Io

Boys

"Mom?"

"Yes, Dearest," she smiled. She always knew what was coming. She must have noticed how I'd be forever gazing at myself in the mirror lately.

"Do you..."

"Do I what, Darling?"

"Do you think... I'm pretty?"

"Very."

"Nobody seems to notice."

"That's because you're shy. You don't show it."

"Show it?"

"You need to bring it out. It's in there alright."

"How?"

"Silly goose. Why don't you ask Jolene?"

The first thing next morning, I went right over to Jolene's house and asked her straight out.

"Well," she considered, "for starters, there's your hair. Frankly Girl, it looks like a boy's."

"What do you mean, 'It looks like a boy's?'"

"It's plenty long enough. And pretty enough. You just need to fancy it up is all."

"How?"

"Child, come with me." She took me upstairs to her bedroom and sat me on top of the bedspread of her four-poster bed. Gathered round were posters of every kind of cute teen boy you could think of, country singers, singers for Jesus, rodeo boys, pale vampires, and fuzzy werewolves. Then Jolene went to her tall dresser, came back, and threw a bunch of stuff down on the bedspread next to me.

She worked behind me and started brushing my hair out. "I wish I had waves like yours. My hair is as straight as the road between Dallas and Fort Worth," she said.

"I think it's beautiful," I said a little too much like a big cat might growl. "Just like poured sunshine."

"Why, thank you, Missy."

She took a small pair of scissors and cut just the tippy tips of my hair. "To make them even is all," she said. She tied my hair back in ponytail with a pretty pink ribbon.

"Look at me."

I did. What I saw were eyes as blue as the deep ocean off the coast of Porta Christi. I don't know what it was that Jolene saw in my eyes. But the pout of her lips told me it was enough.

"Better," Jolene nodded. "But what you're wearing is not gonna cut it either."

"It's not?"

"Nope." Again, Jolene went over to her tall dresser. This time she took out some stuff from her bottom two drawers and laid them out on the bedcover next to me. "These should fit. Put them on and meet me on the front porch when you're done."

They didn't seem all that different than my own, only the colors where different—brighter. The overalls were a summer yellow, very much that of a buttercup held beneath the chin of a young girl. The short sleeve shirt was akin to the pink of a blossom that in its time would be the cherry res of a girl's lips. The socks were the white of meadow daisies their crown ringed round with fancy filigree. Lastly, the high-top's were a jaunty red with laced with white traces.

Each took to me like glass slippers to Cinderella.

When I came out on the porch, Jolene gave me the once over, nodded and pronounced me sound.

"Pretty as a picture," was what she said. Her mom thought so too. She gave us some money so we could get some ice cream.

"You look really pretty," my mother said, when I came home.

The next day, my drawers were stuffed with clothes as neat and nice as Jolene's. Each a treasures, but not as dear as Jolene's gifts.