Pillow forts and patchouli
In the privacy of her bedroom, before Stanley gets home, Beatrice will pretend that her name is B and nothing more. She will strip before the mirror, contort her fleshy parts, pull her breasts to her armpits until her chest turns flat. She will stand before herself, as half herself, and see someone more than herself. Feeling brave, Bea might raid Stanley’s wardrobe for a shirt and tie, carefully. She will dress herself, fold the fabric down her body until it lies in sharp angles, and stare at her alter until its returned gaze becomes too much to bear, wherein she will quickly strip herself once more, and meticulously fold the borrowed clothes back into the depths from which they came until they are returned to a state as if untouched. At that time, she will turn back to herself, redressing in the most polar items she can find: first some lace, then sheer tights, a tight dress, tall heels, gold, gold, gold- around her neck, wrists, and fingers, between her ears. Look into her eyes in the mirror. She’ll touch up that day’s makeup, put on a bright red lip, find a bottle of sweet perfume and douse herself in it until the whole room reeks of cheap floral. She will sit herself down at the kitchen table, as if about to give a lecture, a talking to, to the empty chairs and empty room, and embody the patchouli that sits centre-stage next to the candles. There she will stay to paint her nails, a dark and bleeding red, until Stanley walks in the door and asks Beatrice for tea, at which point she will become herself again, momentary lapse forgotten, and flick the kettle on.
Oh, to be a woman, June supposes. Woman. Why does that sound like a slur?
June has this vivid memory of sitting on her mother’s bed as a child and watching Beatrice try on dress after dress for an event that evening, until the bed was littered in shades of deep red and floral hues, and Mum was left standing there, sweaty with pink cheeks and slightly smudging makeup. Her hair was a mess, and it blew up and down with Beatrice’s deep breaths as she clung to her chest, gasping emptily into her wardrobe, wearing nothing but her knickers and a bra. They were black and had embroidered patterns on them, June remembers.
She stood there, frail and shaking, with her arms slightly apart from her body. Mum’s lipstick had smeared to give her mouth the impression of having been bitten raw and bloody. June thought she looked brilliant.
There was a mirror on the inside of Mum’s wardrobe door, back then, and June could see the look in her eyes- that clawing frustration. No, more than that. Not exasperation, but that breathless anger, that deep loneliness at looking into the mirror and seeing a revolting mass in your place. Of course, June couldn’t see that mass, nor recognise that look for what it was, but now she’s all too aware.
June remembers burying deep beneath the piles of soft fabrics that had amassed on the bed over the course of Mum’s breakdown- June built herself a fort, and the strong main light cast her skin into warm oranges, then pinks, then blues, depending on which dress she next crawled beneath. That was one of the last times June was allowed into Beatrice’s bedroom.
It was only shortly after that that Beatrice decided June could have the mirror instead, and it was repurposed and fitted onto the wall to the left of June’s bed without a word from Stanley, dutiful husband that he was.