How to Bake a Perfect Life by Barbara O'Neal

at one another with tight mouths or rolled eyes. I felt as if somebody had written SLUT SLUT SLUT right over the middle of my body in Day-Glo orange letters.
    “I can’t do this,” I said to Poppy, and turned around to leave. Her hand on my waist pushed me back into the room.
    “Yes, you can. Hold your head up,” she said in my ear. “Look right through them and take that seat there.”
    Ears and face burning, I plopped down, hearing the hiss of whispers start up around us. My hands fell in my lap, below my big belly, and I jerked them up and put them on the table, scooting as close as I could. I didn’t look at anybody.
    “How are you, Poppy?” the waitress said, putting menus down in front of us.
    “I’m well, Marie. You remember my niece Ramona, don’t you?”
    “I do. How are you, sweetie?”
    I kept my head down. “Fine.”
    “Bring me some coffee, Marie, and an orange juice for my niece.”
    My ears were buzzing. My throat felt like it would close completely, and when I glanced out of the corner of my eye, one of the old men at the counter gave me a sour look. “Aunt Poppy, can we please just go?”
    “Absolutely not,” she said in a calm voice. “And after this, we’re going shopping.”
    “Please—”
    “Look at me, Ramona.”
    I raised miserable eyes, hoping she would see that I would die—die—if I didn’t get out of here.
    “Where do you think the father of that baby is now?” she asked so quietly no one else could hear.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Maybe at work, maybe at school? Maybe hanging out with his friends?”
    “I guess.”
    “Probably nobody is making him feel like you do, even though he did exactly the same thing you did. Right?”
    I shrugged. “Right.”
    “You are not a bad person. You’re just pregnant. It’s natural. It happens all the time, and you are not going to hang your head, got it?”
    A little of the heat drained out of my cheeks. I nodded.
    “Sit up straight,” she said. “Head up. Stare back if anybody stares at you. Got it?”
    “I’ll try.”
    She winked. “Good girl.” She picked up her menu, then peeked around it. “Have I mentioned today that I’m so glad to have you spending the summer with me? I love you.”
    I picked up my spine and my chin and my menu. “I love you, too, Aunt Poppy. Really a lot.”

  A fter lunch, Aunt Poppy had to go to the bank and to see a shut-in. She gave me a twenty-dollar bill from the stash my mother left for me and said, “Walk all over downtown like it belongs to you, and I want you to spend every penny of that money, in three different stores. Got it?”
    It made me feel sick to my stomach, but I said, “Okay.”
    The café was across the street from the courthouse, which had a domed roof. Some people sat on the benches under big trees, and others hurried as if they had some important reason to go inside, maybe to get somebody out of jail or maybe only to get some new license plates. I liked a drugstore around the corner from the courthouse, because it had a bunch of art supplies and notebooks and lip glosses. That would mean crossing the street in full view of all those people and parading right down the whole block.
    Hold your head up .
    I stood on the sidewalk in the shade, eyeing the bright sunshine across the street. Pickup trucks passed by. A young guy leaned out the passenger window of one of them. “Hey, mama!”
    I blushed and marched like a nutcracker, all stiff and sober, down the street in the other direction. I didn’t know where I wasgoing. Off the street, out of sight, at least until I could get my courage up again.
    Then I heard Aunt Poppy’s voice in my head. Walk all over downtown like it belongs to you . I straightened up and tried to walk naturally—as naturally as a person could, anyway, with that weight right there in the middle of me. I passed by the dry cleaner’s and smelled the starch and scorch of the irons and by the narrow drugstore that always seemed to only stock things