“Twenty questions,” Mother says, which is a warning. And then she says, “I’m meeting someone.”
A man, of course. Always a man. Which one? Mother is seeing two men these days. Will she be meeting Chip or the Troll? I hate them both, but the white suit and the violet perfume probably mean Chip. She wears another dress, another perfume that looks like a poison apple and is actually called Poison, for the Troll. It smells like spiced secrets. The lipstick she has on (that I love) is the one she wears for them all: Russet Moon by Chanel, a deep red that makes Mother’s mouth look like it’s bleeding. The shiny red shoes on her feet are for all of them too. Not my favorites. My favorites are still in her bedroom closet, second shoe shelf from the bottom, third pair from the left. But these are pretty too. I look at Mother’s strappy feet, her made-up face with the Russet Moon mouth, her hair done by Nicholas, for whom she is someone beautiful.
“Can I come?”
“Not today, Sunshine.”
“Why not?” There’s a whine in my voice. A whine I can’t control. A whine Mother hates. I watch her wince at the sound of me. Touch her white hand to her white temple like I’m too much. I’ve followed her into her bedroom, where she’s pulled a hat from the closet and set it on the bed by her purse. The broad-brimmed white hat with the beautiful black ribbon to protect her face from the sun. Because the sun is our mortal enemy, sweetie, Mother always says.
Why?
Because it makes us age and it makes us tan. And we don’t want that. We certainly don’t want to age. As for tanning, it’s wonderful when we have it naturally like you, of course, she always says to me, cupping my face in her hands. You’re one of the lucky ones, Sunshine. But when we’re ghosts like your poor Mother, we need to be exceedingly careful. I always thought the sun was nice. In school, whenever I drew the sun in pictures, I made a smiling face inside the yellow circle in the sky. Made it smile over the flowers below, also smiling, and the spiky green grass. But ever since I learned the truth from Mother, I put a frown in the sun. I give him angry eyes. Mean eyebrows, like hairy, upside-down vees. He shoots death rays down onto the beautiful maiden’s hat, who is sitting below on the grass.
Why do you make the sun so cruel-looking, dear? Ms. Said asked me, looking over my shoulder at my drawing on the desk. Ms. Said is Egyptian like me. But fully, not half. Which is lovely, Mother said.
Because the sun makes us dark, I told Ms. Said. And Ms. Said was concerned. She was already very concerned that most of my drawings featured girls who looked nothing like me. They were either blond and green-eyed like my secret best friend, Stacey, or they were red-haired and blue-eyed like Mother, and they kept looking at themselves in the mirror. There was always a mirror in my pictures, even when they were outside.
It’s called imagination, Mother told Ms. Said when Ms. Said brought her into the school to talk about the pictures. She’d laid them all out on the desk, to my great shame. All my angry red suns and my beautiful maidens and my shining mirrors.
Is that what it’s called? Ms. Said asked, and Mother didn’t answer, just stared at my pictures. Her sunglasses were on, so I couldn’t see her eyes. Ms. Said is the one who told me my last name, Nour, means “divine light,” did I know that? I thought Nour meant something dark like the French word for black. Noir, Nour, a lot of French people get it confused, including Grand-Maman. Nour, Ms. Said said. Looks like “night” but means “light,” remember that. Mother’s name means “of the gardens.” No one looks at Mother’s name with narrowed eyes or says it like a question. Noelle Des Jardins, they say, and I know they see a beautiful snowy garden like I do. Her face offers a picture. The red of her lips and blue of her eyes like flowers poking out of the white.
“Belle,” Mother says now, “please just stay here and be good for Grand-Maman, okay?”
“But I don’t want to be good for Grand-Maman!” Now I’m shouting. Grand-Maman’s evil, I want to tell Mother. I want to tell her about Grand-Maman’s eyes. How they can go from light brown to shining black in an instant. How the blackness seems to fill her whole eye, even the white. This happens whenever she tells me about the end of the world, how it’s coming soon. She’ll start the minute Mother leaves. Belle, she’ll hiss from her white island of couch. Viens ici. But there is never time to tell Mother because she’s always going somewhere.
“Mom, please let me come with—”
“No, Belle.” And the words are like a slap. My face stings with it. For a minute, Mother looks cruel. It feels like her beauty was only a disguise. This thin, hard mouth, these flashing eyes, this jaw of stone—this is the truth of her face.
“Stay. Here. Stay here and be good and don’t go in my room.”
“I don’t!” I shriek. I’m a terrible liar. I feel my face go red. I look at the floor, where I see my foot’s jittering. I can feel her staring at me, not like she’s mad, but like she’s sorry for me. She reaches into her purse. Lights one of her long cigarettes. Look what I’ve done. I’ve made her smoke. She’s been trying to give it up, she really has, but she never will with me around. Whining. She exhales a plume of smoke into my face.
“Play with your dolls or something, all right? I guess you’re a little old for those now. Read one of your fairy-tale books, how about that?” She makes it sound like such a fun time. Like I haven’t read these books a thousand times before.
“All right,” I say.
“Chin up, Sunshine. No more long face. Or else what? What do we say?”
“It’ll freeze that way,” I finish.
“That’s right. And we don’t want that, trust me.” And she does an impression of me pouting. Makes her eyes storm cloudy and sticks her lower lip out really far. I don’t want to laugh, but I do. And Mother smiles. Pats my head. “Much better.” Kisses the air near my face three times. I catch a whiff of her violets and smoke, the waxy animal smell of her lipstick.
“Bring me back something?” I call after her. Pathetic. I don’t know the meaning of the word yet, but the minute I heard Mother use it about someone, I knew that’s the word I was. She’s already going out the door, but she hears me.
“Like what?” she calls over her shoulder.