father does.â
She stared at me a moment, at a loss for any way to argue, which was something she desperately needed to do. âI donât care. Thatâs not the point Iâm making,â she said. When she became frustrated, she always wagged her head, which made her upper torso wag, too. Sometimes she did it so hard I thought she might fall off her chair.
I sighed deeply. âOkay, Julie. What is the point youâre making?â I asked.
âDonât you want to look pretty? You have a very pretty face, your motherâs eyes, and if you brushed your hair properly, it wouldnât look like a ratâs nest.â
âHave you ever seen one?â I asked her.
âOne what?â
âRatâs nest.â
âOh, Mayfair. Itâs just an expression.â
âYes, but do you know why people use it? You should know what youâre saying when you say something, Julie.â
She shook her head and muttered to herself, âWhy am I even trying?â
âWe compare messy things to a ratâs nest because rats build their nests from an assortment of items, including anything that attracts their interest. Their young defecate in them before theyâre old enough to leave the nests and sleep in their own mess.â
âOh, my God, thatâs disgusting.â
âMaybe then you donât mean to compare my hair to a ratâs nest,â I said.
She lowered her chin to her chest and stared down sadly at her makeup, all her wonderful new powders and creams, the special scissors, and the variety of brushes, all that beautification magic. She looked like she was about to burst into tears. I must say, from the time my father married her until that moment, I had always found her as curious as I would a new insect. She rarely read a book. She collected fashion and celebrity gossip magazines like a squirrel storing acorns and spent half her day getting ready to go to lunch with other women like herself and the rest of the day talking about what they had talked about at lunch.
Was she a product of evolution going in a different direction?
âI remember when my mother first permitted me to wear makeup and instructed me in how to do it,â she said softly, sucking back her tears. âI was very excited, and when I went downstairs to show my father, he looked like he was going to cry. âMy little girl is becoming a young woman,â he said. I was sad and happy at the same time.â
She turned to me, narrowing her eyes as if she were the one looking at a specimen under a microscope, and not vice versa.
âDoesnât any of this excite you or interest you at all? You must have some reaction to it, right?â
âItâs curious,â I admitted.
She looked at Allison to see if she understood anything I was saying, but Allison stood there with that habitual smirk of hers. Unfortunately, she had her motherâs ugly habit of dropping the corners of her mouth.
âCurious? What do you mean, curious?â Julie asked.
âWe make fun of primitive people for coloring their faces, but here we turn it into a high domestic art form.â
âWhat? Youâre saying putting on makeup makes us primitive?â
âConsider the whole picture, Julie. Television commercials imply that if you use their products, youâll be as beautiful as the models. They airbrush them and touch up their faces in magazine advertisements and photographs. Itâs dishonest and makes every girl, every woman, frustrated and unhappy with herself. Look at Allison. Sheâs dying to get to this vanity table, and sheâs only in the fifth grade. You should take that television set out of her room. Itâs a carnival.â
âNo!â Allison cried.
âDonât change the subject, Mayfair. Donât you want to use makeup, wear lipstick, and have your hair look nicer?â
âNot particularly,â I said. âAt least, not now.
Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Martin A. Lee, Bruce Shlain