Issue 3, Spring 2026

Student Spotlight

Fiction

The Southern Belle’s Christmas Bazaar

By Lydia Seaton

Mama always told me, she’d say, “Baby girl, I pray to the sweet Lord above you never find yourself at the business end of an angry man’s fist.” The last time she ever said that to me, she had one hand on the steering wheel and another holding her pack of Virginia Slims, speaking out of the side of her mouth trying to light a new cigarette off the butt of one still lit. This was after Daddy left and before she died. We were on our way to the Southern Belle’s Christmas Bazaar at the Silver Creek Baptist Church down off the interstate, driving in her beat-up, slut-red PT Cruiser – a standard which she made me learn to drive because she said she “ain’t going to have no daughter who can’t get herself out of a right big mess.” I inherited that car after Mama went home to be with the gracious Lord our God up in the sky and since then, I have never found myself in a trap so sticky I couldn’t get unstuck.

Mama was telling me all this stuff about men and how they get mean and mad sometimes while we were driving, but I wasn’t hearing much if I’m honest. I heard her in one of my ears, but the other one was busy listening to Patsy Cline on the radio mixing with the loud whoosh of heavy, humid air through rolled down windows. It was hot that day – hot hot. The PT Cruiser doesn’t have air conditioning either, and even though December is Winter in the great U.S. of A, the southern states can still get warm. Especially when Mama’s chain smoking in the driver’s seat and the sun is beating downhard and fiery through the peeled back sunroof. This isn’t to even mention that Mama and I were two women full of hot air stuck together in the close quarters of her tiny hatchback. But that’s neither here nor there.

She was unrelenting about mean men and bad love as Patsy sang on. Mama tapped her ash out the window and kept on clamoring. I didn’t feel like I had much need for her lessons on love. I just never had much interest in the opposite sex. It wasn’t like I wanted to lay down with a girl or anything like that. I was just content with Mama and the dogs and the cats and the pigs and the goats and the chickens. That’s how things worked for us and that was fine, all fine by me. Daddy left us when I was still in diapers and I never knew what it was like to have a man in our house who was my real Daddy.

Mama had a few suitors but they never let the grass grow underneath their feet and were usually temporary visitors in our life. I think that’s because Mama was content just the two of us like I was. We knew how to change the oil and mow the grass and muck the stalls and shoot a gun, so it seemed silly to keep a man if he ended up being more trouble than he was worth, Thank You Very Much. And on top of that, men ate an awful lot. It was a costly endeavor to have someone you didn’t really want around annoying you and bugging you and pestering you, anyway. That’s why we usually butchered the boy pigs first – less hassle and more meat. We were just fine, Mama and I.

She turned off the exit and pulled up to the stop sign, looking both ways before pulling onto the state road where the church sat. A big old truck sped by and Mama eased off the clutch after him. She pulled into the parking lot and put the hand brake on, pulled her sun visor mirror open and slathered some more raisin colored lipstick on her mouth. She pulled my head to her and planted a big old kiss on my lips “So I ain’t got to dab it. The color suits you anyway. It makes you look expensive, my bright red Ruby.” I rubbed my lips together and got out of the car.

The big truck we drove in behind parked down the lot, and that’s when I saw him jump down from the high up lifted suspension, and everything I ever knew about my life changed. He was a cowboy type, all tall and lean with spurs on his boots and a big buckle keeping his starched blue jeans held up at his waist. My breath hitched high in my throat and my stomach gurgled with excitement and anxiety. I knew right then, right in that very second that he was the one, like, the one. I swear on all the books in the Bible that I have never in my life known anything as true as what I knew in that minute – that I would fall in love with this cowboy and I would marry him and have his babies and baptize them right there at the Silver Creek Baptist Church with holy water which flowed free and sweet. I was grateful for the lipstick and the rush of blood to my cheeks, which I hoped helped me look made up and womanly.

Mama yelled at me to stop gawking and keep on, so I walked with her to the door trying not to stumble over the loose gravel and kicked up dirt. The cowboy beat us both, though, and held the door open, all tall and chivalrous and gentlemanly. He was real handsome if you ignored the papules and pustules and poxmarks on his face. “Thank you, sir,” I said, all kind and sweet, feeling my cheeks get so hot that I had to look away.

“That’s no matter, pretty lady,” he said back to me. My Lord and my God when I say his voice made up for any defects he might have on his face, I’m telling nothing but the truth. I let my eyes meet his again. “I would never want a lady as fine as you to trouble herself with something as dull as opening a door.” His words came out in a deep baritone, all thick and sugary. When he spoke, it sounded like banjo strings getting plucked, all saccharine and sweet, ripened fruit at the height of summer falling straight off the tree on account of the heavy nectar, plump skin begging to be bit into and tasted. He made me feel warm and stiff in my belly, and I’m being as serious as I’ve ever been when I say that.

Mama snapped me out of my staring when she called me along, sighing loud and impatient. I waved goodbye to my new precious love and went on to look through the crafting tables with Mama.

They have all sorts of s-h-i-t at these fairs – and no, I did not swear! I spelled it out. God can’t get mad at your cussing if you’re smart enough to spell it out. Reverend Tom taught me that trick during one of our special Sunday school meetings. On the first Sunday of each month, Mama goes off with the old biddies to prepare the potluck luncheon in the church hall while Reverend Tom tells me Bible stories and gives me kisses on my collar bones, real gentle. It isn’t wrong because he was like my Daddy after my Daddy went away, but only on Sundays. He’s a smart man too, and I respect smart men because they answer the questions I have about things. And even if he weren’t like my father, it is okay because I am a full grown and fledged adult, just over the hump of twenty years old if you must now. Mama always says that Reverend Tom is very handsome and if it weren’t for his wife and four sons, she would sweep in with her magical private parts and steal him away. Mama said that she is Heaven for men and they never even need to die or repent for her salvation. She’s special like that.

Well, anyway, they got so much stuff at these fairs. When I caught up to Mama, she gave me five dollars and told me to look for some Christmas gifts. You can get a lot with five dollars if you’re smart and thrifty – both of which I happen to be. And further more, I knew that if I didn’t find any gifts here, the Goodwill would have something on their half-price days. Even the St. Vincent de Paul has good stuff, but Mama has never supported the Catholics or touched their thrift store with a ten foot pole. She says that all the candles they light freak her out real bad, like they’re witchy or something, and I can’t be bothered to go there much since it’s all the way across town.

Mama tucked my hair behind my ears and went off to chit chat with Mrs. Smith, Reverend Tom’s lawfully-and-God-wedded wife. She’s a pretty woman, only five foot two inches with blonde honey colored hair swooped up into a bees nest atop her head. The hair do probably adds three or so inches onto her height, which couldn’t hurt a tiny lady like that if I’m honest. Her oldest son, Tom Jebediah Smith Junior was only eleven but he passed right on over the top of Mrs. Smith’s head already, hair included! It must be nice for Mrs. Smith to have a big old family with her husband and her sons and her parents and grandparents and Reverend’s parents and grandparents and the aunties and uncles and cousins et cetera,but boy would four boys like that be exhausting, not to mention expensive.

Mama and I don’t have much family we’re close with. My daddy’s parents didn’t talk to us and I never even met them. Since Daddy left all those years ago, Mama and I spend our Christmas in the next county over in the old folk’s home with Auntie Peggy and Grandma Jean, my Mama’s mama and auntie. Their rest home smells like old people and talcum powder and not much like fir and cranberry, but Peggy and Jean like it there because they have a stylist in once a week who does a really good wash and set and they can smoke on the covered porch without having to go all the way outside. I don’t know if they ever really realize it is Christmas anyway.

I found Aunt Peggy’s gift near immediately once I started walking around. Aunt Peggy is a right and true American and only buys American made and manufactured, which was a pain in the butt since the bedazzled cigarette case on the table in front of me was Made in China. Aunt Peggy doesn’t realize that things aren’t made here anymore since she gets confused and forgets, so Mama and I usually spend our Saturday evenings tearing out the tags with names like Cambodia and Vietnam from the supplies we get her from the dollar store or fairs like this. Vietnam is the one that usually upsets her most, though, if she’s in a remembering mood since that’s where Uncle Rod died and she won’t talk about it, even though everyone around town knows that he was high on heroin and messing around with explosives and that’s how he died – nothing to do with the Vietnamese or the government, just Uncle Rod being Uncle Rod. The cigarette case was used and a bit weathered, but I knew I could clean it up as good as new and Aunt Peggy doesn’t see real well anyway. It cost one dollar and fifty cents, and I bought it immediately.

I moved down through the other tables and found Grandma Jean a really nice bookmark for her Bible. It had scripture all over it, which made my heart swell because I learned a lot of those verses with Reverend Tom and those were some of my favorite days I’ve had on this Earth. The bookmark had angels all over with a big picture of Jesus Christ at the top, making his home in the golden tinged clouds, fluffy and soft looking like marshmallows. A hole was punched above Jesus’s head and ribbon hung down holding a pretty red tassel with cross dangled at the end. It was so beautiful I wanted to cry! Only one dollar and seventy five cents, home-made from a woman named Linda, the leader of our church choir. I handed her my money and smiled big and broad at her.

Mama was all that was left and I knew I wanted to get her something real special. I had a buck seventy-five left to spend on her and I was looking to use it all. The thing about Mama is that her favorite things in this world are her television stories and her Virginia Slims and driving around in her PT Cruiser. Those are the things that make her feel free, she tells me, like a bird with wings that no man ever got the chance to clip. I walk from booth to booth, one part of my brain on Aunt Peggy, one of Grandma Jean, one on Mama, and the rest on Cowboy, the right and true love of my life as I see it. It was probably a ten-ten-ten-seventy split if I’m honest, which doesn’t lend itself much to the season of giving and whatnot, but I’m really just a young girl and I’m doing my best, I swear it, Amen.

Eventually, I found myself at the buying end of an unmanned table selling nice little crochet birds, one-hundred percent handmade in America, Thank You Very Much. They were real cute and real little and real soft too from the puffy yarn. They were three dollars though, way above my budget. This was upsetting for many reasons, but mostly because Mama liked to be free like a bird, and one of them was the same red as her cruiser – her favorite color, even if it was a little bit devilish. Now, I don’t steal, and I would never steal. That is a cardinal sin against the Lord our God and I won’t do that, no sir, no thank you, Thank You Very Much. But there was a tug in my heart, looking down at that bird thinking about how Mama would chuckle when she saw it on Christmas morning and how I know she’d say “My girl, my Ruby, you know me so well, don’t you!” And how after that, she’d give me a big old hug and a big old kiss and braid my hair all nice and pretty and tight to my head for Christmas morning church service. And with that thought, I felt my hand close around the little object and began to move closer, nearer my pocket, the bird trying to coo its way home with me. But no, I refused. No, Devil, no – I will please God today! Reverend Tom taught me all that was good and holy and every single one of them ten commandments and today wouldn’t be the day I’d bend my morals for Satan, not even if this stuffed bird was perfect for Mama. Reverend always stopped before the temptation was too much for him, and I am proud to say that I can stop too!

I set the bird down softly on the table and gently pat its little head. I turned to leave and look around more, but that was when I heard a voice as sweet as butterscotch and as deep as the middle of the Chattahoochie.

“See something you like?” He asked, all kind.

The blood rushed first to my cheeks and then to my panties as I said to him, looking up through my eyelashes, “Well, this bird is real nice for my Mama. Just a little too expensive for me is all.” I blinked my eyes real fast, trying to get his blood pumping too.

“That is a nice one,” he said, thick and slow.

“It’s the same color as my Mama’s car.” I cleared my head and clenched my belly, remembering my Christmas mission.

“The red is like your cheeks, too. And your lips.” He kept his eyes looking down into mine and I swear I saw his cheeks go just a little bit pink.

“Well, it’s no matter. Where you from, Cowboy? I’ve never seen you around town before.”

“I’m from all over. Specifications don’t matter much.”

“Well, they matter to me.”

“Well, they shouldn’t,” he paused for a second, “Cowgirl.”

I felt the blood slip out of my cheeks and travel to my core before heading straight back up to my face, turning more red than before with a f-u-r-y fury,like the bile in a burp after too much coke.

“Well, they do,” was all I could manage to say.

“Alright then. I’m from all over, but Georgia is my home for the most of it. I spent time in Florida, I spent time in Texas. I don’t go to Louisiana no more. I got myself a nice old truck that goes up to eighty-five miles per hour on the interstate and I just get in it and drive whenever and wherever I please. I don’t go above the Mason Dixon Line. Come to think of it, I don’t go above North Carolina if I even make it that far. I ain’t welcome in South Carolina. I hunt crocodiles. I kill alligators. I make real good biscuits. I don’t like venison. Right now, I’m working on a ranch a few miles up the road. At this very present moment, I am standing in a church hall chatting with a pretty little lady and I’m fixing to give her the bird she wants for her Mama’s christmas gift, free of charge in hopes she might let me take her out for dinner some time. That is the big and the small of everything, if you must know.”

I forced my brain to close my mouth and gulped down hard, trying to get my spit over the lump of excitement stuck in my throat, sending all of the nerves back down to my stomach. I shift the foot I’m leaning on and feel a tingle up my back when the seam of my jeans rubs right on the sweet, special spot in my privates. “Well, okay then Cowboy. But I can’t take your bird for free.” I hesitate, “Why you even selling birds? Do you make these things?” My voice sounds shaky in my own ears, but I hope Cowboy doesn’t notice.

“No, I don’t make them. The rancher’s wife does the knitting and crocheting. I just got asked to help out today cause I can do numbers in my head real quick.”

“Well then, you’ll get in trouble if you give me this for free. And besides, I don’t like to owe no one nothing. Mama says that’s bad practice.”

“I ain’t no honey trap, Miss. I just know you like the bird and I want your Mama to have a nice Christmas gift. And if I’m being even more honest, I’m a cowboy with a weakness for pretty women.”

“Well, I might be a pretty woman but I don’t have a weakness for cowboys,” I lied through my teeth, right in the middle of a church hall. I turn my eyebrow up and lift my face, looking him straight in the eye at a near one-hundred-and-thirty-degree angle. I am trying hard to resist the unholy temptations that are plaguing me with all their might, but I won’t give in to Cowboy. He’s got to want me more, want me worse, want me so bad he’s hurting and straining against his nice, starched jeans.

“You don’t need to have a weakness for me, Cowgirl. You just gotta want to give your Mama a nice gift bad enough.”

I blink slow at him, waiting for more. His words are like molasses and I want to get down on my knees right in this house of God and lick them up as they fall from his mouth, cascading down his front and onto my lips, onto my tongue, down my waiting throat.

“Alright then, girl. No bird I suppose.” He sighs for a moment and I almost think he feels let down by me.

“Well, wait a minute, Cowboy.” I say, pulling myself out of my dream land. “If you’re gonna twist my arm, I suppose I can take it. But I’m giving you money, you hear? I got one dollar and seventy five cents for you, alright?”

“That sounds mighty fine to me, but why don’t you save fifty of them cents and get us two cokes at the concession stand, which we may drink together indulgently while I trick you into falling in love with a dusty, rugged cowboy like me?”

“See, there you go Cowboy, thinking I owe you something for being nice.” I tisk my mouth real slow, real smooth, three times, one after the other. I swear on all of the graves of everyone I ever knew who died that his eyes bulged out of his head, just a little wee bit, excitedly.

“Well here, darling. I ain’t gonna force you to have a nice cool drink with me on this unseasonably hot day. If you say yes, I will be most pleased. If you say no, I will still take your money for this pretty red bird and think nothing about the exchange ever again. I will adversely be most parched, but I will survive. That’s what cowboys like me do, sweety. We survive.”

“Then here, Cowboy,” I hand him one dollar and twenty-five cents. “You take this for the bird.” I held two quarters back and he looked at me, eyebrows raised like he won. “And you take this,” I set one of the remaining quarters on the table. “A tip for your generosity.” I picked up the red bird and put it in my shopping bag. “I’m going to buy myself a coke now. You can join me if you want, seeing as how you are so adversely parched and got an extra quarter from a customer. But I won’t be bothered if you don’t come. That’s all I’ll say on the matter.”

I turn on my heel and walk away from Cowboy, willing myself not to look back and check if he’s coming. Mama told me once, “don’t ever wait for no man.” She would say, “don’t you ever, ever look behind you to see if he’s coming. If you gotta look, they ain’t worth the breath it takes to say their name.” So, I didn’t look back at him even though I wanted to real bad, almost worse than I ever wanted anything else in my life. But somehow, deep in my belly, I knew he’d follow me. I just knew it, right and true. Cowboy thought he could trick me into falling in love with him, but I was wiser and I knew how to bat my thick lashes and plump out my pink lips and use my womanly body to my advantage. I knew I would make him fall in love with me first, hard and fierce. I stick my butt out a little bit so he could see it bouncing in my blue jeans as a reward for trailing behind me.

At the concession stand, I buy myself an ice cold coke from one of the nice old ladies running the food booth and thank her kindly before finding myself a nice seat with lots of empty space around me for Cowboy to pick from.

Only, he doesn’t come. I sip my drink, savoring the cold liquid and the syrupy taste waiting, waiting, waiting. I thought maybe he got stuck up with some annoying mama who wanted to set him up with her daughter. Maybe he came across the Farmer’s wife who was hollering at him for taking less money than her stock was worth. That was what I would tell him when he finally sat down next to me: “Cowboy, it is ill informed to be leaving your table alone. A pretty girl like me will come up and rob you and the Farmer and his wife blind.” I thought that was clever and right funny. But I couldn’t tell him because he wasn’t here and didn’t appear to be coming!

My face got all red and mad when my coke started running low and an upset feeling settled over me. I wanted to cry a few little tears, but I knew the well would burst open and everyone would look at me saying, “What’s wrong with Eunice’s girl?” and I didn’t want to deal with that even if, stupid as it is, bawling would make me feel ever so slightly better. I took another sip of my coke and sat, evaluating my options and blinking hard to squelch the stream before it made it out of my eyes.

One, I could finish my coke and get up and leave and never, ever think of my Cowboy again. Not my Cowboy – the cowboy, I corrected myself. And furthermore, he ain’t even a real cowboy. I don’t have proof of his position, and that’s all I’ll say.

Two, I could march my a-s-s back up to his stupid little booth, throw the ugly red bird down at him, and demand my money back plus my twenty-five cent tip. I don’t care one tiny bit if that’s Indian giving. I don’t care and I won’t dignify the question, Thank You Very Much.

Three, I could keep my red bird, drink my coke, and leave him be. He’s obviously stupid and slow and I don’t have any issue with leaving him behind in the dust. I do fine for myself. Cowboys survive? Well, here’s what I’ll say — county girls make do.

I pick option three and gulp down my drink, crinkle the aluminum hard in my hands and throw it in the rubbish. Then, I walk straight out of the church hall to wait by Mama’s car. I do not turn around once to see if he’s looking as I walk out.

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Lydia Seaton

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