Character Breakdown by Zawe Ashton

Author:Zawe Ashton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473524897
Publisher: Random House

The lights in the make-up bus are fluorescent and burn through my coolness. I raise my hand, the one that isn’t holding the coffee cup, to shield myself and my friend, my colleague who’s sat in one of the make-up chairs, laughs. It looks like I have an almighty hangover. Shades on, caffeine fix, light sensitivity, trembling hand. I don’t laugh and that makes her laugh more. My blank face intensifies what she imagines. It doesn’t upset me, the laughter. I like it. I could hide behind it if my brain wasn’t so short-circuited. I could laugh along and make up a story about how late I got in last night. Who I might have kicked out of my bed. Instead of telling the truth.

I’m tired, the most tired I’ve ever been, and so can only tell the truth.

‘My auntie died. Please don’t be nice to me, I’ll cry.’

Everyone is quiet. They manage niceness without setting me off. Nice that doesn’t cross the boundary of nice. Not the kind of nice that will take me into the big heaving noises I’ve never made before, the kind of crying which must be reserved for later, when I’m home. Or in the train toilet. The wonderful woman doing my make-up conceals and pencils around the redness, powders out any fresh tears that roll down. I put my head back, all the way back in the chair, and she lets me close my eyes as she creates a new character on my face. I realise I’ve probably spent more hours of my life in a make-up chair than with members of my family. She’s gentle and low-key with my hair, creates a simple style. Lets it wash over me. This strange thing of making up an artist who is a shell. When you willingly have your hair and make-up done, it’s fun. Your face takes the creams and the blushes well, your lips take the lipstick, your face moves into the shape of the colours and softens and hardens in the places it needs to, to create the new you. Putting make-up on when you’re deep in grief is something quite different. Your face doesn’t want to move or bend or be any shape other than the shape of mourning. It doesn’t want to yield to colour, I can see it, my face is literally drinking the colour in, draining it, getting rid. It wants and needs to be washed out and pale, ashen and yellow. The eyeliner on the waterlines of my eyes seems to be sitting an inch or so away from my face. It hasn’t stuck. My eyelashes have gone sideways with the mascara, like they’re attempting to leave my face. The lipstick has dried in place, the moisture in my lips has disappeared and the dry skin flakes the colour off. Make-up needs the cooperation of your face. My face doesn’t want to hide. It has to be seen, it’s asking to be seen as it is. But I have to go to work.

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