Big Stone Gap by Adriana Trigiani

is smooth and pink, an advertisement for his good health. His blue eyes shine with a knowingness and humor that can only come from a serene and intimate relationship with God. There is no pretense to him; he is the real article, kind and good.
    “You be careful now, Reverend.”
    “I will. I will.” He turns to go, then looks back at me. “Miss Ave, do you remember the rest of that song I done taught you?”
    “Reverend, I’m ashamed to say I don’t.”
    He sings,
“God’s words will never fail, never fail, never fail . . .”
    Pearl, June, and I join in,
“God’s words will never fail. No! No! No!”
    Reverend Gaspar laughs as he leaves.
    “Someday you ought to come down and see him preach,” June says from the makeup table. “He is one of the greatest, I’ll goddamn guarantee you.”
    Tayloe Slagle and her majorettes come in giggling and chatting. They are always loud enough to draw attention, but not so loud as to be considered obnoxious.
    “What can I do for you girls?”
    They swarm around the magazine rack and don’t answer. If Fleeta were here, she’d swat their hands with a duster for reading the magazines and never buying them. I cut them some slack because they spend their money in other ways in my store.
    Finally Tayloe asks, “Did you get any waterproof mascara in yet?”
    “I don’t know. Did we, Pearl?”
    Pearl continues to rub cream into June’s face like she’s waxing a car. “Yes, ma’am. We got in the Great Lash.”
    “See there? One-stop shopping, girls. All your needs met right here. Maybe you ought to get Pearl to show you all of our new makeup.” Pearl shoots me a look like,
Please don’t mention me. If you don’t talk about me, they won’t notice me. I will disappear into the vat of Queen Helene Cucumber Masque.
    “Now, Miss Mulligan, let me ask you one thing.” Tayloe looks at me. Even after school, without a stitch of makeup, even under my hideous fluorescent lights, she looks luminous. She sticks out her perfect chin. “Why would somebody who looks like me take beauty tips from somebody who looks like her?” The majorettes laugh loud and hard at this one. Tayloe takes my
People
magazine off of my rack and flips through it. Her casual cruelty makes me angry. Suddenly I don’t want the likes of her touching anything in my store.
    “Put down the magazine,” I warn in a voice that startles me. “You never buy them.”
    Tayloe quickly puts down the magazine. I look back at Pearl, whose eyes are not filled with tears, who is not blushing with embarrassment, who calmly works cream into June Walker’s face with purpose and resolve. Pearl isn’t a bundle of nerves anymore.
    “I’m gonna say something to you girls. And you’re gonna listen.” Two of the majorettes, one a redhead with Farrah Fawcett feathering, the other a brunette with a Jaclyn Smith center part, backtrack to the door to escape. “You’re not going anywhere, you two.” The girls stop in their tracks and turn to face me.
    “I’m sick and tired of your snide comments. You’re mighty proud, Tayloe. But I’d be careful if I was you. Someday you won’t have your looks anymore. And all those girls, like Pearl, who weren’t popular, will be the pretty ones. Why? Because they have had to work at it. So they appreciate beauty in all its forms. You only know beauty as something given, not earned. So you won’t understand what’s happening when your youth is gone and the pounds creep on and the wrinkles come; and you’ll panic because your best days are behind you. But Pearl’s best days will be ahead of her. Why? Because she had to make something out of herself from scratch. Nobody helped her. The best she got was a bunch of stuck-ups making fun of her to make themselves feel big. But trust me, that kind of power is poison. It’ll turn on you. When y’all are my age, you’ll be the ones envying her. Pearl will know the great power of self-acceptance and real self-love, not the shallow vanity