Telling Sonny

By Elizabeth Gauffreau

Beautifully Written, Heartbreaking Portrayal of Innocence Lost and the Love of Family

 

Telling Sonny is a coming-of-age novel set in the 1920s, when much of vaudeville had devolved into the Small Time. Not so for Faby Gauthier, a naïve girl from the small village of Enosburg Falls, Vermont. For Faby, the  annual vaudeville show that comes to the village is worthy of  the Great White Way itself. 

 

Pretty and vivacious, Faby catches the eye of  Slim White, America's self-proclaimed Favorite Hoofer. She spends time with him during the week of the show's run in hopes of learning first-hand how it feels to perform on the vaudeville stage.

 

On Slim White's last night in the village, seduction would appear inevitable, and Faby succumbs. Her desire to forget her lapse in judgment is not to be, however. In a misguided to attempt to do the right thing, Slim White marries Faby on a whim and takes her with him on the vaudeville circuit. Little does she know that in a few short months, she will learn the true meaning of Small Time, setting her life on a path she never imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Paul Stream Press LLC
• Release date: Mar 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781735929262

Elizabeth Gauffreau

Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. Her work has been widely published in literary magazines, including Coneflower Cafe, Soundings East, Hospital Drive, Blueline, and Woven Tale Press, as well as several themed anthologies. Her short story "Henrietta's Saving Grace" was awarded the 2022 Ben Nyberg prize for fiction by Choeofpleirn Press Liz holds a B.A. in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an M.A. in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Her professional background is in nontraditional higher education, including academic advising, classroom and online teaching, curriculum development, and program administration. She received the Granite State College Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2018. Liz lives in Nottingham, New Hampshire with her husband.

Book preview

Chapter 1

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After a year or so, the death knell marking the end of Faby’s marriage lost its resonance—yet it continued to toll, as steady and devoid of feeling as a metronome set in motion for someone who can’t keep time.

Then in April of 1952, unbeknownst to Faby, the tolling unexpectedly stopped. For a week, she knew of nothing that should change her steady marking out of time. She walked to the telephone company in the morning to put in her hours at the switchboard. She walked home again at day’s end to eat her meager supper.

As Louis’s first wife, Faby would have been an afterthought to his family by this time, someone who probably should be notified of his death, seeing as she and Louis did have a child together, although he and the boy had not been close. In fact, from the time his divorce from Faby became final, Louis had seen his firstborn son a total of four times, one of those times, when Sonny was twelve, with the intent of introducing him to his half brother Louis, Jr. so that Sonny could see up close that young Louis looked just like his father, while poor Sonny took after his mother’s side of the family. Dark hair, brown eyes, French. But still, a first wife, a mother of a firstborn son should probably be notified.

When the call came, Faby and her sister Josephine had just settled in for their weekly Saturday afternoon visit in Faby’s small apartment overlooking Main Street, as an unseasonably warm breeze blew through the open windows. Faby almost didn’t answer the call, but Josephine couldn’t abide the sound of an unanswered telephone, so Faby picked up the receiver.

Even as Louis’s sister was identifying herself, the prelude to news that could only be bad, Faby didn’t recognize her voice, it had been so long since they had spoken. When Faby asked about the funeral, it had already taken place, and when she asked if anyone had told Sonny, Dorothy said, No, we thought he would take it better coming from you.

Of course you did.

Faby dropped the receiver back into its cradle without bothering to say goodbye. So Louis had reneged on one last promise, his promise to attend Sonny’s wedding, only two weeks away. She felt Josephine watching her from across the room, expecting some sign to indicate the nature of the call: a shake of her head that the funeral had been for an acquaintance, someone Josephine didn’t know, or, that it had been for a distant relative from out-of-state who had merely died of old age. When Faby gave no sign, Josephine continued to wait, too polite, even with her sister, to ask outright, Who was that on the telephone? asking instead, Is everything all right? Then, when Faby continued to sit in silence, Josephine pressed her. What’s wrong? What’s happened?

Louis is dead.

Josephine crossed the room to join her on the sofa. When? What happened?

Faby looked down at her hands in her lap. They lay palms up as if someone had dropped them there, the fingers curled and tingling. Dorothy left it to me to tell Sonny.

Josephine took Faby’s hands in hers. What happened, Faby? Did he have a heart attack?

I don’t know. I didn’t think to ask.

Dorothy didn’t tell you?

Faby shook her head. No. I may have hung up on her.

Oh, Faby.

I don’t know what to tell Sonny. They didn’t tell him. They didn’t tell him about the funeral. How can I tell him he wasn’t even asked to his own father’s funeral? Dorothy shouldn’t have left it to me.

No, she certainly shouldn’t.

Faby squeezed Josephine’s hands, grateful for the sympathy, then dropped them and stood up. I’ll need to call Dorothy back. Sonny will want to know how his father died.

Faby could not find Dorothy’s telephone number anywhere in her desk—not written on the torn corner of an envelope tucked inside her address book and long forgotten, not loose in any of the drawers. When she dialed the operator to place the call, she gave Dorothy’s maiden name and Louis’s hometown without thinking, and the call went through.

Dorothy answered on the first ring, as if she had been waiting for Faby to call back—so Faby didn’t identify herself. You didn’t tell me how he died, Dorothy.

It had been a car accident, an inexorable hurtling of metal and glass against tree, Louis dead on impact. Faby could hear the collision as Dorothy was speaking, the grinding shriek of metal on metal, the pulsating explosion of glass, the instant before impact a never-ending moment of awareness, before his head smashed through the windshield and all his bones shattered.

The sound of Louis’s final leave-taking didn’t subside after Faby hung up the telephone, the grinding shriek of it so piercing it made her eyes hurt, the pulsating explosion of it so thunderous it made her chest hurt. How was she going to describe that sound to Sonny, two weeks before he was to be married?

He was killed in a car accident. On a clear day, on dry pavement. How could he have been so careless? After a moment, she murmured, Thoughtless to the end, before lapsing into silence.

As the minutes went by, Faby remained silent, grateful for her sister’s presence, hoping she would stay, both of them watching the curtains rise and fall at the open windows unbidden until the sound of Louis’s accident left her head at last. There may have been street noises eddying in and out of the room with the unseasonably warm breeze—the sound of car doors slamming, shop bells tinkling, children calling after their mothers—but Faby didn’t hear them.

As late afternoon passed into early evening, the breeze turned chill, and Josephine got up and closed the windows. Before leaving to prepare supper for her husband, she brought Faby aspirin and a glass of water, but that still didn’t dispel the sound of the collision, which now had intensified to include the sound of the tree breaking apart, a splitting, tearing, rending that no tree should have to endure.

And what was she to tell Sonny about his father’s death? What did Sonny know of his father, after all? Sonny knew what his father looked like, certainly, tall and blond, with an affable, lantern-jawed face. He even knew the basic facts of his father’s life: high school athlete, veteran of the First World War, minor vaudeville player, master salesman. As far as Sonny was concerned, his father was a man of infinite charm, a man with that enviable quality, savoir faire. What was she to tell Sonny now?

Chapter 2

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When Faby graduated from high school, she expected something to happen. After all the essays were written, the equations solved, the exams taken, she expected that her life would be different—different in what way, she didn’t know, but surely, after the embellished white dress, the carnation corsage, the scrolled diploma with ribbon—not to mention the class photograph—nine girls seated in a row, nine boys standing in a row behind them, not a one of them smiling, because they were the Class of 1924 and they mustn’t demean the dignity of the occasion by smiling—surely, after that, Faby should expect her life to be different.

The summer immediately following graduation didn’t count, of course, because it was summer, a time to spend out-of-doors with friends from morning till night, all piled into Clyde Geraw’s flivver with a basket of cold meat sandwiches and rhubarb pie to sustain them as they tore over the rutted dirt roads surrounding the village, stopping only to eat, swim, and sing raucous songs no one could remember the words to

When the summer ended, Faby watched from her bedroom window as Josephine set off alone on the first day of school, finding it hard to believe that she no longer had to traipse off to school every day, day after day, week after week. Today, she could do as she pleased, and when today ended, she would have a lifetime of days to do as she pleased.

But first there were chores to do, she and Maman both coming under the increasingly resentful eye of Maman Aurore, now that there were three women to tend to the house and the meals, not two. Maman Aurore had lived with them for as long as Faby could remember, watching disapprovingly from her rocking chair by the window as she knit a never-ending series of sweaters-afghans-mittens-scarves-socks, as if the entire family could never be warm enough. Maman Aurore set such a fast pace for her needles that her finished scarves were long enough to tie someone up with—and have enough left over to strangle him in the bargain.

As Faby slipped an apron over her dress before beginning her morning chores, the thought occurred to her that the current state of affairs must actually be an improvement over what it had been when her mother first married her father, when Maman Aurore would have tried to run the household herself, moving the flour bin, crossing items off her daughter-in-law’s grocery list, elbowing her away from the stove so that she could preside over the pot of soup simmering there, the two of them nearly coming to blows over a ball of bread dough to be kneaded. There must have been a spectacular blowup between the two of them, with the rocking chair as the compromise.

After finishing her chores, Faby tossed a breezy Bye-bye, now! to her mother and grandmother and left the house. She gave little thought to where she was going as she set off down the sidewalk, just relishing the warm fall day—the sound of insects chirring companionably, the smell of wildflowers waning, a little acrid, a little poignant. The maple trees lining both sides of the street were just starting to turn yellow and gold—orange and red still several weeks away. A few of the leaves had fallen, detaching themselves gently from the branches that held them to drift through the air and land on people’s lawns to form a pleasing random pattern, as if someone with a practiced eye had placed them there.

The houses Faby passed were as familiar to her as her own. Every house on the street had a porch, some on the front of the house leading to the front door, others on the side leading to the kitchen door. A few of the larger houses had both. On every porch was a tin box for the milkman to leave milk, cream, butter, and eggs, with the occasional quart of buttermilk, for those who had a taste for it. Being in the village, the houses didn’t have mailboxes, Rural Free Delivery reserved for farms.

Halfway down the street, Mrs. Gibson’s house had gone unpainted since 1910, the year her husband died, the window shades pulled down, as though Mrs. Gibson couldn’t bear to look out and see that life on the street had gone on without him. Further down the street, the front porch of the Neales’ house was nearly obscured by massive lilac bushes that reached to the second floor, keeping them trimmed having ended two generations of Neales before.

On sunny days like today, the Judds’ dog, a grossly overweight beagle named Sally, would be sprawled in front of the door napping, too lazy to muster the strength to even lift her head when someone walked by. The Bergerons’ house had a bay window in front, with a very excitable terrier resting uneasily on the window seat inside, breaking into fits of frantic barking whenever anyone passed by. Few, if any, of the neighborhood boys could resist stopping in front of the Bergerons’ house and yelling something at the poor creature, sending it into hysterics while they pointed and laughed.

Walking at a brisk pace, Faby reached overstreet in just a few minutes, stopping briefly by Aseltine’s Dry Goods to see if there was anything interesting in the display window—there wasn’t—before continuing on to Lincoln Park. The old biddies of the Ladies’ Village Improvement Society had set out chrysanthemums in honor of the changing season, the yellow blooms vibrant against the backdrop of the park’s evergreen shrubbery—and God forbid that any rambunctious boy from the school across the street should trample them or a heavy rain bend them or anyone criticize their color or arrangement. The fountain in the center of the park had not yet been turned off and drained for the season, the naked cherub still unable to keep the water in the pitcher he held above his head from overflowing into the three basins beneath him and splashing into the fountain below, poor fellow.

Directly across the street from the fountain stood the school, its solid brick bulk unchanged from the day Faby graduated, unchanged, for that matter, from the day she had entered the graded school on the first floor, knowing so little English that she didn’t know how to ask permission to use the bathroom. How odd it was, to have spent so much time in that building, most of her life, in fact, and, just like that, to no longer belong there. If she were to enter the building and walk down the hall, the first person she encountered, whether principal, teacher, or student, would ask her what she was doing there.

She turned from the school to begin the walk home, stopping to get a drink of water at the new drinking fountain that had been donated to the village by the L.V.I.S. the previous year. As she trudged back up Main Street, she idly wondered if they sent out clandestine patrols of their eldest members, stout, white-haired women wearing unfashionable hats, to make sure that the drinking fountain was not used improperly by the wrong people—despite the carved dedication announcing that the fountain was intended for use by man and beast.

She found her mother and grandmother out in the backyard taking clothes off the line, working at opposite ends, each yanking the clothespin bag closer to her own end before releasing the clothespins from her hand.

Where have you been? Maman Aurore demanded, wandering the streets like a vagabond?

Maman gave a bath towel a sharp snap before folding it and setting it on the neat stack she’d made in the clothesbasket. Leave her be. She’s only been gone a short while.

Later, when all of the laundry was put away or hung on hangers for ironing, Faby wandered into the kitchen, where Maman and Maman Aurore were at the ironing board engaged in ironing one of Papa’s shirts, Maman wielding the iron, Maman Aurore at her elbow sprinkling water on the cloth with the tips of her fingers from a bowl held in her other hand. Faby stood watching them for several minutes, wondering how Maman was able to maneuver the iron with someone constantly getting in her way, yet still avoid burning either of them.

After several more minutes had gone by, Maman Aurore looked up and said, "What do you want, child, just standing there like a witless sheep? Can’t you find something to occupy your time?" Tears sprang to Faby’s eyes, and she left the house by the back door, slamming it behind her. She knew that neither her mother nor her grandmother would come after her, first, because it wouldn’t look good to the neighbors for either of them, or, even worse, for both of them, to go chasing down the street after her, scolding until they could get her back into the house to chastise her more thoroughly, and, second, neither would give up her appointed place at the ironing board with Papa’s half-ironed shirt.

Throughout that fall, every morning when Josephine’s alarm clock went off, in those first few moments of coming into wakefulness, Faby thought she too had to get up and get ready for school, moments later feeling the oddest mix of relief and disappointment when she realized that she didn’t: the panic over homework left undone becoming relief, then disappointment that no one had assigned her any. Although she really didn’t have to get right up, she couldn’t bear the thought of staying in bed while the rest of the family was downstairs eating breakfast and preparing for the day ahead, as if she were some unwanted invalid whose needs would be attended to, dutifully, after everyone else’s were met.

One unusually warm day in late October, Faby walked all the way down lower Main Street to the power plant, past all the blocks on Main Street, the Burt Block, the Perley block, the Billado Block, the Merrill Block, past the brick telephone building, where, inside, pale young women plugged and unplugged the telephone conversations of the village with bony fingers and tired eyes, while they waited for someone to marry them. When she reached the river, she stood on the bridge for a long time, looking over the railing at the water rushing over the falls, inexplicably glad for the movement and the rush of noise.

Even after the first snowfall of the year, the week after Thanksgiving, Faby continued her daily walk, now, however, unable to leave the house without Maman Aurore’s fussing that she would catch her death, or fall and break a bone, or several bones, or get hit by a car while crossing a snow-covered street, the unfortunate driver unable to stop in time to avoid hitting her, poor man.

In December, Clyde Geraw asked Faby to the annual Christmas dance that the high school held at the Opera House, and she was sorely tempted to say yes, but she didn’t. Two weeks later, watching Josephine, radiant in a red velvet dress, leave for the dance with Leonard Paradis, Faby didn’t know whatever had possessed her to turn Clyde down, except that he was still in high school and she wasn’t.

The winter was unusually hard that year, with more snow than even the oldest in the village could remember. Then, at the beginning of February, influenza hit the family, each one of them sick in turn, with Maman Aurore developing pneumonia and nearly dying, saved only by the grace of the Good Lord Above, according to her, which, Faby had to admit, could very well have been the case, her grandmother’s abortive struggles to breathe as the illness progressed truly frightening. By the time the ice on the Missisquoi went out at the beginning of April, Faby was ready for spring. She was ready for warm days and tender green leaves, ready for the smell on the air that comes only in the spring and carries with it a poignant blend of melancholy and hope.

Once spring came, the days went by quickly, with spring cleaning and clearing out the flower beds and planting the vegetable garden and preparing for Josephine’s graduation from high school. On the night before commencement ceremonies, as she lay in bed unable to sleep, Faby turned on her side and whispered, What will you do, Josephine?

Her sister didn’t answer at first, and Faby thought she might already be asleep. Then Josephine whispered back, I’m not sure what you mean, Faby. What will I do about what?

I mean, now that you’re finished with school, what will you do?

What will I do? Why, I expect that I’ll marry Leonard. Not right away, of course. I’ll stay here and help out while he establishes himself and saves up enough money for us to get married.

Oh. Faby saw in her mind’s eye the image of four women in the kitchen wrangling over who would wipe the table and who would stir the stew and who would open which jar of vegetables, the four of them stumbling into one another like dancing bears, and she decided that she was best off just turning over and going to sleep.

Commencement exercises for the Class of 1925 were held in Lincoln Park, and the weather couldn’t have been better: warm and sunny, with just enough of a breeze so that no parent, young sibling, or elderly relative got overheated sitting in the sun. The town band, a ragtag mix of old and young men who happened to be proficient at musical instruments, played Pomp and Circumstance at just the right pace, slow enough to afford the graduates their proper respect but not so slow that the business of the occasion lagged. The speeches weren’t unduly long, although this year Faby found herself confounded by their theme of commencement. It had been a year since her high school graduation, and nothing had commenced for her, as far as she could tell.

Chapter 3

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After the high school commencement ceremonies, the next big event for Enosburg Falls, Vermont took place at the beginning of July, when a traveling vaudeville show came to the Opera House. Moving pictures, with piano accompaniment provided by Mrs. Blanche Martin, were shown at the Opera House throughout the year, which was entertainment enough for young children and the elderly, neither of whom knew any better.

However, Blanche’s plodding arpeggios and stumbling glissandos in no way matched the action on the screen, and the flickering black-and-white images simply could not compare with the thrill of live performance, with its colorful costumes and feats of daring that held the potential of permanent injury for any performer whose attention wandered or whose sights were set too high. What’s more, Faby knew from loitering in front of the Quincy Hotel, where the troupe stayed while the show was in town, when the performers were out of costume, these were people who wore impossibly stylish clothes, the men in suits with nipped waists and tight pants, the women with their skirts audaciously short. Once the performers were off-stage, their speaking voices, as they batted the latest slang back and forth like badminton shuttlecocks, reverted to the vowels of the states where they’d grown up, but whether California, New York, Michigan, or Tennessee, Faby had no way of knowing.

She looked forward to the vaudeville show for days, as soon as the playbills went up, stopping to read them on her way to Giddings Drugstore to buy Bromo-Seltzer for Maman Aurore, or the I.G.A. to buy sugar for Maman, delighting in the bold, black lettering, the profusion of exclamation points, the extravagant adjectives: A spectacular lineup, stupendous, tremendous!! Rollicking comics! Kaleidoscopic tableaux! Altogether extravagantic!!!

Even though she had been to the show every year since she was seven, it had never disappointed. Every year, the songs were always the catchiest she’d ever heard, the comics were always the funniest she’d ever seen, the dancers the most graceful, the acrobats the most nimble. And the performing animals—well, the performing animals were just the cleverest thing she’d ever seen.

Every year, she talked about the show for days afterward, the worst third-rater just as memorable for her as the headliner. And after the show moved on, the images stayed with her until it returned the following year: her scrub brush on the bathroom floor becoming the lively patter of the headline comic, sheets on the clothesline becoming the most graceful of dancers, her own tuneless humming as she dressed in the morning transformed into a lilting melody sung by a willowy blonde in a white silk dress, the words and notes coming to her as effortlessly as her own name.

This year, she looked forward to the vaudeville show in a way she never had before. She and Josephine would attend the evening show for the first time unaccompanied, now that both were graduated from high school, Faby surprised at how little cajoling it had taken for Maman and Papa to agree to let them go alone. In the days before the show arrived in town, Faby played the performance inside her head every night before she went to sleep, taking each of the parts herself, in turn: The Acrobat, turning cartwheels, handstands, back flips, somersaults, each one more gravity-defying than the one before, the audience as they entered the Opera House halting in their tracks at the sight of her—The Escape Artist, no handcuffs too tight for her to slip from, no straight jacket too elaborate to hold her—The Athenian Dancer, running barefoot across the stage, evoking ancient ruins and hot Greek sun with nothing more than fluttering chiffon and graceful limbs—The Headliner, of course, singing or emoting to an enraptured audience, and, finally, The One-Woman Band to close the show, a big bass drum strapped to her back, a harmonica around her neck, a trumpet in one hand, a klaxon in the other, the audience in on the joke.

When the day of the show finally came, Faby stood in front of her open closet scowling, having decided that not a single one of her dresses was anything but old and shabby. Josephine stood in the doorway of the bedroom, already dressed, in her favorite blue voile, her hair neatly pinned up and waved in the front. What’s taking you so long, Faby? We don’t want to be late.

I can’t decide what to wear.

Josephine entered the room and joined Faby in front of the open closet. We’re just going to a show, Faby. Wear your good dress.

Faby reached into the closet, pulled out her good dress, and held it against herself. It’s too long. They’re wearing them shorter this year. She shoved the dress back into the closet.

What about your green?

I wore that last year.

For goodness’ sake, Faby, nobody’s going to remember what you wore last year! Josephine reached into the closet, pulled out a dress, and thrust it at Faby. Here, wear the yellow. It looks good with your hair.

Faby slipped the dress over her head, and Josephine buttoned the back for her. Do I have time to put a little polish on my shoes, Josephine? They’re scuffed.

No, you don’t. Let’s go.

My hair!

Josephine crossed the room to Faby’s dresser and picked up her hairbrush. Stand still. She ran the brush through Faby’s hair, rubbed a spot of pomade between her hands, and smoothed her palms over Faby’s dark cap of hair. There, you’re all set. I swear, Faby, sometimes you are just the silliest old thing.

Faby checked her hair in the mirror above the dresser for spite, catching Josephine’s eye and making a face, before racing out of the room and clattering down the stairs, laughing, Josephine fast on her heels. Just as she was about to dash out the front door, tossing a breezy good-bye over her shoulder as the door closed behind her, she thought better of it and ran into the kitchen to tell Maman they were leaving, Josephine now two steps ahead of her.

Maman was at the sink washing the last of the supper dishes, while Maman Aurore sat in her rocker by the window knitting a sock. Where do you two think you’re going? she said, looking up from her knitting as the girls entered the kitchen.

To see the vaudeville show, Mémère, Josephine said.

You’re not going to any vaudeville show, either one of you. It’s vulgar. Grown men telling dirty jokes for a living. Maman Aurore addressed her next remark to Maman’s back. How can you let those two young girls expose themselves to such vulgarity? She continued to knit without looking down at her work, still addressing Maman’s back. You are just letting them run wild, Yvette. I don’t know why you ever let Faby cut her hair.

I decided on my own, Mémère, Faby said. And my hair has nothing to do with going to a show.

Don’t be disrespectful to your grandmother, Maman said. She turned from the sink and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. It’s just harmless fun, Maman Aurore. Families take their children. Joseph and I have taken the girls ourselves, if you’ll remember.

Every year since I was seven, if you’ll remember, Faby added, turning her head to avoid the disapproving look Maman shot in her direction.

Young ladies should be accompanied when they go out in public. Maman Aurore’s needles stopped clicking. Perhaps I should go with them. To chaperone.

Faby glared at her grandmother, then quickly looked away before Maman Aurore could tell what she was thinking. Meddlesome old biddy, suggesting that she spoil our evening out by going with us as chaperone, to sit in her rocking chair by the stage in front of everyone, knitting and carping about the performance: can’t carry a tune, dances with two left feet, talks too fast, juggles too slow, far too old for ruffles and bows.

You don’t need to do that, Maman Aurore, Maman said, taking a clean dishtowel out of a drawer and drying the last spots of water off a plate. Faby is a grown woman after all.

Nineteen years old is not grown, Maman Aurore sniffed.

Just then Josephine slipped out of the room. When she returned, she held a wrinkled program in her hand, declaring as she crossed the room to her grandmother’s chair, Lois Benoit gave me a program from the matinee. See, there is nothing vulgar in the show at all. I’ll show you. She stood at Maman Aurore’s elbow and began reading the program: ‘Amazing Animals, featuring an acrobatic, well-dressed, fiddling baboon, a rope-jumping dog, and an ornery donkey and their trainers—’

A fiddling baboon, you say? A fiddling baboon? Why would a baboon want to play the fiddle?

Josephine ignored that remark and continued reading, ‘Ota Gygi, Court Violinist to the King of Spain’. The king of Spain, Mémère!

And I suppose the King of Spain taught the baboon to play the fiddle.

Just as Faby was about to shout at the old woman, Maman put the last plate away in the cupboard and made a shooing motion with her dishtowel. "Go on, now, girls, you don’t want to be late. See that you come straight home afterward.