“You’re mean,” Allen said. “And ugly. Look how ugly.” He held up his drawing. It was a portrait of me, my face spackled in red and pink marks. I understood completely why people hit their children.
I walked over to Allen and slammed the plate down on the table. “Eat your sandwich.”
On my way to the bathroom, I heard Allen yelp and sputter in disgust. He’d gotten a taste of the onions.
* * *
When I wanted to despair over my reflection, there was no better place than my mother’s bathroom, where the light was so bright you could hear it fritzing in your skull. Sometimes I played a sick game with myself in the mirror. Would I rather have a million dollars to run away with or perfect skin? Still married to CJ or not a mark on me? I had yet to come up with a scenario in which I did not choose my own skin. What did that say about me?
It’s just that, without acne, I was sure I could handle it. Whatever crippling remarks my family made about me. I could stop twisting myself into unnatural configurations, trying to hide whichever side of my face offended most that day, at angles that were starting to give me chronic muscle aches. My family may be less disgusted with me if I were beautiful, or maybe their disgust wouldn’t sting so much if I didn’t feel so ugly all the time.
I twisted the tap and let the water run until it steamed. There was a pimple that had come to a head over the course of the morning. All the magazines tell you not to pick. Picking causes scarring. Picking doubles the length of time it takes for the blemish to heal. These are lies told by women with occasionally imperfect skin. Pimples leave marks behind whether you touch them or not, and they clear up in one or two days if you wait until they’re at their ripest to release them. Only rookies pick when the blemish is freshly forming, and this I can confirm will extend the life of the bump. I should write a story for Cosmopolitan. “How to Deal with Pimples by Someone Who Actually Has Pimples.”
I was blotting away a mixture of goo and blood when I heard a knock at the door. The only indication that Allen had gone to answer it was the sound of his chair scraping the linoleum floor in the kitchen. Allen was light as a feather, just like my sister-in-law, who was pint-sized and adorable and looked up at me through her blond eyelashes as if I were a gruesome spinster, though she hadn’t always seen me that way.
“Aunt Ruth!” Allen shouted.
I blotted my chin one last time for whomever was at the front door. Probably a Bible salesman, and maybe I would buy one. I could never say no to anyone so desperate. And a family of so-called Catholics should probably have at least one Bible in the house.
Only pick when you have at least thirty minutes of free time, I thought about adding to my article as I made my way to the stairs. That’s how long it takes for the crater to stop oozing, so you can spackle it in foundation and powder and get on with your day.
“Aunt Ruuu-uthhhh!” Allen said again, this time in a sort of teasing, come and find me way. Like we were playing hide-and-seek.
“Comiiing!” I called back, matching him.
Halfway down the stairs, I stopped and brought my hand to my chin in a panic. Had I been seen, or was there still time to run back and slap on some emergency cover-up?
“There she is,” Allen said to Tina, outing me.
Tina had been crouched down, speaking to Allen eye to eye. She stood and tucked her straight yellow hair behind her ear, a pantomime of a shy schoolgirl, down to the neat cashmere coat buttoned to the neck. “Ruth!” She waved as though we were in a large crowd and she had spotted me first. “Hi! Sorry to drop by unannounced like this. But I found this under the passenger seat.” She was pinching something between her two fingers, a bell about to ring. Reluctantly, I descended another stair to get a better look and realized it was the bottle of my favorite foundation, the expensive one I’d had to special-order from a store in New Orleans when they stopped carrying my shade at Frederick & Nelson.
“Oh, wow, thank you,” I said, and I meant it. That stuff had been seven dollars an ounce and worth every penny. I had backups, of course, which I used on days I wasn’t planning to leave the house. I’d gone nowhere since Tina had dropped me off last and hadn’t realized it was missing.
“What is it?” Allen had to ask.
“It’s makeup,” Tina said, and I braced myself for whatever debilitating comment Allen would make in front of her. My aunt Ruth needs it, probably. But before he could, Tina pretended to paint it on his face, and Allen squealed in delight.
“Well, thanks,” I said. I was still standing halfway up the stairs. I didn’t want to get too close, not with a seeping abscess on my face.