Jordan 1917
LOUISVILLE
IT WAS A BONA FIDE fact that Daisy fay had the shiniest hair on this side of the Ohio River. I asked her once how she managed it. How, even on the hottest day of summer her acorn hair shone so bright I swear to god it shimmered like starlight. “Oh, Jordie.” She’d laughed and waved me away with a faux modest flick of her wrist. Then she’d leaned in, conspiratorially, and whispered, “Egg yolks.”
“Egg yolks?”
“Once a week,” she’d whispered. “I soak my hair in six egg yolks, for a full hour.”
And that was why at the tender age of thirteen, I’d snuck into Mr. Barnaby’s chicken coop next door one morning, when Daddy was in court. I was in desperate want of extra egg yolks to make my hair as shiny as Daisy’s. And I knew Daddy, who couldn’t stand to waste food, would never approve.
But Mr. Barnaby was blind as a bat and dumber than a wild turkey, and he mistakenly thought I was an intruder. He shot first, and figured out it was me, later. He killed six of his chickens, but luckily, I was unscathed. That is, until Daddy found out. Once he got the whole story out of me about why I wanted the eggs in the first place, he cut my hair off with a pair of pruning shears. “Vanity is for the weak, Jordan,” he told me.
I lay in my bed and cried for my hair that whole night. Not only would it never be shiny, but now it would be ugly, too. I would be ugly.
But then the next morning, I got up, and I saw my reflection for the first time. I ran my fingers through the short streaks of chestnut hair around my ears. I was a different Jordan with short hair, a better Jordan. A tougher Jordan. And maybe, tough was pretty.
Daddy’s punishment wasn’t really a punishment at all, I decided. But a blessing. I’d worn my hair short ever since.
* * *
IN THE FALL of 1917, I was sixteen years old, and Daisy Fay was still my best friend and, as Daddy always said ever since the chicken incident, my worst influence. Her younger sister, Rose, was my age, and Daddy always wondered why she wasn’t the one I spent time with instead. Rose was fine; I had nothing against Rose. But she wasn’t Daisy.
“I don’t like the way Daisy runs around with all those soldiers,” he said to me over breakfast one morning that fall. Daddy and I had taken a walk through Belgravia Court last night after supper, and on the way home, we’d seen Daisy driving by in a car with a soldier. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, either. Daisy loved to play, to flirt. Daisy loved to be admired. “You know better than that, Jordan,” Daddy was saying now. “I hope you’re not off doing that with her.”
“Oh, Daddy, she’s just having a little fun,” I told him. “And I have no interest in those soldiers. They’re all so… old.” It was true. Most of them were in their late twenties or early thirties, and I, at sixteen, did not find them appealing whatsoever.
Daddy nodded approvingly, turned his attention back to his newspaper, and told me to go to the club to work on my swing. I finished the last bite of my breakfast, stood, and kissed him on the top of his round, bald head.
Daddy started teaching me golf when I was five, just after Mama died. He said he couldn’t bear to leave me, so he would take me with him to the club on Saturdays. To his surprise, I picked up how to swing. And now, what would you know? Eleven years later, and I was a better shot than him, a better player than any other man in Louisville for that matter. Which was something he would remark on with pride to whomever he could, whenever he got the chance. Now Daddy was always after me to practice.
Most well-to-do fathers of daughters in Louisville worried about marrying her off to a man from a good family. Daddy imagined me on the professional golf circuit, winning championships. Never mind that the circuit only included men. Daddy believed that would change soon, that I would be a part of it. I loved him more for it. Because that was truly what I wanted for my future too. Not a man, not a marriage. Golf.
And the truth was, I agreed with Daddy about Daisy and the soldiers. What good would come of it? Eventually they’d all leave, ship out to this war so far away it almost felt imaginary. And what would Daisy be left with then?
When we were little girls, Daisy, Rose, and I used to play with Daisy and Rose’s porcelain dolls, giving them pretend lives and hopes and dreams. And that was sort of how I felt about Daisy, hanging around with the soldiers. None of it was real. It was all playacting.
Until it wasn’t.
* * *
“JORDIE,” DAISY WHISPERED my name one lazy afternoon in October, not even a week later. “I have to tell you something.”