Picky Vicky

The mirror showed a reflection that wasn’t my own. It was a mermaid. Another mermaid. My twelfth one that shift at the Scales and Booty booth where I sold Booty and beauty. That year, the Starling Pirate Festival featured adult beverages to boost sales. Charcuteries, too. It was like printing money.

The mermaid picked at a nickel-sized scab in the center of her soft little forearm.

“Hello, Mermaid!” I said, pressing play on the script I’d been running all day.

Mom slurped down the last of Dad’s Ancient Booty jug. “This is Vicky,” Mom said with midwestern inflection. “She’s a little sweaty, she’s been that way all day.” Her breath blended rum, freshly squeezed mango juice, and boba in a marketing attempt to capture their target demographic of educated men age 30-50. The keepers of the privy purse and their female companions.

“Sorry,” Mom said. “She’s got cotton candy all stuck to her face from the snack she just had to have.”

I hoisted the little girl up into my chair and swiveled her around to face me.

“Hello, Mermaid,” I whispered. “I see the Sea Witch hasn’t stolen Mommy’s voice just yet.”

Her plump sun-burned cheeks lifted into a smile as she scratched around the loose edges of her scab.

“Would you like your face painted today?” I asked.

“Quit scratchin’!” Mom said in a holler, interrupting my flow. I jerked back abruptly and knocked the handheld mirror from the top of my cart to the floor between my suede ankle boots. Held together by the black plastic rim, a dozen shards reflected the inside of my skirt.

“Rainbow scales or a glittery tail?” I asked, skilled at ignoring disturbance. Holding up a laminated printout of the little girl’s options, I waved my hand in a questioning gesture and stood beside her in wait.

“Scales,” said the girl. “I want to be a beautiful mermaid.”

“You were beautiful the moment you woke up,” I said. “The scales just hide your new gills.”

“What are gills?”

“Gills are great! They let you breathe underwater.”

“Do I have gills?”

“All mermaids do! It’s a part of your transformation.”

Her cheeks lifted into that smile as she imagined what I might mean and mindlessly scratched at her scab.

Mom’s ears were attuned to what bothered her liking, and she lunged in to swat her daughter’s small hand.

I painted her into a mermaid. Forty dollars to make her feel pretty. Plus tax.

She looked down at her arm, at that cherub-like limb, and asked me in a voice safe from Mom’s ears, “What do you think’s inside of me?”

Our eyes mirrored each other. Straddling the broken black-framed glass shards, I stood between Vicky and her parents.

“Let’s find out!” I said, holding up two fingers, in peace. I touched them down upon her wrist and walked them up the length of her arm while she giggled, then I slid my thumbnail up under her scab and ripped it clean off of her flesh.

We walked the Pirate Festival grounds all morning, looking for some ice water. There wasn’t any, Daddy said. My pink Crocs had let the dirt in between my toes, and the sweat from my ankles was pooled in a tiny mud pit beneath my arches. The slurry slopped with each step.

The pretty lady at the booth smiled at Daddy. Daddy was the best. Everyone loved Daddy. He handed me a dixie cup of water from the lady.

“Daddy found you some water, my princess,” he said, handing it to Mommy to give to me while Daddy gave the booth lady some money.

Mommy was so pretty. She was looking at a board full of mermaid face paintings. Mommy loved mermaids. She thought they were beautiful. I eyed the board of faces in awe of which one I might become to earn Mommy’s love.

Daddy’s drink came in a big jug.

“I want some of yours!” I said, already done with my water, the last of it still dripping from the corners of my mouth down onto my shirt.

“No, no, my dear. This is for Daddies.”

“And Mommies,” Mommy said with a slurp. “You want your face painted, Vicky? You wanna be a beautiful mermaid today?”

“I do!” I said, picking at the week-old scab on my arm.

“Then quit pickin’!” Mommy said, but it felt so good to pick. “Pretty mermaids don’t pick like that. Quit pickin’ and you can get your face painted.”

“But it feels, Mommy! It feels like something in there making it tickle.”

The booth lady looked at me and smiled. Daddy gave her more money, and Mommy slapped my arm a little to stop the itch.

I picked up the shattered mirror from the ground and held it at an angle for the Mermaid to see her new scales, now smudged with tears falling down her face.

“Don't cry, Mermaid! Your gills will come in soon!” I promised then tilted the broken mirror downward to show the girl her own forearm in the reflection. “First, you must empty out.”

Blood poured from the open wound in the mirror, streaming forth a thousand baby black eels.

Inside the mirror, the shards fell one by one onto the Mermaid’s arm and singed open her skin where more creatures escaped. But in the swivel chair, Vicky’s tears fell onto her healed little arm.

“They’ll all be out soon,” I said, “and you’ll be filled up like new!”

“With what?” asked the Mermaid.

“With whatever gets put in you next!”