Beauty

Momma was starting a beauty routine that she read about in a magazine. I hurried to pull up my step stool to the washstand to watch. She didn’t forbid me, so that was enough to assure myself I could stay.

She prepared hot water in the teakettle and brought the steaming, scalding water to the wash basin, and poured it in to my whispered, “Be careful-be-careful-be careful, Momma!”

She frowned at me, and proceeded to wash her face carefully leaning toward the mirror over the basin. Then to my horror she reached into the medicine cabinet and took up Daddy’s razor. I must have cried out, because she gave me ‘the look’, and said, “Hush!” I knew that meant not just now, but at future venues when the subject of razor safety arose.

Her next thing was, she leaned toward the mirror with the razor and in choppy strokes, she cut off her eye brows! I clapped my hands to my own to reassure myself that mine were safe. And then she stepped to the match holder and took out a wooden match and scratched it on the striking strip. It flared right up and burned brightly for a bit. She blew it out, thankfully, and brought it to the mirror. I was open mouthed with amazement as she drew black lines of char where her eyebrows used to be.

Next, she got a tiny red box out of the medicine cabinet and opened it to find a little bitty brush and some black stuff. She licked the brush, (ewwww!) and rubbed the bristles it in the black, and started toward her eye with it. I closed my eyes against such a dangerous act. When I looked again she was brushing this wet wax on her eye winkers! I couldn’t see any change, although it looked like it might be painful.

Momma took out her lipstick. I was familiar with it and had used it some when she didn’t know it. She made a duck mouth when she put it on. I liked her look in lipstick. But alas, she put it on her finger and dotted it onto her cheeks. Polka dots of red up by her eyes and nose. Then she rubbed it all off with toilet paper. She looked carefully in the mirror and seemed to be satisfied, so she took up her big tan powder puff and patted clouds of sweet smelling powder over her face obliterating all the improvements she had made.

There was a bottle of perfume on Momma’s dresser. I was absolutely forbidden to touch ever. She said it was just like White Shoulders, but lots cheaper. White Shoulders was the best perfume in the world, she proclaimed, and must only be used by grown up women. Sometimes for Sunday school she put just a tiny drop on my offering hanky so I wouldn’t lose the pennies tied up in the corner. Now she dabbed it behind her ear lobes; only one drop on each. How would anyone smell it I wondered? But she was obviously satisfied.

“Are you through?” I asked. “Well I am glad I’m not a grown up lady I guess. It looks dangerous!”

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