QUINCEAÑERA BY PROXY

Carol Nowlin

Iam sitting cross-legged in the basement, my bottom numb from the cold. Around me are the perfectly arranged folds of the Quinceañera dress my cousin Jeanette gave us. The taffeta flares out across the concrete floor. This dress, more than anything, makes me feel beautiful. When I am sitting like this, with the frothy pink taffeta splayed out neatly in a circle, I am perfect.

I touch the ruffles at my neck and dream I am Pocahontas, the Indian princess. Or a blonde damsel waiting for a knight to free her from the dragon’s lair. In the damp stillness I turn my head and listen for the sound of horse’s hooves clattering down our staircase.

Instead I hear my mother moving about in the kitchen above me. Then there is the heavy tread of my dad’s shoes and the sound of the TV in the living room. They don’t even notice I’m gone, I think. This dry-walled room on the side of the basement is where I come to try on the Quinceañera dress. It hangs in a closet on a wire hanger, a smooth rush of pink against the basement’s gloom. Despite the rust spots, rips, and sprinkles of mold, my stomach wallops every time I catch sight of it.

I smooth a wrinkle and turn toward the door. "Hello Prince Charming," I say, and tilt my head. Just then I hear footsteps on the stairs. I jump up, grabbing handfuls of the taffeta skirt, and face the door. My father walks past the doorway, his tool belt clanking with each step. He catches sight of me and stops, his face shadowed in the half-light. We make eye contact, then he turns and walks over to his tool bench.

I wait until I hear the tread of his feet on the steps once again. Then I pull the dress over my head, lace scratching my cheeks. I put it on its wire hanger and tug back into my T-shirt and culottes.

I knew there was no prince. Yet I kept sneaking down to the basement, sometimes just to stroke the dress, sometimes to pull it over my head and sit down, letting it puff around me and feeling the cool floor on my legs.

While I sat there I imagined Jeanette’s Quinceañera in Mexico, where her family lived as Mennonite missionaries. Her dad Raul was Latino, so I imagined Jeanette’s dark hair arranged around her shoulders, her greenish eyes (my aunt’s color) glowing out from her dusky skin. The pale pink sleeves making her arms look even darker. It was her Big Day. She wore a black lace head covering, making her look like a Spanish princess.

Jeanette’s mom, my Aunt Vanita, stepped forward in a white jacket and skirt, complete with matching white heels, and handed Jeanette a cream-colored Bible with thick gold lettering on the front. Next Uncle Raul stepped forward and served Jeanette communion, the brilliant juice threatening to mar her dress as she sipped from the cup.

Then, when that was all over, they filed out of the auditorium and had a party in the foyer. Jeanette stood in a circle of light eating chocolate cake as her friends and the boys from her village gazed at the puffy pink dress and her beautiful Young Woman figure.

After Jeanette was done eating, she threw her paper plate in the trash can and leapt onto the back of a waiting stallion one of the boys had fetched. They rode through the church yard and out of town, disappearing into the Mexican horizon, her dress a blur of froth around the horse’s flanks.

Since I didn’t live in Mexico and I wasn’t Latina, I was never going to have a Quinceañera. But no one had told me that yet. I hadn’t grown up, hadn’t heard the deadly truths my parents never spoke—about lives hanging like commas, waiting for the princes that never come.

I took to drawing pictures of princesses in ball gowns during church. Walter Beachy leaned on the pine pulpit and talked about submission and the evils of women wearing "war paint" while I drew rosy cheeks and necks dripping with jewels. When I sat next to my friend Ami, we would draw them together, giving them names like Amber or Crystal.

That is, we would draw them until Ami’s mother set her mouth in a line and confiscated Ami’s pencil. When this happened we were set adrift to stare around us at a room full of good Mennonites, old women in plain dresses with hankies stuffed in the folds, and the scent of spearmint Certs mixing with wood polish. Often I glanced over at my big sister Grace as she listened to Walter, her soft eyes shining above a modest pink blouse with puffy sleeves. A long French braid slipping down her back.

Grace and my mother were ample, obliging women. They liked the colors pink and purple and practiced the womanly arts of dressmaking and acquiescence. Grace won a 4-H medal for a loaf of wheat bread she baked in seventh grade.

I, on the other hand, was a late bloomer. Tight-budded, angry, folded up—preferring mustard and chartreuse. Once I reached puberty, I willed boys to like me then found myself repulsed, outraged when they obliged. I examined their glistening yellow teeth, smelled their rank musk, and turned away. To pass the time, I imagined plucking off their heads and pasting replacements on their toothpick frames.

"I think I’m ugly," I said to Grace one night. Our rooms were connected by an L-shaped bathroom, and we talked into the dark from our beds, our voices echoing through the space between us.

"Stop saying that. You’re just being stupid."

Staring into the darkness, fiercely. A few moments of quiet, then I gathered up my courage and repeated, "No. I know I’m ugly."

A disgusted sigh. More silence. Then, "Don’t go getting a big head or anything, but you’re not ugly. You’re actually kind of . . . pretty."

"Thanks." Staring into the darkness, smiling like my face would break. Long brown hair floating, halo-like, on the pillow beneath me.

—Carol Nowlin, Hilliard, Ohio, spends most of her time running after her two-year-old son and part-time as grants manager for an international ministry. She practices her rusty Spanish skills with friends and colleagues in hopes of someday being invited to a real Quinceañera. The closest she has yet come was a day trip to Tijuana, where she found delicious churros but no fluffy pink dresses.