Beyond Blonde by Teresa Toten

Author:Teresa Toten
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PENGUIN GROUP (CANADA)

As soon as I got home from Kit’s, I pulled out my trusty encyclopedia and scrolled through the relevant sections about Buddhism and Jewishness. I did not reread Christianity: The Catholic Church Since the Reformation because, well, for one thing, it was the smallest piece of my religious practice, so to speak, and, for the other, I was worried about what it might say.

Okay. I slammed the book shut. Okay! According to my exhaustive search, Kit was wrong. Being a lesbian wasn’t this big, burn-at-the-stake thing with religions! Well, maybe in some weirdo church-type places, or maybe a thousand years ago, but not in my index. According to The Concise Encyclopaedia of Living Faiths, it was nothing. “Lesbian” wasn’t there as a good thing or a bad thing; it just wasn’t in the index at all. Therefore, being a lesbian must be a neutral “who cares” kind of thing.

Works for me.

I offered up a short but intense prayer of thanks on behalf of Kit and myself. My altar was coming along nicely. I now had a red silk runner complete with shiny tassels and embroidered gold elephants. Auntie Radmila had given me a pewter rosary, which she had had blessed in Rome, and it lived peacefully beside the small bronze Star of David that Auntie Luba found kicking around in her trunk. Finally, I had these Buddhist-type incense thingies that smelled like burnt oregano. So, I lit my candle and incense cone, made the sign of the cross, and touched the bronze Star of David. It would be okay. Kit would be okay. Please, please, please, make it okay.

Thank you, thank you. Amen.

I blew out the candle. Now what? I went to the kitchen, then the living room, then back to the kitchen again. Since it was still early in the afternoon, I assumed that Mama was showing a house. And then I remembered. It was the last Saturday in the month. Memories erupted. It had been months. I just fell out of the habit of going. The last Saturday of every month was a big glamour beauty day for the Aunties. Cast in stone, sacrosanct, and sacred. When I was little, they made me feel like the magician’s assistant for their elaborate and convoluted rituals.

I jogged all the way to Auntie Eva’s. Damn, I was in good shape.

“Hi guys!” Everyone and everything was already assembled in the dining room. “It’s me! I’m here to help.”

Shocked squeals, hoots, and riotous table thumping greeted me. “Sophie, buboola, baby!” fluttered Auntie Eva. They all wore their beauty uniforms, floral housedresses covered by shower curtains jerry-rigged to look like salon smocks. Auntie Radmila had on my Bambi shower curtain from three moves ago. The dining room table was pulled out to its full “seats twelve” size, and it, in turn, was covered with more shower curtains, newspapers, mud masks, toners, peroxide, creams, a dozen tweezers, lotions, and four separate piles of hair-dying accoutrements. The bowls were plopped on top of photos of near-naked Sunshine Girls that the Aunties seemed thankfully oblivious of.

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