Mama had on a fine dress, one that Aunt Carrie had given her. It was of a dark purple cotton with a fancy bow flopping at the neckline. It was the kind of dress that hung on her just right, making her look like she belonged in a movie, dancing in the arms of Fred Astaire himself.
When I told Mama that, she said I sure had myself a good imagination. “It’s just a church dress,” she said.
Still, the way she admired herself in the mirror made me think she liked that dress just the same.
She had worked all afternoon at getting her hair to wave just so. Her lips even had a touch of color to them that she’d splurged on at the drugstore.
Mama and Daddy had been invited to dinner at the Wheelers’ house. Daddy’d told Mama it wasn’t anything special. Still, she’d insisted that he wear a clean shirt and tie. Daddy did all he could to try to get out of going.
But, as it often went, Mama got her way and Daddy put on his funeral suit. He did look awful handsome even standing stiff like he did.
I stayed beside Mama there in her bedroom, watching her touch up her lipstick in the mirror. She got up real close to her reflection and puckered her lips and rubbed them together.
“You look pretty, Mama,” I said.
She moved her eyes so she could look at my face in the mirror. “You’re too nice.”
“You look like you belong in a magazine.”
She raised her eyebrow at me and smiled. Then she looked back at the mirror and wiped at the corner of her lips to take care of a smudge.
“You want me to put some on you?” She turned to face me and held up the tube of lipstick. “Open your lips, just a little. Relax them.”
She dabbed the color on my lips, making them feel sticky.
“Don’t lick them,” she said. “Now maybe a little rouge. Just a little.” The brush prickled against my cheeks and I had to fight the urge to scratch at my face. The powder tickled my nose and I was sure I’d sneeze.
Mama stood back and looked at my face, pushing my hair behind my shoulders. Crossing her arms she put her weight on one high-heeled foot and breathed in deep, blinking slowly.
“Oh,” she whispered. “You look so grown.”
Turning, I looked into the mirror. What I saw there wasn’t my face but Winnie’s. Her eyes and cheekbones and nose and lips. And I saw bright blue eyes the color of cornflowers.
“I look like her, don’t I?” I said, a tear bubbling up out of my eye. “Like who?” Mama asked, busying herself with clearing her brush and makeup off the top of her dresser.
“I hate that I look like That Woman.” I lowered my chin so I wouldn’t have to meet Mama’s eyes. “I don’t wanna look like her.”
“You don’t.” She said it so sharp it surprised me. “You aren’t like her, hear? Not even a little. I won’t have you talking about her.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She left me there in her room, staring into the mirror at the likeness of the mother who’d given me up.
We were meant to be asleep, Ray and me. Opal had told us Mama said we were to go to bed and not make one peep. We told her we’d stay in our rooms and fall asleep fast.
Neither of us had a mind to do that, though.
Instead we sat on Ray’s bed, trying to scare the willies out of each other with every ghost story we could think of. For all the tales I came up with, Ray told spookier ones, bloodier and goose-pimple-raising.
He’d get going on some yarn of a headless man stumbling about through town or a tormented soul floating over the beds of children, looking for her lost love, and I’d be shaking with fright. I’d hold both my hands to my mouth, making tight fists, and I would be too afraid to so much as blink for fear I’d see a picture of the story in my mind.
I decided right then I’d do my very best to never ever sleep again. My mind got full up enough of nightmares to last a lifetime.
The sound of a woman’s laugh caught my attention and I knew without even having to look out the window that it was Mama. I did look anyway and saw her walking down the street toward our house alongside a man.
A tall and lanky man. I could see his face by light of a streetlamp they’d both stopped under.
“Who’s that with her?” Ray asked.
“Abe Campbell,” I answered.
“What’s he doin’ walkin’ her home?”
I just shrugged.
Mr. Campbell said something that made her cover her mouth so her laugh wouldn’t wake the whole street. Then she swatted at his arm, letting her hand rest on him a second longer than I thought was proper. He looked at that hand and followed her arm with his eyes to shoulder to neck to face.
That sick feeling I’d gotten when I saw him touch her hand came back. What I wanted to do was holler out the half-open window for him to go on home and leave her alone. She had a family already and Daddy wouldn’t like them walking and laughing together like that.
But I didn’t yell. I didn’t say anything at all. What I did was get up off Ray’s bed and walk right to my room where I got in under the sheet and pulled it up to my chin. I knew Mama would check on me and I was going to make her think I was asleep.
When I shut my eyes all I could see was the way she’d smiled up at Abe Campbell.
It was the way she used to smile at Daddy.
Mama still smelled of her perfume when she leaned over and kissed my cheek. I stayed still as I could and tried breathing in slow and deep.
“I can tell you’re faking,” she whispered.
I opened one of my eyes a sliver to see if she was watching me. She was. “How’d you know?” I asked, opening the other.
Mama was busy taking pins out of her hair. It fell to her shoulders, the curls wild, making her look like Beanie.
“A mama’s got her secrets,” she said. “Were you and Ray good for Opal?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“She give you supper?”
I told her she had.
“Did you have a good time?” I asked.
“Sure I did.” She sat on the edge of my bed, crossing her legs and fingering through her mess of hair. “Half the town was there.”
She went on to list all the folks that’d gotten all dolled up in the nicest clothes they had for the party at the Wheelers’. How they’d served deviled eggs and gelatin salad and little sausages. She said they even had a Negro fella there playing the piano and singing old songs.
“He wanted people to dance,” she said with a wide smile. “Some did.”
“Did you?”
“Well, no.”
I asked her why not.
“Your daddy isn’t so light on his feet, Pearl.”
I thought of the times the two of them had danced to some song that came on the radio. Back in Red River, they’d put their bodies up close to each other, Mama’s hand on Daddy’s shoulder and his hand on her waist. They’d sway, shuffling their feet against the grit and making a crunching sound under the soles of their shoes.
Sometimes, if they didn’t have any music playing, Mama would sing a song unlike anything we ever sang at church. Daddy would pull his head back so he could look at her face and she’d have to stop singing she’d be smiling so big.
“You’ve gone and made me forget the words,” she’d sometimes say.
She’d finish, though, even if she had to hum.
Before letting her go, Daddy would always kiss her on the cheek or the forehead. She’d close her eyes like she was about to open them to the biggest surprise of her life.
If all that didn’t make Daddy light on his feet I didn’t know what did. “What’re you thinking about?” Mama asked, half turning to look down at me in my bed.
“I was just wondering where Daddy was,” I told her.
Any bit of smile she’d had on her face dropped and she blinked twice before turning her eyes from my face.
“He got stuck talking to the mayor,” she said, her voice gone chilly. “I got tired, so I came home.”
“You walked by yourself?”
She nodded and hummed. “Yes.”