I grew up slowly, and much too quick. My stuffed animals strayed in my bedroom, hidden in the closet, under covers, for much longer than my friend’s boxed up teddies. My girlfriends ran out of their black spandex pants and into tight-fitting jeans when I was still putzing around the playground next door, sitting in the giant holes I dug into the pebble-filled ground. I did however, experience one change before them: face-paint, mascara, blush, lipstick; the makeup.
Closing my eyes, I see my old house, the shadow-profiles of me and my sister’s faces we had traced in elementary school taped up against the hall closet. I remember the dark, rough green carpet of my sister’s meticulously clean room. I can still picture the toys left abandoned and kicked around my floor, prohibiting any memory of what color it may have been. I can see myself running around in a frenzy, constantly looking for something new to do, always waiting for the makeover that would transform me into the woman I was slowly becoming.
It’s after lunch, and I’m already bored. My Barbie’s are married; one even was involved in a severe plastic-life altering car crash this morning, plunging step to step down our stairs, down a “ravine” in soap-opera finesse. The doctors weren’t sure she was going to make it, being pinned under the car and all (until Ken rescued her), but she’s gonna pull through. Simultaneously, Skipper ran away from home (to be continued), and the Turner-Barbie household rearranged their home for Christmas. It’s March.
But alas, only the morning hours can be entertained by dolls for so long. It’s Sunday after all, and my dad is watching the TV in our deer-head decorated basement; he just stares ahead in professional ignorance, over the mess of toys littered everywhere, over the giant dollhouse that takes up the majority of the basement floor. He just concentrates on the hunting, fishing, golf on the television, and ignores the plastic leg sticking through the cushions and into his side. I need to find something else to do besides babble conversations and make up plots that nine-year-old girls shouldn’t be capable of creating. Even I know this, so I return to my rose room upstairs, shades of pink, but still boring for a weekend.
“Monica? Monica!” I yell, I repeat, until my sister grunts recognition from behind her closed bedroom door. “Monica, can I come in?” I ask, knocking a steady beat, nudging the door ajar with each “thump.”
“Yah,” she answers, knowing that if she ignores me long enough, one of my other two sisters will become my next victim. I wonder if they cover me in shifts?
“What are you doing?” I ask as I search her room of treasures, pushing her magnetic momentum contraption that once started, magically rocks and spins like the earth and moon.
“Nothing really,” she answers dully, flipping to the next page in whatever grown-up high school thing she’s reading. I flip over a trinket, a pink chamber filled with goo, watching with my head lowered at eye level, as the lava-like substance slowly oozes from the top of the jar to the bottom. Eventually, that too loses my attention.
“I’m bored,” I add sighing, as if she didn’t already know. All she does is shrug, so I move to the next thing on the shelf. It’s a glass sleeping puppy figurine. I have the same one, only mine is black, resting belly up like I do, and has a chip in its left ear. Disinterested with this familiar object, I halfheartedly and clumsily return it to its home. Hearing me knock down one of her decorations, I hear her magazine flop closed. Finally.
“I guess I’ll do your makeup,” she says, standing up from her bed. Finally! Finally! Finally!
Monica should be a professional, and her makeovers have been one of my favorite ways to pass the time, ever since that magic paint first transformed me for the Disney-themed skating show four years ago. She knows what colors match my outfit best, how to apply that pink goop to my lips. She’s also a professional singer, knowing all the words to her homemade tape. She stands staring at me, waiting for me to move. She doesn’t need to tell me where to go. I scramble to get seated on the stool near her dresser and by the time she sets down her green and yellow caboodle filled with makeup, I’m sitting on my hands, rapidly bouncing my right leg against the chair leg in a steady rhythm. One scolding look and I stop.
“Close your eyes,” she demands as she squishes a hairy brush against the blue powder she’s holding. I do so, enjoying the talcy smell as a little bit sprinkles onto my serious cheeks. I’m lost in my thoughts of movie-stardom, staring at my dark-orange eyelids when I realize I haven’t felt her apply anything for a while, so I risk a peek. She’s an inch away from my eye with another color. I jerk my head backwards in a surprised response.
“Close your eyes!” she repeats frustrated, telling me to sit still. I do so, only to peek a little later, and then a little later after that. I try to keep one eye open and one eye closed so I can watch her face and stare at the cosmetics as she works. She scolds, telling me it’s creepy. She’s brushing softly against my right cheek now, so I try to be as still as possible, knowing that with one foolish fidget, I could be a tomato head.
“Close your mouth. God you’re breathing all over me!” Monica says as she snaps close the blush. Now I have something to concentrate on. I feel lightheaded and happy for the rest of the makeover. My right nostril is stuffed, and I’m trying to not even open my mouth when she is so near. I try not to make any noise either, inhaling slowly, as I know the nasal squeaking will get on her nerves as well.
“Ok!” she enthusiastically declares after each area of my face has been taken care of. She turns my shoulders to the left, facing me toward my reflection. “You are done. You are complete--A masterpiece!”
After trying to sneak a peek for the last half-hour, I am finally allowed to look at myself in the mirror. I smile at all the new colors on my face. I try to touch my cheek, where she covered the rosiness, but my sister smacks my hand away.
“You’ll ruin it,” she explains. I can only nod my head seriously. “Next time maybe I’ll do your hair too, since it’s sort of taking away from the effect,” she adds shrugging. I smile wide, already wiggling in anticipation for such a makeover.
“Ok. I’ve got stuff to do now, so get out of my room.” She says plopping onto her bed. I hop off the stool, I tell her I love her and I turn away from the mirror, conscious of how much heavier my face feels.
As I walk out of her bedroom, I’m filled with her musical voice, and I start to hum so I can remember some of the words to her songs the next time she does my makeup. I feel beautiful, and I can’t help but stop one last time at her shelf, to touch the giant clay head my sister made in her likeness in an art class. It’s so beautiful, just like her. I gently touch its nose vowing that I too will be someday.
I walk into my room, stepping over the piles littering the floor. I do a few fancy twirls in my room, pretending to be Michelle Kwan. Jumps here and there, a bend backwards, and an extravagant smile at the ceiling ends my flourishing finish. Lowering my hand from above me, I panic when I discover a glob of black and blue on my hand. I trip over to my mirror to assess my smudged right raccoon-eye. I bound to my closet to dig out my own sparkle purple caboodle filled with hand-me-down cosmetics, my hoard of grown up gifts. I fix what I can using the techniques I absorbed through various boring Sundays, what I picked up with that one creepy spying eye. All is better again after a few minutes of spreading spit on my face to remove the streaks. I do my skating routine again, this time ending with a leap onto my rose bed. Lying there, I stare at the star-covered and popcorned ceiling wondering what I should do next. Sitting up, I walk over to my shelf and attempt to disentangle a chunk of beads. I throw them on knot and all, and work my way to the hallway-closet, to the dress up clothes. A model needs a dress, and I’m thinking the peach colored ball gown will be perfect.
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