One day, just after noon Johnny ran into the living room from the porch. He rushed to Ma's side and handed her a big package that was just delivered from the local department store.
"This is for you, Kevin," Ma weakly called out.
I crossed the living room, over to the couch as mom opened the package under the wide eyes of my brother and I.
"Get the footstool," she directed me.
I pulled it in front of the sofa where Ma sat. With the sun entering the window from behind her, illuminating my face, I took a seat as she opened the box.
Inside it were tubes and bottles and brushes, small plastic cases and lots of other things, some I recognized and others I didn't.
"Now, sit facing me. A girl, er . . . someone . . . your age should learn to use makeup," she explained as she took a few of the items out of the box.
"It's only makeup and you can wash it off if you don't like it."
I glanced up and Johnny was intently staring. Mom did too.
"Want to watch, Johnny?"
I gritted my teeth and stared at Ma. Johnny blinked and shook his head like he just snapped out of a trance. He puckered his lips in jest. "What a bunch of dumb stuff," he blurted out, then ran off to play.
With dancing fingers Mamma stuffed my curls into a plastic cap she placed on my head to keep my hair out of my face.
As she showed me each item, I recognized much of it. We'd all watched Ma apply her makeup and even played with it a few times.
"Ouch, " I cried out as when she began to pluck stray hairs from my eyebrows.
Once she was satisfied with my brows she drew on them with a light brown pencil. Shaping, she called it.
She then shook a bottle, opened it, and dabbed a little on her finger. Applying some to several places on my face, she began to smooth and blend it all over my face and into my hairline.
Next she applied blue eye shadow with a dabber to both my eyelids, blending it very thinly to my now arched eyebrows.
I followed with my eyes and then looked into hers as she rolled a brush of black mascara lightly over the top and bottom of my eyelashes. I felt my heart beating so hard I worried that Ma might hear it.
Mama was explaining what she was doing as she did each thing. Said I'd better be taking mental notes cause I'll need to be able to do this myself.
With her fingertip coated in rose-colored blush she brushed the cheeks of my face. Then she went over it with a powder dabbed brush, before opening a tube of light red lipstick and lightly sliding it over my lips.
"Kevin, do you think you'll be able to apply your own makeup now? From now on, every morning I'll expect you to look like this when you make breakfast for the boys. I'm sure they'll appreciate it, even if they don't say so. I know Timmy will."
I could only nod my head.
"Good." she said. "You're such a pretty boy now. Okay, go wash it off with this cream and come back and you try your hand at it. I wanna see what you can do."
When I returned, I hesitantly sat down on the floor before the coffee table and looked into the mirror Mama had placed on the table along with the cosmetics.
After a little prodding from Ma, I finally, as best I could began to nervously redo my face with Ma adding comments: "a little more," "that's too much", "smooth it in," and of course, encouraging words like, "You're doing wonderfully well my pretty little boy."
After I finished, Mama used a tissue and some of the cosmetics to touch up my mistakes.
"One last thing," Ma announced, pointing at my hands.
"What?" I inquired, looking down.
"Your nails."
With that she took my soft hands and began to file my uneven nails. She then applied a coat of shiny, faint pink, almost clear polish, another item from the package.
I instinctively held my hands with my fingers spread to allow my nails to dry.
"Now let's brush out you hair."
I turned around to face Ma and she removed the plastic cap from my head.
Mama, as usual instructed me as she proceeded, "I'm brushing your hair from front to back...now I'll very lightly brush the top layer in the direction of the set... Once we have the shape we'll loosen the hair underneath and gently pull out pieces here and there until the form is right."
I closed my eyes and soaked in one of the most pleasurable feelings I'd never before experienced. My mind went blank after a few minutes.
Who knew having your hair brushed like this could feel so incredibly good. I was so excited that I couldn't have told you my name if asked. I could hardly wait until Ma finished to look at myself but also wished the sensations of her combing my hair would go on much longer.
If only I could look as pretty as I felt.
"All done, sweetie. You were so good the whole time. All done." I finally heard Ma the second time and opened my eyes. "Now go look at yourself and if you don't like how you look, I guess you can wash it off this time."
I walked into the bathroom and when my eyes landed on my reflection, I stared into the mirror. A soft wave of hair dipped by one eye and was met by a bundle of curls; the top was smooth and lifted up with more curls in back; and on the other side a tendril dangled along side my cheek with the hair swept back into another mass of curls.
It was beautiful.
The hair combined with the makeup to create an image of an attractive young girl looking bask at me from the mirror.
I was beautiful.
I stood still, amazed at how girly I really looked, and lost track of how long I had been standing there admiring my reflection.
Ma's call finally brought me out of the bathroom.
I passed by her lying on the couch smiling at me. "Going to keep it on, I see."
"Ya, sure," I replied. "For a while at least." But a part of me, something new growing deep inside me, really wanted to say "I could keep this look, forever."
I enjoyed doing my chores even more, that day. I swept, dusted, wiped, and washed. I gathered up the boys' clothes and even decided to strip the whites off the beds. I didn't normally like to do the laundry, but today I was looking for more.
I made a mental note to tell the boys to pick up after themselves and put the colored clothes and underwear in the proper baskets to make my job easier, but the extra work really wasn't bothering me too much this day.
I sorted the socks, the T-shirts, and the jockey shorts into a pile. I could tell which ones were Tim's because they were the largest.
I picked up a pair of his shorts from off the pile in the basket and felt my hand squish into a wetness. Turning it inside out, I saw a glob of white liquid. It was soaked and I had gotten my hand in it.
I absolutely knew what it was and I couldn't believe I was in this situation, yet for a moment, a brief moment I brought the stain close to my face, close enough I could smell the musky, masculine aroma emanating from his shorts.
What was I doing, I asked myself after quickly looking around to ensure no one had seen what I had done.
I could feel my cheeks burning with embarrassment.
Telling myself that what I just did was weird and gross, I retrieved a tee shirt from the basket and cleaned my hand. I then tossed the shorts in the washer and told myself, having three brothers I'd just have to get used to stains like this and would have to be more careful how I picked clothes up next time.
After each load finished in the washer, I brought the baskets of clothes outside to hang up on the clothesline.
We didn't have a dryer and even if we had, ma wouldn't have allowed us to use it, insisting we couldn't afford the extra electricity.
At the supper table the younger boys hardly paid any attention to me. Just a "you're looking more like a girl everyday," from Johnny and a inquisitive look and a giggle from Jessie.
Tim didn't even say a word about my hairdo and makeup, just a condescendingly delivered, "nice f*ucing look." He talked with the boys about sports, television programs, and other nonsense stuff, but basically acted like I wasn't there.
I was mad at Tim for ignoring me and felt like saying, Tim, don't shoot your load in your underwear 'cause I end up getting it on my hand and it's a lot of work to wash them and next time I'm just going to put them inside your pillowcase, but I bit my tongue and didn't hardly say a word to him and tried not to show my anger. Of course I really didn't mind too much, Tim messing in his shorts, I just wanted to get even with him.
As usual I cleaned up the kitchen alone while my brothers watched TV and goofed off in the den, but that really didn't bother me, as I seemed to be becoming more and more like a sister and mother who took pleasure in taking care of the house. Besides, "boys will be boys," as Mama would always say.
Everyday I got more and more comfortable in this role and slowly became more and more feminine. Day after day Ma taught me how to take care of a house. She taught me how to iron, how to polish the furniture, how to easily dust ceiling fan blades, and how to properly clean the wood floors.
And she taught me all about cooking. How to cook chicken breast through with out drying then out, the correct way to use measuring cups and spoons, how to make biscuits from scratch, how use ingredients on hand to make casseroles, how to know when fish is done, and so many other things, including how to plan for a week of meals and make a grocery list.
She taught me advanced intricacies of doing the laundry; separating colors and fabrics, about bleaches, color absorbing sheets, machine cycles, clothing label care instructions, detergents, pretreating stains, when to use fabric softeners, and how to launder her delicates without ruining them (she told me to take special note of this task, since I would soon have delicates of my own to launder).
I never imagined how much work she had to do to take care of us and I felt bad that I hadn't helped her more in the past just like nobody was helping me now.
I became even more determined to do everything I could to make Ma happy and quickly learning what did make her happy.