her, cigarette dangling in her hand. “Come on back.” Despite my nerves, all I can think of is the old college rule, A Chi Omega never walks with a cigarette. I follow her through the desks of staring men, the haze of smoke, to an interior office.
“Close that thing back,” Mister Golden hollers as soon as I’ve opened the door and stepped in. “Don’t let all that damn smoke in here.”
Mister Golden stands up behind his desk. He’s about six inches shorter than me, trim, younger than my parents. He has long teeth and a sneer, the greased black hair of a mean man.
“Didn’t you hear?” he said. “They announced last week cigarettes’ll kill you.”
“I hadn’t heard that.” I can only hope it hadn’t been on the front page of his newspaper.
“Hell, I know niggers a hundred years old look younger than those idjits out there.” He sits back down, but I keep standing because there are no other chairs in the room.
“Alright, let’s see what you got.” I hand him my résumé and sample articles I’d written in school. I grew up with the Journal sitting on our kitchen table, open to the farm report or the local sports page. I rarely had time to read it myself.
Mister Golden doesn’t just look at my papers, he edits them with a red pencil. “Murrah High editor three years, Rebel Rouser editor two years, Chi Omega editor three years, double major English and journalism, graduated number four... Damn, girl,” he mutters, “didn’t you have any fun?”
I clear my throat. “Is . . . that important?”
He looks up at me. “You’re peculiarly tall but I’d think a pretty girl like you’d be dating the whole goddamn basketball team.”
I stare at him, not sure if he’s making fun of me or paying me a compliment.
“I assume you know how to clean . . .” He looks back to my articles, strikes them with violent red marks.
My face flushes hot and quick. “Clean? I’m not here to clean. I’m here to write.”
Cigarette smoke is bleeding under the door. It’s like the entire place is on fire. I feel so stupid that I thought I could just walk in and get a job as a journalist.
He sighs heavily, hands me a thick folder of papers. “I guess you’ll do. Miss Myrna’s gone shit-house crazy on us, drunk hair spray or something. Read the articles, write the answers like she does, nobody’ll know the damn difference.”
“I . . . what?” And I take the folder because I don’t know what else to do. I have no idea who this Miss Myrna is. I ask the only safe question I can think of. “How much . . . did you say it pays?”
He gives me a surprisingly appreciative look, from my flat shoes to my flat hairstyle. Some dormant instinct tells me to smile, run my hand through my hair. I feel ridiculous, but I do it.
“Eight dollars, every Monday.”
I nod, trying to figure out how to ask him what the job is without giving myself away.
He leans forward. “You do know who Miss Myrna is, don’t you?”
“Of course. We . . . girls read her all the time,” I say, and again we stare at each other long enough for a distant telephone to ring three times.
“What then? Eight’s not enough? Jesus, woman, go clean your husband’s toilet for free.”
I bite my lip. But before I can utter anything, he rolls his eyes.
“Alright, ten. Copy’s due on Thursdays. And if I don’t like your style, I’m not printing it or paying you squat.”
I take the folder, thank him more than I probably should. He ignores me and picks up his phone and makes a call before I’m even out the door. When I get to my car, I sink down into the soft Cadillac leather. I sit there smiling, reading the pages in the folder.
I just got a job.
I COME HOME STANDING up straighter than I have since I was twelve, before my growth spurt. I am buzzing with pride. Even though every cell in my brain says do not, somehow I cannot resist telling Mother. I rush into the relaxing room and tell her everything about how I’ve gotten a job writing Miss Myrna, the weekly cleaning advice column.
“Oh the irony of it.” She lets out a sigh that means life is hardly worth living under such conditions. Pascagoula freshens her iced tea.
“At least it’s a start,” I say.
“A start at what? Giving advice on