SHE MOVED IN AND SLEPT THAT FIRST NIGHT ON THE couch in the front room. In the morning they introduced her to Joy Rae and Richie. The two children looked at her with suspicion and said nothing to her. After they left for school, she went back to sleep until noon, and then took a shower while Betty made lunch.
The girl soon grew bored in the trailer and went out and walked downtown in the bright cold windy afternoon in her black raincoat and wandered into the stores. She loitered in Weiger’s Drug and at Schulte’s Department Store she looked at clothes hanging from the metal pipe racks. She tried on a long pink evening gown with a low-cut bodice while a nervous clerk watched her. The dress suited her tall body and made her look older and more sophisticated. For a long time she studied herself in the mirrors, turning to see how the dress looked from the side and the back, holding her hands as she had seen women do in magazines, then she took off the dress and put it back on the hanger and handed it to the woman. I changed my mind, she said. I wouldn’t care for it. She went outside again and crossed Second Street and walked up to the middle of the block to Duckwall’s.
In Duckwall’s she wandered back into the aisles and picked up various items and examined them, and after about fifteen minutes, while the salesclerk at the cash register was ringing up a sale, she pocketed a tube of lipstick and a small tin container of mascara and eye shadow, then drifted slowly away to look at hand mirrors and purses and came up to the front of the store to the stands of greeting cards, and stood there for a while reading the messages, and finally walked out of the store onto the broad sidewalk.
The children had come home on the bus by the time she returned to the trailer, and Betty then told Joy Rae to let her big sister move into her bedroom. Both of you can sleep in the same bed. You have to get to know one another sometime.
Joy Rae was upset and frightened but the girl said: I got something to show you.
What is it?
The girl turned to her mother. We’ll be all right, she said.
Because you’re sisters, Betty said.
They went down the hall to Joy Rae’s orderly bedroom. Sit down, the girl said, and shut the door.
What are you going to do?
I ain’t going to hurt you. Sit down. I want to show you something. Joy Rae sat on the bed as the girl took the lipstick and the mascara from Duckwall’s out of her purse. I’m going to show you how to make up your face, she said. How old are you?
Eleven.
Well, shit. I was already kissing boys and wearing Make a Promise lip dew by then. You’re way behind. You’re awful young-looking, aren’t you. Kind of skinny.
Joy Rae looked away. I can’t help it. It’s just the way I am.
Well, don’t worry about it. We’ll fix you up. The boys in this little shit-ass town are going to go nuts over you. They’re going to want to eat you up. She smiled. Or wish they could.
What are you going to do?
I’ll show you. Lift up your face. That’s it. Well shoot, you’re kind of pretty too, did you know that?
No.
You are. I can see it. You’re going to get prettier too. Like me.
The girl bent over her half sister and brushed mascara on her eyelashes and penciled on eyeliner. Stop blinking, she said. You want to fuck this up? You can’t blink your eyes while I’m doing this. She angled the younger girl’s chin a little and brushed on eye shadow, then stood back to inspect her and twisted open the lipstick tube and outlined the top lip and dabbed a quick deft spot on the bottom. Smooch them together, she said. Yeah, like that. But not so much.
How do I?
Like this. She showed her, then stood back again. Don’t you want to see what you look like?
Yes.
She stepped across the room and took a hand mirror from the dresser and held it in front of her. Well?
Joy Rae studied herself in the mirror, lifting her head and turning her face. Her eyes opened wider. It don’t even look like me.
That’s the point.
Can I keep it on?
Why not? I ain’t going to stop you. Girl, you’re ready to go. Then she lit a cigarette and sat down beside her on the bed.