Another RQF fic, based on the prompt "jealousy." Written 2003/2004-ish. I don't subscribe to the "Ellen/Helen Plum is evil" theory, but certainly she is very conventional with a limited view of what "acceptable" behavior is and far too worried about what the neighbors might think and not about what her youngest daughter wants out of life. I think JE wrote her as very much a late 1940s/early 1950s stereotypical housewife (I see her in an apron, a semi-bouffant hair-do and pearls). This story feels like it is set in 1965 to me: just go with it.
The little girl stood in front of the full-length mirror in her mother's room and pirouetted, craning her neck while she tried to see herself from all sides. The dress she wore was brand new, with all the textures that brought joy to the heart of the young and vain: taffeta and tulle with velvet piping along the bodice seams. She did a quick half-turn, flipping her golden hair, and the stiff skirts flared around her, showing off her knees and just a bit of thigh. Pleased with the effect, she did it again.
"Valerie!" her mother called up the stairs. "It's time to go!"
"Coming!" She upended her small matching purse on her parent's bed and searched through the detritus until she found what she was looking for - contraband that it was. Her mother had forbidden her to wear makeup, but she was a Burg girl, and Burg girls had their sources; in her case it was Anna Maria Morelli, older by one grade and therefore a student at Trenton Junior High School, instead of plain old Hamilton Elementary. Anna Maria would be at the church social today and it was Valerie's chance to demonstrate that she wasn't a child, wasn't a baby anymore, and that she was ready to step up into the world of a teen, even if she wasn't really officially a teenager yet.
She twisted the lipstick tube open, closing her eyes and inhaling the heady scent of artificial strawberry-banana and petroleum distillate. She made a monstrous face, opening her mouth wide and stretching her lips taut over her teeth as she began to apply the lipstick, following the exact contours of her lips, being very careful to color within the lines. When she was done she took a step backward to admire the effect.
"Valerie!" her mother's voice was closer now, at the foot of the stairs, about to come up after her. She hastily put everything back in her purse, except for the lipstick. That she put in the small pocket of her dress, where she would be able to touch it. She patted her pocket in satisfaction - she already felt older.
With a final look in the mirror she ran out of the room. "Coming, coming!" She ducked her head as she ran down the stairs, hoping her mother would not notice the lipstick.
Her father sat in the living room, in front of the Philco console television, watching a baseball game and ignoring her mother while she lectured him. "Valerie and I will be at church this afternoon, Frank. I will be home in time to start supper. Stephanie is not going to be going with us," Valerie felt a small thrill at the irritation that twitched the corner of her mother's lips down, "and will be here with you." Her mother looked around the room, as though expecting to find Stephanie. "Or somewhere." Her father grunted in reply and her mother took that as assent and pulled on her gloves.
Valerie did not hold her mother's hand as they walked down the porch steps together. The bells at St. Mary's had just finished tolling out the noon hour and now the air-raid siren sounded the weekly Saturday afternoon test, echoing the cornerstones of Burg life: duty to family, religion and civic authority.
They waited at the end of the walk until they were joined by other groups of mothers and daughters; Valerie noted that she was the youngest girl in the group and that even some of the older girls weren't wearing lipstick yet. She rubbed her lips together, enjoying the greasy and waxy feel of the lipstick, and caught her mother's frown as she finally saw the lipstick. For a moment Valerie was afraid her mother would reach out and wipe it off of her face, in front of all the other mothers and daughters, but to her relief, her mother just shook her head once and fell into step with several other women.
They hadn't walked far as a group when they heard shrieking, followed by a rhythmic clanking noise. A small figure came around the corner toward them, clearly the source of all the noise.
It was her younger sister, running down the sidewalk toward them, holding a stick in her hand and banging it across the heavy metal fence posts of the wrought iron fence that surrounded the small post office on the corner. She was wearing shorts and a striped t-shirt and had an old maroon bath towel tied around her neck, hanging down her back to brush the back of her ankles. She was bellowing a song, her head tipped back.
"Here she comes to save the day! The Mighty Space Princess!" Stephanie stopped running and did a few skip-steps, pumping her hand and the stick in the air in time with her words. "Mighty, mighty, Prin-CESS, Prin-CESS, yes, the Mi-igh-ty Sp-a-a-a-a-c-e Prin-CESS! She's big, she's strong, she's brave, the Mighty Space Princess!"
She came to a complete and silent stop as she saw the group of disapproving matrons and her sister, all staring at her.
Beside her, Valerie heard her mother make a small, resigned sigh. "What have you done to your hair?"
Stephanie reached up and pulled a handful of leaves and twigs out of her heavy dark curls, staring at them as though she had never seen anything like them before. Her eyes darted to her left and then back to her mother's face, and she rolled her eyes and shrugged.
Valerie looked in the direction of Stephanie's first guilty glance and saw the small park at the end of the street. It wasn't much of a park, just a few benches to sit on and a small circle of grass ringing an ancient and spreading oak tree. Under the tree was a pile of leaves, raked up by the city employees - or what would have been a pile of leaves if a small girl had not been joyfully jumping off of the lowest branch of the tree into the leaves, wallowing in them and spreading them back across the landscape with abandon. Just last fall they had done that together.
"And why are you running with that stick?" their mother scolded. "Put it down right now, you could hurt yourself or someone else."
Stephanie dropped the stick and scowled as she shuffled her feet, not looking at her mother. "Sorry," she muttered, though it was clearly untrue. "Can I go now?"
Their mother pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yes," she said at last. "No more sticks, do you hear me, Stephanie?"
She nodded and stepped away from the group, carefully not looking at her sister or any of the other girls. Her first steps were sedate and calm, but after she was a few feet away from the group she broke out into a run again, tearing down the sidewalk and singing softly under her breath.
"That was your daughter? But this one is such a perfect angel." Valerie smiled up at Mrs. Trocenti, who reached out and smoothed her fine, bright hair back away from her face. "She's so perfect, she'll be a fine wife and mother someday."
Valerie's smile faltered, just a bit. She was still not very clear on the whole boy thing yet, and for a moment she turned and watched as her sister skipped away from the group, the tattered maroon towel flaring out behind her. It wasn't taffeta or tulle, but it looked like freedom and fun. Valerie knew that there was another towel just like that one in the downstairs linen closet, way in the back, behind the guest linens.
She put her hand in the pocket of her dress and touched the plastic lipstick tube and then nodded. There was no going back from here; she'd chosen lipstick over leaves in her hair and a tattered cape. She smoothed her dress down and fell into step between her mother and Mrs. Trocenti, trying hard not to listen as the Prin-CESS sang her song and climbed the tree in the small park.