Southern Lady Code: Essays(28)

So until they come up with a turtleneck that doesn’t grip my throat like a compression sock, I’ll sink into a mock turtleneck like a bubble bath. A mock turtleneck is light and luxurious. Sometimes, I clutch the cashmere collar and bring it up over my nose so I can peep out of my sweater like a kitten over the lip of a teacup. Is there anything more adorable? I don’t think so.

Bread-loafing: As an alternative, I’m embracing the fact that my face and neck are beginning to resemble a slice of bread. As soon as I wake up, I look in a mirror and glop on positive affirmations like skin-care cream (or, since I’m bread-loafing, like butter): “Hey there, hot stuff, you want your face and neck to look like a slice of bread. Everybody loves bread. People love bread so much, they try and abstain from it. But bread is the great seductress. You, madam, are the Kate Beckinsale of baked goods. Everybody wants you at every hour of every day. Hubba hubba! Those aren’t double chins, they are more smiles.”

Getting handsy: Forget about my neck, I’ll focus on my hands. How often do I see my face anyway? I see my hands a heck of a lot more: reading, scrolling, loading the dishwasher, pulling an arrow out of an intruder—what have you—there are my hands.

Some say the eyes are the windows to the soul, but I say the hands are the tollbooths to beauty. I can Lipo (suck), Thermi (burn), or Kybella (acid-wash) my neck fat away, but there’s no plastic surgery for the backs of my hands.

So I moisturize, I sunscreen, I have age spots scraped off like barnacles. And I don’t wear fingerless leather gloves because fingerless leather gloves age you more than using your smartphone light to read a menu.

Antiquing: Screw all this, from here on out I’ll consider myself an antique lamp. I am worth something and polished. I may be fragile, but I’ve survived. I am a conversation starter. And I will never be too old to light up a room.





SERIOUS WOMEN





The New York Post nicknamed the twenty-two-year-old woman on trial “Womb Raider.”

She’d told everyone she was pregnant. Then she connected on Facebook with a former classmate who truly was nine months pregnant. She lured the victim to her apartment, then took a common kitchen paring knife and slit her throat, stabbed her fifty times in the face, chest, and hands, and then cut open her abdomen. She opened that flap of skin, removed the victim’s uterus, and turned it inside out on a bathroom floor like she was emptying a stolen Birkin bag. The baby survived and, for the next few hours, the killer claimed the baby as her own.

It’s my friend Meredith’s job to send “Womb Raider” to prison for life. And I am sitting in the back row of what will be a two-week trial to watch her do it.

Meredith is private about her work as a Bronx assistant district attorney. She says, “I don’t want to ruin anyone’s dinner.”

On the first day, she wears a skirt suit and leather kitten heels so shiny they look like they’re straight out of the box. She is petite and at one point will present evidence—a suitcase with the victim’s blood in it—that is nearly as big as she is. She will carry it in her arms like a gigantic teddy bear.

I want to clap and shout, “You go, girl!” or “Yasss, queen!” But I’m pretty sure that’s inappropriate. I’m struggling with how to behave because murder trials weren’t in my etiquette books. In this audience, one of these things is not like the others, and I am that one thing. I don’t look like family (African Americans dressed for church) or press (single women dressed for an Adirondack hike). I’m a middle-aged white lady in a blouse and tapered slacks. My purse has a notepad with notes about ghosts and cheese logs, double chins and Burberry coats. I write silly stories for money. When entering the courthouse, my hair clip set off the metal detector. I feel that detector buzzing all over me now: I am the woman who doesn’t belong.

This is a serious room with serious women.

The salt-and-pepper pixie-cut judge, who looks like she’s permanently had it up to here, looms down from her bench. The court officer enforces the rules—no texting, no talking, no food, no funny faces—like a headmistress with a handgun. Meredith’s co-counsel, a new mom, keeps their desk better organized than a Pack ’n Play. The defense attorney paces, a cougar in a cardigan.

The defendant enters with her wrists handcuffed behind her back. The court officer unlocks her, sits her down, and then takes a seat directly behind her. No one in the audience is here for the defendant. The victim’s mother—a pastor’s wife—sits with her husband and two adult daughters. Steady and ever present, she is the epitome of composure. God is her jury. I will never hear her speak.

In my notepad, I write to myself: You think you’re tough, but you are not tough.

Meredith is tough.

I met Meredith more than ten years ago in a card game. She is the kind of woman whose resting face is a poker face. Nothing rattles her. The woman is calm. And she’s not afraid to bet. Throughout the trial, the defense attorney will put her legal pad on Meredith’s table, object to her choice of words, and ask the judge to ask her to speak up. When I tell Meredith I’m infuriated that this woman is trying to get under her skin, Meredith tells me she hadn’t even noticed.

She shrugs. She says, “I’m missing that gene.”

Which explains why she’s so intimidating at a poker table. No matter what her cards, she makes it look like she always has the best hand. I can’t count the number of times I’ve folded to her.