Clown Girl - Monica Drake [26]
I twisted my hair into a high topknot. “‘Greed has poisoned men’s souls,’” I said, and slid a bobby pin in.
“Hell-o?” Crack said. “Say what?”
“…has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.”
Crack painted on her tiny Chaplin mustache. “Look, I’m not exactly taking it out of your hide. I don’t know what you’re getting at, but I’m here to make a buck…”
I said, “Just quoting Chaplin. I’ve sure you’ve seen The Great Dictator.” I tucked in more hairpins to keep my hair off my face and flat under the bowler.
Matey piped up: “Like, how do you quote a silent flick? Riddle me that one.”
I finished pinning my hair and said, “You’re doing that on purpose, I hope.”
“Don’t count on it,” Crack said. With her tiny mustache and the slick hairpiece, Crack looked halfway to her own dictatorship.
I said, “So, what kind of fetishes are we selling tonight? Chaplin and hairbrush spankings, for the prom crowd?” I pulled my makeup palette from the bag and found a sponge in a plastic Baggie. I ran the sponge under cool tap water. I touched one edge of the sponge to the white cake of base.
Crack said, “Again, Miss High Artiste, it’s not about prom, see? It’s corporate stuff. Call it a logo, branding, whatever they want to call it, but underneath, it’s a fetish. A fetish, by any other name, is still the big bucks.” She closed one eye and used a long paintbrush to circle her eye with black. “Matey knows about fetishes, right, Mate?”
Matey said, “Hey, fetish? Me? Nah, these clothes were fresh this morning.” She bent one foot up, hopped in a circle, and tried to sniff her shoe. Her face was white, her hair pulled back by a dozen tiny bands. She grabbed the counter and swung herself back up to face the mirror, stuck her bowler on her head, and offered a nightmare smile.
“Cover the bruises,” Crack said. She smacked Matey on one bruised forearm. “These corporate yahoos ponied up for their own style fetish, not S&M, you read me? A little wear and tear takes the shine off the illusion.”
Matey dug in her bag and came up with Flesh Tones Cream, shade: sallow. She dropped the tube on the counter. Farther down the wall of mirrors, a prom girl ran a line of silver eye shadow over her eyes, same movements as me and Crack and Matey, different color was all. Crack drew on eyebrows. “They want Chaplin, we’ll be Chaplin, see? If they want their mamas, I say play mama for enough cash. If we give ’em what they want, they’ll find a reason to have us back. High demand, high demand. That’s us. Mark my words, ladies.”
I touched up the white makeup along my chin.
Matey drew a heavy, black, straight line over her thin, arched eyebrows. Her arms were like sticks, her elbows sharp. The white insides of her arms were marked with thumbprint bruises. I wondered if the rumors were true, that Matey was an S&M clown for hire, into the degradation, catering to coulrophiles.
“Juggling pins lately?” I asked, hopeful. Pins caused those kinds of bruises. Sometimes.
Matey glanced at me, didn’t bother to answer. Her makeup cracked around her eyes; her eyes were puffy. I felt a flicker of sadness, but the sadness wasn’t really about Matey. It was bigger than that. I leaned into the mirror, drew on my own lips, and joined every last prom queen in line doing almost the same. We were a sad parade of longing, those lip painters and me, humans trying our hardest. Mostly, I felt the missing life of my tiny baby, my tiny Rexie, who never even made it into this crappy world.
Baby Rexie never had a chance to be a sucker, a chump, a prince, an S&M clown. Whatever he or she might’ve been. And then I thought of my parents,