Gabriella Brand

My story “The Weight of a Bag” is one of twelve stories featured in Dress You Up – A Capsule Collection of Fashionable Fiction. This special anthology is edited by Brian Centrone, of New Salon Lit.

This has been an exciting collaboration. Every story is illustrated by Stephen Tornero.

Please add this book to your GOODREADS”Want to Read” list. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57202101-dress-you-up

“Fashion is the thread that unites these impressionistic stories about pleasure, loss, and longing, capturing the emotional weight of the second skins we wear each day.”

Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell, author of Worn on the Day and The Way We Wed.

READ IT HERE:

 “You gotta get a bag,” Sandy had said. “You can’t start Junior High in September without a bag.”

It was August, 1958. The two girls were walking home, each holding a cherry popsicle which dripped onto the sidewalk. They had been to the town swimming pool together and were just rounding the corner of Sandy’s street.

John Davenport Junior High wouldn’t start for another week or so, but Sandy insisted that Anna-Maria’s lack of a handbag was a pressing issue. Sandy had already bought one.

Back in elementary school, there had been no need for a handbag. No one carried anything. They didn’t need money for lunch because they went home at noontime on foot or by bicycle. And, of course, no one wore lipstick. But now things were different, Sandy explained.

“If you don’t have a bag, where are you going to put your Clear-Skin? Huh?” 

At the beginning of the summer Sandy had been the one to suggest Anna-Maria squeeze the occasional blackheads that had begun appearing on her nose and slather her skin with acne cream.

Sandy always knew what to do, what to buy. She kept her eyes on the older girls in town and their accessories. Charm bracelets. Pennies in their loafers. Oversized safety pins on plaid skirts.

“For a bag, you need something cool,” explained Sandy. “Like a feed bucket or something.”

Anna-Maria had no idea what a feed bucket was, but she concluded it was a kind of purse. Sandy’s knowledge of the world was far more vast than anyone Anna-Maria had ever met.

Sandy knew, for instance, that Rock Hudson was double-jointed, and Elvis Presley would eat five scoops of ice cream before he did “it” with a woman. Sandy knew those facts because she claimed to have read them in movie magazines, the kind with black and white photos sold in the darkest corner of United Cigar and Newstand, right next to the humidors.

Anna-Maria wondered where Sandy had learned about feed buckets, but she didn’t want to ask.. Perhaps Sandy would say that feed bucket bags were just common knowledge, like the fact that Marilyn Monroe slept naked.

“Do you think I can get one at Clemen’s?” asked Anna-Maria, mentioning the local clothing store on Main Street, a few blocks away. Clemen’s featured dusty women’s sweaters that stayed in the sun-bleached front window all year long.

“Not a chance,” shrieked Sandy, “ Go out to the Rossinger’s and buy a decent bag.”

Anna-Maria sighed. It wasn’t that easy to get to Rossinger’s. The department store was about fifteen miles away, in a shopping center right off a major highway. But Anna-Maria’s mother didn’t drive. And it would be tricky asking Father to go.

“Rossinger’s, huh?” asked Anna-Maria, wondering how she would ever get out there.

“Show me your bag the minute you buy it,” said Sandy, turning around and waving at Anna-Maria as she headed up her driveway.

“I will,” said Anna-Maria, crossing the street to her own house.

Now, the closer it got to the start of school, the more glum Anna-Maria felt. She went out of her way to avoid her neighbor. Of course she was grateful for Sandy’s guidance. If it weren’t for her friend, she might have shown up on the first day of Junior High with her lunch money tucked into her sock and without any lipstick at all. As it was, Sandy had already led Anna-Maria to the drugstore next to United Cigar and together they had browsed the aisles. Sandy picked out PinkNOrange for Anna-Maria and a tube of French Spice for herself.

“You gotta blot it against a tissue, like this,” Sandy had said, demonstrating with a large, kiss on a paper napkin.

Anna-Maria had hidden the PinkNOrange in the far back corner of her top bureau drawer, so that her mother wouldn’t see it. She knew she’d have to prepare her mother for the sight of her daughter with garish pink lips like some kind of a snow monkey.

Anna-Maria’s mother liked serious things. Classic things. European things. She never wore pants like the other women in the neighborhood, and she kept her hair long and wound in a tight chignon, as if she were always ready to read a dissertation in front of the French Academy. Because she didn’t drive, she walked solemnly and slowly all the way into town, heading for the hairdresser’s or the grocer’s.

As Anna-Maria approached her own house, she began plotting a strategy for telling her mother about Rossinger’s and requesting the all important handbag. It wasn’t a matter of money. It was more a question of silliness. Would her mother put this request in the category she called “nonsense”?

There were so many things in that category. Baby doll pajamas. Popsicles. The television show American Bandstand. Breakfast cereals other than oatmeal. Poodle skirts. Twinkies.

It did no good to argue that that other kids ate spongy cylinders filled with sugar. Anna-Maria’s mother didn’t care.

“That’s not food. It’s nonsense,” said Anna-Maria’s mother.

Sometimes she launched into a long speech about “the old country”, where Anna-Maria had never been and didn’t want to go. It seemed to be a grim place, fractured by war, with not enough meat and butter to go around.

Once Mother had caught Anna-Maria with a slick movie magazine that Sandy had let her borrow.

“Why are you reading such a thing?” asked her mother, “It’s nonsense.”

Most likely a handbag for school would fall into the nonsense category.

At dinner that night, with both Father and Mother sitting on each end of the table, Anna-Maria got up her courage.

She knew better than to start off by saying, ‘Sandy says.’  That wouldn’t work.

Anna-Maria decided to present her need for a handbag as a matter of practicality.

“There’s going to be a lot to carry around in Seventh Grade,” she began.

“Why is that?” asked Father, as he passed a plate of green beans sautéed with mushrooms.

“Um….because I’ll be staying at school for lunch. So I have to bring lunch money.”

“Don’t you have a change purse?”

“Um, yeah, but I’m afraid it might get lost. Because it’s small. And besides, I need lots of pencils and erasers,” said Anna-Maria.

Her parents looked a bit puzzled.

“Because I’ll move around from class to class. I won’t have one fixed desk,” she explained. “And I’ll want to be….really….prepared.”

Mother nodded, smiling at the thought of her daughter taking such a studious attitude.

Anna-Maria felt that she might be on the right track.

“So, just get a zippered pencil case, ” said Father.

“Yes, yes, that’s right,” said Anna-Maria, picturing such a pencil case lying at the bottom of Sandy’s recommended feed bucket.

“But I also need to bring…well, some other stuff,” said Anna-Maria, glancing at her Mother and hoping for some sign of feminine understanding without having to mouth out the word “ sanitary pads”.

Mother said nothing, preferring to concentrate on sweeping crumbs off the table with a little brush.

 “Actually, I was thinking of a bag. Like a handbag,” said Anna-Maria.

“Oh, that’s a good idea,” said Mother, bringing some melon to the table for dessert.

The melon was beautifully presented, all scooped out in perfect rounds and topped with a bit of mint.

“I suppose it is,” said Father.

Then the family finished the melon and talked of other things.

Anna-Maria thought it was best to save the discussion of having Father drive her out to Rossinger’s for another time.

After the dishes were washed, Mother asked Anna-Maria to follow her upstairs.

“I have some handbags you can choose from,” she said.

Anna-Maria gulped. Her mother opened the doors of her closet, which was organized with Swiss precision. The navy blue skirts in one section, the gray skirts next, all the shoes carefully paired in little boxes. Mother began taking various leather handbags off of a high shelf.

“Here,this one is nice. It has a good handle.”

Anna-Maria stared at her Mother’s old handbag. It was black patent leather with a brass clasp. She remembered her mother carrying it a few years ago to Anna-Maria’s ballet recital.

“Um…,” said Anna-Maria, gulping again.

“Or what about this one?” asked Mother, handing her daughter a navy-blue handbag with a zippered top.

“A zipper would be useful for keeping everything inside,” said Mother.

Anna-Maria could tell her Mother was trying to be helpful.

“I was kind of thinking of something like a …..um….a feed bucket,” said Anna-Maria.

“What’s a feebucka?” asked Mother, whose European tongue tripped over the unfamiliar word.

“Um…it’s a kind of bag,” said Anna-Maria, “I think it holds a lot.”

“Well, this holds a lot,” said Mother, handing Anna-Maria still yet another bag.

It was a brown leather one with two long straps and a little silver chain on the end. It was the color of sludge.

Anna-Maria gingerly brought up the possibility of Father driving her out to Rossinger’s.

“I don’t think that’s necessary. We already have several bags right here. You just need to choose one,” said Mother.

Anna-Maria knew when she was defeated. Waste not, want not, said Mother, who seemed to be warming up to give one of her little speeches.

Not wanting to hear about some European relative who had been so hungry during the war that he ate the soles of  his own shoes, Anna-Maria thanked her mother and ended up accepting the brown leather bag with the long straps.

She went up to her room, threw herself down on her bed, and buried her wet face in the pillow.

Meanwhile, Sandy pestered Anna-Maria every afternoon of the week leading up to the start of school.

“Have you gotten your bag yet?” her friend asked as the two girls walked back and forth to the town pool before it closed on Labor Day.

“No,” Anna-Maria lied.

 “You’d better hurry,” counseled Sandy. “All the good ones will be gone.”

The night before the big day, Anna-Maria reluctantly filled her hand-me-down handbag with pencils, lunch money, a new pink eraser, two small packages of Kleenex, a big tube of hand cream, and the previously hidden lipstick.

The brown bag seemed to her like a weight on her arm, on her spirit.

Mother softened the brown leather with saddle soap and cleaned the silver chain.

 “You look so mature,” said Father, as Anna-Maria left the house.

She walked slowly down the street towards Sandy’s house. The bag felt awkward on her arm. She couldn’t decide whether to throw the long handles over her shoulder or not. And it already felt too heavy. Maybe she shouldn’t have put in the big tube of hand cream.

Sandy came bounding out of her house and raced towards Anna-Maria.

“Oh, you finally got a bag. Let me see!” she shouted.

Sandy looked the bag over inside and out, scrunching up her face as if she were handling a dead brown dog. She ran her hands over the smooth exterior,still a bit sticky from the saddle soap and she pulled on the silver chain.

 “Did you get this at Rossinger’s?” she asked.

“Yes, um…no, in the end I got it somewhere else.”

“Where?” asked Sandy, scowling. “It’s really weird. You should have let me come with you.”

“Well, my…..” Anna Maria started to answer.

Fortunately, before Anna-Maria had a chance to finish her sentence, she and Sandy were joined by a gaggle of other neighborhood girls. Anna-Maria eyed the other girls’ purses. There were a lot of feed buckets. Maybe Sandy had talked to them, or maybe feed buckets were truly just common knowledge.

Anna-Maria waited for Sandy or one of the other girls to make fun of her bag, but Sandy got caught up explaining to everyone how to put pennies in their penny loafers. Apparently, they were all doing it wrong.

“I saw a bunch of Eighth Graders at the shoe department at Rossinger’s, so I know,” said Sandy.

“It’s not cool to put a penny in each side,” she continued. “You need to put one penny in the right slot if you already have a boyfriend. Or in the left slot if you’re looking.”

If any of the girls had put in two pennies, Sandy urged her to take one out.

As soon as the loafers were in order, the group headed down the street, crossed the intersection and approached John Davenport Junior High. Anna-Maria’s palms were moist and the brown bag kept slipping from her grip.

She and Sandy weren’t in any of the same classes. They had gone over their schedules and agreed to find each other in the cafeteria at lunchtime.

As she made her way from class to class, Anna-Maria felt a mixture of anxiety and pride. With the constantly changing classes, the crowded hallways, the independence required to get from one place to another, it was all so different from elementary school. And yet she made it to each class on time and she always had a pencil ready.

In third period history class, a girl she didn’t know asked if she had any tissues, and Anna-Maria was happy to rummage through her well-stocked brown bag and hand the girl one of the two little packets she had brought with her. She and the girl talked a bit before the teacher arrived. The girl didn’t make any comment about the weirdness of Anna-Maria’s purse.

Throughout the morning, Anna-Maria found that she wasn’t thinking about her old friend Sandy at all. By noon, it actually felt good to be walking around on her own, without Sandy’s constant jabber and advice in her ears. And somehow, carrying the big bag made her feel older, maybe wiser.

At lunchtime Anna-Maria could see Sandy sitting at the head of a cafeteria table, surrounded by some of the other girls from the neighborhood. Anna-Maria placed her cafeteria tray down and caught the gist of Sandy’s monologue. It was all about someone in one of her classes who was wearing really childish shoes.

“Like tie-ups. They look like something you’d wear in Third Grade,” pronounced Sandy.

The other girls laughed.

Anna-Maria just ate her lunch quietly. She didn’t know what was so wrong with tie-up shoes. After all, she’d been wearing tie-ups herself up until last year.

When the bell rang, Sandy and the other girls walked out together, like a herd of heifers heading out to pasture. They pushed open the big double doors and moved into the corridor.

Anna-Maria walked a bit with them, then hung back to stop at the water fountain.

A few Ninth Grade girls, coming in from gym class, got into line behind her.

“That’s the coolest bag,” said one of the older girls, leaning over Anna-Maria’s shoulder, and gesturing towards the brown bag. The girl was tall and blond, with suntanned cheeks and no lipstick.

“Hey, Terry, look at this cool bag,” said the girl, turning to her friend and gesturing towards Anna-Maria’s purse.

“Yeah,” said the girl named Terry, “It’s definitely neat.”

Anna-Maria was stunned. At first, she stared down out the floor, overcome with shyness. Then she looked up and realized the older girls were smiling at her.

“Thanks,” she said in response to their compliments. She stopped short of telling them where the bag came from.

Then she stepped aside and the first girl moved ahead to the water fountain. The girl named Terry kept chatting with Anna-Maria.

“You’re in Seventh, right?” said the girl. “ I remember my first day. Don’t worry, it all gets better,” she said with a smile.

“Yeah,” said Anna-Maria, “I hope so.”

Just as she walked away Anna-Maria noticed that Sandy had joined the water fountain line and clearly observed her interaction with the friendly Ninth Graders.

She waited for Sandy to grab her arm to give her a piece of advice. But Sandy just stared at Anna-Maria with her eyes narrowed, her mouth open in surprise.

Suddenly Anna-Maria felt light and weightless.

She nodded at Sandy, then swung the brown bag easily onto her shoulder and went off to face her next class.