Mom had done a better job on my makeup and garb the next go around. That is to say, she took me down to Macy’s and had a professional do me up. The clothes we borrowed from a tall neighbor with big feet and wide shoulders. She’d been a roller derby queen in her youth, so it was befitting that a queen’s clothes were borrowed by yet another queen. Not that we told her that the clothes were for me so much as for a visiting aunt whose luggage went lost at the airport, a woman of largish proportions.
“Not doing me any good anyway,” said the neighbor lady, Marge, who went by Marge the Barge in her youth. Didn’t sound like a moniker most women would relish, but Marge seemed to brighten at the retelling. “Hadn’t worn this nice stuff in years.” Nice, by the way, equated to gaudy: gaudy dresses, ga
