Transforma
by Consatnce Gelvin

Mother left Bible study early and caught me watching television with Casey at the Apache Motel. That's where Casey and her family live in four rooms so small you've got to scrunch between the door and her twin bed. Casey's television is attached to the wall, like in a hospital room. I don't know how Mother knew to look in that one particular window, but she did. I'd had time to see the rerun of "Mannequin!"--where Jilly gets a Snowflake soap ad and Xan is jealous and tries to ruin it for her--followed by a new Transforma commercial.

"Trans...form...a. Makeup that's magic." I sang softly to myself, so's not to think about what was in store for me. Sure enough. "If you think I'm letting any daughter of mine watch that trash, you're sadly mistaken--nothing but a buncha painted-up whores. You already lah-di-dah around here enough as it is, thinking you're better'n everbody. Don't you look at me like that, young lady, or I'll give you something to cry about."

"Trans...form...a." I whispered while she whaled away on me. But I didn't cry because my secret made me happy. I'd met this New Yorky-looking woman at the Woolworth's who said I was pretty enough to be a Transforma Girl. Me. And if that happens, I vow to never lay eyes on Mother or Squanee Springs or the folks from Living Gospel Church again. Ever.

After Mother left for work the next day, I took the bus to Denver for my appointment with the Transforma Personal Facial Specialist lady I'd met. This guy with a sliver of pillowy stomach poking from between his belt and button-missing shirt kept asking me questions: how old are you? where you headed? You have friends in Denver? He offered to: help me find the Transforma office, buy me a Coke, show me a new Arcade. Once we pulled into the terminal, I was first to hightail it off the bus.

The address on her card was an old Victorian mansion. A plaque with "Transforma Cosmetics" in cursive hung next to the front door. Locked. I peeked in a window and saw a man whose head rested on his folded arms, sound asleep. He didn't rouse when I knocked. I walked around back and stepped into a miniature garden like you see in picture books about England. A sparkly mist of water splashed in a fountain. Dead center, stood a shimmery statue of a naked woman with arms outstretched like she was being rained on. The cement of the statue's face was pocked and chipped away in places. A Siamese cat dozed under a weeping willow.

I saw a glass door like people have to their patios, and just waltzed right in. I jolted backward when I saw someone heading right at me. It was my own reflection bouncing off a floor-to-ceiling mirror. Then I saw the lady I'd met, standing with arms outstretched, like the statue in the fountain. She was wearing a cape like the Abracadabra Lady in the Transforma ads.

"Aurora, isn't it?"

I nodded. She reached over, cupped my chin and slowly moved my face from side to side. Her eyes were squinched almost closed and I wondered how she could see out them. A blotchy stain mottled her face. The thin wrinkle-gullies that ran from her nose to her scar of an upper lip deepened; she seemed angry. "How old are you?"

"S-sixteen."

"Bullshit. Though you're not a day over thirteen, you have some sun damage. You've neglected your skin."

I gulped. Good thing I'd found this old interview with Teena who'd been the first Transforma Magic Face of the Future and the most beautiful one ever. I'd rehearsed her quotes.

"Oh, no. I spend an hour a day on my beauty routine. I believe beauty is a choice."

"You do, do you now? But to follow your belief to its logical conclusion, you must think ugly people have chosen to be ugly."

"Uh, no, not exactly. But everybody should try to look their best. I read that Lily, you know, the Transforma Girl from--"

"Lily, of course." Her gaze reflected back at me like the lens of glarey sunglasses. Nervous, I looked away and noticed that her office was filled with mirrors--on every shelf, every wall, an antique-looking one stood on wooden legs.

"You think of ugliness, age, almost like they were failings, character flaws. Admit it. You're an American teenager; that's all you know. But for right now, I want to see your face without all that orange cakey glop. Bet you bought it at that five and dime."

While she rummaged through a drawer, I glanced back toward the garden. Amazed, I saw it looked like it'd just been withered by a killing frost. The fountain's water was still and the delicate purple-blue of the cosmos were now brittle, dried stalks. The shadows had changed to evening-time ones--it seemed like night was seeping from the earth upward, not falling from the darkening sky.

The Transforma lady scrubbed my face with a rough washcloth like Mother did when she caught me wearing makeup. Her pupils glittered; something oval and white--me?--flashed in their centers. I felt like one of the small helpless things: a flopping fish before it's gutted, a bone-light sparrow caught in an eagle's claws, my baby brother, head bobbing on his fragile stalk of a neck while Mother shook him, yelling "Shut up, just shut up."

"Oh, I know why you accepted my invitation, why you all do. You think that being a beautiful, glamorous model would be the ultimate life. Money, expensive clothes; men--women, too--staring at you, admiring you. So did you?"

"Ex-excuse me?"

"Buy a jar of cheap makeup, probably on sale. You picked it up, maybe slit the box with your fingernail hoping nobody from the store would see you, and dabbed some on your wrist and thought it matched your skin tone."

She was half right, but I'd shoplifted the makeup after I tested it. Music that sounded like ocean waves played in the background. With a crack! of a wave, an urge to run from there surged through me. "Look, I'd better get. My mother--"

"Your Mother doesn't get off work until six."

I reared back, shocked, but she stilled me with a hand placed on top of my head. I felt like I was in one of those traps that the animal rights people are trying to outlaw. My body felt thick, like before sleep. "How did--"

"Intuition." She coughed in that fakey way people do when they don't really have to. "I know more about you than you think. I know you're an only child, well, at least now anyway."

How did she know about my baby brother who died? My thighs felt wobbly like they wouldn't be able to hold me up.

"I know how you feel because I once felt trapped by my own life, too. And I thought my beauty would be the ticket out. That it could buy me love. I was wrong, as are you. You'll see." She shook a jar; its silver cap threw off streaks like a comet.

"What's that?"

"After removing makeup and grime with our patented Cleansing & Exfoliating WonderCloth, the next step in the Transforma Quick Way to Beauty regime is a thin layer of Miracle Rejuva-Now Betahydroxy Replenishing Crème. But I'm giving you the Ultra Transforma-ation; reserved for special customers." Her fingertips rubbed a greasy, warm lotion into my face. "Doesn't your skin feel refreshed? Our Rejuva-Now lotion is pure magic for the skin. Next I'm going to put down a good foundation, much like a homebuilder does. Our Cover-All Pore Minimizing Maximum Foundation gives you that glow, that flawless, poreless look that models have." She ignored the phone ringing in the background.

I floated far away, in the same daze I'd get into when I watched "Mannequin!" and imagined being the star of the show. The walls of the room quavered; it was like I was floating underwater in a large aquarium. My skin tingled when she massaged another flesh-colored lotion onto my cheeks.

Then she stroked my hair the way you'd pet a cat. "You can't imagine, can you, the freedom of invisibility? Don't you sometimes feel the burden of men's attentions, their eyes, their...didn't you ever wish you could be invisible when you were a little kid?"

I had. I'd wanted to hear what Casey and her other friends said about me when I wasn't there.

"I could make you invisible. Think of it, the power, the freedom. And, later, with the help of Transforma, you could always come back. If you'd want to." When she shook another bottle; sparks burst out like from a 4th of July sparkler. She dabbed a cotton puff and streaked the lotion on her face. Her dry, creased skin pinked and began to glow. Her eyes looked darker, her lashes seem to grow 'til they were as soft and fluffy as expensive paint brushes. Teena--the first, the prettiest Transforma Girl ever--stared back at me. "Mirror, mirror." she said. "Look," she said. She held up a hand mirror before me. An old woman, a witch-woman was reflected. It was the face she'd had before she uncovered her Teena face. It was my mother's face. It was my face?

"No! No! I want to be beautiful. I don't care if--" I wiggled from her grasp, jumped away from her, ran. Ran toward the garden, ran--I crashed into the glass of the sliding door; I--.

I lay back, limp, against the chair's cheap vinyl. I stared at the canister holding alcohol swabs, at the plastic curve of the ammonia bottle, at the tissue-paper runner. The doctor peered at me, his crow's feet deepened all the way to his hairline, like how I'd draw the sun's rays when I was little. He peeled the bandage away from my skin. His gentle slowness made it hurt more. He looked at me with sad eyes.

"I want to see my--"

"I know. But keep in mind, Aurora, that plastic surgery could eliminate--"

I grabbed a mirror from the counter and waved it like a sword. Look, the Transforma lady had said. Look. I studied the crooked lightning bolt of a scar, bruised and blueish in places, thin at the bottom but knotted and corded-looking at its top.

"But for the time being, you should be able to cover the scar quite nicely with makeup. I've had other patients say that the Transforma products are especially good."

"She'll do no such thing. Her scar is a sign from God."

"A sign from God? I'm not sure I follow how--"

"Thank you, Doctor. We're moving, so we won't be setting any more appointments."

"Where will you be going? I could refer you to--"

"She don't need another doctor. All healing comes from the Lord. Let's go, Aurora."

It was three years ago when I became invisible. I wear my scar proud as can be, and, no, I've never wanted to "come back." Mother saws it's a lust deflector, and she's right. I can walk alone and men don't whistle, jeer. I can ride the bus and no one sits down by me. When men catch sight of my scar their gazes just skitter away.

Mother and I are much closer now; it's like I had to walk through the Valley of Vanity before I saw the error of my ways. For a time there, before we moved, Casey tried to tempt me into watching Mannequin! with her. She must've thought I needed cheering up 'cause of my face. But I just shared with her the mysterious way the Lord was working in my life. Like it says in Proverbs, Chapter Thirty, verse 8, "Remove far from me vanity..."

Constance Gelvin's first novel No Reason to Lie will be published this summer by Hardshell Word Factory.