I was a Brown girl

You know 'em, you've seen them cantering through hallways at school or at church, throwing cascades of thick hair and letting loose a confident whinny, all legs under denim cut off shorts. Girls who were born in a kind of harem, bunches at a time, looking like a clan of liberated nesting dolls. Sunshine, summer girls who's bright disposition would leave you completely unprepared for the thunder and lightning that made them.

Shelly was first, actually, no, Mom was first, I would watch her get tickets, write deposit slips at the bank. The way her eyes looked up from beneath her manufactured lashes. The curl of her fingers as she moved her hand across a check. Her polyester nighties that felt just like the real silk kind and were the color of mermaid fins, I would steal them and pretend I was a turtle hiding in my shell, I think that being the imagery of choice says something but I can't say for sure. The times my friends would meet her and whisper your mom is pretty your mom is pretty your mom is pretty. How I wanted to dreamily sigh I know and curl my lip back and snarl at the same time. How I would forever alternate rolling my eyes at her and emulating her.

We all fell in line behind, each cute or beautiful or luscious or sparkling in our own sphere. Never are you really dressed unless your wearing a girdle and heels. Always improving on the lashes God gave you. The haughty Vogue mugging in the mirror. The Hey-that's-mine-did-he-ask-you-out?-If-you-get-it-dirty-I'll-hunt-you-down-and-kill-you-don't-be-such-a-little-jerk-you've-got-a-zit-right there din always playing in the background.

Shelly was the next. Darker, more like the gypsies we all really were, at least in my magical mind. She was charming and talented. She was also angrier, deeper, and stronger. More passionate, in her grudges and in her charges. Tresa had the words. The way. A luster that I still can't understand fully because my resentment clouds my view like a damn swarm of misquitoes most of the time. Then me, scrappy, sunny, a silly thing, a foolish thing. Then Dee who is a chameleon and a mystery still, maybe because she is the most like me and maybe because she is the most like everybody.

We were talented, and long limbed, and lovely and no one stood a chance, I forget any of our failures, they must not be worth remembering.

Time has gone by though, and I have faded, I am too smart by now to speak for everyone else. I am still a sunny, silly, foolish thing, and I have not had to take inventory of my scrap for some time now. But now I am a Mrs. D McKay and girdles seem to hide less than they used to, although high heels are still fabulous. But as I see a beautiful girl, forever seeming to be frozen in carefree laugh, I think to myself you know, I used to be a Brown girl