Gynophagia Chronicles: Samantha
Wednesday, August 26, 9pm
The Wells Home, 1110 Beagle St. San Ramon CA.
From Samantha Marie Wells’ Memoirs
If Jimmy were GQ boy, Danielle is fast becoming Fashion Slavegirl. That also happens to be the title of a popular magazine, though Danielle by far prefers London Calling. “Fashion Slavegirl is for white trash,” she would tell you. Danielle had nothing if not standards...
All evening she directed Celine and gave both Becca and me a complete make-over that, amazingly enough, did not completely infringe on my time.
It was in an issue of London Calling, in fact, that Danielle found the step by step makeover guide she used on us. Soak hair in beer and egg whites. Rinse with lemon juice, etc.… cleanse skin with the same lemon juice… etc., et al, ad-nausea.
Now, our house had all five bedrooms upstairs back then. Downstairs is our living room-dining room which is pretty much a very large front room. To the extreme left is the main staircase. The back end, on the right, is the kitchen. On the left is the main bathroom, which is huge. It has the laundry room area attached in back of it almost as an afterthought. So when there is any commotion in the going on in the kitchen, any one in either the main bathroom or the laundry room gets to be the audience.
Jenna and Jimmy were putting on quite a show tonight, too. They’d been selected by Mom and Daddy to cook for the rest of us on “Adult Night, or, as everyone else likes to call it, Wednesday Evening. They always return between midnight and two, usually with Daddy carrying Mom, lock themselves in the master bedroom and… well… knock boots almost as noisily as Jenna and Jimmy were being now as they argued over who was in charge of what for dinner. Now, this end result, Mom and Dad, not dinner, is brought on by what Mom always describes as sitting in other people’s hot tubs and drinking wine. Must be good wine.
In the meantime, Grace could be heard trying to broker peace between Fireball and GQ Boy, so we all might get something to eat before the boots started knocking.
It was, of course, my laundry night as well. Twelve days of dirty cloths I had done in four loads, the last of which was in the wash now, and I’d soon be hanging it on the cloths line. While I did that, Danielle would buzz around Becca like a hen constantly referring back to her stack of magazines, especially the one with none other than Princess Caroline on the cover. Okay, the fist one of London Calling with her grace on the cover. No, the one from the Début into Society that year, and not the baby pictures!
Please remember that Danielle was only thirteen years old that year! Of course she loathed and loved boys and had that cruel streak all girls her aged do in the agony of early puberty. She’d had braces for a year, and had just had them off. Now that she could smile with pride, it brought her an intense sense of shame if any one of her family looked less than perfect! I was, along with Becca, the first battlefield in her campaign against ugliness in her world. Wait till I tell you what she did to Eric!
Anyway, Celine, the quietest among us, followed Danielle’s instructions as best she could, never once complaining.
“The thing, no, no, yes! That!” was about as coherent a direction as Danielle was capable of giving. Poor Celine, bless her, was as patient as Job. Tenderly, she cared for our scalps and faces as if she were caring for a newborn’s, though she confessed later she had no clue at all what she’d been doing.
Danielle even had Celine applying our make-up. Though, all of in my family were fairly competent with it by the time we were thirteen. Even so, the whole exercise ate up my evening. We weren’t done till ten. Nor was dinner. The four of us, Danielle, Celine, Becca and I could not have cared less, however. We stood at the enormous main bathroom mirror completely speechless.
Becca was gone. In her place was Reba, the Jewish Princess. I know that sounds derogatory, but it’s not meant to be. I never thought of Becca as Beautiful, that’s why we all started calling her Reba from that day on. Danielle and Celine had straightened Reba’s hair to a silky smooth blanket of ochre locks that billowed above her crown as if she wore a fall. The make-up Danielle applied was light, but the blue shadow over Reba’s dark eyes brought out their lustre. Ruby red lipstick gave her natural olive colouring the illusion of being lighter.
My hair liked it seemed to want to always, straight, then curling past my shoulders. Danielle had parted it slightly to the left than I previously had, hanging more of it on the right like a curtain. I liked, very much, how it framed my face, and have worn it that way ever since. Brown eye shadow that was barely there and lip-gloss, a slight bit of rouge on my cheeks. I felt amazing. I couldn’t help but hug Danielle and Celine and thank them profusely.
The proof in it was when the four of us came out of the bathroom and into the Kitchen War Zone, all of it stopped.
Thursday, August 27
As usual, Gracie was the first one awake. And with her help, I was still the fist downstairs. At his usual place, Daddy sat reading the Amador Herald while Mom cooked raisin oatmeal.
Mom turned, as she always did, to greet my arrival, her serene smile vanished, her jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. I can’t ever get used to that feeling. The ultimate complement a woman can receive. She had always been my ideal of beauty, and she raised the bar in that moment with her own expression. But it was all for me!
It passed quickly enough as Patti and Miki arrived.
“I did not!” Patty was whining. “Mo-om!”
“Mom, will you tell her to quit going through my things?” Miki complained.
“I didn’t touch anything!” Patti protested.
“Then who did?” Miki countered.
“Okay-STOP!” Mom said. “Miki, what is the problem?”
“She took my sewing kit and won’t give it back!”
“Did not!”
“STOP!” Mom said again. “Miki, I have your sewing kit. I borrowed it yesterday and I forgot to put it back. Now apologize to your sister!”
“But Mo-o-o-om!”
“No buts! Apologize or your grounded for the weekend!”
Miki relented and apologized. As much as those two could hate on each other, they could turn around and love on each other just as fast and mean it. They were best of friends by the time we left for school that morning.
My pulse was still quick from the look on Mom’s face earlier. The distraction had not diminished it one iota. I took the discarded front section of the Herald from Daddy’s paper and read it as I ate, being as quiet as possible.
However, when Danielle and Celine appeared, the conversation quickly turned back to my makeover. Daddy heaped praise upon them mentioning more than once how beautiful I looked… Of course, Danielle was now miss popular, which had always been her goal anyway. All my other sisters started their bids to be Danielle’s next project. Even Celine was vocal and animated.
Mom moved behind me with her brush and quietly brushed my hair. Barely noticeable to me at first were her trembling fingers. I felt more than one caress on my ears and neck before it was time to go. I also caught both Daddy and Jenna giving us sideways glances. I could see Daddy gazing at her over me and she stopped, kissed my crown, and moved away.
Sloan caught up with us on the way to school, gawking at me for a moment, then turned to introduced herself to Reba before she realized who she was looking at.
“Becca?” she said in complete disbelief, before she composed herself. In moments we had talking to Reba as if Becca was long gone and Reba was a new friend.
“Guess what!” Sloan said as she and Reba met us on the way to school. It’s amazing how a girl recovers after a sibling gets culled. But Sloan never seemed phased by it even as we had walked home together on Monday.
“What?” Jenna bit.
“Miss Emerson, you know Lisa, Miss Farmer’s secretary? Camilla Harper saw them kissing in the principal’s office!”
“Okay,” Jenna said. “So all there senior home-room teachers are lesbians. Congratulations, Sloan. You win. Reba, you really do look fantastic!”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah,” Said Sloan. “So I guess we’re all screwed.”
“The only difference is,” Jenna said. “My home-room teacher doesn’t do students like yours does!”
“I like Miss Masters,” said Grace. “She’s really nice to me.”
“Duh! You’re sooo blonde!” said Sloan.
“So?”
“Amanda Taylor: she was blonde too.”
“Even so,” Reba said. “Watch her when she talks to Sam.”
“Me?”
“Yeah! She was all about you yesterday.”
“Oh, come on!”
“It’s true!” said Sloan. “The whole period it was Samantha This, Samantha That… yada, yada, yada…”
“Jealous?” asked Jenna.
“No. Better she diddles Sam then me!”
“She sure liked your interview,” said Reba.
“What interview?” asked Jenna.
“The one with Carmen Sanchez. All about bisexual women and the law,” Sloan mocked.
I know I was ten shades of red, bordering on purple. I just tried to ignore Sloan as I could not think of anything to retort with.
“When did you get that?” Jenna asked.
I sighed. “I told you all about it! Last July in the city!”
“I gotta read that,” Jenna said. “You have it?”
“No.” I said, exasperated.
“Oh,” Sloan said. “She’s being too coy She’s getting published in the Amador Herald, so you’ll see it. Everyone will.”
Having survived the sideways glances of the girls, and some gushing by some of the boys, I made it to my seat next to the window in time for class. When Miss Masters came in, she stared at me for just long enough to make me uncomfortable. I paid attention that day when Miss Masters called on me with Jenna's declaration hanging over me like an axe. And yes, if she was not at all interested, which she very well might not have been, maybe she called on me more than anyone simply because I’m a good student?
At lunch, Sloan and Reba caught up with me acting as if they'd been friends for years.
“See?” Sloan said.
“See what?”
“Girlie, your teacher wants you sooo baaad!”
“You’re imagining things!”
“Seriously,” Reba said with a concerned voice. “I thinks she’s right.”
“Look,” I said. “So what? Who cares? Why do we have to judge her about that?”
“Cuz Lezbianz get culled!” Sloan countered.
“And that really turns you on, doesn’t it Sloan!” Eric said as he strode past us.
I wheeled, but he was ignoring me. Instead his eyes were transfixed on Sloan.
“You know, Sloan,” Eric added. “They don’t just cull lesbians. They cull bitches too. I can’t tell you how much that part turns ME on!”
Sloan stood wide eyed for a pregnant moment, then ran away from us.
“God I can’t stand her,” said Eric. “I don’t see how you guys can. You okay?” he asked me directly.
“Yes,” I said. “Eric, you don’t have to come to my rescue. I can take care of myself, you know.”
“Yeah, well… okay.”
“Okay.”
“Fine,” he started to turn. “But watch yourself.”
“Fine.”
“Okay!”
We caught up with April, Danielle and Mark in our usual spot. Mark barely spoke while both Danielle and April tried to keep his attention. His eyes were, sadly, on me.