TODAY I heard some of my boy cousins talking about me. I was sitting in the apple tree when Sonny, Mickey and Rowdy walked by on their way to visit Jimmy and play his guitar because Jimmy came home early today. My cousins didn’t see me. They said I was the only plain Stone girl. I know what plain means. It means the opposite of pretty. I couldn’t believe my ears. I always thought I was beautiful because I have hazel-green eyes. Besides, Cookie told me that I look like Doris Day, my favourite actress.
I went running into my mum’s bedroom where there is a big mirror on the dresser. I stared at myself for a long time. My hair is ugly because I have the junior girl “bowl” haircut, but all the other girls have it too. I looked at my eyes, sleepy looking and grey-green with yellow near the irises. Ski-jump nose. Medium lips. Dimple on my chin. Big ears but they don’t stick out or show very much. Freckles.
I thought of Shirley Temple with her big blue eyes and curly hair. Then I knew it was true. I am plain. It makes you really sad to find out something like that.
I went around in a daze for the whole day wondering what I could do about it. Then I got the brush, the comb, some lipstick and rouge that was left here by Aunt Mamie, Cookie’s mum. I combed and brushed my hair and pinned it behind my ears with bobby pins. I put on lipstick and rouge. I didn’t look any better. I was putting eyebrow pencil on when Benny and Missy saw me. They watched for awhile. Then they climbed up on the basin stand with me and started trying on lipstick. They started arguing about which of them was the best-looking. Missy asked me what I thought. I looked at them. They both looked back at me, waiting.
“Well,” I said. “Missy’s the prettiest, and Benny’s the cutest.” They both looked happy when I said that.
After that I went to my mum and asked her if she thought I was plain. She said it was too soon to tell. You look like your dad, she told me. I went and looked at myself again. I couldn’t see it, except for the eyes. Mum says Dad has wolf eyes, yellow eyes. I liked that but I was still sad.
One time Dorothy pushed my head back and asked if she could look at my nostrils. “You have the most beautiful nostrils,” she said. Nostrils are nose holes. She said Jane Russell has beautiful nostrils too. Jane Russell is Dorothy’s favourite movie star. She must have seen Jane Russell kissing with her head way back in a movie or a movie magazine. It doesn’t help to have beautiful nostrils. Nobody can see them.
Then my dad came home, and he was a little tipsy.
“McSpoot,” he said, “you’re a square-shooter, and you have a million-dollar smile.” A square-shooter is an honest person. I went and smiled at myself in the mirror. It pushed up the corners of my eyes and looked so merry. “It’s true,” I said. “I have a million-dollar smile.”