“I am a girl of color now,” she tells the mirror, again. I lay sprawled on th bed and watch her adorn herself meticulously. She brushes her long raven locks and braids them into one thick rope, adding such garish decorations as sparkling butterflies and golden flower clips. I sigh but she appears not to take notice.
“I don’t want to hear a word from you,” she tells me, her lips scowling as she brushes her eyelids with gaudy glittery pink eyeshadow. She slips on dangling gold turquoise earrings and a matching necklace around her bronze nape. I pull the sheets off and stand beside her. She looks at me from the mirror and I kneel down next to her chair. She kisses me gently on the forehead with her ruby red lips.
“You didn’t change your lipstick,” I tell her. She shrugs, gets up and wiggles her slender body into a pink sunflower dress and a lavender jacket. Her feet glide into neon purple flip flops and I withhold a cringe as she inspects herself in the mirror.
She does not ask me how she looks.
“I’m going out now,” she tells me. We kiss good-bye and I watch her open the bedroom door, a blinding flash of sunlight invading the comfortable darkness and piercing my blue eyes. She is gone and the room is back to itself again.
I crawl back into bed and turn on my side, there I am face to face with an old picture of her taken some months ago in a park just before sunrise. She is wearing a gray corset and a long jet black skirt. She had been dancing with herself nearly all night. I remember watching her hair flow freely with the wind, her brown eyes heavy with mascara always on the moon, twirling for it. She smiled a lot back then, with an exhilaration I haven’t witnessed in weeks. In the picture she is smiling, her lips a crimson red.
She kids herself. She may be able to fool herself, but not me.
I turn over and close my eyes, ready to sleep away the sun.
She didn’t change her lipstick.