to keep Viola on full-time, which is why I have so much time to read, come to think about it. Is that ironic?”

            Justine didn’t know about ironic so she said nothing. And just what was a fair living wage?

            Mom insisted Justine drive home since she’d had two drinks.

“Stay under the speed limit, dear.”

            “No one else is.”

            “Well, we’re not in any hurry.”

            Justine backed off the pedal and had to again and again. She felt like she was buzzing inside. She imagined meeting Jesse at the show, meeting him after school, meeting him at the front door.

            When they got home, she parked her bags of new things on the washing machine, let the dog out, and sat down on the stoop to wait for him. She wondered if Jesse had tried to call. Would he leave a message or hang up?

After Cooper returned, which he always did, Justine took the bags into her bedroom, removed the tags, and hung them up, taking care to clip the skirts to skirt hangers. She especially liked the culotte dress and tried it on again. She stepped into the hall and looked at herself in the hall mirror on the back of her parents’ bedroom door.

Here she’d thought tennis shoes would be too casual for Mom, and Mom wanted her to change the dress code and wear pants to school.

            They ate in the kitchen so they could watch the Democratic Convention on the portable TV. Huntley-Brinkley and veal scaloppini.

            “Viola, your pilaf is better than the pilaf we had at the restaurant today,” Mom said.

            “I’m sorry you had to eat it twice in one day, ma'am.”

            “Shhh,” Dad said. “I want to hear this speech.”

            Justine finished dinner and excused herself. She wasn’t interested in the convention and wanted to write her brother a letter, telling him all about her new culottes, the Bowdens, and the dress code. That she could imagine leading at a meeting. That Mom had acted differently. Wouldn’t he be proud of her?

            In her imagination, all the right people would be on her committee, all the people she wished she were friends with. In her imagination, she spoke right up with the same sparkle in her eyes that Mom had today, sitting up just as straight. All the members listened to what she had to say, in her imagination.  

            Justine opened her desk drawer. The stationary lay in neat and tidy stacks. She chose the blue airmail paper and an airmail envelope. She addressed the envelope first, copying his address exactly as she had written it in her little white and gold address book.

The light from her desk lamp lured a few fat June bugs away from the dark of night. Their spiked legs clung to the screen. Moths beat against the screen. She could smell the gardenia that bloomed outside the open window.

She sat down at the corner desk, handmade by Grandpa out of mahogany. On her desktop, a pen set sat on the old leather blotter, a hand-me-down from her dad’s office.  Everything else had to be in one of the drawers.

            Justine had rules about her room. For instance, the wooden rocking chair in the middle of the room, facing the corner windows, was the only place clothes could be besides folded, in her dresser drawers, or hanging, in her closet. In order to be on that chair, the clothes had to be clean enough, clearly intended for wear the next day, which rarely happened in the summer. Her closet door had to remain shut at all times with all shoes inside.

The bed she made as soon as she got out of it every day, enjoying the feel of smoothing the textured sunbonnet-girl quilt Grandma made for her with fabric from clothes she’d worn growing up in Iowa.

She didn’t have much furniture in her bedroom—the corner desk, the rocking chair, the cedar chest at the end of her single bed, and her bookcase. When Aaron had first gone to college, he’d offered his record player and end tables, even to trade beds since his was a double. Justine liked her room neat and tidy and she liked space—to lie on the floor, read, do art projects, and sit-ups. The only thing her brother wanted from her was her bookcase.

 The bookcase wasn’t special, but she wouldn’t give it up.  In it, arranged with care, her old dolls, Barbie and Raggedy Anne, her horse collection, and her old books, Little Women, Jane Eyre, a dictionary, thesaurus all her Dr. Seuss and Nancy Drew. The top she dusted even though she knew Viola cleaned her room regularly. Nothing was allowed on top.

            Aaron used to barge in about this time. He’d flop on her bed with his shoes on. He disturbed the order of things but tonight she missed his company. June bugs and moths buzzed lonely.

            After addressing the envelope, Justine took off her clothes and threw everything in the dirty-clothes hamper. Not one article made it to the chair for tomorrow, not even the bra, which was too small and cut into the soft flesh under her arms and stained yellow from all her sweat.

Perspiration, she corrected herself, and wished she’d come home with new bras, new underwear, new pjs, too, but shopping with Mom for skirts was one thing, bra shopping quite another.

All of a sudden, she knew she would never form a committee or change the dress code.

Why do they always want me to be someone I’m not?

            She grabbed a clean pair of baby-dolls from her dresser drawer, the pink ones with the red polka dot bears dancing. Why didn’t they unbutton all the way down the front?  Soon she was stuck, half in and half out, listening to the fabric rip as she struggled.  

“Mom!”

Silence. Her parents were glued to the boob tube and would never hear her. Half in and half out, she wondered why slang for breasts meant the same as “idiot.” Idiot box—boob tube? My boobs aren’t idiots, she thought, and yanked the top hard enough to rip. She was free. The bears landed in a heap on the hardwood floor. Justine dove into her pj drawer, finding only flannel nightgowns that might fit. All the summer pjs were two small. 

What about the Army t-shirt Aaron left her? She found it in her closet, clean and ironed, where Viola had hung it up. She sat down at the desk, took out a pair of scissors from the top drawer, and snipped the sleeves off right below the shoulder seam. She held it up.

My new pj top.

After putting it on, she turned the desk lamp off, said goodnight to the bugs, and folded back the quilt, so only the top sheet would cover her. In bed, cozy in her newly fashioned t-shirt. On the floor, baby dolls ripped and forgotten.