momma's pride and joy

What Ma Wants

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."