The pushed back door swung heavily back on her heel, causing her to stumble forward. For a second, she freezes, at the thought of whether she’s been seen — how many she’s been seen by. But only for a second. She grips the edges of her long-sleeve hoodie with chipped nailed fingertips and looks ahead.
The multi-colored aisles are bright and colorful, so much so that the sliver of a child left inside her brings a candy store to her mind’s eye. A white woman wearing mostly black smiles fakely at her — “Welcome!” — and turns to walk away before she can fit her mouth to any words. So she too, turns and walks down the first aisle her stride takes her toward.
She never wore any make-up growing up so she didn’t know what to look for. She’d never even wanted to. She had light brown skin so maybe that was why. Brown enough to bronze and glow on long days full of sun, and light enough that no one ever told her to avoid that. Once in middle school, in a bathroom, another girl asked her where she got her eyebrows done. I don’t, she’d replied. Lucky, the girl said back. Yes, she’d been a pretty girl, who boys would push down and run away from smiling, saying, I didn’t do anything! to the teachers if she cried, and now she was a pretty woman, who —
“Can I help you?” She meets another white woman in mostly black, and the kind of smile that doesn’t mean anything.
“I don’t really wear make-up,” she replies, gazing down the aisle beside her at all the circular jars of skintone powder. “I just need to find something my complexion that could cover a small rash.”
That morning she woke up she felt — alright. She’d felt a little off, a little — messy. Clothes were on the floor beside her bed, overtop her laptop, which she reached down to pick up and that’s when she felt it. A stinging softness on her back that drew her to the mirror to look.
“You have a good weekend?”
She didn’t answer at first. Her eyes snapped away from all the thoughts she’d been thinking and back to the face of the woman squeezing a pale cream onto her hands and bringing those hands up to her face.
“Just applying some primer.”
She would have nodded but, for obvious reasons… “Yeah,” she replied.
And then the woman didn’t talk again, which she preferred. She just dapped, and brushed all over her face. Until she caught a glimpse of the bruise trailing down her neck. “Is this what you want covered,” she asked, with an edge of something in her voice — an edge of something Anita looked for in her eyes, but —
“Yes,” she said.
And she turned her head to make space, so the woman dapped and brushed right there. Where it also felt soft and a little stung. And maybe Anita just imagined it but, the brushes felt — maybe there was a touch of a tremble in them.
Anita in the chair. The woman on her feet. One bright, multicolored, backlit wall pouring light on them as it stretched out in either direction, and other aisles pushing back toward the center of the store away from them — and there were people in those aisles, mulling through, picking up bottles and setting them back down with quiet clinks, talking to each other, admiring and suggesting, but — they may as well have not existed.
“There, I don’t think anyone will notice that.” And a mirror was brought to her face.
She nodded. “I’ll take it and the brush.” One bottle of foundation. One brush. A little over $90 on the screen at the register. Still somehow, she didn’t blink. Just bought. Just took the bag. Just pushed through the door to sit in her car and —
Her phone vibrated in cup holder she’d forgotten it in. Several missed messages starting with,
Kavanaugh’s confirmed. You hear?
And ending with,
How’d your date go??? Details???
She put it down, leaned back, closed her eyes, and before she opened them, tears were running down her cheeks, visible rivers of salt water breaking through fresh foundation — she kicked her legs and swung her arms and screamed at the top of her lungs until she heard the tires of the cars in the parking lot again and realized she had no more sound left.
But… maybe one more time?
Maybe if she screamed one more time, she’d hit the decibal at which the world would stumble, freeze, and look around to see what happened. To just shut its mouth and listen. To put the bright, white lights on the purple-brown bruises and refuse to touch a brush to them. To look for a fingerprint. To say, “I’m so sorry.” To ask, “What can we do?” or any any any kind of human response.
But.
In the highest courts and the lowest mental valley of her self, she knew the world that she was living in. And she had a class meeting in a few minutes. And she’d already be late. So she wiped her face and checked her neck in the car mirror. No, no one ever needed to know.
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