Independence Day
AS I STRIP for the shower, I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. The bathroom walls have a swirl of pink and white with opaque chains of copper. The linoleum floor has a mixture of lime with undercurrents of gray and white with sprinkles of gold on top. Two columns of vanity bulbs are soldiered next to the mirror above the sink. That mirror silently recorded how I grew.
At first, when I was a little girl, I didn’t care to look because I was too short. When I saw how my older sisters Vicky, Patty, and Colleen stood in front of the mirror, fixing their hair and applying their makeup, I became curious. They didn’t invite me in the way that they did with our youngest sister Fiona, and there she laughed with them when she tried on a bit of lipstick.
It didn’t help that
