Make Me Over

Women crowd in because the semi-annual lingerie sale only lasts a week. Men come in and pretend to buy for their girlfriends. Pre-teens in A cups drop in on the way after school, look at the prices and feel the thongs. Large women come in knowing that we don't carry their size. I unlock the dressing rooms for them. Then I wait and listen. I hear them groan as they try to squeeze and squeeze.

I work here afternoons and evenings, when my classes are all done, when the professional shoppers come in with the evening rush. The professional shoppers are the worst. They come with a willingness to stay until they have matched every panty to a bra. They can spot a fake from three clearance racks away. They can go through a single bin in the blink of an eye, tossing panties out of their way, rummaging through to get to the matches at the bottom. But lace, they handle delicately; they are careful not to snag. They consult with their girlfriends, so as not to get taken in by satin masquerading under the light as silk. I stay out of their way. They stampede the lesser women in their hurry to get to the cash register. Believe me, it's not at all pretty.

Sometimes I wonder if I should have just taken the work-study job the financial aid office offered me.

 I am keeping my eye on a short black woman making her way around the discounted lingerie. Her hair is pushed back from a high wide forehead and carefully tweezed brows. Her lips are painted a frosty color. She's a young woman dressed like an old woman in a deep plum business suit with a pearl pin at her lapel. A stack of bras draped across her arm, she mills around the three panty clearance bins looking for matches. The panties are divided into Extra-Small/Small, Medium, and Large/Extra-Large. She is clearly a Medium, but she searches all three bins indiscriminately. She pulls out panties from the Extra-Small/Small and discards the ones that don't match the bras into the bins with the Mediums. She is wreaking havoc, destroying my order. It will take me the rest of my shift to go back behind her and make it right. I follow her closely enough to make it look like I am ready to serve her, but not close enough to make her think I am watching her just because she is black. I get that often enough myself. Once I get closer, she seems somehow familiar to me. I know you, I think. Alicia Watson. From Riverdale and Amboy, around the corner from the Laundromat where I grew up in Brownsville. She had lived across the street from me.

I want to make her turn to me, see if she remembers who I am. I come up behind her, tapping her shoulder. When she turns, her pin, encircled by pearls, reads: Beauty by Addie Mae.

I say, "Would you like me to get a mesh bag for you to hold your items in while you shop?"

Nina is already in my room, sitting on my bed with her cognitive behavior text opened on her lap. Her red hair is wet and twisted into a loose knot like she just came back from the gym.

"I went to Gimbel's without you," she says.

"I'm too tired to work out anyway. Breaking and entering is a crime, you know."

"Your roommate let me in," Nina says. "I was hungry." Then I see that Nina has been in my stash. A Styrofoam cup of noodles is in the small trashcan that comes with all the dorm rooms. Three candy bar wrappers are lying on my desk. An opened can of soda sits on my windowsill.

"Make yourself at home," I say. But I really don't mind. Nina is my only friend on campus.

I tell her who I ran into today.

Nina looks at me as if I've just said a bad word. "Wasn't she your friend?" she asks, frowning.

I nod. "She wants me to have lunch with her."

"When's the last time you've seen her?"

I hadn't seen Alicia since the last time I spent the night at her house. I was twelve then. It was almost eight years ago.

"I can't remember," I say. "It was a while back."

"Weren't you guys close?"

Alicia was my best friend. I would go over to her house after school and we would do homework, play dolls, and promise to be the godmother of each other's firstborn child. We had been in the same class from second grade to sixth ever since she had moved into my neighborhood and our teacher had asked us to be nice to her. Her parents bought a house on Hopkinson Avenue and lived in it exclusively. They were well off enough not to rent the bottom floor and basement out. Alicia's mother was a nurse who worked in Brookdale Hospital. Her father was a store manager. She lived right across the street from me.

"Not that close," I say.

"But didn't she ditch you for some guy?" Nina asks. "You never ditch your friend for a guy." Nina is touchy when it comes to guys. She thinks they are unnecessary. She says it's a matter of general principle.

Alicia was one of the first girls to grow breasts in our class. Somehow, over the summer between fifth and sixth grade, she had grown out of her training bra and into a B cup. As soon as the school year started, the boys were chasing after her. She started going with a boy named Raheim. After that, she hardly ever had any time for me.

"It's just a visit," I say. "It's not like she's moving to Philly. She's just here for five days at some sort of beauty convention. She sells Addie Mae Cosmetics."

Nina bursts out into laughter and has to fight to get a hold of herself. "She probably wants to sell you something over lunch," she says. I shrug. My face is pretty oily. Maybe Alicia can help me out. "Do you have any dip?" Nina asks. Laughing, like everything else, makes her hungry.

"Wrapped up in the fridge," I say. "I stole it from the cafeteria last night. Didn't you look?"

"I haven't gotten that far," she says. She leans over the side of the bed and opens the mini refrigerator stored underneath it. "So, are you going to go?" she asks as she pulls out the bowl and rips off the clear plastic that covers it.

"I think I should."

"Why should you?" Nina looks at me like I have grown two heads.

"I think she's unhappy."

"You would be too if you worked for a company called Addie Mae," Nina says.

"Seriously."

"Besides, how do you know?"

I know her, I think. "I don't," I say.

Nina pats the spot beside her, like the bed is hers. I hop up beside her and let her pull my head into her lap. She balances the bowl of dip on my stomach and opens a bag of tortilla chips with a hint of lime. "Who the hell isn't unhappy? What, you're a therapist now?"

"Don't be like that."

"Like what? Some old friend that's never bothered to stay in touch with you breezes in and tries to get all chummy and you tell me don't be like that," Nina says, reaching over to dip a tortilla chip into the bowl of avocado ranch. "She probably just wants to use your discount the next time she comes in."

"See? Like that."

"She can buy so much more when you take twenty-five percent off," Nina says.

"Nina."

"Come on!"

"Besides, I only get fifteen."

Nina brushes crumbs off her white top. They fall onto my neck and the salt on them makes me itch. "Hey," Nina says. "Whatever. You're a big girl."

"I just want to know what you think," I say.

There is nothing between me and Nina. But sometimes it feels like there is.

"I don't know," Nina says. "I don't trust her. You said she just stopped being your friend for no reason when she got a boyfriend. That's lame. I wouldn't trust anybody like that. She's only looking out for herself. I'd keep a close eye on her and I wouldn't trust her any farther than I could throw her. In fact, I'd throw her right back to wherever she came from."

"No, Nina, tell me how you really feel."

Nina licks the salt off her fingers and sets the bag of chips beside her leg. "I don't even know why you want my opinion. You're going to go anyway."

I vacuum my carpet after Nina leaves. But the communal vacuum only pushes the tortilla chips further into the carpet rather than rooting them out.

I had told Nina about Alicia a while back sometime during our freshman year. But I left a lot of things out. I didn't tell her what Alicia was to me.

Alicia was the first person I loved that wasn't family. I loved her before I knew I wasn't supposed to. I didn't tell Nina what happened to make Alicia stop talking to me. I still remembered the last night I had spent in her house.

We were having a sleepover with just the two of us.

We were lying in bed. I was pretending to sleep, but I was thinking about the things Alicia had been doing with Raheim now that she had a boyfriend. She gave me all the details, but I couldn't imagine them. It was like being on the outside looking in. She and Raheim had moved beyond kissing. She had let him touch her breasts after he told her that it would make them grow. She had almost let him put a hickey on her neck.

Into the darkness, I asked, "Why didn't you?"

"What?"

"Let him finish the hickey."

I could hear her moving on her side of the bed, her legs kicking the sheet out from where it was tucked in. "I got scared that my mom might see it. I don't know. Plus, it hurt a little."

"Is it supposed to hurt?" I asked, wondering how it felt

"I think he was doing it too hard." She said it as if I knew what she was talking about.

"Oh," I said. "Are you going to let him next time?"

"I don't know. I don't know if I like it or not."

"Yeah, I don't think I would either," I said. I was thinking of Raheim's high gums and how they made it look like he had a mouth full of baby teeth.

Alicia touched my shoulder and turned me to face her. She had scooted over closer. I could barely see her in the dark, just the outline of her face and her small slanted eyes staring at me. I could hear her moving in the bed closer to me, springs creaking as she scooted to my side. Her hand touched my neck, the pads of her fingers lightly pressing on my skin. "It's kind of like this," she said as she moved closer to me and pressed her lips on the spot she had touched. She kissed my neck. Her lips were soft. She caught the flesh of my neck between her teeth and began slowly to suck. Even though it was dark, I closed my eyes.

It hurt. Like getting a hand vacuum stuck to your skin. But beneath the pain was the gentle insistence that it would get better and the promise that I would not be let go. And it did get better. The pulling and increasing pressure tempered by the wetness of her two lips made it so I couldn't get away. I didn't want to. I arched my neck to give her more of it. I did not even think of crying out. I pretended Alicia was a vampire, feeding on me so that she could live, draining my life and my blood like they did in the scary movies. When she was finished, I wouldn't be me. I'd be something else, a creature tied only to her for all eternity. I touched the hem of her nightgown and let my hand follow upwards over her smooth brown legs until I touched the elastic band of her rayon panties. I tried to tug them down and, when I couldn't, I edged my fingers inside them. She had not let Raheim touch her there yet, but she didn't stop me. Alicia let me touch her for long minutes, lying perfectly still under my fingers. Then she took my hand away and rolled over onto me, kissing a new spot on my neck near the hollow of my throat and pressing against me until our legs were tangled together and my neck was sore. The sound of footsteps in the hallway froze us and we dropped our hands and legs from each other and moved to opposite sides of the bed. The footsteps continued on to the bathroom and we pretended to sleep. Finally, she moved and the bed creaked beneath her. She touched the spot on my neck and asked, "Did it hurt?"

"No," I told her, touching the wet spot on my neck where my flesh was raised and bruised. "Was it supposed to?"

She didn't answer me. Minutes passed before she whispered, "Why did you do that?"

I whispered back because she had. "Do what?"

"Touch me you-know-where."

I thought of pointing out to her that she had started it all. I thought of lying and playing it off, of acting like it hadn't meant anything. But I told the truth anyway. "I wanted to," I said. "I just wanted to see how it would feel."

"Well?" she asked me, waiting.

It felt like someone had reached inside of me and pulled me out of myself. Like I was inside out and it was the right way to be.

"I don't know," I said.

We meet at a restaurant in Center City that I have never been to. No one I know would ever see me here. It is the kind of restaurant that wants to be a deli. I order a hot turkey pastrami sandwich and wait for her to arrive.

I finish half of my sandwich before she comes in the door, wet from the rain even though her coat has a hood. She has the kind of hair that doesn't revert when the water hits it. It is damp and curly around her face. When she sees me and waves, I can see short black strands curling at her temples and cheeks.

She doesn't apologize. She sits down without taking her coat off, takes one of my napkins and wipes her wet face with it.

"How long has it been?" she asks by way of introduction.

"I don't know." Mayonnaise oozes from my sandwich and I answer with my mouth full.

"How's your mother?" she asks.

I shake my head at her. It is bad enough that she is late. No mother questions.

"Oh." She looks down at her closed menu, traces the plastic cover. "I think you've changed."

"Of course." I shrug. "We all do."

"You know what I mean."

"No, I don't."

"I wouldn't have recognized you if not for your name tag."

"I don't work there all the time. I go to Penn," I say. "Your convention must be pretty boring if you're out buying underwear."

Alicia lowers her eyes and confesses, "I forgot to pack any. I had everything else. Socks, pantyhose, toothpaste, and even tampons. I had a whole stack of underwear piled on my bed at home and just forgot to pack them."

Alicia was always doing things like that when we were in elementary school. She'd come back from the bathroom without her hall pass, she'd forget her bagged lunches at home whenever we had field trips, she'd forget to dress up when it was picture day and she'd ruin the picture, the only girl in jeans. Our sixth grade teacher had joked that Alicia would lose her head if it weren't fastened on tight.

"I guess some things never change," I say. We laugh. A waitress comes to take her order.

"I could always talk to you," she says. Then she begins to talk.

She never asks me how I am, or what I'm studying, where I'd like to go once I have this degree in hand, if I am ever coming back to Brooklyn. Instead, she tells me of herself. For a time, she had tried to please her mother by studying to become a nurse. But now she had put all of that behind her in favor of Addie Mae Cosmetics. Proudly, she gestures to the ring on her right hand. She won it for selling so many products. She had her eye on free a trip to Aruba now and was only a few sales away. Addie Mae had given her enough strength to move out of her parents' house. Addie Mae had paid to get her nails done, had paid for the outfit she had on and the shoes to match. She could deduct them because they were all business expenses since beauty was her business.

"You know," she says. "I'd just love to give you a facial while I'm here. You could show me around your campus. I could give you a makeover. It'd be like a big slumber party. Just like old times."

Just like old times. After that night, Alicia never invited me to sleep over again. Soon after, she went all the way with Raheim and told all the girls about it. Sometimes I wondered if it was something I'd done, because after that night I never heard from her even though she only lived across the street, and when we got to junior high she pretended not to know me. I never admitted to anyone, not even Nina, just how much Alicia had hurt me. And it wasn't just the abandonment. It was the way she laid with me that night and changed me and turned me inside out and pretended not to know it.

The waitress brings Alicia's platter out and sets her drink down, pulling a straw out of her apron pocket and laying it by the side of the table.

"Do you ever see Raheim?" I ask.

Alicia's face goes blank. "Raheim? Oh, him. Right. Oh wow. I can't believe I forgot about him. He was my first kiss, my first . . . you know. My first everything. Wow. No, I haven't seen him in a long time. Why?"

"Just wondering."

She breaks out a book of skin care products for me to look at while she eats. She dog-ears four pages with products for women with oily skin to show me what she will use during my makeover. She eats like a glutton and finishes telling me about her life. I flip through the pages of women whose faces are scrubbed clean, porous and shiny. Alicia doesn't even notice that I am no longer listening. Not now I know that she is lying. Raheim was not her first everything. Because I was her first love.