my mother would have seen this:

Robin is smacking her gums at a hand mirror. She hunches over, back to us, in the middle of her room. Her smurf sized body curves like the shell of a snail. The popping is loud, quick, and jarring.

“La, la, la, la,” smack, “la.”

Beside her my overturned purse spills tape, lipstick, pennies and an orange across the carpet.

I look at Robert. "What is she doing?" I mouth.

"I don’t know," he mouths back, hoisting his eyebrows to the middle of his forehead.

“Yes madame cheri, yes! I WILL take the black sood pumps.” She rams her small fists together. “I won’t pay what you ask!”

I cover my mouth with my left hand, Robert’s with my right.

“And no, no I will not have any- what’s that? I need to do that? If I must.”

She seizes the tape and wrenches a clear strand from its reel. “If I must,” she repeats. She smoothes the tape over her upper lip, using her finger to flatten the air bubbles.

“Sho be it,” she mutters, and with a valiant stroke she rips it off.

Her shriek makes us duck and grab each other's arms.

random excerpt from a story of mine, about the price beauty exacts.

my sister's 21st birthday on sunday!