What Filter Would Make Yellow Look Good on Brown Skin
I hate this bathroom mirror. It’s too small, and the light in here always makes my skin look weird. My hair is doing that thing again where it can’t decide if it wants to be curly or just frizzy. Honestly, what’s even the point of trying to fix it? The DevaCurl mousse Mommy bought smells like vanilla trying to mask chemicals and it always makes my hands sticky. I twist a strand around my finger and watch it stiffly snap back. Whatever. I press play on my iPod, adjusting the headphones over my head. They were the best Christmas gift Mommy got me last year. I can’t stand those wired earbuds everyone else at school uses. Drums slam in time with grinding electric guitars in Phoenix’s "Countdown," drowning out all other noise. It doesn’t matter what you did and if you did it like you been told. Jason showed me this album yesterday after school, and it’s already my new favorite. It feels like a blanket, wrapping me in something familiar, something that makes me yearn in a way I can’t explain.
I lift my camera and look through the viewfinder adjusting the focus. I'm trying to take a self-portrait for that photography contest Mr. Levinson mentioned. Black-and-white film would just enhance the uneven blotches of acne scars and hyperpigmentation, but at least it’d make me look artistic instead of just awkward. I lower my Nikon and squint at my reflection. The mirror does something strange. Like a ripple or a glitch or something out of one of those horror movies Sophia and I watched last weekend when her parents weren’t home. Suddenly, I’m looking at someone else. But it’s me. But it’s not.
She’s older. Like way older. At least thirty. Her hair is longer than mine, with sun-bleached strands that catch the bathroom light. And it’s curly—actually curly. Not the half-frizz disaster I fight with every morning. Like she figured out how to make it look good somehow. Her eyebrows are different too. Fuller. Shaped. Not the mess I try to pluck with tweezers I stole from Mommy’s room. She’s wearing a yellow shirt that should look terrible with her dark olive skin, but it doesn’t. I wouldn’t wear yellow. Not after that bitch Nicole said it made me look jaundiced in sixth grade. I still remember the way everyone laughed. Even Brian. But this woman—this version of me—she wears it like she doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. Like she forgot all about Nicole and sixth grade and how yellow is her least favorite color now. The old Santa María necklace from Mamá Bruna that I keep tucked under my shirts is right there out in the open. Just hanging there like it’s no big deal. I stare at her face. Do you remember when 21 years was old? She has lines around her eyes that crinkle when she smiles, and I'm smiling now, so she’s smiling too. I don’t have those lines. She looks tired but not in a bad way. Like she’s done things, seen things, experienced things. Been places. Figured stuff out. There’s a tiny scar by her eyebrow I don’t have. How did I get that?
Her nails are painted a dark rose and not bitten down to nothing around the sides like mine. Her hands look like they belong to someone who knows what they’re doing. Mine just hang there, useless. They never know where to be. I notice the ring on her finger. Silver and simple. Married? To whom? A man, a woman? I blush. Not like anyone at Toms River would even look at me twice. Maybe art school will be different. If I ever get there. I could never convince Daddy that studying Studio Art at SVA isn’t just a waste of money.
Something moves at the bottom of the mirror. A dog. A small, fluffy thing that circles her legs and rests its chin on her boot. She reaches down to pet it without even looking, like they’ve done this a thousand times before. I press my hand against the cool glass. She does too. Our fingertips align. Same short fingers, same crooked thumbnail that snags on everything. But her hand tells a different story. There’s a scar across her wrist, thin and silver. What happened there? What happens to me? Did we make it? Did we become someone important? Do I have a studio? In the city? Did I escape this house, this suffocating town, the sound of Mommy crying in the bathroom when she thinks no one can hear, Daddy’s constant questions about where I'm going and who I'm with and why can’t I just be normal like other girls? We’re sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, sick, we’re sick for the big sun.
The woman in the mirror is studying me too, and I wonder what she sees. Some kid with a cheap camera. Ripped jeans from the thrift store. Hair she hasn’t figured out how to love yet. Brown skin she’s been told a thousand times is too dark, too alien. Her eyes—my eyes, our eyes—are soft, though. Like she remembers. Like she knows what I'm thinking. We’re lonesome, we’re lonesome... The song fades out, and I see tears glaze our eyes. We open our mouth like we might say something, but then Mommy yells my name, echoing from down the hall, sharp and impatient, cutting through the muffle of my headphones and forcing me to look away. I pull the headphones down to rest around my neck and turn to my reflection for a final look, but she’s gone. Just a normal mirror now. Just normal me. I adjust the camera and run my fingers through my hopeless hair one more time. Whatever. I gotta finish that English paper anyway, and Sophia wants to meet at the mall later.
Mommy calls again, louder and more annoyed this time. I wonder what filter would make yellow look good on brown skin. I wonder if dogs can be hypoallergenic. I wonder who that woman was, with my eyes and her scars. And then I don’t wonder anymore because Mommy is calling a third time, and I'm already thinking about what excuse I'll give for taking so long.
