by Karin Cook
“I feel like I’m living with two Twiggys,” he said over her shoulder.
I gave him a blank stare.
“That’s a compliment,” he said.
As we were cleaning up, sweeping stray hair into a prickly pile, Elizabeth picked Mama’s rope of hair out of the bag and held it up to her nose, inhaling the smell of it deeply.
“Put that back,” Mama said. Her tone was a shock: harsh and punishing, it made Elizabeth cry. Mama moved to comfort her. “I just don’t want it floating around,” she added softly.
The next morning, I overslept and by the time I arrived at Brooklawn Elementary, the entire sixth grade was lined up in the hall, ready to march. Samantha leaned out of her place in line, showing off her sandals with wedge heels. Her hair was braided down her back with sprigs of baby’s breath at the top and bottom.
“You look so different,” she called to me.
The graduation march came over the loudspeaker in the gym and just as we had rehearsed, the whole line swayed forward to the beat. As we walked slowly across the waxed gym floor, I felt a sadness rise in me. This hadn’t even been my school for very long and already it was time to leave. There were schools in Atlanta I had been at longer and had no certificates from. I didn’t understand what the big deal was about the sixth grade. I looked at the bleachers to see if I could find Mama, but only the top of her head was visible over the crowd. Nick stood at the side taking pictures of kids who weren’t even my friends. The slow, hollow sound of the music made my throat tighten. When Mr. McKinney called my name, I felt hot and flushed. Ms. Zimmerman squeezed my hand for a long time before giving me my scrolled certificate. Her touch almost made me cry.
That afternoon, Elizabeth and I made up, silently, while Mama and Nick were out getting a cake. Mama’s room was still, the light making window panes on the carpet. I found Elizabeth up to her elbows in the large mahogany dresser by the bed. We moved wordlessly through Mama’s things—holding up scarves, leg warmers, wooden beads—and draping each other in her favorites. At her closet, we pushed through the hangers, coming by her fancy clothes: a denim dress, maroon suit, and beige Angora sweater. Elizabeth smiled. These were the clothes Mama wore when she had something official to do involving the school or any occasion when pictures might be taken. We slid pieces of these clothes on over our own and moved around the room like grown women.
It was Elizabeth who found the wig, hidden at the back of the closet, tucked away behind Mama’s shoe boxes and shrouded in tissue paper. She put her hand out as if to touch a shy dog and brought it into the light. Neither of us said a word. Similar in style to my own hair, round with stiff dirty blond hair, the wig looked more like an overgrown cabbage than an artichoke. Elizabeth folded her thick, blond hair up and tucked in the stray pieces with her free hand. From an angle, in the mirror, she looked almost exactly like me. For a moment, I was filled with pride. Myself, but better. It wasn’t the right feeling, I knew. Looking at her, I imagined for the first time what it would really feel like to be beautiful. Elizabeth turned from side to side in front of the mirror, making pouty, sexy faces, watching herself from all angles.
No matter what Elizabeth did, I would always look more like Mama.
HEAT
Elizabeth exploded into summer—her limbs long and brown, her hair light from the sun. She’d moved easily from the bulk of cotton to silky shorts and tank tops. She smelled of watermelon lip gloss and carried a spritzer bottle in her see-through plastic sack. The first week out of school, Elizabeth landed a job at the Y and became the youngest girl ever to walk the preschool campers from the locker room to the pool for their swimming lessons. She held it over me, packing and repacking her goggles, her pink neon zinc. The head lifeguard had given her one of his old sweatshirts with the hood cut out. She modeled it for Mama and me in the TV room.
“This means I’m practically guaranteed a spot on the swim team,” she bragged.
“Big deal,” I said.
“I’d like to try swimming,” Mama said, raising herself up on the couch and bringing her knees into her chest. She was wearing a soft cotton skirt which fell around her like a nightgown. She was near the end of the second cycle of chemotherapy and ran a constant low-grade fever. The backs of her hands were still bruised from the barrage of injections. She borrowed Nick’s shirts and wore the sleeves long.
Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, “Really?”
“I’m supposed to,” Mama said, “if I feel like it. Dr. O’Connor said so.”
Elizabeth glanced at me across the room, hopeful. She believed that Dr. O’Connor was the good doctor, the one set on healing. Neither of us trusted what the Mosquitoes were doing. The medications that were supposed to be helping Mama made her feel worse. Her face tightened when she stood up or reached for the telephone. Her skin turned yellow at the sight of raw hamburger meat or egg yolks.
“Besides,” Mama said, “I’m feeling much better today.”
Elizabeth and I gave each other a knowing look. Mama usually said that she was feeling better than she had the day before, without ever saying outright that she’d been feeling poorly.
The next day, Mama came into my room wearing a matching shirt and skirt outfit with sandals. I could see right away that her tiredness had lifted; she’d used a hair dryer and had on mascara.
“Come shopping with me,” she said, “I want to get a new swimsuit.”
“Where’s Elizabeth?”
“Nick dropped her at the Y already,” she said. “Let’s hurry so we can surprise her.”
It was disorienting to hear Mama talk of surprises after weeks of sitting still. I was afraid her enthusiasm would vanish so I rushed around the house, gathering my bathing suit and a towel, and stuffed them into my knapsack—scrambling to get ready the way I did in order not to miss the bus.
Mama overpacked, filling her own small duffel with a robe, towel, and extra set of clothes. She stored her sea sponge breast in her swim cap and jangled the car keys at me. I dashed to the station wagon, threw our bags in the back, and waited, breathless, for Mama to start the car. Once we were settled, she paused and stared blankly at the dashboard in a way that made me worry.
“Does Nick know we’re going?” I asked.
“Of course,” she said, turning the key in the ignition. She stopped to look at me. “I am my own person,” she said, “I don’t have to tell him everything.”
I crossed my arms and wedged myself against the door. “I know.”
There was a small silence and then Mama said, “I feel a little too self-conscious for high fashion today.”
She opted for Margaret’s maternity store in town, said that they would be more sensitive to physical concerns and might even have a suit with a specially padded top. But when we arrived, the saleswoman seemed bewildered and eyed us suspiciously. I lingered a few feet behind Mama who didn’t seem to notice; she just kept sorting through the racks and fondling each suit. For some reason, everything she said embarrassed me.
“This ought to distract attention.” She held up a red, white, and blue suit with a giant star on the top.
I recited the summer suit advice from Seventeen magazine, “Horizontals broaden, verticals lengthen, patterns accentuate, and solids conceal.”
Mama looked at her selection. “Oops,” she said, tucking three brightly patterned suits under her arm. She picked out a solid suit and brought them all into the dressing room.
I waited outside, watching her feet under the door, the labored pulling on and off of swimsuits. When she settled on one, she opened the door a crack and let me peek.
“It looks nice,” I said, automatically.
The solid navy suit gaped around her middle like elephant skin and fell into a short skirt. She’d stuffed one of the other suits into the right side of her chest. She caught me staring and stepped back behind the door. When she resurfaced, I could tell that she had been crying. Her eyes were glassy and red and she wouldn’t look at me.
At the register, Mam
a explained that she would be wearing the suit home, under her clothes and lifted her shirt slightly to show the saleswoman the item number and the price.
“You wouldn’t have a pair of scissors?” she asked at the end of the transaction.
The woman grumbled, dug through a drawer and held up a pair with heavy-duty blades that was attached to the register by a ribbon. She pointed the handle in Mama’s direction. Mama leaned her upper body over the counter and tried twice to reach her right side with her right hand. By the time she looked up at me, I had already positioned myself to help. The saleswoman pretended to be busy, shuffling through receipts and separating them into piles. As Mama pulled the tags out from the seam under her arm, the suit lifted away from her skin and revealed a razor thin line down her chest and under her arm. I snipped quickly and stepped away. It looked as if someone had drawn on her with indelible red marker.
When we got to the Y, Elizabeth was sitting in the lobby drinking orange soda with a flexi straw. She put the can down slowly on the floor when she saw us come in. Mama went right to the front desk to sign up for the pool. Even in the lobby, the air smelled of chlorine.
“What are you doing here?” Elizabeth hissed.
“It’s a free country,” I said.
“Surprise,” Mama said, joining us. “Come take a swim with us.”
“I can’t,” Elizabeth said. “I’m working.” She looked around anxiously. “Besides, there’s only ten minutes left of free swim.”
It occurred to me that she was as nervous as I was. Mama had seemed so fragile since the surgery. What if she inhaled too much water? What if her new suit didn’t fit correctly? What if someone saw her scar?
“Ten minutes?” Mama said. “We better hurry.”
In the locker room, there were other women Mama’s age walking shameless and naked from the showers to their clothes, stopping at the scale on their way. Their flesh moved with them. One woman’s breasts and stomach swayed with the weight of each of her steps. Her skin looked gray, spider veins exploding across her thigh like a road map, her breasts pendulous. The word udder came to mind. I peeked at Mama to see if her body showed that much strain, but she still had her clothes on. I sat on the bench and pulled my suit on in that quick way I’d learned from having to change in gym—crouched low, a flash of skin and limbs until everything was in its proper place. Mama went into the bathroom stall and came out in a bathrobe with her swim cap on.
“You don’t really need that,” I said. “It’s only for long hair.”
She looked confused at first and then touched her head gently. “You’re probably right,” she said, “but I better wear it anyway. You never know.”
Elizabeth ducked into the lifeguard office, pretending to look busy and important, when she saw us emerge from the locker room. At the pool, Mama folded her robe in half and placed it on a chair against the wall.
“Grab me a kickboard, honey,” she said and walked quickly down the steps into the water at the shallow end.
When the water reached her waist she dipped down with her knees bent so that only her head floated above the water. Each time someone passed, she turned her face away from the splash, her face squinched up like a tentative child. I walked in with my arms bent, controlling each moment of my skin against the water until I reached Mama with the kickboard. She pulled it to her chest and flicked a wet finger at me. “It’s warm once you’re in.”
She leaned her weight forward on the board and pushed off, kicking her way across the shallow end. I’d forgotten what a strong swimmer she was. In Atlanta, she’d take us to the lake, pulling us on inflatable rafts, her hair floating around her shoulders like sea grass as she swam with her arms stretched over her head. When we reached the raft at the center of the lake, she’d let us warm our bodies on the wooden slats of the dock. I liked to pretend that we were on our own island, the edge of the beach miles away, the only sound, an ebbing of water against the red Styrofoam floaters beneath us.
I sank down under the water and sat on the bottom with my eyes open. All around me, legs and arms thrashed in slow motion, dipping in and out of sight. Each time I went up for air and came down, the muffle of voices comforted me. After one short lap, Mama stopped to catch her breath. She pulled the Lycra away from her skin, bloating her suit with air bubbles and moving the elastic high under her arm. She pushed off and kicked her legs gently, not using her arms at all.
At the end of free swim, the lifeguard blew the whistle four times. Elizabeth appeared at the edge of the pool with an armful of towels for the campers. Mama stayed in the shallow end and bobbed slightly, squatting on the steps until the last of the child stragglers had reclaimed their nose clips from Elizabeth. Then, with her back to the crowd, she began the climb, her hands holding fast to the railing, her step unsure. Just before she came entirely out of the water, I caught her check the top of her suit and give her sponge a quick squeeze. I’m not sure which embarrassed me more: that someone might think she was touching herself or that there was nothing there to touch. I waited with a towel, my arms stretched out wide until Mama stepped up to me and folded the towel around her like a cape.
“That was fun,” she said when we were safely in the locker room. She put her clothes on over her swimsuit and mashed her wet feet into the sandals. After she was dressed, she wedged two fingers under the swim cap and lifted it off carefully. Her hair was matted to her scalp in a way that made her look as if she’d just awoke. The longer pieces at the back of her neck were wet.
Elizabeth joined us in the lobby and held the front door open, impatiently, as Mama waved good-bye to people she didn’t know. Elizabeth was mortified, all hunched over in hiding with exasperated sighs. She marched ahead of us to the car in the parking lot. I watched Mama from behind, a broad wetness seeping into the back of her skirt.
“Why did you do that?” Elizabeth asked when we got to the car. She looked as if she was about to cry.
“Do what?” Mama asked.
“Show up like that.”
“I wanted to go for a swim,” she said, her lips slightly blue. “Besides, I didn’t think it would bother you.” Elizabeth wedged herself into a corner, crossed her arms, and stared out over the parking lot. Mama got in and slammed the car door. “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you,” she said.
She didn’t look at either of us before pulling out of the lot. Her words hung in the air between us, like shame. I held my arm over my face and breathed in the chlorine from my skin for the entire ride home. My mouth tasted like metal. When we pulled in the driveway, Mama cut the engine and got out, leaving us alone in the car. Elizabeth’s eyes remained wide and stubborn.
“You’re such a jerk,” I said. “She wanted to surprise you.”
Suddenly, Elizabeth’s face collapsed. She cried in gusts of halting breath, her cheeks wet and shiny. “I didn’t mean it,” she sobbed. “I don’t know why I said that.”
“Me either,” I said and walked away.
• • •
The house was dark and quiet as I made my way down the hall. I tapped lightly on the bedroom door; Mama was sitting on the edge of the bed in her robe, the swimsuit in a heap on the floor next to her. I picked it up and shook it right-side out.
“It’s ugly, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Not really.”
“Yes it is,” she said, her eyes full of disgust.
“Well, maybe just the skirt … it’s kind of old-ladyish.”
“I should have looked harder.”
“Not with that grumpy saleslady.” I glanced down over my nose, imitating the judgmental look the woman had given us.
“Yeah,” Mama said. “What does she know? I could’ve been pregnant.”
I laughed.
“Better yet,” Mama continued, “you should have tried on something.”
“That would have shown her,” I said.
We were giggling like this, back and forth, when Elizabeth appeared in the hall, looking timid and distraught.
“Come here,” Mama said and Elizabeth began crying all over again. She buried her head in Mama’s lap, weeping. “Don’t cry,” Mama stroked Elizabeth’s head. “Tilden and I have just voted this the world’s ugliest swimsuit. We need your vote to make it unanimous.”
“Count me in,” Nick said. He walked over to where I stood with the bathing suit, wrapped his arms around it and pretended to slow dance, box-stepping around the area rug in the bedroom while we watched in silence. He looked handsome, the way I imagined he must have looked that first time Mama saw him, with his dark hair shining in the afternoon light.
“You haven’t asked me to dance in a long time,” Mama said.
Nick stopped midstep and flung the suit off to the side. He stepped up to Mama dramatically with one arm outstretched. “May I?”
Mama waved him away. “I was just kidding.” She blushed and dipped her head toward her chest. Nick didn’t move.
“Come on, Mama,” Elizabeth said. “Please.”
Mama took a deep breath, lowered one leg and then the other to the floor. She tightened the belt on her bathrobe and stepped into Nick’s arms. He cupped one large hand around hers and pulled her close to him with his other hand pressed against the small of her back.
I leaned over to the clock radio to find a station.
“Something slow,” Mama called to me. She watched her feet, taking two steps to each of Nick’s until she found the rhythm.
Elizabeth folded a pillow in her lap and counted to herself—one, two, three, one, two, three—trying to will Mama’s steps to match Nick’s. After Mama had the hang of it, she rested her head against Nick’s neck and moved to the beat of “This Magic Moment.”
They swayed slowly even after the song had ended, Nick’s mouth pressed to the top of Mama’s head, his eyes closed. And for the first time since it all began, I believed that she would get better.
