Beach Trip by Cathy Holton Page A

anddoll furniture. Lola knew it well because the last time she had come to play, Charlotte had locked her inside the claustrophobic space for nearly an hour.
    “Okay, slave,” Charlotte said, sliding the bolt back so that the door swung open on creaky hinges. “Time for you to go to the dungeon.”
    Lola took a step back. “No,” she said.
    Charlotte gave the belt a little jerk. “Bad slaves go to the dungeon,” she said.
    “No.” Lola’s heart leapt up into her throat. She could feel it beating there, flittering around in circles like a bird with a broken wing.
    “Get in, slave.”
    “I don’t want to.”
    “Now.”
    “What’s that?” Lola said, pointing with her chin.
    Charlotte leaned over with her pudgy hands resting on her dimpled knees, and stared into the darkness. “What?” she said. “I don’t see anything.”
    Lola shoved her into the space and slammed the door, holding it closed with her shoulder until she had managed to free her hands and slide the bolt into place.
    When Mrs. Hampton came up later carrying two slices of cake on a little silver tray, Lola was sitting on the bed softly crooning to Esmerelda. She had bathed her and dressed her and gently smoothed her torn hair off her face.
    “Where’s Charlotte?” Mrs. Hampton said vaguely, looking around the airy room.
    The racket from the crawl space, which had long ago ceased, began again with a furious staccato of hands and feet, followed by a loud, piercing wail.
    “Oh, my God,” Mrs. Hampton cried, dropping the tray. “My poor baby!”
    All the way home Lola sat with her face pressed against the car window. Rain fell in sheets, drumming against the roof of the car and filling the streets with a rushing torrent of gray water. They passed through Hueytown, past rows and rows of little cookie-cutter houses with the lights just coming on and families sitting down to dinner. They passed a house where an old woman in an apron stood looking out at the rain and anotherwhere a large family, illuminated behind a plate-glass window like actors on a movie screen, gathered around a long table. The father sat at one end, the mother at the other, and the children were lined up in between. They seemed happy and complete behind their illuminated window, and Lola wondered what it would be like to grow up in a little house no larger than a stable with a father at one end of the table and a mother at the other. If she had been older, she would have told the driver to stop. But she was still a child, vacuous and ignorant, so she said nothing, watching the family until they were nothing more than a twinkling in the darkness behind a curtain of steadily falling rain.
    Her mother was standing on the portico when the car pulled up in the circular drive. The headlights illuminated her grim face and the dazzling whiteness of the large columns she stood between. Savannah hurried down the steps beneath an umbrella and opened the door for her, saying nothing but taking Lola’s hand and giving her a little squeeze of encouragement. They went up the wide steps together and followed Maureen into the house.
    Maureen switched on a table lamp. A circle of light sprang up around her, glistening on the dark wood floors. She thought of her friends in the UDC and the Junior League snickering behind their hands when they heard what Lola had done to Charlotte Hampton. She thought of Amanda Logsdon and Celia Shanks giggling and rolling their eyes. She leaned over and struck Lola twice on the back of her thighs with an open hand. The child made no sound but Savannah moaned deep in her throat as if Maureen had struck her instead.
    “Go to your room,” Maureen said. “There’ll be no supper for you. You’ve misbehaved in a home where you were a guest, and I’m very, very disappointed in you.”
    Later, fearing she had been too hard on the child, Maureen climbed the stairs with a peanut butter sandwich and a glass of milk on a tray. Savannah had bathed Lola and dressed her