We are so pretty. We wear our hair long, parted in the middle, pulled low to either side in almost hippie ponytails. We are wearing lip-gloss we bought at the Woolworth’s with money we made off babysitting the neighbor kids. We always babysat together because neither one of us wanted to be alone in their house late at night. They always stayed out late. The girls always went to bed easy. We would root through the fridge and poke our fingers into custards and leftover stews. If we liked it, we ate it. They didn’t mind. We drank juice from the jar of maraschino cherries. We sipped from the open bottle of wine. They didn’t notice.
By ten on those nights we were sitting on the couch, each snuggled into a corner of their couch watching Friday Night Frights on the television. We watched it with blankets pulled up to our ears. Margaret had seen this one already because she had older sisters, and they watched scary movies. Her oldest sister had cable TV back when no one had cable TV. When we babysat her sister’s kids, we watched MTV and ate potato chips from the big Hussmann can that her sister would buy every week. We watched videos by Blue Öyster Cult, and Journey, and Meatloaf and it felt like a miracle.
“I don’t like this one,” I would say.
“You don’t know what you like,” Margaret would answer. She was right. Everything was new to us–MTV, Blue Öyster Cult, cute boys who lived in the apartment building. We were not yet thirteen.
We are so pretty. We are wearing lip-gloss that tastes like rootbeer. She wants to buy the bubble gum flavor, but I insist on rootbeer. We take the bus to the mall. We wear our hair in almost hippie ponytails, lying flat in front on either side. Margaret’s hair is long and black and thick, it reaches down to her cleavage. I envy her cleavage and her hair. My body is scrawny, my hair thin, and blonde–dishwater blonde as my grandma would say. She wants my blue eyes and my skinny legs. I want her thick hair and her cleavage.
She is saving for a stereo, so I am also saving for a stereo. The one she picks out at the Woolworth’s has speakers that are half as tall as me. She’s short. She says that they are the perfect height for her. I say, that’s a bad way to think about it, that she’ll grow taller, and then what? She says she’ll always be short, and who cares. She is the shortest of her sisters and the youngest, the change of life baby. Her sisters think she’s spoiled. I wish I had an older sister, just one. She doesn’t understand why it matters, but it matters to me. We are so young. We are so fragile, balancing on tiptoes at the edge of life, before we lost our tails. We are so pretty.
Angela Doll Carlson is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist whose work has appeared in publications such as St. Katherine Review, Rock & Sling, Ruminate, and Relief. She has published two books: Nearly Orthodox and Garden in the East: The Spiritual Life of the Body.