The Right Shade

I never leave home without my lipstick. Even if sometimes I don’t know where home is. My lipstick is my permission. To be whoever I want to be for the day. And every day I choose to be someone else.

If I choose pink, a pale and glossy version of peach, I become the 8-year-old girl I once was. When I used to watch my mother put on her make-up before going out with my father for the evening.

After they had both left, I would stand in front of my mother’s dressing table and pick up her lipstick. Then I would carefully put it on, trying very hard not to go beyond the lines.

What was my name? Strangely, now that you ask me, I can’t remember. My father used to call me Precious. In full, Precious Heart. They all used to call me Precious, I think. Now no one remembers my name. I’m referred to as ‘her,’ ‘she’ or ‘that old woman’. I don’t mind.

That’s the funny thing, now. People don’t see me. They walk past me, talk over me and decide on my behalf. No one asks my opinion. I have always had one.

It was an unusual shade of red. Not a red I was used to. Neither was it as shiny as I expected it to be.

It was a shade of red that needed complementing. On that day, I learned that quickly. By a perfect set of pearly, white teeth. A pouting pair of soft lips. A porcelain, unblemished skin highlighted by the palest of blushes.

I knew then that only a certain kind of woman could wear that shade of red. When I saw her wearing that red lipstick, I wanted to become that woman.

In a room full of people, she was alone. Dressed beautifully from head to toe, not a thread out of place. That day only her face was slightly marred by distress, her eyes red. All around her, people whispered and talked softly, but I knew she only listened to what was in her head.

I liked that independence. She seemed free, unfettered by expectations. An aura surrounded her. She was who she was.

On that day, when I first saw her, she was the only one wearing a lipstick that red. A shade so shocking that other women looked away. But the men looked at her.

She was at my father’s funeral.

Creating Character Workshop by Sharon Bakar, Language Works Hill Literacy, April 2015