I wasn’t exaggerating during my womanly talks when I suggested some of this as part of a woman’s book. Lessons in romance like these were what I intended to memorialize in my diary. There were all sorts of sexy ways to softly close your eyes, hold your head just a little to the side, and sigh seductively. But how was I to explain it so that someone far more naive would understand? As Agnes and Edna and girls like them demonstrated, most girls my age were ignorant when it came to what made them more seductive. I had all this natural wisdom to share, but to talk to them was like trying to converse with someone who spoke a foreign language. Only Daisy seemed to care, to learn from me, but I doubted she would ever reach my level of magnetism and win the man she wanted, even if I got her a personal copy of my book of love.

However, the proper words, words that really captured my feelings and thoughts, were so difficult to write. I was frustrated almost every time I lifted a pen, my diary opened to blank pages, and sat at the mahogany inlaid desk my mother had thought was far too expensive for “a little girl’s room.” Whenever my mother referred to me that way, my ears would burn, even when I was seven. I was never really just “a little girl.”

It was so important to write in my diary, despite my struggle to express my feelings accurately. Most of my girlfriends kept one, but mine would be historic. It might even end up in a museum or be used to teach other young girls how to become fully developed women. Why, someday I could be as famous as Clara Barton or Louisa May Alcott. I was certainly more attractive than they were. And now I would prove it to Alexandria high society.

A new dress, the Wexler gala! I really am breaking free, I told myself. I would fill the pages of my diary with memories of this time in my life, memories that would send my mother rushing hysterically into the street, pulling her hair out, even if she had read only one page.

To prepare myself for what I saw as my coming out, I consumed anything I could read about the new dresses and hairstyles. By the time we set out to shop for my new clothes, I was as good as any fashion expert.

Not surprisingly, from the moment my mother had walked into the department store with my father and me, I saw her face droop with disapproval at the sight of the dressed mannequins and hanging garments. She hadn’t bought anything new for herself for quite some time. No recent fashion was special enough or good and proper as far as she could see, and it wasn’t a case of being deliberately critical of something you couldn’t have. My father had never discouraged my mother from buying new clothes and shoes. On the contrary, he was always encouraging her, but carefully, because if he mentioned someone else’s wife and how good she looked in something new, my mother would accuse him of lechery.