Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir - Plot & Excerpts
My house is dark against the heat, the heavy draperies closed. In the dining room the one air conditioner labors and sweats. I lie under it in my camp shorts and a stiff shirt printed with birds. I am home from camp, home from the island. What’s left but the burned-up end of summer? I’ve finished the books my sister brought me from Athens, where she goes to college, and I am half through the long row of worn-out orange books from the library. The librarian, Miss Peetrie, gives a star for every book I read and after every ten I may have a free ice-cream cone at the Central Pharmacy. I want to win the Best Reader Prize for the summer—ten tickets to the Grand Theatre. The Chinese Twins, The Mexican Twins, Anne of Avonlea, A Girl of the Limberlost. I sip Coca-Cola through the glass straw Grandmother Mayes used once when she was in the hospital. Mother has gone to bed with a splitting headache and my sisters, packing for college, stay in their room, too hot to talk, playing “How High the Moon”
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