Buggy straightened the waist of her dress, then adjusted her sweater. "Haven't you caused enough suffering in this house? Enough is enough."

As her mother left the doorway Vivi thought, Enough is not enough, Mother. And it never will be.

The Buick was warm when Pete opened the car door for Vivi.

"Warmed her up so you wouldn't freeze," he said. "Buggy the Bitch still inside?"

"Checking on Jezie," Vivi replied. "Maybe we'll miss the train."

Pete checked his wristwatch, then went around to get in on the driver's side. He looked serious, his usual athletic swagger replaced by a heaviness.

He pulled the car door tight, then turned to his sister. "Want a smoke?"

"Yeah," Vivi said. She watched as her brother lit two Luckies off a kitchen match, which he struck on his thumbnail.

"Sorry I'm the one that has to drive you, Buddy," he said as he handed over a cigarette to his sister.

"Not your fault," Vivi said, taking a deep drag.

Pete picked a speck of tobacco off his tongue. "Not your fault any of this shit is happening."

"What do you mean?" Vivi asked.

"I mean nothing you ever did deserves getting crated off to the penguins like Goddamn freight, Vivi."

Vivi tried to smile. "Mother ever knew we called nuns 'penguins,' she'd croak."

"Nah," Pete said. "She'd do penance for us. Shit, that woman loves doing penance."

Pete patted his jacket as though he were checking for something. Then he inspected the rearview mirror, nervous. "She's been wanting to punish you for years."

Vivi counted the pieces of luggage that were in the backseat. She looked out at the yard, Buggy's garden almost dead in winter. The Rose of Montana and clematis vines on the porch were shriveled and brown.

"What're you saying, Pete?" Vivi asked.

"Sis, I'm your bud, you know that, don't you?"

"Yeah, I know that."

"Trust me, then. Look out for Mother. She's gunnin' for you. Keep your elbows out."

She is my mother, Vivi thought. She loves me. Doesn't she?

Pete reached over and took Vivi's hand, squeezing it tightly. He looked at her with sad eyes and shrugged his shoulders. "Gonna miss you, Stinky."

Then, pulling his hand away, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a flask. "For the trip. Swiped expressly for you from Father's liquor cabinet."

Vivi received the flask like a sign of love. She tucked it into her purse. "I'll carry it with me like a friend."

As she kissed Pete on the cheek, she could see her mother in her gray coat making her way toward the car.

"I will say nothing about the smoking," Buggy accused her children, as she positioned herself in the backseat.

"Good, Mother," Pete said. "Don't."

Once settled, Buggy began to hum softly. Vivi thought the tune sounded like "Salve Regina." Pete began to whistle, to drown out the sound. As they rode, Vivi pulled down the vanity mirror, as if to see if there was something in her eye. But it was not her own face she wanted to see. She wanted to see the face of her mother as she sat silent in the backseat. Vivi did not know what she was looking for, but she thought that if the right expression passed over her mother's face, then she would know the right thing to say, the right thing to do, the right way to be in order to sidestep this banishment.

I want to tell her to shut up her crazy humming, Vivi thought. I want to bash her in the head with one of my suitcases. I want to truss her up with ropes like a cow, and drop her in a ditch on the side of the road. Then seize the wheel myself, whip this car around, blast the horn up and down the streets of my town, declaring my freedom from that woman in the backseat who thinks she's a modern martyr.

But Vivi could not move. She was too sad.

It required all the strength she had to ask, "Can we just stop by Caro's? They wake up early. Or could we swing by Teensy's real quick? It's on the way. Sometimes Genevieve reads all night long when she can't sleep."

"You do not barge into someone's house at this time of day," Buggy said. "Your father gave specific instructions that we were to go straight to the station."

You are lying, Vivi longed to say, but she could not. To say it out loud would be to admit her mother's cruelty.

Vivi glanced down at her gold Gruen wristwatch, with its green dots glowing with poison. Four-fifteen in the morning. Nothing will ever be the same.

She studied her mother sitting in the high, rounded backseat of the Buick, fingering her rosary beads.

She is lying through her teeth, Vivi thought. She is lying and she is happy. Why is she so serene?

It was still dark when they reached the train station at Jefferson and Eighth streets. Pete climbed out of the car and went around to open Vivi's door.

As she stood on the curb by the car Vivi could see her breath in the early-morning air. Watching as Pete ferried her luggage into the lobby, she pressed her purse to her side and thought of the flask of bourbon. The anticipation of its comfort kept her from crumbling to the ground.

Rolling down the window, Buggy said, "Aren't you going to tell me goodbye?"

"Goodbye," Vivi said.

Then Buggy opened the backdoor. She turned her body slightly, as though she might climb out of the car and go to her daughter.

Vivi longed to run to her mother and bury her head in Buggy's lap. She longed to hold on to her mother and not let go. Leaning into the car, touching her mother's hand, she asked, "Mama, what are you praying for?"

Buggy placed her hand on Vivi's cheek. In a gentle voice, she said, "I'm praying for you, Viviane. I'm praying for you because you've run out of grace."

Then Pete's hand was under Vivi's elbow, pulling her upright, all but tucking her under his shoulder.

"Ma," he said, "get the hell off my sister's back."

Then he slammed the car door, leaving his mother in the backseat with her rosary.

Inside, the lobby was empty except for four sleeping soldiers, their feet propped on duffel bags. The sight of them made Vivi think of Jack.

After buying her ticket, she and Pete sat on one of the long wooden benches. Vivi tried to imagine she was in a movie. The beautiful young girl misses her lover, she thought. The camera comes closer. She sits in a train station with her brother, waiting for the war to end. Heartsick and lonely, she reaches for the only comfort she has.

Checking the door to make sure her mother had not decided to come in, Vivi took out the flask and offered it to Pete.

"You first, Buddy-o," he said, and Vivi took a swig.

The bourbon went down smoothly. She waited a moment, then took another swig, feeling the warmth spread through her body, associating the taste of the whiskey with good times, with being desired, with what little she knew about sex. At her third sip, Vivi was wishing she had yet another flask-no, a bottle or two-tucked into her luggage.

She passed the flask to Pete, who took a sip and handed it back to her.

"Gimme your hand," he said.

Vivi put out her palm. Into it Pete slapped a compact, weighty little object. Vivi looked down to see his pocketknife, a prized possession of his she'd always admired. She could feel the knife's red-and-silver heft. She held it to her nose and smelled the handle. It smelled like Pete. It smelled like boy.

"A buddy should never be without a pocketknife, Viv-o. It can get you out of all kind of jams. If one of those penguins sits on you, stick her in the battookus with your pocketknife, and run like hell!"

Vivi tried to smile. "Thanks, Pete-o."

Then, with the time she had left, Vivi carved her name into the wooden bench where they sat.

"V-I-V-I A-B-B-O-T-T," she gouged into the wood.

"The Vivi Abbott Memorial Bench," Pete said.

"Now nobody can forget me," Vivi said.

Pete boarded the train with her, carrying her train case. When Vivi was settled into her seat, he gave her a rough hug. "Love you, Stinky," he said.

"Love you, Pete."

Pete turned to the black porter who was squeezing by at that moment. "Yall take care of my little sister, you hear? You're traveling with precious cargo."

"Yassir," the porter said, giving Vivi a smile.

After Pete climbed down from the train, Vivi reached for the flask, took two swallows of bourbon, then began to cry.

Viviane Joan Abbott, age sixteen, sat on the Southern Crescent wearing a baby-blue angora sweater over a cream-colored pleated skirt. She pulled her navy wool coat with the lovely fox collar tight around her body. She tried to believe that her own arms were Jack's holding her close. She tried hard to believe that everyone adored her.

January 26, 1943 Dear Caro, Every single girl at this school is ugly. I do not mean plain, I do not mean homely. I mean ugly. This is one of those schools where there are two types of girls: (1) the daughters of Catholic nuts; and (2) bad girls who they want to punish. I guess I fit in both categories.

They're all ugly and they stink. The whole joint reeks like sauerkraut and old men's socks. The odor alone is enough penance for eighty-four thousand mortal sins. Obey the Church, confess your sins, and die, that's the plan. It all comes down from the Mother Superior, the Boris Karloff of the nun world.

My room here is not a room. It's not even a cubbyhole. It's a pen, a hole, a cell. It has a cot, a chair, and a water basin on top of a small chest of drawers. Hooks on the wall, no closet.

I asked the nun who brought me here where my closet was. She said, "You have no closet." Like I had asked for a suite at the Grand Hotel.

"I need to hang my dresses," I said, pointing to my suitcases and footlocker.

She looked at me like I had a harelip.

"That luggage is your cross to bear," she said.

Caro, I do not know whether I am in purgatory or just plain hell.

Love,

Vivi

It took Vivi a week at Saint Augustine's to realize the girls hated her. It took her a week and a half to realize the nuns did, too.

She tried smiling at first, but it was a waste of face muscles. Nobody, not one person, would smile back. They looked her up and down and whispered malicious things she couldn't quite make out. Vivi's hair was too blonde for them, her eyes too bright, her language too jazzy, and above all, they hated the clothes she'd brought. She tried, but Vivi could not locate any other bad girls to become buddies with.

The hallways smelled like oatmeal with Lysol stirred in. The very air made Vivi cringe. Vivi lived by her sense of smell. She could tell when people were scared, or if they had eaten peaches, just by their scent. She could sniff and tell whether a person had gotten enough sleep the night before by breathing them in. She could smell the scent of tuberoses in a person's hair days after they had been near those flowers. There weren't any tuberoses at Saint Augustine's.

Sister Fermin, who taught Religion, delighted in introducing lessons by looking at Vivi and saying: "For those of you girls who have been sent here because of sinful behavior, pay special attention. You do not deserve God's love after the pain you have caused your families, but if you study hard and keep ever present in your heart the shame you carry, in time you may be welcomed back into the light of God the Father's love."

Then the other girls would turn around and gawk at Vivi like she was a child murderer or a Nazi. Vivi wanted to tell them all to go straight to hell, but it was not worth the effort.

Vivi set her footlocker up in her cell, and on top of it she placed the photograph of Jack and her at the Thornton High Mardi Gras Ball. Next to that, she arranged photos of the Ya-Yas at Spring Creek and at the Gulf Coast. The little basket of dried rose petals from the roses Jack sent her the day he left for boot camp sat in front of the picture of her family.

Lifting her blue velvet birthday gown from the trunk, she pinned it up on the wall of her cell, where it bloomed like a huge flower above the crucifix that was standard issue in every Saint Augustine room. She had to have something colorful in there or she would die. When she came back to her cell after the chalk dust and freezing cold classrooms and the cafeteria that smelled like green peas covered in mold, Vivi took little nips from Pete's flask, and stared at that wall, trying to make a party.

Thank God she'd snuck Delia's feather pillow from home. They do not sleep on pillows here. Pillows are against the rules. This scared Vivi more than the puke-green color all the walls were painted. Every morning she woke in that penitentiary, she had to actually hide her pillow so the proctor nun would not take it away from her.

Screw them, Vivi prayed. Screw them and the horse they rode in on. Don't let them get me. I am Vivi Abbott. I am a member of the Royal Tribe of Ya-Yas. I am a cheerleader. I am going to play at Wimbledon someday. I have a perfectly wonderful boy who loves me. Where I come from, I am popular.

Holy Mother, full of gracious virtues, patient and well taught, give me strength against my enemies. Make these headaches go away. Send me a touch, a smoke, a kiss, a hug. Help me not to shrivel up and die.

March 1, 1943 Dear Caro, Teensy, and Necie: It's been five weeks and three days. I am entombed here. I cannot breathe. They wake us by pounding on the door of our cell at five in the morning. I am supposed to splash cold water on my face, take off my gown, put on my gray scratchy wool uniform, pull on the gray knee socks and the oxfords, tie my chapel veil on my head, and walk straight to the chapel without saying a word. A priest with bulging eyes says Mass and hears Confession. No singing, no music, no dancing at all. This is the longest I have gone without dancing since I was born. Even Mother never minded our dancing. When I take Communion, the host sticks to the roof of my dry mouth.

They only allow you to use two squares of toilet paper in this place because waste is a sin. They monitor you in the john. There are girls here who beg to be bathroom monitors. They think it is something great, like being elected class president. That's how sick this place is.

No such thing as a bath here, only showers that feel like someone spitting on you. No Ya-Yas. No Jack. I would commit murder for the cafe au lait that Shirley brings us in bed at Teensy's in the big bowls, sweetened with honey. I would commit double murder to see the three of you and Jack.

No one laughs here.

I am parched. I am drying up.

Please ask Pete to talk to Father about me. I've written to Mother, but have received no response.

I shouldn't complain like this with a war going on. I don't know why they want me so miserable.

Your Vivi P.S. Get your hands on hooch and send it soon.

Then she wrote her mother a variation of the same letter she had written several times since she arrived at Saint Augustine's: March 1, 1943 Dear Mother, Please forgive me. I am not sure what I have done wrong, but I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you. If you let me come home, I will not disappoint you. Please, Mother. Please let me come home. I miss you, I miss everyone so very much.