Ugly People Don't Take Showers
My mother was at her mirror one day, a thousand light bulbs outlined the mirror, making sure to highlight every blemish on her face. She applied her makeup with precision and dexterity, just as she had done in the car all those years ago. I had long since given up trying to wear her makeup. I sat and watched, sitting a little behind her on a small stool. I asked her if I was beautiful. She had been covering a small scar on her cheek with powder. Her hand stopped, and the brown dust from the poof fell silently like snow onto the white counter. She scrunched her perfectly arched eyebrows in confusion, as she looked at my reflection. “What?”, she asks. I repeat the question. She replied, “Of course you’re beautiful. You look just like me. Don’t you think I’m beautiful?” I did think my mom was beautiful, and I knew that I looked like her, I looked exactly like her. Our reflections matched almost precisely as she continued powdering her face in the mirror and I watched silently. I still couldn’t help feeling like there was something she had that I didn’t. Something that she had given to Denise but didn’t think was necessary to give to me.
It was attention. My mother had spent so much of her time trying provide for us, that she never had time to tell me things that didn’t matter, like I was beautiful, or special. She was so busy, she didn’t know I’d had a spelling test every Friday since the first grade, until I was 11. Now that she was married, and had one steady job instead of three, she had the time to cuddle with Denise, and rock her to sleep, and tell her she was cute, and tickle her. I was never jealous of my sister, I was more upset at my mother. It took me a long time to understand that Denise and I had grown up at totally different times, and there were things I had experienced that Denise wouldn’t. Like playing outside all day, or lighting all of the candles in the house and pretending they were stars because the electricity had been shut off again.
The summer after my sophomore year, I went to Philadelphia to stay with my aunt and my cousin, Chyna for two months. I loved the city. It was gritty, and the stench from hot trash was almost unbearable. Flies buzzed lazily around the damp, brown faces of the people sitting on the blue, chipped porches of their red brick row houses. My aunt lived across the street from an old burnt down motel, and everyday, the drug fiends would play cards on old wooden crates in front of the motel to keep their minds and hands busy, toothlessly smiling and laughing at their own guile and trickery. There was a park right in the middle of the neighborhood. It didn’t really fit. It was strange to see greenery in the middle of this cement jungle. It was ivy vines around telephone poles, and the trees and the streetlights were the same height. There was a pool in the park, and when it became too hot to sit on the metal slide, my cousin, her friends, and I would change into our bathing suits and cool off. Alas, a boy. He was staring at me. I had never had a boy stare at me like that. I could feel exactly where his eyes were going as they swept over me. They left what felt like two small holes in my skin where they had rested. After awhile, it was almost necessary for me to get in the pool, I felt like his eyes had singed me in enough inappropriate places.
It was the first time, in a long time, that I felt desirable, or beautiful. This is how Alaina must feel, this is how Marilyn Monroe must’ve felt, I felt clever and playful. I felt like I smelled good, I felt delicate and dainty. I felt like my smile sparkled and my hair shined. I felt like I could never do anything un-lady like, like fart or burp or pick my nose, no, I was desirable. But then I felt him grip me tighter, tighter than the-getting-ready-to dunk-me-in-the-pool-grip. Then through his swimming trunks I felt something hard and disgusting. He moved his hips back and forth, over and over again in the public pool, gripping me so I couldn’t get away. I imagined a video I had seen once, of a Chihuahua gripping onto a limp, one-eyed teddy bear, something pink and hard and disgusting moving back and forth into the poor teddy’s tail. I kneed him and swam away. Although I was disgusted, and felt dirty, something sick and dejected still felt desirable. The small sick part of me felt irresistible. I avoided the boy for the rest of the summer, realizing that most boys who grow in hard cities like West Philadelphia are bold. The amount of death, poverty, and pain they had witnessed was more to fear than something as trivial as being rejected by a girl. Whenever I did mention the boy or ask about him, my cousin wouldn’t look at me and tell me she didn’t know where he was. I eventually convinced her to take me to his house. He was sitting on his porch with some other boys. But the air was different, I didn’t feel desirable anymore. I felt stupid and desperate. My cousin asked where he had been, and why he didn’t talk to me anymore. He looked at me, and gave that same smirk Donovant had, and said, “I don’t really like you, you were just the first girl I saw, so I decided to play with your head. Did you really think I liked you? You’re ugly.” I felt like my ears were clogged, the laughter sounded chopped and screwed. I felt my cousin pull my arm, but I couldn’t move, I sat there stammering, trying to be clever and dainty and playful, trying to come up with something, anything to say.
Then I saw a girl. She peeked her head from behind the screen door and walked towards the boy. She was light-skinned, with long jet black hair, she was petite, and had to be at least a D cup. It was as if every image of beauty that I had fallen short to had manifested itself in this one girl. Her laughter sounded like bells and rang out louder than all the rest. He draped his arm around her and stuck his chin out childishly, sitting on his porch with his cronies and his woman, as if it were a throne, and my cousin and I, watching from the streets, were just lowly peasants.
I spent the remainder of my time in the bathroom, looking in the mirror and hating myself. It was the first time I had ever been called ugly to my face. It reaffirmed every flaw I thought I had. I thought that Chriszani, Keisha, Alaina, and every other girl that a boy had liked instead of me was better than me. I became a recluse, obsessing over one small moment in my life, trying to figure out if there was something I had done wrong. I listened to Radiohead’s “Creep” over and over again. I was Howard Hughes in the screening room, peeing in milk bottles and misspelling the word quarantine. I paid no attention to hygiene. Ugly people don’t need showers. I cried way too much to wash my face anyway.
My aunt got tired of me “hogging up the bathroom.” Didn’t she know I was depressed? She finally convinced me to unlock the door and let her do her makeup for her date that night. I watched her line her lips with a chestnut colored liner, and apply mascara to too long lashes, and eyeliner to the lids of eyes that shone like two whole worlds.
She was my mother’s sister. They looked exactly alike. We looked exactly alike. We were mirrors looking into mirrors, looking into mirrors, infinite and opalescent instances of beauty. We struggled with our own hardships, trying to find happiness and peace of mind in another person. We covered up our blemishes and hid our sadness, but it didn’t mean we weren’t beautiful. I hadn’t gone through half of the hardships my aunt or my mother had endured. I realized that my level of confidence shouldn’t be based on whether or not a boy liked me, or how many people called me pretty, but on my level of perseverance. I ignored everything I had went through. I had ignored my intelligence.
I had spent so much time concentrating on one trivial aspect of who I was. I felt like I didn’t know myself. Who was this sarcastic, skinny girl? Who was this doe-eyed, know-it-all? Who was this brash, impulsive, book-worm? Khadijah, and she took showers.
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