Fannie Flagg - Standing in the Rainbow

She had been nervous to begin with, as this was only her second week working in the maternity ward. And to make matters worse, she had just been handed three babies at once and she had to weigh and clean up and get them ready to go and see their mothers. Not only that now there was a man standing at the window with a dummy shooting his eyebrows up and down at her, saying "Whoo, whoo, whoo." Chester banged his wooden head against the window, trying to get her attention. Which, unfortunately, he did. Nurse Buck became so flustered that she put the Sizemores' baby's name bracelet on the Oatman baby and the Oatmans' baby name bracelet on the Sizemore baby.

When Mrs. Kathrine Sizemore, the lovely young blond wife of a prominent Montgomery attorney, was handed her baby, she was surprised to see that her hair was so dark. Just as Minnie had been surprised that her baby had such light hair. She had immediately remarked to Ferris, "She's a pale little thing, ain't she. And just look at them tiny little ears!"

If anyone had known about the error Nurse Buck had committed that night, it certainly would have explained why, eighteen years later, a plump large-boned girl with coal black hair and short arms was desperately trying to stuff herself into a white evening gown to prepare for her debut at the Montgomery Country Club. Of course her parents adored her but secretly they wondered why, when her mother had been so tall and slim and graceful, each time Carolina practiced her debutante curtsy to the floor she always fell over on her side in a lump. Just as the Oatmans wondered why Betty Raye had been unable to carry a tune. But what has been done cannot be undone. Fate is fate, and while Carolina was getting ready to be presented to Montgomery society as one of the city's leading debutantes, Betty Raye, who should have been there, was miles away applying for a job as a vegetable girl at the Three Little Pigs cafeteria.

Betty Raye had wanted to get a job after graduation but she was not equipped to do anything that required intimate dealings with the public or being outgoing in any way. The job at the cafeteria seemed just right for her. All she had to do was stand there and dish out portions of whatever vegetable the customers pointed to. She did not have to talk a lot, so she was very happy she got the job. Now her world consisted of offering beans, okra, creamed corn, black-eyed peas, or whatever was on the menu that day and going home. Not knowing she might have been a debutante, she was perfectly content being a vegetable girl. And who knows she might even work her way up to the desserts someday.

Anna Lee stayed in Chicago that summer to do her student nursing and after the valentine fiasco Bobby gave up on girls forever. When he was not at the swimming pool he spent most of his time reading Zane Grey cowboy novels, which Betty Raye brought home from the library for him.

He was so caught up in reading about the romance of the Old West that by June he had finished them all, from The Riders of the Purple Sage to The Thundering Herd, and he took great comfort that most real cowboys did not even have girlfriends.

When the car full of women pulled up in front of the house and tooted the horn, Dorothy called out, "Sweetie, your bowling team is here." In a few seconds Betty Raye came out dressed and ready to go and said good-bye to all as she ran down the stairs. Everybody was out on the porch eating ice cream, including Monroe, and Bobby waved at the car and said, "Good luck tonight."

"Thank you," they said and drove away.

As they turned the corner Doc stood up and walked over and tapped his pipe on the side of the house. "I'm glad they asked her to join. She needs to get out once in a while."

Jimmy nodded. "Yeah. I think it's been good for her."

Dorothy got up to take her bowl back in the kitchen and agreed. "I do too. I just hated seeing her sit at home every night, a young girl like that."

"I just wish some nice boy in town would ask her out," Mother Smith said, "somebody her own age."

Jimmy grunted. "There's nobody around here worth going out with, if you ask me."

Monroe, sporting a new crew cut, his red hair shooting out of his head like wires, said, "I'd take her out… if she'd pay for everything," and thought it was the funniest thing anyone had ever said, punching Bobby in the ribs.

Bobby punched him back. "She wouldn't go out with you, you cootie head."

Jimmy said to Doc, "See what I mean?"

He did not say so, but Jimmy often thought that if he had been younger and had not lost his leg, things would be a lot different. He wondered why the boys who had fallen all over Anna Lee, who would not give most of them the time of day, never paid the least bit of attention to Betty Raye. He was pretty well disgusted with the whole lot of them. When Jimmy had slipped the valentine under her door, he had said to himself, If the local Romeos are so dumb that they cannot see what a fine girl she is, then, by God, he would see to it that the day would not go by without her knowing there was at least one person in town who thought the world of her. Not while he was around at least.

Jimmy was also right about one thing: the bowling team had been good for Betty Raye. A few months before, when Ada and Bess Goodnight had come marching into the house to lobby for her to join the Elmwood Springs ladies bowling team, Dorothy and Mother Smith had encouraged her. And despite her initial reluctance, Bess and Ada could be very persuasive. Ada, the larger of the two, had once worked in the WASP recruiting office and knew just what to say. In the end Betty Raye could not say no. According to Ada it would have been, at the least, unpatriotic, un-American, and letting down the entire female sex if she did not join.

Although Betty Raye was a last-minute replacement and had never bowled or played any sport before, to her surprise, unlike the other Oatmans, she seemed to be a natural athlete. She was graceful and coordinated and after a few lessons from Doc turned out to be a pretty decent bowler. Ada and Bess and their younger sister, Irene, who they called Goodnight Irene, were good too. But nobody was better than Tot Whooten. Just the mention of her name struck fear in the hearts of all the other teams. She was known throughout the county as "Terrible Tot, the left-handed bowler from hell." Tonight they were driving all the way over to the huge new bowling alley in East Prairie. Tot's next-door neighbor Verbena was staying with Darlene and Dwayne Jr. and watching her mother so Tot could go. The county championship was at stake.

Hours later it was down to the wire at the bowling alley. The Elmwood Springs Bombers had matched New Madrid's Wildcats strike for strike, game for game. But the last Wildcat had missed her point and now there was a chance that victory would be theirs.

The atmosphere was tense. Goodnight Irene had just picked up her spare and if Tot could get this last strike and score the extra point, they would win. A hush came over the large, usually noisy, air-conditioned room. Tot, wearing brown slacks with her hair freshly per med for the occasion, stood up, all eyes upon her. She squinted at the pins, put out her cigarette, walked over, picked up the chalk bag, threw it down, hoisted her ball and lifted it high in front of her, concentrated on the spot with all her might, took a deep breath, and let her rip.

The moment the ball left her hand and spun down the alley toward the pins she knew what had happened. In the intensity of the moment and the pressure of knowing that this one throw could mean the championship, she had jammed her fingers into the holes so hard that her wedding ring went down the alley with the ball. Not only did she miss the strike and sprain her finger, but the entire team had to spend hours after the game searching for Tot's ring. They had searched almost four hundred bowling balls with a flashlight before Betty Raye spotted it. But once they had it, the ring would not come out for love nor money and Tot had to buy the bowling ball just to get her ring back.