Once inside Lizzy threw yet another white dress at me. I groaned. "What, do we have after-dinner clothes too?"
Jane giggled while Lizzy rolled her eyes. "That's a nightgown."
"Oh." I said sheepishly. "Keep in mind, guys, I'm five years old, remember?"
"Well go get changed, dear, it's past your bedtime," Lizzy said, nodding to the changing wall.
A bowl was left on the vanity in the corner next to a pitcher of warm water and a bar of brown, corse soap. After changing into the nightdress Jane showed me how to lather and rinse my face properly without using too much water. Lizzy took out the pins holding her hair together and brushed the tangles out of it, holding out the wood handle and hair bristles to me when I finished drying my face.
"Oh, I have one, actually," I said, remembering my suitcase under my bed. I tossed the towel onto my mattress and retrieved the bag, unzipping it to reveal my toiletries bag. As I began rifling through my things, Lizzy came over and looked over my shoulder into the contents of my suitcase.
"Aha!" I pulled my hairbrush out victoriously. She turned her attention to the blue hairbrush in my hand.
"May I see that?"
"Sure," I handed it over. There wasn't much interesting about it, yet she looked at it as if it were from another world.
"What's it made of?" she asked.
"Just plastic, I think."
She looked at the individual bristles with the tiny balls on the end to keep it from poking your scalp, the cushion they were laid in, the handle wrapped in rubber, all with fascination. "Where did you come from?" she mumbled.
She didn't give me any time to answer. Instead she looked back up at me. "What else do you have in that bag of yours?"
I turned back to the little plastic bag and after a moment pulled out an elastic hair tie. Lizzy pasted the brush to Jane, who had come up next to her and was also looking at my stuff with interest.
"What is it?" Lizzy asked, stretching the rubber circle between her fingers.
"It's a hair tie. See, watch." I grabbed another from my bag and pulled my hair into a quick ponytail.
Lizzy watched in awe, and when I was finished she asked, "How did you do that?"
I showed both of them how to grab their hair and pull it through the band and how to do it do it stayed but it wasn't too tight. They caught on quickly and asked to see what else I had in my bag. We must have spent at least an hour going through my things, and when they finished with hair and face they moved onto clothes.
Jane held up a pair of skinny jeans from my bag. "How do you wear this?" she asked.
I looked up to what she was holding. "Those are pants. We don't wear dresses like this were I come from. We wear a lot of pants and shirts instead."
Lizzy started laughing. "You wear those on your legs?!" she exclaimed. "Why, they're nothing but pantaloons!"
"No, they're just pants!" I said good naturedly as Jane put a hand against her mouth to keep from laughing. "Men were stuff like that all the time here."
"Oh, so they're breaches then?" Lizzy asked, sending all of us into full out laughter.