Mother’s heels are very high, so when I try to stand up, I nearly fall down. But I grip the closet doorknob just in time. It makes a groaning noise.
“？a va?” Grand-Maman calls.
“Oui.” Quickly I teeter to Mother’s vanity. Spritz the violets-and-smoke perfume from the bottle shaped like a jagged star. Does Mother have another red lipstick? She took the best red with her, but there’s a lesser red right here in her drawer. In a blue-and-gold scratched-up case shaped like a hexagon. Rouge, it’s called. By someone named Dior. I coat my lips without looking, I don’t want to look until I’m done.
In Mother’s vanity mirror, I can see only the top half of myself, and I can’t see the shoes. She used to have a full-length mirror on the back of the bedroom door, but she took it down. The door still has the shape of the mirror though. I can see the holes where Mother nailed it there. I always thought that mirror must be magic because Mother couldn’t stop staring into it. I’d call her name again and again, Mother, Mother, Mom!, and she’d keep looking in the glass like she was in a fairy-tale trance, like it was telling her something.
Where is that mirror now? I look all around her bedroom. Nowhere.
“Belle? Are you sure you’re okay?” Grand-Maman asks from the living room.
“Fine.”
I teeter back into the closet, ready to take off the shoes. And then I see the mirror. Leaning against the closet’s back wall. Turned to the wall like it’s mad at Mother. Or maybe Mother turned it away because she was mad at the mirror, like when she makes me stand in a corner. I turn it around, quiet as I can. Heavy. There’s a crack right down the middle. Mother must have broken it once. It’s dusty and smeared, too. But at least I’ll be able see all of myself in it. As I wipe the mirror with my hand, I suddenly fill with hope. Maybe with her red shoes, and her lipstick, maybe in Mother’s mirror, I’ll see something else. Someone else. Not this face or this body. Not this skin I wish I could slip out of like a suit. Someone who makes me not want to look away. Who? I wonder.
But when I look in the mirror, what I see is what I always see. My bulbous body. My monster face. Beautiful, Mother says, but I know by now she’s lying. I can read Mother, too. Every page. My gold Egyptian bracelet—a gift from your father—glows on my hairy wrist. There’s an eye in it that’s always staring. The Eye of Horus, Mother explained when she gave it to me. An Egyptian god from mythology. You love mythology, Mother insisted.
What’s mythology?
Old stories. Like your fairy tales.
I looked at the strange, painted eye. It looked nothing at all like fairy tales to me.
Think of it as Father’s eye, Mother said. Watching over you. She never lets me take it off. I slide it off my wrist now. Let it clatter to the ground. Right away, I feel lighter. I close my eyes. A land far away. A castle by the sea. That’s the story Mother tells me each night. About the beautiful maiden. I smile because I can see her. When I close my eyes like this, I am her. Wandering the castle with my glowing skin and my hair like an S.
I open my eyes. What I see in Mother’s mirror isn’t me anymore. The crack down the middle is gone. The glass is shining. And there’s a shape. A dark shape shimmering in the mirror. Waving like smoke. Suddenly, I’m excited. Frozen as I watch the smoke gather into something.
Not something.
Someone.
A man.
An actual man in the mirror. He’s blurred around the edges, like a pond rippling after you throw a pebble in. But I see him there. He’s beautiful. Dark, waving hair. Eyes of bright blue-green. He looks like he’s from the movies. He looks like a fairy-tale prince.
“Are you a prince?” I whisper.
He smiles with his red lips. “Am I a prince?” he whispers back. Looking at me from the other side of the rippling glass. Intensely. So intensely, I shiver. His voice is playful, though. You know me, his voice says. Don’t you?
I nod. Yes. His voice, his face. I know them.
“The movies,” I whisper. “You’re from the movies.”
And just like that, he’s not blurry anymore. He comes into vivid focus. His smile shows teeth. Long and white, slightly crooked. Yes. That’s exactly right.
My heart hammers. The movie. Seeing it in the theater with Mother, then again secretly with Stacey. He’s not wearing aviator glasses or a pilot’s uniform, but otherwise it looks just like him. It is him. I know it like I know my own hammering heart; it hammered just like this in the dark theater. My breath catches.