The Red Dress

The Red Dress

Her face looked soft during her bath time on Saturday nights. I would sit on a chair that was just outside of the bedroom door to watch her. Her hazel eyes seemed to gleam with that same light that I noticed every time she sang in her church every Sunday and at weddings.

Mother was the most beautiful woman in the world to me as I beheld her pure essence at these times that were very sacred to me. She wore little makeup because she in my eyes, she was graced with natural beauty. I knew because I had seen many movie stars on television and in magazines. She had straight white teeth and her upper lip was softly bow-shaped that she enhanced with red lipstick that she carefully applied and blotted with tissue so that it wouldn't smudge or leave traces on her teeth. She would use a comb to brush her eyebrows up into their already perfect shape arched directly above the edge of her clear blue irises. A small amount of mascara applied with a tiny wet brush swished across a small cake of black kohl powder was all that she needed to look like the movie stars of her time. She reminded me most of Vivian Leigh from the movie, "Gone With The Wind".

I was in love with my mother when I was a girl and I was very proud of her. She worked a head teller in a local bank where I took my girlfriends often just to show her off to them. She was also quite nice to me when she was working amidst her friends.

Mom didn't own many dresses and I remember them all because I was tall like her and I would try them on when she wasn't looking. My favorite was the one I called her 'Cha cha dress'. It was sleeveless and hugged her shapely breasts, her tiny waist, and her generous hips like jersey even though it was made of cotton and polyester. It was flared at the bottom and her black patent leather black shoes completed her party ensemble. When she put on her dress, she would rub her right palm across her stomach from left to right usually about three times as if to flatten it as she gazed into her full length mirror. I often noticed her doing that. I thought there must be something good about rubbing one's hand across one's belly because her eyes seemed to light up and she smiled at herself every time that she stroked herself. She would turn from right to left and left to right and back and forth a few times as though she was ready to dance a sashay. To frame what I thought was the perfect picture of female beauty, she would put on my favorite earrings with cherries and bananas. I believe that they would be called chandelier earrings today. She always reminded me of Chiquita Banana from the banana commercials on the television. Chiquita would dance around in her wonderful dress and bandana as she peeled and cut a banana for her cereal. She would sing in her Jamaican accent, "I'm-a Chiquita banana and I'm -a here to say, "Put bananas on-a your cereal like-a this today".

I felt always that when mom wore that special dress that she should have been off to a fancy cocktail party on board a luxury ship setting sail for the Caribbean Islands. My father never seemed to see what I saw on those Saturday nights when mom wore her red dress. When he caught sight of her, he would bend towards me and whisper into my ear, "I hate it when your mother wears red".