The Millsville Five

Her hair was like her father’s: short, blonde, and always unkempt. She didn’t like it short, and she never had. But as a child, she’d caught lice at school every fall, and her mother got into the habit of keeping it short and manageable. Even though elementary school was now almost six years in the past, she still wore it this way. Perhaps it was just the convenience. Perhaps it was in memory of her mother. Whatever the reason, Bette Kinsella’s hair was like her father’s.
She tried for a long time to look like Jean Harlow. She sharpened a lead pencil so finely that she could fabricate the look of Harlow’s lashes. The lipstick collection her mother left behind made achieving the classic pout as simple as she could have hoped. But that hair… she never could resolve that. And so Bette determined to grow it as it was, keeping it close to her head and chopping it whenever the ends became unruly. People were sporting this look everywhere a decade ago. Perhaps it would come back.
Luckily for Bette, the company she kept wasn’t one to judge. Her four closest friends had their own troubles, and hairstyles were among the very least of them.
For example, there were the Brooks twins. Iris and Rose, both sixteen, were not identical, but they had almost identical problems. One of those problems was the fact that their mother, whom the Kinsellas had hired five years before as a housekeeper, hadn’t had employment since The Crash. In those three years, however, the Brooks family stayed in the Kinsella home, resumed their duties for as long as they could, and eventually became a second family to Bette. After all, Mrs. Kinsella’s death was completely unexpected and tragic, and when Mr. Kinsella transferred his business to “The Attic,” Bette was, more often than not, alone. In these moments, Angelina Brooks and her daughters would take Bette under wing and give her the life that every young lady deserves. They arranged dances, afternoon teas in the shade, and even sat atop the rafters of the half-built mills and pointed out which young men they found attractive. None of these activities was ever formal or elaborate, of course, but it was enough for a girl of sixteen to find some solace in a time of trouble.
And then there was Mallie. Magalakutway Perez, Half Shawnee, half Mexican, and the first of the town to make Bette’s acquaintance. It was before The Crash, before Millsville was what it was. Mallie saw the Kinsellas admiring the construction of their home and approached Bette with caution. Two girls of twelve, no matter their differences, can become friends very easily if only one of them will try.
“You might not want to build here,” she whispered into Bette’s ear.
Bette turned around, her blue eyes suddenly locking with Mallie’s hazel orbs. “What? Why not?”
“This is an old Indian burial ground,” Mallie said eerily. “Curses will fall on your family for generations and generations. Your children’s children will reap the pain that is being sown here this day.”
A striking fear invaded Bette, and she felt her hands becoming sweaty, warm, her stomach aching. “Really?”
Mallie laughed for three solid minutes, walking around and surveying the job the workers had done on the house. “I’m only joking,” she said. “My name’s Mallie. I’ve never really been down in town before today, and I thought it might be fun to give you a scare.”
It could have been considered a cruel trick, but as time passed, Bette found that Mallie liked to pull this prank as often as possible every time a white family moved to town.
She’d even done it as recently as Laura, who had only moved to Millsville three months before the crash. Laura Kepler, her parents, her fourteen siblings, and their dog were all in the process of moving into a modest little home in the foothills, very near where Mr. Kepler would be working, or so everyone thought. As soon as they moved in, Bette made her acquaintance, believing that they should be friends. Bette was desperate for friends, and girls her own age were scarce in the town. Bette and Laura were acquainted and enjoyed their friendship for a full week before Mallie showed up to change things.
Laura spotted Mallie across a cornfield that had been recently planted, and at the sight of her in what Laura perceived to be native dress, she asked Bette if they should be afraid.
Bette laughed. “Magalakutway is the least harmful person you will ever meet.”
While Laura struggled to say the name correctly, Mallie had found her way across the field, ominously staring down her newest victim. “How!” She exclaimed in her deepest, grittiest tone.
“Please don’t scalp me!” Laura begged. “Please! I have a family!”
Mallie’s laugh, now one that was familiar but still lovely music to Bette’s ears, rang louder than usual. “You’re too easy!” she said to Laura before introducing herself. “Oh boy, I can’t wait to meet the rest of your family!”
Bette thought Laura might faint, and she wrapped an arm around her, explaining that Mallie was, as she’d said before, the least harmful person Laura would ever meet.
And it would always be true.
These five girls, however diverse each one was from the next, formed an unbreakable bond very quickly. Iris and Rose enjoyed the freedom they found in walking around town with Bette and Laura without anyone pointing them out, telling them to leave the shop because of their skin color. Of course, this was in the days when the girls all went to shops, and when there were shops to be gone into. Now all around them was desolation. It was a ghost town. It was a failure as an idea and the result of it was worse than any could have imagined.
It was on one particularly cool autumn morning that Bette put the green lantern on the porch – a symbol to her friends that there would be a meeting that day. Slowly but surely, Rose and Iris found their way from the guest house into the main one, and Mallie and Laura, who looked every day to see whether the lantern was out, trudged up the hill into the grand home. By now, the girls all knew better than to say anything about the fact that, despite the lack of food, heat, or maintenance in the Kinsella home, the house and land they owed seemed far beyond their means. From the outside, it would appear that was true. But ever since the girls discovered The Attic, they knew better than to acknowledge its existence.
Mallie was the first to speak, as was typical. “Alright,” she started, seating herself in the parlor and gesturing for Bette to sit beside her. “What is it today? A fishing trip again?”
“Please tell me it’s not more fishin’,” Iris pleaded softly. She slumped into the chair by the window and looked over at Rose for validation.
“I dunno, I didn’t mind it much,” said Rose. “Sure, the fish cleanin’ is gross, but it pays off. That was some of the best fish I’d ever eaten in my life, the way Mama cooked it.”
“It’s not fish,” Bette spoke as she landed beside Mallie. “It’s a job. A big one.”
“How much do we make from it?” Laura asked. For the first time, she seemed to perk up.
“None. It’s not paying. Not in money.”
“In what then?” Mallie asked smartly. “Wampum?”
Bette cast a sideways glance toward Mallie and shook her head. “Experience. Life experience. The kind of thing you can’t learn in school.”
“Oh,” Iris scoffed. “So this is a job for your daddy? Why didn’t you say so?”
“Another job for your dad?” Laura asked, increasingly becoming more bewildered at the thought. “No. Absolutely not. Every time we do a job for your dad, something happens.”
“It’s been a while, girls!” Bette begged. “Please! I’ll be going with you this time!”
The room fell silent, and each girl looked at the one beside them. Collectively at last, they looked to Bette.
“How far do we have to travel?” Mallie asked.
“And do we get to use the Ford? We can’t take the train again if we get chased back like last time.” Rose was leaned forward as she asked, intent on the answer.
“It’s in Louisville,” Bette explained. “But before you complain about the distance, you should know we do get to use the Ford this time. So long as I drive.”
“How long?” Iris spoke after a brief thoughtful silence. “How long will this take? And while we’re at it, what exactly is the job?”
Bette looked the girls over, then stood again in the midst of them. “If we hurry, we can make it there and back in a day. Louisville’s only thirty miles or so anyway, and if we leave early enough, we’ll be done and back by suppertime.”
“And the job?” Rose repeated her sister.
“It’s a shipment. The guys who usually bring the stuff here ran into a little trouble.”
“A little trouble?”
“Got arrested, more like.”
“We cannot get arrested, Bette!”
She tossed her hands in the air in exasperation. “Stop talking! Listen to me, will you?”
Four pairs of eyes gave her their full attention.
“Who’s going to suspect a group of girls in pretty frocks, hm?” she asked, feigning a sweeter voice, very much out of character.
“Anyone who notices that two of us is black and one of us is Injun,” Iris answered.
“Laura and I will play like we’re sisters, see. We’ll say we’ve brought the help from our wealthy home back in Indianapolis. We’ll stop at the hotel, where they’ll graciously check us into their best suite. When they see the Ford, believe me, they’ll know we’re good for the credit.”
“And then what?” Mallie asked. At present it seemed she was the only one who was even slightly willing even to hear how the plan would work.
“Then at two fifteen on the button, there’ll be a knock at the door. We won’t have to answer. All’s we’ll have to do is leave. The car will already be packed, and we’ll drive back home. Easy as pie.”
“And I assume we’re delivering booze, right?” Iris asked. Her voice was quieter now. It seemed she had resigned herself to the fact that of course she was participating in this. But she didn’t have to like it.
“I made a point of not asking Daddy what we’re moving.”
“Well unless it’s prostitutes, I think we know it’s booze.”
As Rose spoke, the rest of the girls looked at her harshly. Except for Bette, that is, who was looking down at the floor.
“I can’t help what my father does to keep us living,” she said quietly. “We have a home, and we haven’t starved yet. If The Attic is what it takes to make that happen, then you can be sure I’m gonna help however I’m needed.”
Rose felt the searing gaze of the others and relaxed back into her seat. “Fine,” she said humbly. “Sorry. Your daddy’s done good by me and Mama and Iris. I guess I can’t look a gift horse in the mouth, can I?”
The rest of the girls fell silent, slowly looking back at Bette with expectation.
“We leave in the morning,” Bette said. “I can do it myself, but there’s power in numbers, Daddy says. And besides, he’s doing business here tomorrow. I think it’d be best if none of us were around for that.” She panned the small group, noting each hesitant stare. All but Mallie seemed as though they’d rather chop off their own foot than do anything for Fred Kinsella. Sure, there was that time the coppers chased them to the state line in the car when they dropped off a mysterious package at an inn at Evanston. And sure, maybe there’d been inquiries about town with a group that was sure their tools had been lifted by a couple of girls. And yeah, there were other examples, too. Plenty of them. But when Bette needed something, somehow or other, all of the girls were there for her. Even when it was, as it often was, actually a favor for Fred.
“Who’s in?” Bette asked.
Mallie stood without hesitation. Iris and Rose looked at each other from across the room, nodded, and then stood. Laura looked back down at her feet, biting the inside of her cheek.
“In or out, Laura?” Bette asked. “And don’t tell me your folks’ll mind, because we both know they won’t even notice you’re gone.”
“They’ll notice,” she mumbled. “They just won’t care.”
“In or out?” Mallie repeated.
“Can I use a fake name?”
Mallie and Bette exchanged looks. “Why?” they asked in unison.
“I don’t know. For fun.”
“What name did you have in mind?”
“Anabelle Lee.”
“Like Edgar Allen Poe?” Rose smiled, almost laughing. “You think people won’t know it’s a fake name?”
“Can I do it or not?”
“What the hell, Laura, do what you want.” Mallie never tried watching her language around the others. She knew they didn’t care for it, but she believed that was only because they weren’t used to it. She was determined to change that.
“Fine,” Bette agreed. “From now ‘til tomorrow night, you’re Annabelle. Are you in?”
As a broad smile painted her lips, she stood proudly. “I’m in!”