Perhaps I wouldn’t be here writing this story. If my mother had sons, perhaps she would have passed me, a stranger on the street, and stopped to smile, not at her roly-poly daughter in a tight tweed coat with black velvet collar, but a person she liked. Perhaps that time I tried to snuggle up in the double bed when The Honeymooners was on, she would have let me. And not said, Leave me alone, go find your father, you’re his favorite aren’t you? Perhaps she didn’t know what her husband my father that man did to little girls who were his favorite. Perhaps she did know and only pretended she didn’t. Someone must have bought me pretty-in-pink babydoll pajamas. Taught me how to show off my dimples. Sat me on the creamy silk stool facing the three-mirrored vanity and twirled my hair into ringlets, singing, “There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead, When she was good, She was very very good, But when she was bad....”
Or perhaps I was born that way like her husband my father that man said, flirting with any husband father man who happened my way. Or perhaps she tried to protect me. When she sent me to my room. Told me to lock the door. Bought me my own princess telephone. Taught me how to dial the operator and say, Police, come quick, it’s an emergency! Told me to scream as loud as I could if any husband father man ever put his hand on my ... or put my hand on his. Perhaps that’s why, after my father’s her husband’s that man’s death, she said, Take that wedding photo off the wall, lay it facedown on the dresser. Perhaps I said, We never have to look at your husband my father that man again. Perhaps that was the moment we both smiled across the three-way-mirror. And then there was lipstick. Old and new, red, pink, and coral, until our lips, hers and mine, were perfect. No perhapsing about it.
Bio: Roberta Beary
