Your Face Will Stay That Way

I haven’t been born yet.

Underneath my sister’s pre-Vatican II veil her face is red from crying. I recognize that she is in protest mode. She cannot smile at injustice. The whole family is standing in front of the fireplace. It must be Easter morning, judging from the line of pastel dresses. My mother cannot hold us together, not even for one frame, though she tries.

***

My child is a Viking. A warrior, complete with two braids hanging down over her shoulders. Her face is solemn, fierce, the face of a girl who knows she will have to fight, perhaps even kill. She looks like her great-grandmothers, those women from Finland and Eastern Europe, with their wide jawlines and big eyes. This secret warrior girl surprises everyone but me.

***

They tell us to smile on every street corner in every city in the world. Smile. Men and women both are sold on this advice. A smile is supposed to make you prettier, and that is the name of the game. Once, while I am standing alone in Bayonne, a man comes up behind me and wants more than a smile. I run.

***

The two girls are wearing sundresses and giggling, eating candy like little kids. Except they can’t be kids, because they’re holding those telltale red plastic cups, and we all know what that means. One of them rises to get a refill and drops a candy heart into her friend’s lap. On the way down the heart passes before the friend’s eyes, blocking out all the world’s badness. You can still find her walking around with hearts in her eyes, chasing after sweetness. Just like a child.

***

“Do you want to play with Snow White?”

Valérie hands my child the doll to distract her as I leave. She does not tell her to stop crying. Valérie calls the doll Blanche-Neige because this is French school. I have chosen to leave my children with a transgressor, a liberal from Provence who has a husband and a lover. A metal sculptor who never apologizes for herself. She would never tell a girl to smile.

***

A woman is screaming at a ghost child, a baby with a blanket over his head. He already knows her so well. The whole family knows this about her: how she likes to scare and be scared. They all rejoice in this moment of play-horror. Though the grinning baby hasn’t yet said his first word, he understands everything about this family he was born into.

***

In a purple house a mother and daughter do homework at a tiny purple plastic table. It’s easy. Everything is easy so far. Outside in the old pecan tree, a great horned owl is supervising the lesson. His low, authoritative hoots come in through the window, covering the table, filling the room. The mother and daughter laugh and laugh.

The owl is stern. The owl is always right.

***

The grandparents are impossibly chic, handsome and well dressed, standing somewhere in San Francisco. Their smiles are discreet, cautious. Coy. You can tell they are lovers. It’s just amazing, your uncle will say, looking at them decades later, after everything has happened, every bad thing. But it’s not over yet. There is more to come. Always more to come.

***

I tell the photographer I want a special wedding picture. Not artistic, but special. And nobody else should be in it. Just me and the mirror. I want to have a picture like no other bride has ever had. This is a great mystery. We are trying to capture Nessie or Bigfoot. We are looking for a UFO. My childhood monsters are invited to the wedding. When the photographer tells me to smile, I want to burst into flames.