Josephine Czinski did not know that she was one of the Others. At six, Josephine Czinski was a beautiful child, with shiny black hair and deep brown eyes and a lovely oval face.
Josephine’s mother was a skilled seamstress who worked for the wealthy people in town, and she would take Josephine along as she fitted the Oil Ladies and turned bolts of fairy cloth into stunning evening gowns. The Oil People liked Josephine because she was a polite, friendly child, and they liked themselves for liking her. They felt it was democratic of them to allow a poor kid from the other side of town to associate with their children. Josephine was Polish, but she did not look Polish, and while she could never be a member of the Club, they were happy to give her visitors’ privileges. Josephine was allowed to play with the Oil Children and share their bicycles and ponies and hundred-dollar dolls, so that she came to live a dual life. There was her life at home in the tiny clapboard cottage with battered furniture and outdoor plumbing and doors that sagged on their hinges. Then there was Josephine’s life in beautiful colonial mansions on large country estates. If Josephine stayed overnight at Cissy Topping’s or Lindy Ferguson’s, she was given a large bedroom all to herself, with breakfast served by maids and butlers. Josephine loved to get up in the middle of the night when everyone was asleep and go down and stare at the beautiful things in the house, the lovely paintings and heavy monogrammed silver and antiques burnished by time and history. She would study them and caress them and tell herself that one day she would have such things, one day she would live in a grand house and be surrounded by beauty.
But in both of Josephine’s worlds, she felt lonely. She was afraid to talk to her mother about her headaches and her fear of God because her mother had become a brooding fanatic, obsessed with God’s punishment, welcoming it. Josephine did not want to discuss her fears with the Oil Children because they expected her to be bright and gay, as they were. And so, Josephine was forced to keep her terrors to herself.
On Josephine’s seventh birthday, Brubaker’s Department Store announced a photographic contest for the Most Beautiful Child in Odessa. The entry picture had to be taken in the photograph department of the store. The prize was a gold cup inscribed with the name of the winner. The cup was placed in the department-store window, and Josephine walked by the window every day to stare at it. She wanted it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. Josephine’s mother would not let her enter the contest—“Vanity is the devil’s mirror,” she said—but one of the Oil Women who liked Josephine paid for her picture. From that moment on, Josephine knew that the gold cup was hers. She could visualize it sitting on her dresser. She would polish it carefully every day. When Josephine found out that she was in the finals, she was too excited to go to school. She stayed in bed all day with an upset stomach, her happiness too much for her to bear. This would be the first time that she had owned anything beautiful.
The following day Josephine learned that the contest had been won by Tina Hudson, one of the Oil Children. Tina was not nearly as beautiful as Josephine, but Tina’s father happened to be on the board of directors of the chain that owned Brubaker’s Department Store.
When Josephine heard the news, she developed a headache that made her want to scream with pain. She was afraid for God to know how much that beautiful gold cup meant to her, but He must have known because her headaches continued. At night she would cry into her pillow, so that her mother could not hear her.
A few days after the contest ended, Josephine was invited to Tina’s home for a weekend. The gold cup was sitting in Tina’s room on a mantle. Josephine stared at it for a long time.
When Josephine returned home, the cup was hidden in her overnight case. It was still there when Tina’s mother came by for it and took it back.