The Petrified Condom

“Dance Lessons? Are you kidding? You can’t even coordinate eyeliner.”

She had to admit her sister was right. While Audrea scowled down from perfectly kohl-blackened eyes, Candace’s own defied hours of drilling the finer points of warpaint. The makeup mirror scowled too, one eye a winged feline sneer and the other smudged way beyond redemption. Candace grabbed a tissue and scrubbed her skin raw. The girl in the mirror reddened with the likes of windburn.

“Keep it up Candygirl, you won’t need to bother with blush lessons.”

With pink walls flowering cheerfully around her, the cloud behind that sibling silvery lining let loose. Tears rubbed salt in wounded eyes then singed trails down her cheeks. Candace’s head, heavy with hair rollers recycled from orange juice cans, thudded to her dressing table and sent that offending mirror tumbling.

“What do you think you’re doing to my mirror?”

By time Barbara Edwards’ furry scuffs reached the landing, even a blaring record couldn’t temper the sobs drifting to meet her. She found a wailing lump of offspring sprawled face down in bed. Though this might have preserved a tin can coif, it did little for the feathery pillow silting up from torrents of flushed eyeliner.

“You’re a beautiful girl without having to fuss at all.”

“But Mom,” Candace wailed, fetalling tighter than ever. “I’m not in style.”

“Style, schmyle.” One look at those battle-weary eyes would have startled any mother. “Oh, Babydoll, all that black junk makes you look so hard. Mean.”

The next blubber sent Candace latching out. Mrs. Edwards was dragged down into that delta wetland of a pillow, her starched shirtwaist rustling in surrender. Whimpers eventually replaced tears and while daughter sniveled into one tissue, Mom dabbed sore, reddened eyes with another.

“Lay right here a minute, Baby.”

Hurrying out of the room, she redirected triage. Audrea never heard the knock on her door, couldn’t have with the decibel level pumping through her hi-fi. Mrs. Edwards simply walked to the bookshelves and unplugged the offending hi-fi.

“Mom!” Her objection reverberated with the final guitar riff.

“Audrea, I don’t know what’s going on up here but I think it would be in everyone’s best interest if you learned to be a little more kind to your sister.”

Big sister grudgingly dragged one class-A Audrea sneer off the bed mumbling a terminal diagnosis of: “she’s hopeless.” Mom paused only long enough to fire her, “we’ll talk about this later,” glare before storming off down the hall, reading glasses bouncing on her bosom. She tapped lightly on the bathroom door.

“I’ll be right out.” It was Mr. Edwards’ usual mutter, at least until that turning doorknob cranked his volume. “Barb, I said I’ll be right out.”

By Edwards family decree, no one locked the door of their single bathroom in case there was an emergency. Such emergencies had never been clearly defined. Though protocol frowned upon interrupting family business, in family practice, infringements were hardly uncommon.

“Hon,” she never even slowed down, “could I just dampen a facecloth?”

“For Christ’s sake Barbara, can’t a man have privacy even to take a crap?”

“Honey, please?” She raced that cool cloth from basin to bedside ministry. “Baby, just you rest. Michael won’t be here for an hour.”

Michael. Candace, one budding high school junior, agreed months ago to go to his senior prom before she realized what that, “Dream by the Sea” nightmare entailed. Between Mom’s fluff and Audrea’s too trendy, dress shopping was a nightmare. Nothing fit the teen hulk she saw in the mirror. Then, as if she needed any more complications, pimples sprung out of adolescent nowhere and her period, that should have been weeks away, decided it too wasn’t about to miss the dance.

“I’m sorry.”

“Sure you are.”

She actually was. A little. Audrea towered over Candace only as long as her baby sister reclined. From beneath the facecloth, Candace watched her sister pull a box from behind her back and set it on the bed.

“Truce?”

Audrea pulled out something the thickness of her middle finger. Accepting the peace offering, Candace followed its instructions. “Open here. Grasp chord and pull from wrapper.” Now she held an even more mysterious cardboard tube.

“It’s a tampon. Wouldn’t want you bulging under that pink dress of yours.”