Mad Love: The Ballad of Fred & Allie
The sin was not so much the taking of the throat as the wanting of it in the first place. And what a fine throat it was, the way it captured those who saw it: men loitering at the Customs House; boys down by the river, who stretched their own necks to catch a glimpse of its fine whiteness; eventually the entire nation. But Alice Mitchell was the first to be lassoed by Frederica Ward’s charms, becoming hooked while they were still schoolgirls.
It must have been the way Frederica walked into the music room at The Higbee School for Young Ladies. The Higbee School took only the best girls, from the best families in Memphis not always the first families, those with places at the Cotton Exchange on Front Street, mind, but always the most respectable families, which is how Frederica’s people were set, a touch heavier on the respectability than the money. But my God, how that girl could twirl her hips like the women selling their wares down on Ponto