The Queen of Make-up

Make-up was 100 percent forbidden, and because of that, I craved it all the more. Each day, while waiting for the van to take me to school, I would creep into my mother’s room, hoping to catch a glance of the mysterious magic and beauty that transformed her from an ordinary housewife into a Queen. That was what she was, I decided. The Queen of make-up.

How I loved to watch her bat on a bit of lipstick, comb on a little mascara, and circle her eyes with eyeliner before heading off with a perfume-scented hug that lingered in the air for what seemed like hours after she had left. How I craved to experience the grown-up world of unexplored colors and exotic scents.

Alas, my mother always warned me not to touch the cases. “Makeup is not for little girls.” she lectured. I would have to be content to hover around her like a scavenger, waiting to pounce on any particles of the flower perfume mist, or specks of colored dust that missed her body.

It consumed me. This dire need to be The Queen, beautiful and famous, showed itself in my childish drawings of me with red cheeks, oversized red lips, and purple-painted eyelids. I was reduced to begging, pleading even, for her to bend just slightly. If only she would allow me one day to rule the throne, I’d be satisfied enough to last a lifetime. My mother remained firm. “Make-up,” she mumbled around her lipstick, “is not for little girls.”

I plotted. I could use my own meager allowance to save up and buy my own kit. I quickly dismissed that plan. Who knows how long would that take? Hadn’t I already suffered enough? No, the only solution would be to borrow my mother’s materials. If I only took a little, she would never find out. But when? If I went to school with make-up on, my teachers woul...

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...s. I clutched at her, staring in fear at the thin marker circle, dreading the scaly claw of something unseen. Seconds clicked by, and once I was sure nothing was coming to grab me, I chanced a look at my mother’s face. She was so disappointed that I bowed my head and shuffled my feet in shame to my room, feeling her eyes on me the entire time.

I had to spend the rest of the day cleaning the marker circle off the tiles, no easy task due to the upraised planks of linoleum, and used almost an entire year of my allowance to pay for the ruined makeup. Although I had to go without candy and ice cream, the worst part was the silence bestowed upon me for the following weeks. My mother’s eyes always held that withering look of shame whenever she chose to let her eyes seek mine.

But, for that brief moment, I was Queen and I will forever remember my time in the spotlight.