The Fifth of May

Friday, May 5, 2006

Cinco de Mayo – the fifth of May, which was also Ben-Hur’s birthday, and it seemed fitting – bells, whistles, and party animal that he was… It was also the day before Diana’s graduation. And it was a half-gray day that morning as Collette prepared to fold the bulletin. Susie Hatch had already set up the conference room with a buffet table, coffee pot and ice bucket, a clay jug of what appeared to be silk daisies and cotton blossoms, and bottles of lemonade and sodas for the New Members’ Class which would meet that evening.

Meanwhile, Max and Joy were quite the same, and mewed just as much for their breakfast. Although this time, Max did not greet her in the morning by batting her ponytail, as he seemed to enjoy doing before, several times.

And interestingly, it was the night of the home school prom. Following the choir workshop for all three choirs (which would take up the full afternoon into the early evening) with the most famous Mr. Mather, the girls would prepare for the big night – frothy cupcake gowns of strawberry pinks and butter yellows, sparkling tiaras and robins’ egg blue eye shadow, wrist corsages of biting-red roses and, not to mention – the giggle-boxes who wore them. The church bathrooms following the workshop would surely be filled with a bubble of gossip and a fog of hairspray and perfume, a touch of underlying bullying (over which gal could flirt away the attentions of which guy), frosted with a sickeningly sweet dripping honey-sugar icing of artificial sweetness. But truly, Collette had never been to prom. She had only ever heard stories. So, alas, what could she really say?

“I made up her bed and I turned down her sheet.
I ironed the dresses she wore-oh.
I’ve peeled her potatoes. I roasted her meats,
And ’twas I, with me broom, swept her floor.
Oh, dear me, how can it be?
The life of a servant is all misery.