Free June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore Page B

long space; on one, hundreds of men’s shirts waited to be ironed; on another, shawls were sorted by color. On the bleachers waited a thrilled scrum of St. Judians, eager to be transformed. Lindie ignored the jealous pit in her stomach when she saw that mean-hearted Darlene Kipp was one of the lucky ones.
    Lindie presented herself at one of the lunch tables, where a man with a pin between his lips crouched at the feet of pretty, young Mrs. Sudman, already transformed into a vision of the last century in a cerulean gown. Without lifting an eye, the man, named Ricky, shoved a tomato pincushion at Lindie and told her to pin up the back of the wide dress. “If they’d sent us here a week ago instead of sitting us on our asses out on the lot,” he seethed, as though Lindie knew what he was talking about, “I’d have all these finished by now.” On the table above him, scores of taffeta skirts were draped, in deep shades of evergreen, eggplant, and plum. Lindie whispered that she didn’t know how to sew.
    “I’m not asking you to sew,” he said, sounding more like a peeved friend than a punishing father, “I’m telling you to pin.”
    So pin she did, and though Ricky fussed as he went over her uneven pinning with his needle, he didn’t fire her. He was a grown man but funny in the way even Lindie’s father wasn’t funny. He talked sometimes like women talked—“Oh, sweetheart,” and “Honey, if you ask me…”—but he was also firm in the way of men, especially when he called up the next girl for her fitting. Lindie stayed by his side as they hemmed four more dresses, and her skills improved.
    When Lindie saw that the fifth girl up was Darlene Kipp, she almost announced she had somewhere to be, but Ricky would have balked, and he was the kind of person you wanted to have think the best of you. Darlene teetered up onto the little stool and smirked down. Her legs were swathed in midnight blue taffeta that scratched under Lindie’s fingers.
    “Why don’t you sew this one?” Ricky suggested, handing Lindie a matching spool of thread and a long, sharp needle.
    A lump formed in Lindie’s throat. “I told you I can’t,” she said fiercely. She knew she’d ruin the costume; Darlene’s costume, at that. She couldn’t invite any more abuse from the girl who’d thrown erasers at her head and locked her in the janitor’s closet and, worst of all, often called her “manchild.”
    Darlene remarked loudly, “Yeah, just sew it, Linda Sue.”
    Lindie felt her face grow scarlet. She told herself she didn’t care what horrible Darlene thought of her. And it didn’t make sense that she cared about Ricky; she’d only just met him. She mumbled that her father hadn’t cared to teach her the things that had brought about her mother’s moving out.
    Darlene snickered above them. “Raised by a colored woman.” Her hand fluttered to her chest in mock concern. “Poor little boy.”
    Without a second’s hesitation, Ricky took a pin from the corner of his mouth and jabbed it straight into Darlene’s juicy ankle. She howled in pain, grabbing at the site of the injury. Stumbling off the stool, she seethed like a bull, skirts rustling around her. Through gritted teeth, she told Ricky she’d have him fired. He calmly stuck the guilty pin back into his tomato and said, “Be my guest, honey. I’m sure my boss—who paid to fly me all the way from Los Angeles—will take your word over mine.” He batted his eyelashes, wrapped an arm around Lindie, and squeezed.
    Tears cascaded down Darlene’s furious face as she stormed off. Victory soared through Lindie at the sight, and Ricky shook his head as he watched the girl go. Then he turned to Lindie and took her hands, dark eyes boring gravely into hers. “My darling little Dorothy Parker, if you want to get anywhere in this life, we must teach you how to sew.”
    An hour into the day and Lindie was already in love with all of it. Her St. Judian existence, which had seemed