Dirty Faces - Book 2

Chapter 13: Ladylike

Chapter 13: Ladylike

It was Tommy and Danny's Saturday to visit their pap so there wouldn't be any action at the dirt patch until early afternoon, at the earliest. Ginny had spent the morning at home helping Mama cook breakfast, washing up the dishes, listening to a radio program with Adam. But as the day wore on, she began to get restless, and so she grabbed her ball glove and headed for town.

Knowing it was too early for her friends to be back, she decided to see what Becky was up to. She climbed the stairs behind the store to the Kellys' apartment, the non-stop chaos inside audible from halfway up the steps. After she knocked on the door a few times, each time louder than the last, the perpetually weary-looking Mrs. Kelly permitted her entry and told her that Becky was in her bedroom. Ginny walked through the Kellys' piled-up apartment, trying her best to go undetected by Becky's more raucous younger siblings. She had read about the jungle in school and always imagined it was probably a lot like Becky's apartment.

Ginny tapped on the pulled-to bedroom door, but not surprisingly, Becky didn't hear her, so she let herself in. The room Becky shared with three or four of her sisters was crammed wall-to-wall with furniture: two double beds and a vanity filled it completely up. Becky lay on her stomach cross-ways on one of the beds, her feet swinging back and forth in the air, thumbing through a magazine. She looked over her shoulder when the door creaked open. The angry look melted off her face when she saw that it was Ginny. “Hey. I was fixing to throw this magazine at you if you were one of my little brothers again.”

“Glad you looked first.” Ginny kicked her shoes off and climbed up on the bed beside Becky. “Whatcha looking at?”

“Movie stars, mostly.” Becky turned a few pages. “Aren't they lovely?”

“Yeah,” Ginny agreed. The stars and starlets on the pages of this latest issue to grace the shelves at the company store were indeed beautiful. But they didn't look real, not like anybody she knew, anyway.

Becky twisted one of her fiery-red ringlets around her finger and sighed. “I sure wouldn't mind looking like that.” She turned the page again and studied the face of a model in a cigarette advertisement, then pushed the magazine in front of Ginny and slid off the bed. She sat down in front of the vanity, pulled open a drawer, and began rummaging through it until she produced several small items.

“What are you doing?” Ginny asked.

“Practice makes perfect,” said Becky. She began lining her eyes with a black pencil.

“You have makeup?”

“My sister does.”

“Why are you practicing putting on makeup?”

“Do you see those ladies in that magazine? How do you think they get to be so pretty?”

“Some people are just good-looking.”

Becky frowned and turned to look at her hopeless friend. “Do you know anybody who looks like that?”

Ginny thumbed through a few pages. She did know some pretty people; she thought Mama was pretty. And Leslie Williams was far too pretty to have any interest in her brother. But neither of them looked anything like the movie stars. “No, I guess not.”

“Makeup,” said Becky. “Makeup makes all the difference.” She patted her nose with a powder puff. “Besides, it's just a ladylike thing to do, like crossing your legs and chewing with your mouth shut.”

“Hm,” said Ginny. She flipped through the magazine and examined the photographs and advertisements while Becky chattered about makeup application and making oneself look more appealing to the boys. She admired the fancy evening gowns worn by the ladies in the magazine and their long, flowing lochs. Running her hand through the short, coarse mess on her head and glancing down at her dirty blue jeans assured her that all the makeup in the world couldn't make her look remotely like the photographs.