"You're shy," she decided, nodding firmly. "You're just too much like your daddy. He was so shy. I had to kiss him that first time How's that? It surprise you to know that big, strong, bull of a man was afraid to kiss a girl? That's right. He was shaking in his shoes so bad. I could have pushed him over with one finger," she said. smiling, "I have that effect on most men. And you could, too, if you'd just listen to me. You don't even put on lipstick unless I hound you, and you still ain't trimmed tho
se eyebrows the way I taught you,"
Mama had spent six months in a beauty school when she was seventeen. It was her one real attempt at any sort of career for herself, but she lacked the sense of responsibility and the discipline to follow through. If she woke up tired, she just didn't go in, and soon they asked her to leave. However, she had learned a great deal.
"You need the arch," she pursued, running her forefinger over my left brow, "You put the high point directly above the middle of your iris. Brows are the frames of your eyes. Ice. Don't be afraid to tweeze them! Why should you be afraid of something like that anyway?"
"I'm not afraid. Mama." I said stepping back.
"Well then, why don't you do it? You can make your eyes look bigger. Remember what I told you: tweeze the hairs from underneath. not from above. Best time is after a shower. It's less painful, but a little pain can go a big way."
I looked down, hoping she would get bored as usual and start on some other pet peeve of hers, like how small our apartment was or how she couldn't buy the new dress she wanted because it was too expensive. Usually, she ended up threatening to go get a job, but she had yet to apply for work anywhere. Most of her day was spent looking after her hair and her skin, doing her beauty exercises or meeting her friends for lunch, which usually ran most of the afternoon. She always had too much to drink at those lunches and always reeked of smoke.
I once asked her why she smoked and drank if she cared so much about her looks and she responded by throwing a water glass across the room and accusing me of being too religious. She threatened to keep me from attending the church choir or make me quit the school chorus.
"It's the only time I ever see you show any interest in anything. What kind of a young life is that? Even birds do more than just sing."
Actually, both our school chorus and the church choir were award winning and were often asked to sing at government and charity events, but what did Mama know about that? She rarely came to hear me sing.
"You'll end up mealy-mouthed and fat, worrying about your everlasting soul day in and day out instead of having any fun." she rattled on. Now that she was on a roll, she seemed driven by her own momentum like some car that had last its brakes going downhill.
"My mama was like that and that's why I was glad to get out of that house when your daddy came along and made me pregnant," she said without the slightest shame.
Other mothers would hide the fact that you were an accident, but not mine. Depending on her mood when she talked about it, she was either seduced by Daddy or clever enough to get herself pregnant and married as a means of escaping imprisonment at home. Whatever the reasons, however, my birth had been a blow to her youth and beauty. She never stopped reminding me about that added inch on her hips besides the strain it was on her to care for a baby.
"If you looked after yourself more, you'd have boys asking you out. Ice. As it is, they won't give you a second look unless you become one of them easy conquests."
Her eyes widened with her own imaginings: me on a street corner or in the back of same parked car.
"You do that and I'll throw you out on the street," she threatened. "I'm not having people talk dirt about a daughter of mine."
I stared at her as if she was really talking nonsense now.
"Don't look at me like that, girl. It doesn't take much to turn a nice girl into a street tramp these days. I see it going on all around us. That Edith Merton might as well put a sign on her door out there." she declared, pumping her finger at our front door. "That whole family oughta be evicted."
The Mertons lived at the end of the hall. Edith's father was a city bus driver. She had a ten-year-old brother and her mother worked in a dry-cleaning and laundry shop. Edith's double trouble was to have developed a heavy bosom at age thirteen and to have parents who were so busy working to keep a roof over their heads and food in their mouths that she was left on her own too much.
Mama's obsession with herself and her youthful looks had one good result. I suppose. She was terrified of disease, especially anything that affected her complexion. I was prohibited from ever going into
Edith's apartment. and I was never to invite her into ours. Mama saw her as walking contamination and pointed to every blotch on her face as evidence of some sexually transmitted disease.
As a result of what I learned people would call a bad neurosis. Mama wanted our home to be immaculate. If she did any real work, it was to keep our house and our clothing clean. Of course. I was the one who did a major part of all that. but I didn't complain. Except for my singing in the church choir and the school chorus and doing homework. I had little to compete for my time.
However, shortly after Mama and I had our most recent one-sided conversation about my anemic social life. Mama came to the conclusion that it was finally beginning to reflect poorly on her.
"I go out with my girlfriends," she complained, "and before long they're all talking about their kids in some new romance, bragging about the way they get all spruced up or how pretty they are and I got to sit there with my mouth as sewn tight as yours usually is, just listening and hoping no one's going to ask me about you. But I know what they're thinking when they look at me: 'poor Lena. She got that great burden to bear at home,' How do you think that makes me feel, huh?" she whined,
"I'll tell you," she said let knowing I wasn't going to offer any answer, "It makes me feel like I got some kind of a retard at home. a girl who never gets her hair fixed in a beauty shop, never listens to me about her makeup, never asks for a new dress, never does nothing but read or listen to her music and go singing with some travel agents to heaven. You're an embarrassment!" she declared finally. "And I mean to do something about it once and for all.'
I had no idea what she meant, but I did look at her with curiosity, which made her smile.
"You need a push. girl. That's all. Just a little head start. Even your daddy says so." she told me.
I doubted that. More than likely, she went into one of her tirades when he had just come home from work late and was tired and he couldn't offer much resistence. To shut her up, he probably nodded a lot, grunted and looked like he agreed, but my guess was he wouldn't even remember the topic of conversation the next day if he was asked about it.
At least. I hoped that was true. Daddy never lied to me or ever criticized me for being too quiet or too withdrawn. He liked the tranquility he and I enjoyed when Mama wasn't around to lecture us on one failing or another. More often than not, he and I would sit quietly, both of us reading or listening to his jazz records. We said more to each other in those silences than most people did talking for hours and hours.
"Listen to that trumpet." he would say and I would; he would nod and look at me and see that I understood why he loved jazz so much.