For Beauty, For Brightening

I used to belong to her mother—a gift for her first date with the boy she had loved since they were small enough to play in mud. I smoothed beige over freckles, made her already pink cheeks pinker. 

            I saw her through her first breakup, when the boy she had loved since they were small enough to play in mud, decided he preferred the girl he had only just met. I hid the evidence of her grief, red around her eyes, splotchy around her nose. 

            I was with her in the bathroom at school months later, spreading beige over the grief still lingering in the hollows beneath her eyes, when her friend told her about the new student. That he had boldly declared his intent to ask her out. I watched her survey herself in the mirror, as if searching for a reason to say no, but she found none.

            So, I brightened shadows, I pinked pale cheeks, and I shimmered nervous cupid’s bow. She took me with her that night, tucked in her purse beside red lipstick. I was there when she fell in love. 

            There were a lot of dates after that, and I got her ready for all of them, watching her look at herself in the mirror as if delighting in a secret she shared with her reflection. And after each date, she would hold me tight in her fist with my soft hair pointing up, catching the words she sang into me as she danced around her room, looking pink and perfect and bright. 

            I swept extra shimmer along the high points of her face on prom night. I went with her for touchups, stowed between red lipstick and new diaphragm in her powder blue satin clutch. Later, I fixed salty black smudge from where mascara had run when he pushed in. But still, her reflection sparkled like the dust on her lids with this new shared secret. 

            It was not until after their wedding that her secrets darkened to something not even I could cover up. 

            I had been there of course, to brush a gold sheen across the tops of her cheekbones and clavicle. She looked so pink, so perfect, so bright, surrounded in white gauze, her smile in the mirror happy and ready.

            I remember it still, so many years later, while I nudge bronze into the hollows of Daughter’s cheeks. I snatch her nose the way we learned from her favorite makeup tutorials. I create illusions of soft angle and curve in all the right places. 

            Daughter admires our work in the mirror, shares a secret with her reflection. Defiance. But all that powder is rubbed away with oil and foam before Father returns. I hide beneath the mattress next to drying red lipstick; powders beige, bronze, and pink, translucent for setting; mascara and tweezers and eyelash curlers; small round mirror for traveling—all crushed together in powder blue satin clutch.

            A crash of glass against hard floor wakes us all from our nighttime inertia, and Daughter trembles above us. She does not get up to investigate. She knows who the crash came from, and she knows it is safer to stay still and quiet in the dark. She knows the accident that left Mother—my first cheeks, my first cupid’s bow—lying in odd angles at the foot of the stairs, was no accident. She knows Father’s glass bottles precipitated the shove. 

            After, she pulled me and drying red lipstick in blue satin clutch from the boxes at the curb before the rest of the evidence of Mother’s life was swallowed by reeking jaws of the garbage truck. She held the three of us to her budding chest that night, the only noise she allowed, her shuddering breath. 

            The first time she had used me, I had looked for happy pink, shimmering gold, the colors of Mother’s girlhood, but all I saw was an echo of Mother’s dark secret. Daughter had no powders or tools yet, but she slid me naked over the echo hiding in the space beneath her eyes, along her jaw, down the line of her nose, in the dips above her collar bones. My soft hair warmed in the journey over her skin that felt so much like Mother’s had when she was Daughter. 

            I longed to feel my first cheeks, my first cupid’s bow, while I remembered the last time I had failed to cover her secret. It had emerged from the flesh shared by her temple and the ridge around her eye. It had oozed from her swollen nose. 

            I had pressed beige into indigo violet, smoothed worry away from her brow. But she knew as much as I did that my soft hair could not sweep away the fear in her eyes. I could not reach it. I was limited. I was plastic and animal fur. I was for pinking cheeks, shimmering cupid’s bows. I was for feeling beautiful. I was for brightening moods. Not covering crimes. 

            I had watched her, not knowing it would be the last time her warm skin would touch me. The secret she had shared with her reflection hung dark and hard and heavy between them. And I had felt weary. I missed beautiful. I missed brightening. I gave up. 

            Glass against glass and the rustling of flimsy plastic fill the space around Daughter with sounds of crushing secret. Daughter trembles and breathes, shuddering, quiet above us and too still to be comfortable, even hours after Father goes to bed. 

            The next time Daughter brings me to the mirror, I see Mother’s face and I recoil, clattering on the cold bathroom floor. Daughter shakes her hand, frowning, flexes her fingers and picks me up, dips me in beige. I cringe away from Mother’s secret, blooming indigo violet on my beautiful second cheeks. I absorb all of beige, leaving none on her face. 

            My second cupid’s bow pulls me away from my terrible work, confusion carving a line between her brows. She inspects me, finds me as I always am. But I am not as I always am. I cannot be what I always was. Complicit. A cover. A protector of the dark. I am for beautiful. I am for brightening. I will not wash the beige of coming death over my second cheeks. 

            She dips me in beige again and this time I resist, pushing away powder. I will not take it with me to her face. She dabs at death’s foreshadow with me, but indigo violet remains stark against pale peach. 

            She is frustrated. Digs me hard into the powder, and I try to deny it, but I am coated by her relentless pressing. Saturated, I have no choice. I stroke indigo violet and she winces, glaring at her reflection. She does not stop until the secret is reduced to a whisper beneath beige. I see no beauty. I see no brightening. And then I am back in powder blue satin clutch with drying red lipstick that gave up long before I did. 

            I failed my first cheeks, my first cupid’s bow. I will not fail my second. 

            That night, I form my plan. 

            The following night, I execute. 

            We wait for Daughter to breathe slow and steady above us, for the house to fall into the kind of quiet that comes with sound sleep. 

            It was easy to convince them. Even drying red lipstick who has so little to offer besides this help. We are all for beauty. We are all for brightening. None of us want to be the shroud that covers the dark. 

            Drying red, beige and bronze, pink and shimmer, translucent for setting, all push and pull from powder blue satin clutch, slipping between wooden slats to the carpeted floor. Mascara and tweezers and eyelash curler, and small round mirror, follow me out next. Powder blue satin clutch is last, a crucial role to play. 

            We all slither and roll from the bedroom to the hallway, into Father’s room where my first cupid’s bow used to sleep. Where we both used to live. The air is familiar in here, her scent clinging to the space, despite Father’s purge of her. We wind our way up the wooden leg to the footboard, fall silent to the blanket. He sleeps with his mouth ajar. Perfect for powder blue satin clutch to do what we agreed. We slide up his body and take our positions around his head.

            I think of my first cheeks, the first time I touched them, brushing pink over pink, and I know that was never what she needed me for. 

            I think of my first cupid’s bow, the first time she pressed me to mottled indigo violet, and I know that was never what she needed me for. 

            We are for beauty. We are for brightening. And Father is a darkness we can no longer abide. 

            Powder blue satin clutch goes first, leaping into his mouth, shoving down into his throat, strangling the yelp before it can make it to his mouth. He jolts awake, tries to yank satin away, but eyelash curler is ready, catches a finger and curls. When a snap cuts the air that still smells like my beautiful first, he growls high-pitched through muffling blue. And then tweezers begin their work. 

            Snapping follows every attempt to bat away tweezers from their hungry plucking, spitting small bites of him onto the pillow. Mascara takes aim, shooting up Father’s nose, while beige and bronze and pink erupt, blowing into eyes wide with shock and pain. But where is fear? 

            Where is the fear that lived in the eyes above my first cheeks? Where is the fear I heard in the shuddering breath of my second cupid’s bow? 

            Small, round mirror for traveling clicks open and hovers above Father’s makeover. And then I see it. The fear. And I know that it is fear of himself. 

            Beige and bronze and pink crowd his blinking lashes, clumping around the rims of his squinting eyes, puffing in clouds up his nose as mascara twists, and turning spattered blood into mud. Delicate shimmer swoops in to highlight the tops of tweezer’s bite marks, casting muddy blood in gold glow. Setting powder waits with me, enjoying as I do, the sight of fear fading from Father’s crusty eyes as life leaves him.

            We are for beauty. We are for brightening. And this will be our last dark deed. 

            When Father stops twitching, I move into place with setting powder. What is left of beige, bronze, and pink retreat to their pots. Tweezers, bloody and caked in powdery gore, take one final bite, slimy mascara emerges, shimmer finishes its final touches. Eyelash curler does its actual job of curling Father’s lashes so mascara can coat them in black ink and slime, while drying red lipstick rubs into paling lips stretched wide around powder blue satin clutch. I dip into setting powder, sweep it over the whole secret revealed. 

            When Father is set, we all perch on his chest and admire our work. We are for beauty. We are for brightening. But we are also for enhancing what is already there. We are for calling forth what is inside. 

            We perch on his chest, and admire Father called forth, his hideous laid bare, grotesque on display. 

            We perch on his chest, and I remember my beautiful first cheeks, my precious first cupid’s bow. I remember her pink and perfect and bright, and I know, this is what she needed me for. 

. . . 

            “This used to belong to my mom,” Mother says, handing Daughter the vintage makeup brush. 

            Daughter takes it, runs small fingers along the tortoiseshell handle, ruffles small fingers through the soft sable hairs. 

            “It’s beautiful,” Daughter says. 

            “I want you to have it.”

            “Really?” Daughter’s eyes are bright. She runs sable over the curve of her pink cheek, over cupid’s bow.

            “Yes,” Mother says. “But I also want you to know that you’re perfect. You’ll never need it.”