Mom would never let me, anyway. Like the time I asked her about eye makeup. Well, I didn’t really ask her, I just mentioned it, but she must have known what I wanted to say.
“Mom”, I’d said. “What do you think about the girls at school wearing eye makeup?”
“I’d meant to mention it to you, Jen”, she said. “I don’t recall seeing the girls at your other school dressing in such bizarre clothing and wearing makeup as they do here. I think they look like little tarts.”
“What’s a tart?” I asked, although I was fairly certain I knew.
“A prostitute”, she answered, shortly.
“That’s not fair, Mom! You’re labelling people by the way they look and dress and you tell us all the time not to do that.”
“Okay, you’ve got me there. I’m not saying that’s what they are. I’m saying that they look cheap.”
“Everyone does it.”
“Who’s everyone? And just because a majority of the kids do something, it hardly justifies your doing likewise.”
“Who, me? Who said anything about me?”
“Jen, you’d never have raised the issue of makeup if you hadn’t been toying with the idea of using it yourself. Right, or not?”
“Maybe, a little bit”, I said, feeling kind of sheepish.
“You’re almost fourteen”, Mom said. “If you want to wear lipstick, that’s up to you, but I wouldn’t like you to wear mascara or eye shadow or anything like blush on your cheeks. It’s unsightly and I think it’s unhealthy. You have a good natural complexion and you’d end up spoiling it by using makeup.”
“I don’t think it looks so bad”, I objected. “But I don’t want to wear lipstick. I thought maybe just a little bit of eye shadow…?”
“No.” that’s all, just no. Nothing like being reasonable. But I thought I’d better forget it. When Mom says ‘no’ in that quiet voice, it means drop the subject.
So me and Laura are just about the only kids - oh yeah - Jennifer too - we’re the only kids in our class - girls, that is - who don’t wear eye makeup. We’re like from the dark ages.
Sometimes Mom is just ridiculously unreasonable. She keeps looking at me all the time to see if I’m ‘maturing’. That means, getting breasts. She makes me so nervous. She bought me two sets of matching stretch bras and panties and she thinks I’m going to wear them. I won’t. I mean, I hate them. Like they’re stupid and I won’t wear them. Besides, I’m glad to say I’m flat as a board. Almost. It’s only because I’m plump (fat) that I’m not absolutely flat.
Laura’s flat, but she’s skinny so that’s all right. And you might have guessed that Sally’s got a figure. I mean like a girl’s figure. And the other day at school, when we were standing around outside at recess talking, she dropped a bombshell.
“Girls”, she said loftily, “You are in the company of a woman.”
We all looked around, trying to see the woman she was talking about, but there was just us.
“Stupid!” she said in her unbeatable way. “Me, it’s me. I’m the woman!” And she smirked at us. Really sickening.
Well, Sally may have some bumps and she tries to look grown-up like with her clunky shoes that she’s always tripping over things with, and those silly frilly jumpers and the mascara, but she doesn’t look like any woman. She looks like a little boy in drag. Like that, huh? I learned about that yesterday. From Larry.
How it happened that he told me was, I heard him talking on the telephone in Mom and Dad’s bedroom the other night to a friend. Boy, for a kid who’s so devoted to music he sure spends a lot of time on the telephone. More even than me. Anyway, when he got off finally, I asked him. Larry, what’s drag? He wasn’t very nice at first. As usual, called me nosy. But then he got nicer, in his way.
“I suppose”, he said, “I should see it as my duty to educate my dumb little sister”.
I almost told him to shove it, he’s so superior, (like Mom says). He’s insufferable sometimes, but she says it’s because of his age, (kind of like my puberty I guess), so I did a slow inside burn and waited for him to tell me. What he said was, drag is kind of like a kid, a guy, dressing up for fun in queen’s clothes, like long dresses, stuff like that. I guess it’s called drag because the dresses are so long and they kind of drag along on the ground. Guys are nuts anyway, even girls don’t wear long dresses. Much.
Anyway, I’m sure she thought she was looking mysterious - Sally. Batting her mascara-crusty eyelashes at us, hands on her hips. “I am a woman today”, she repeated, not very discreetly. Boy, she must think we’re pretty stupid. Big deal. I knew before she told us she had her period. What else?
“I am men-stru-ating”, she said, chucking up her pointed witch-chin.
Donna and Diane were all agog. “Really!” They almost screamed. Then they lowered their voices and came closer. “What’s it like?”
I mean really, what a dumb question! Even Sally must've thought it was dumb. She just looked at them. Then she looked at Laura and me.
“Jenn-I-fer”, she said in a mealy voice. “You’re the oldest of us. I suppose you’ve already begun men-stru-ating. Why don’t you tell them what it’s like?”
The bitch-witch! I’m only a month older than Laura, two months older than her and a little more than that older than the others. So what if I haven’t started yet? So big deal. Who wants to, anyway?”
No comments:
Post a Comment