Her First New Dress
Little Mei-Ling was in her room trying to get ready. She was turning eight years old in three days and her mother was taking her shopping to get a new outfit. Mei-Ling was surprised-her mother never took her anywhere-but she was not going to spend a single second arguing about it.
She looked at the poster about her bed, which showed the most beautiful woman in the whole world. The woman was wearing a really pretty dress and long gloves and was holding a stick with a cigarette on the end. She was smiling and looking at the camera, like she was smiling at Mei-Ling, and telling her she could be this pretty some day. Her mother said she would never be that pretty if she stayed so fat, but Mei-Ling was sure she could.
There were a bunch of words on the poster, but Mei-Ling could not read them. She could not read anything. She tried, really hard. She could name all the letters, and even spell some words if she concentrated, but when she looked at letters on a page she just could not make them join into words in her head. Her big brother said she was a stupid retard. Mei-Ling asked her mother, and she said the words meant the pretty girl was having breakfast or something. It seemed funny for the girl to dress so pretty for breakfast, but Mei-Ling decided if she ever got pretty enough, she would dress like that for breakfast, too.
When Mei-Ling told her mother about her brother calling her a retard, her mother just sighed and said not everyone can be smart, and she would just have to live with it.
"Mei-Ling! Hurry up!"
Mei-Ling took one last look at the poster and went out to meet her mother. She wondered if she could get a dress like the pretty girl in the poster had.
The store was huge. Mei-Ling had never seen it before. Her mother always went shopping with her brother and sisters, but never took Mei-Ling along. She said she didn't want a big scene if people made fun of the fat girl. But she was taking her this time. Her sisters complained that they didn't want her to some, but she got to come.
Mei-Ling looked at all the clothes. She couldn't believe it. Usually when her mother brought her somewhere-which wasn't very often-she would hurry her along and pick things out for her. She never got to just look at things before. Her sisters made fun of her. They said she looked fat and ugly and stupid. Her mother looked kind of sad and angry at the same time, but still let her look.
She found the perfect dress. It was deep blue and shiny and didn't have straps over the shoulders and looked just like the dress from the poster. Her mother wouldn't let her buy it, though. She said it would be a waste trying to fit such a pretty dress on too fat a girl like her. She made Mei-Ling pick out a simpler dress, something with straps and made out of stretchy fabric. Mei-Ling was disappointed, but wouldn't let herself be unhappy. She was still getting a new dress, a pretty dress, and she had never gotten one before.
Her mother paid for the dress, and then took her ovr to the fitting room. She said she should change into it, to look as pretty as she could for later. She told Mei-Ling that she had to do something. She said it was for smart kids only, so Mei-Ling couldn't come. She said to wait in the fitting room, and not come out until she came back with her sisters.
Mei-Ling changed into her new dress right away. She looked at herself in the mirror. She thought she looked as pretty as she had ever looked before, but that she would have looked even prettier in the other dress. Even if she was too fat, the other dress was better.
Mei-Ling got bored waiting in the fitting room. She got hungry. She wondered how long her mother and sisters would take. She had to go to the bathroom, but she couldn't leave the room until they got back. She held her privates and squeezed, trying to make the feeling go away. She promised herself she wouldn't pee her panties like a baby. Her brother told her that retards pee themselves. She wouldn't.
After a while, the lights went off. Mei-Ling was scared. She wondered if she had done something wrong, if she was supposed to have met her mother somewhere else. Maybe she forgot something, like a retard, and her mother left her behind when she didn't show up. But she was sure her mother had said to stay in the fitting room. She curled up on the bench in the corner. She couldn't leave, not until her mother and sisters came back. She cried to herself, and fell asleep.
She dreamed about the woman in the poster. She dreamed that the woman lived in a department store, and never got to leave. She dreamed about living there with her. There where houses and restaurants and even a big pool in the middle of the store. She dreamed about going swimming. She waded in up to her waist. The water was hot at first, but then in got cold on her legs. She woke up still feeling wet. She realized that she had peed herself in her sleep. Her new dress was ruined. She started crying again, feeling more stupid than ever.
It was still really dark, but she saw a little light hitting the ceiling. The walls of the fitting room didn't go all the way up. She didn't want to leave the fitting room, but she couldn't let her mother see her like this when she came back. She grabbed her other clothes and left the fitting room.
Light was coming into the store from the big glass doors. It was morning. It wasn't much light, yet, but it was enough for her to find the bathroom. She took off her wet dress and panties. She wet some paper towels and washed herself off as best as she could, then dried off with more paper towels. She threw away her pee-soaked panties. She started crying again when she had to throw away her new dress, too, since it was just as stained. She put on her old clothes, making due without underwear, and grabbed another handful of paper towels. She made her way back to the fitting room and tried to clean up the wet spot she left, feeling fat and ugly and stupid.
She stayed in the fitting room like her mother told her to do. She didn't know what she would tell her about the dress, but she was too scared to worry about it very much.
Some lights came on, later. She heard people moving around in the store, vacuuming and talking to each other in Spanish. More lights came on, more people in the store. Some people came in to the fitting rooms. She could hear them trying on clothes in the other rooms. Finally someone knocked on her door, asking if she would be long so they could use it.
She opened the door and left. She had to use the bathroom again, anyway. She took several long drinks of water from the sink after using the toilet properly. Her stomach pinched in on itself in pain and hunger. She couldn't do anything about that, though. She didn't know where to get any food, and didn't have any money to pay for it anyway.
She went back to the fitting room. One of the girls folding clothes asked Mei-Ling if she needed help finding anything. Mei-Ling shook her head quickly and went back into the fitting room. She was already worried that she had been gone too long. That her mother might have come back for her and missed her while she was in the bathroom.
After a while there was another knock at the door. Mei-Ling opened it to find the same girl from before.
"Are you alright?" the girl asked.
Mei-Ling nodded. "I'm waiting for my mother," she said. "She told me to wait here until she got back."
"How long ago was that?"
"Yesterday."
The girl gasped and her jaw dropped open. "I'll be... I'll be right back," she said, then walked quickly to one of the registers against the wall of the store. Mei-Ling closed the door again. She didn't know why the girl had left so quickly. She had probably said something stupid again, like her brother always said.
Soon there was another knock on the door, this time much heavier. She opened the door and this time there was a big man in a police man's uniform looking down at her.
He smiled at her and told her she had to come with him. She told him that she was waiting for her mother, but he said she couldn't wait there anymore. He said he would try to help her find her family, but she had to come with him. She took his hand, feeling lost, alone, and very very scared, and went with him.
She stared at the dress, the perfect dress, as they passed by it on their way out the store.
He took her out of the store to the parking lot, and to a police car parked up front.
"I'm not supposed to do this, especially as small as you are," he said, "but do you want to ride up front with me?"
She nodded quickly. Her mother never let her ride up front.
"You don't say much, do you?"
"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she said quietly.
She was quiet during most of the ride, while the man kept talking. She kept her legs close together with her hands on her skirt, hoping he wouldn't realize she didn't have any underwear. He told her that they could find her family with the new fangled computers they had at the police station. He told her that he had been a police officer for three years, and loved helping people. He told her he had a special friend named Janice Deckler, and that they were getting married as soon as they could.
She kept looking at a patch on the sleeve of his shirt. There were three words around it, starting with 'L' 'P' and 'D', but she couldn't get any further than that. "What's that?" she finally asked.
"That?" He glanced down at it. "That's the emblem and my department. Can you read what it says?"
"I can't read," she said, looking down. "I'm too stupid."
"I don't think you're stupid," he said. She looked up at him, surprised. "Just because you have trouble reading doesn't mean you're stupid. Why, my brother has dyslexia and still has trouble reading, and he's one of the smartest people I know." He paused for a minute, thinking. "Besides, there are a lot more important things in the world than being smart. It's more important to be nice, and loyal, and to take care of your family. I'll take a nice person over a smart person any day of the week." He reached over and tapped the patch. "That says 'Lawndale Police Department'. This line below it says 'To Protect and Serve'. And this," he tapped the bronze rectangle over his left shirt pocket, "this says 'Blum'. That's my name, Officer Benjamin Blum."
She smiled at him, but didn't say anything else the rest of the ride.
When they got to the police station she was introduced to a whole lot of new people who started asking her questions. Officer Blum said he had to leave her with the other people for now, but he promised to be back later. The people asked her her mother's name, and she realized she couldn't tell them. She was always just 'mother'. They asked her why she was at the store that day. They asked her if her mom or dad ever hit her or touched her in weird places. They asked her if she ran away. They asked so many things that it just overwhelmed her and she just wanted to curl up into a ball again.
"Could you give it rest?" A new woman came over holding a coffee mug. "The poor thing has just had the worst day of her life, and you idiots aren't helping." She shoed the other people away, telling them they could ask Mei-Ling their questions later. She sat down and handed her the mug. "Here. I hope you like veggie soup. I figured you must be starving after staying over night in that store."
Mei-Ling nodded quickly and started gulping down the soup.
"Slow down, you don't want to make yourself sick." The woman brushed Mei-Ling's hair out of her eyes. "Aren't you a pretty girl."
"I'm not pretty. I'm an ugly fat girl."
"You're not ugly," the woman said. Mei-Ling tried to look away but the woman wouldn't let her. She grabbed her chin, gentle but firm, and turned her head to face her. "You're not ugly, and you're not fat. Whoever told you that was a horrible liar. I think you're one of the prettiest and sweetest little girls I have ever met."
She let go. Mei-Ling turned her face away again, this time blushing.
"My name is Janice," the woman said after a moment.
"Janice Deckler?"
"How'd you know that?"
"Officer Blum said you were his special friend," Mei-Ling said.
Janice laughed. "Benny's telling tales again, is he? Oh, and speak of the devil."
Mei-Ling looked up. Officer Blum was walking toward them with a white box tucked under one arm.
"I am not the devil," he said, "no matter what everyone says." He sat down on the other side of Mei-Ling from Janice. "No reports from missing persons," he said to Janice quietly. She nodded, looking angry for a moment before smiling again at the girl. Officer Blum-Benny-handed the box to Mei-Ling. "I hope you don't mind. I know you have been having a really rough time, and I thought this might cheer you up a little."
She opened the box, wondering why he would get her a present. He didn't even know it would be her birthday in two days. Inside she found the dress. The perfect dress. The dress like the most beautiful woman in the world wore in her poster.
"I can't take this," she said. "I'm not-"
"Not what?" Janice interrupted her. "Remember what I told you?"
She stopped. She couldn't say she was too ugly for the dress or too fat for the dress. Not after what Janice had said. She wasn't sure if she believed it, but she couldn't say it. "Thank you," she said quietly after a moment, looking down and blushing again.
"You are very welcome," he told her. "Now, seeing as you know me, and you know Janice, we are not really strangers anymore. Might I have the pleasure of your name, young lady?"
She giggled at being called a lady. She almost told him her name was 'Mei-Ling' but she stopped herself. That was the name her mother had given her. It was her fat name, her ugly name. Her stupid name. She didn't ever want to be that person with these nice people. Instead she thought of her poster. She thought of the most beautiful woman in the world having breakfast in that pretty dress.
"Tiffany," she finally said. "My name is Tiffany."