Anne Valente
Althea tiptoes out of her mother’s bedroom, the smell of meatloaf saturating the house. From the hallway she hears her mother setting the table, the sound of clinking glasses and silverware mixing with the portable television her mother watches when she cooks, the evening forecast, a low warble. Althea hides the makeup bag behind her back, in case her mother steps out of the kitchen, and inches down the hallway until she reaches the bathroom. She closes the door behind her.
…..Inside, Althea empties the bag onto the countertop, an array of dark mascaras and tan foundations spilling across the tiled surface. Too short to see herself in the medicine-cabinet mirror, she stands on the toilet instead, the seat’s height placing her squarely in front of the mirror. She fishes through the colored bottles and cases until she finds the shades she wants. Cobalt blue eye shadow. Blush in carnation pink. Mascara, jet black. She lines them up in a row, placing the rest of the containers back in the makeup bag, and gives herself a hard glance in the mirror.
…..She has never liked her name. Althea is such an old-fashioned name, and she doesn’t care that it’s her grandmother’s namesake, no matter how many times her mother tells her she’ll appreciate the legacy when she’s older. She watches her features mimic all of her movements and imagines a more beautiful face, one she can create with the brushes and wands before her.
…..She takes the blush and swipes it across her cheekbones, impersonating what she’s watched her mother do so many times, before the start of her workday. Lately Althea’s been putting her dolls in boxes, telling her mother she’ll donate them to their next garage sale. She’s been hiding her old crayon drawings under her bed, child’s play, crude scrawls that seem too simple now, unrefined. And she’s been toying with her mother’s razors in the shower, shaving a spot here or there on her legs, staring at the unfamiliar gleam of stripped skin, small clearings made smooth.
…..Boys like smooth skin, she’s read in young adult books in the library at school. Not dolls, not crayon drawings. Just beautiful girls, with legs slick enough to touch, in tight shirts and short skirts, made sparkling by paints, made new.
…..Althea pulls the wand across her eyelids, a blue streak, azure star wipe. She breathes deep, admires the way a sweep of color lightens her eyes. Her hands arc in mid-reach for the black mascara tube when she hears her mother’s voice yelling down the hallway, Dinner’s ready. Althea yells back, she’ll be there in a minute, her hands already scrambling for tissues to wipe away the makeup before her mother comes looking for her. The blush comes off easily, the tissues streaked pink as she wads them up to be flushed away, but she needs something wet, a washcloth, to scrub away the blue stain on her eyelids. She crouches down, rifles through the cabinets beneath the sink, until she finds a few cotton balls. She wets them in the faucet’s cool stream and climbs back onto the toilet seat to look at those last tints of blue, all the color left.
…..Althea meets her own gaze and holds a cotton ball near her eyes, a grin surfacing across her unstained lips. The blush is already gone, the mascara never reached her eyelashes, but already she can see traces of what might someday be beautiful. Her breath catches. She swabs away the last of the eye shadow. Once her mother lets her wear makeup, she might be pretty for more than moments. She might be beautiful for an entire day.
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Anne Valente is the featured writer for Volume 15 of Emprise Review. You can read an interview with Anne or the other two stories featured, An Agreement and The First Amendment.
