Part IV: Spin – The Mermaid Dress: #1 (Chapter 68)

Mother, in a good mood, allowed me to sit with her at the vanity as she got ready for work.

Our hips touched slightly, her warmth running through me.

As she worked on her face and hair, Winky Dink, my favorite TV show, came on.

I wiggled in the seat.

I want to draw on the Magic Screen.

I needed to hide Winky Dink from the bad guys, even if my lines wobbled.

I wished Mother would hurry up and pick her wig for the night. On either side of the vanity were two plastic heads with no faces, each displaying a platinum wig, one short and curly, the other shoulder length and curled under in a pageboy.

Mother ignored them and, instead, took a plastic box with the ponytail, my favorite, out of the middle drawer.

She looked down and smiled at me.

I held her brushes for her. “Can I brush it?”

“Okay,” she said, “but be careful.” She opened the box and carefully lifted out the ponytail. She laid it across the dressing table, her thin hands smoothing it out as if she were caressing a newborn baby. She handed me the special brush, the one for just the ponytail.

“It’s so pretty.” I stroked it as if it were a kitten.

“Only a little bit, now.”

It doesn’t grow like our real hair, so you must brush lightly.

“Okay.” I swept the bristles gently over the surface.

I put the brush away in its regular place next to the head on the left and watched Mother apply peach foundation, powder, rouge, eyeliner and shadow, mascara, and lipstick.

I liked when she used the eyelash curler, although it frightened me. Her hand none too steady – surely, she’d pinch an eye out, but she never did.

After Mother finished, she made faces in the mirror, blotted her lips on a tissue, and checked her teeth for stains. She opened her eyes and mouth wide like Joe E. Brown.

“It’ll have to do,” she said, reaching for the VO-5; she squeezed a dab into her palm and rubbed both hands together. Combing through her hair with her fingers, she massaged her scalp.

“Can I put some salve in my hair, too?” I pulled the rubber band from my ponytail.

“You don’t need it,” she said. “Your hair already has lots of natural oils.”

“Don’t yours?”

“It used to, a long time ago.”

“But my hair looks dry.”

“Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter. Here, open your hand. Ah, that’s it, now rub your hands together. That’s a good girl. Now rub your scalp. Yes, that’s it.”

Mother handed me her best brush.

I brushed my hair over and over.

Brush 100 times each day, and you’ll always have that wonderful, red hair.

Now my hair glistened like Daddy Platts’ crew cut.

“I’m afraid we’ve overdone it,” Mother said, shaking her head.

My hair, saturated with VO-5, fell past my shoulders, heavy and shiny, now just wavy instead of curly and frizzy.

Mother turned away and began fixing her own hair.

Winky Dink was over.

Now Julie London crooned, “Why don’t you settle back and light a Marlboro cigarette....”

Mother was prettier than Julie London. Even prettier than Marilyn Monroe because Daddy Platts said so.

Daddy Platts never lied.

As sunlight faded, something changed, like rules bending in the middle of a game or birds suddenly not chirping anymore.

An impatience in Mother, a nervous energy building up, as if she were anxious to be away from here, away from me.

Was she going to be angry again?

“Sammy,” Mother said, her hands shaking a bit as she lit up a cigarette, “Get me a beer.”

“Okay.” I slid off the chair, went to the icebox, and grabbed a Hamm’s off the middle shelf where Mother and Daddy Platts kept a case of beer.

I didn’t like getting beer for Mother – it felt strange – but I liked when she felt good.

I took the can opener from the counter and punched two holes in the top, just like Daddy Platts had taught me to do.

When I returned, Mother, cigarette dangling from her mouth, was still brushing her hair, swooping it into a small point at the crown. She puffed from the cigarette and placed it on her favorite ashtray, a blue ceramic toilet seat with “All butts go here” painted in red on the lid.

Then she tied her hair off with a rubber band. After attaching the hairpiece above her own ponytail and blending it with her real hair, she wrapped the piece around her head like it was a sparkling tiara.

“Thanks, kiddo,” she said, taking the beer. She took a long swallow and then another. “That hits the spot.” She lit another cigarette and finished off the beer.

Nodding, Mother handed me the empty can.

In the kitchen, I threw away the empty, and opened another Hamm’s.

Well into the second beer, Mother’s cheeks grew pinker and her green eyes sparkled; for now, everything was all right again. She drained the can.

Mother nodded, and I fetched another.

She took a swallow, stubbed out her cigarette, and smiled. “Sammy, what should I wear tonight?”

I couldn’t believe she was asking my advice on dress-up clothes. I wanted to jump up and hug her and kiss her for loving me and making me feel so grown up. But I was afraid I’d spoil the mood.

“How about the mermaid dress?” I asked.

“The mermaid dress? Hmmmm....I don’t know.”

“Please, please, please?”

Mother, her eyelids drooping slightly, considered this, and then broke into a smile. “Oh, why the hell not? Haven’t worn it lately.”

“Hooray, hooray, Mama’s wearing the mermaid dress, the mermaid dress, hooray, hooray...!”

I ran to the special closet where Mother kept her best clothes, the evening gowns reserved for when she sang at the Stardust Club.

Just stay out of that closet, or else!

But I wanted so much to go in there and feel all the sequins, the sheers, the satins, the velvets, the gold and silver lamés. To smell my mother – the perfumes, the tobacco, even the stale beer – because they were her smells and nobody else’s.

Mother pulled the green sequined dress from a satin hanger and stepped into it. “Zip me up, Sammy.”

I stood on a chair and carefully pulled up the zipper so that it wouldn’t catch. The dress took on Mother’s shape, her tiny waist and rounded breasts and thighs.

The mermaid dress, a strapless gown that showed off Mother’s milky shoulders, sparkled with millions of green sequins. Skintight to Mother’s mid-calf, it billowed into a full-length skirt which swished as she walked by the mirror.

Like magic, she’d turned into Cinderella.

“I’m much too fat,” she said.

I looked down at my own rounded belly and doubted if I could ever wear such perfect dresses, let alone sing at nightclubs and win the love of someone special like Daddy Platts. “You’re beautiful.”

Her backside facing the mirror, she turned her upper body to get a better view. She scowled. “You think so?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. Dizzy at the sight of my mother pivoting in front of the mirror, I threw my arms around her hips. “You’re a star.”

Something changed again. She stiffened and pushed me away.

In the next room, my baby sister Ruby cried.

“Shut that damn kid up,” Mother said. “Get me another beer.”