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Transformations
by Suzanne Mitchell
I am spending the final month of my fourteenth year staring into a bathroom mirror…waiting. There is only one full-length mirror in my house. It's long and straight, held up by four plastic brackets. Nothing fancy….like me. It's on the back of the bathroom door. This is inconvenient for me at a time like this. My fifteenth birthday comes in just a few weeks on Halloween, El Dia de los Muertos. My Abuelita says I will be a woman when I turn fifteen…ready for marriage. Grandmothers are so old school. I gaze in the mirror, turning side to side, looking for signs. I could say I need privacy (it's true, three kids, two parents and one grandmother all in one little casita) or I'm practicing my princess smile or I have cramps. I could say a lot of things, but nobody would listen. So I just stand here….staring. My grandmother has noticed me spending a lot of time in the bathroom and she's worried. So she follows me everyplace. For example, my grandmother passes by the bathroom door. I see her smile at me through the crack between the hinges. "Mi'ja, que haces?, she asks, reaching for the doorknob. I reply smiling, "I'm doing nothing, Abuelita", gently nudging the door so it shuts on her dark frowning face flecked with rogue facial hairs.
My Abuelita came from Mexico City to live with us last year. She always wears black and prays all day long. Becoming a woman, to her, is growing big breasts and getting your period so you can get married and have babies. Becoming a woman to me is wearing high fashion clothes like in Glamour magazine, dating gorgeous guys, and staying out after 9 PM. To her, a girl my age should be reciting the rosary, serving the men in my home and protecting my virtue. She doesn't believe in dating. My mother is more modern but still big on virginity and saying prayers. My mother came to the United States when she was eighteen to escape a marriage to a middle-aged man with a tortilla business. It was a marriage my Abuelita arranged when my mother was just fifteen years old. My Abuelita didn't talk to my mother for a long time after that. Now we all live together.
I stare into the mirror again, fold my arms over my thin chest and give a squeeze like I'm hugging myself. I look down at the discouraging result. The pendant my parents gave me at confirmation glistens on my brown skin, the little gold Jesus sticking out over shallow skin folds. I say a prayer to the Virgen de Guadalupe, requesting a sign of my imminent womanhood. My Quincinera is going to be on Halloween, like a masquerade ball. It's the first time being born on the Day of the Dead has ever worked for me. Ramon Lopez is my chambelan. He's wearing a white tuxedo and a crazy Mardi Gras mask. My mother says it's important for a young girl to enter womanhood respectably, presented by her parents to the world. To her that means a big fancy party with scratchy puffy dresses. To me, you become a woman when you fall in love and kiss a boy. I hope Ramon will kiss me at my Quincinera. I look in the mirror at my wide lips. I practice a flirtatious smile and flutter my eyes. Then I purse my lips like a bow into a kissing pose. I lower my eyes. I kiss the mirror. While I do this, I glimpse my straight boyish body. I pray harder to the Virgen.
My sister Anita pushes on the bathroom door while I'm kissing the mirror, and it bumps me in the nose. She never knocks. Anita is eighteen with huge boobs and full hips. Her straight black hair is wrapped in a towel on top of her head. She has a date with her boyfriend, Victor. She fumbles through the vanity drawer, her long fake fingernails painted with flower designs on the tips. Anita calls me 'Flaquita'. I hate being called 'Skinny'. To her, 'Flaquita' is a freckle-faced baby sister who never tells when she sneaks out at night. Skinny, to me, is the wobbly chair at the table. "Flaquita," she says, "Que haces, mi'ja? Did you take the hair dryer? You know you shouldn't use it on your kinky hair. Why are you staring in the mirror anyway? Why aren't you at the mall with your home-girls checking out some chulo-ass boys at the food court." She's so crass. I could say Boys are boring or I'm styling my kinky hair. I could say I'm awaiting the late arrival of two sumptuous breasts set atop gently curving hips and a big J-Lo ass that will make chulo boys swoon in heady ecstasy. But I don't think she really cares what I'm doing in the bathroom. She just wants to find the hair dryer. So I say, "I don't know where the stupid hair dryer is, Anita," as I stare at it hanging from the back of the closet door. She leaves and I go back to searching in the mirror, wishing I could have asked her how you kiss a boy. I'm not sure the Virgen would know.
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