Mothered (10)

Hope would use her wheelchair to block Grace and hide what she was doing (even if someone looked at them askance, Hope had learned that no one at Rite Aid was gonna yell at a smiling girl in a wheelchair). They considered it not really stealing because they didn’t take entire greeting cards, just the pretty hodgepodge bits. A lot of cards had fabulous decorations, like little bows and lace and faceted gems that looked like rubies and emeralds—and Grace learned to tear them off superquick.

Going to Rite Aid was like a trip to a treasure chest. Mommy always let them roam around the store on their own while she waited in line to get Hope’s prescriptions. And Mommy didn’t give a fart about the whats and wheres of their old baby-food jar (though she did sometimes call the girls magpies). Whenever they showed her their fabulously adorned paper dolls, she’d look up from cutting coupons just long enough to flash them a zippered smile.



Their paper dolls were twin girls named Mona (Hope’s doll) and Rona (Grace’s). They were nine inches high and had been cut from the back covers of two old spiral notebooks, which were stiffer than paper and white on one side. Sometimes Grace forgot that she alone was doing the drawing and cutting: Hope always instructed her on every detail for Mona’s new clothes and advised Grace on how to embellish Rona’s. Hope wanted to be a fashion designer someday, and Grace would be her assistant.

Mona and Rona were always being invited to fancy balls and needed the best clothes for each one. The dolls could never look exactly alike (though their outfits had to complement each other), and they couldn’t wear the same dress twice (at least not in public). Since Mona and Rona had so many ridiculously fancy frocks, sometimes they wore the older ones as nightgowns or as play clothes—even for a rough game of dodgeball with the stuffed animals.

Under Hope’s direction, Grace finished coloring a new halter-style gown in a shade of pear green that she never would’ve picked for Rona. Mona, with her red hair, could get away with weird greens, but Grace insisted on blues and purples for her black-haired doll. (That the dolls were so-called identical twins but didn’t look alike was of no concern to the girls, who also were identical but . . . different.)

“Let me see,” said Hope.

Grace folded the paper flaps of the pear-colored dress around Mona’s flat body and held the doll up for Hope to inspect.

“Hmm. Good. Will look nice with a mink stole.”

Unsure of exactly what a mink stole was, Grace dug through the jar of adornments, looking for emeralds and bling.

“No, you have to make one,” Hope insisted.

“How?”

“Cut off a piece of your hair. Drape it around her neck, and clasp it with the biggest diamond.”

Grace hesitated. Now she grasped her sister’s vision of a fur wrap but wasn’t sure she wanted to donate a piece of her own hair.

“Why not yours?” she asked. They had the same dirty-blonde hair, shoulder length and untidy.

“Yours is prettier.”

Untrue but flattering. With a sigh, Grace separated a tail of hair from the back of her head and pulled it forward (at least no one would notice the missing piece if they only looked at her from the front). She was about to cut it when Hope issued another command.

“Longer. It has to go around her shoulders.”

“We could find some yarn.”

“Mink is the softest fur, no itchy yarn.”

“Fine,” she grumped. Grace inched the scissors closer to her scalp and cut off a hunk of her hair. She glued it to her sister’s paper doll, securing it at the front with the best of their diamonds.

It was a good look, Grace had to admit. The soft-green dress, the blonde “fur,” the priceless gem. She held it up for Hope’s approval. Hope threw back her head (probably on purpose) and clapped (or tried to) and laughed with madcap pleasure. Her joy was enough to soften Grace’s irritation. Hope was such a perfectionist, and to create something to her standards was its own sort of reward.

Grace assumed that Mona was done and ready. The ball was set to start in twenty minutes and Rona was still in her underwear, so she traced the doll on a clean sheet of paper, ready to start on a new gown.

“Need one more thing,” said Hope.

“What?” Grace rolled her eyes, impatient. “I don’t want Rona to be late to the ball.”

“A purse. The softest calfskin bag.”

“Okay, I’ll make one after Rona’s dress.”

“Make it now, so the skin stops bleeding.”

“What?” Grace, sitting on the floor cross-legged, surrounded by paper scraps and the accoutrement of two-dimensional fashion design, looked up at her sister. Perched in her power chair, Hope often seemed like a queen on a throne, larger than life. Had Grace uncharacteristically misunderstood her?

“Make it now so the skin stops bleeding!”

“What skin?” Grace cringed, grossed out and confused.

“Your earlobe.”

Grace started to feel queasy, like she sometimes did when they were in the car, going up and down too many hills.

“You’re crazy,” she said. Maybe Hope was joking around—she couldn’t modulate her voice well enough to make it clear when she was being sarcastic. Grace fished a piece of lace out of the jar and folded it over. “I can use this, make a pretty—”

“No! Take the scissors. Cut off an earlobe. It will be soft, the perfect clutch. Do it now.”