Bess and I went downtown to get her a prom dress.
Her friend knew a store and she had already been there once so I let her map us there. We've been to the toy district so we knew what to expect. It's like a mini 14th street in NY, there seem to be alot of things leaking into the street, the streets look like alleys and the alleys look like murders. It's crammed down there so it looks like there's more people but really it's just foreign people like us, parking and hoping their car is still there afterwards, trying to all fit on the sidewalk with the carts selling what looks like blue lemonade with a side of burning rocks on a grill under an umbrella too big to get under as you pass.
We duck into a place called Connie's which they immediately start doing when we walk in the door. I like a store that isn't lying, they want your money and they want all of it as fast as possible.
The dresses are flowing off the walls like chinese upholstery. Are these expensive dresses? Or are they 40 dollars and they want us to pay 280 dollars so they can go buy some electronics next door. Hard to tell.
The colors though, it is like a sea of foamy color, with sparkly beads. It's like the childhood bedroom of Tori Spelling. I imagine a flowing canopy bed which is so majestic you can't notice how big her nose is.
Bess is as boggled silent as I am, but she does find a sage green, a lavender lilac rapunzel dress, an electric royal blue. Emma suggests the deep blue, that's how she pictures Bess.
We cram into a small curtained area about the size of a valet parking attendant and this is maybe the closest Bess has let me get to her in about 6 years. But she saw her friend needed help dressing from her mom when they went so this fore-adventure helped her know how to act in this, our adventure. I help her pull fancy dresses over her head and then we stand looking in the mirror and they say no pictures I guess the chinese government is really worried about dresses on the internet, but I take pictures secretly like James Bond steath fast.
She considers her image in the mirror. I'm not sure what she likes or doesn't like about herself, she keeps most of her pain inside. I hope she sees what I do, a mother deer and her gentle doe. Blinking her big eyes and seeing perfection. I don't even think she sees the mother deer, holding the curtain. But she knows I am there. I did the zipper.
When she tries on the blue dress, all the other dresses fall to the floor in tears. The blue dress wraps her like the ocean. It holds her gently in its palm and lifts her to the gods like look
look at this
We get the blue dress.
The way you pay is you have to hold the dress up to a counter up so high it's like you're in divorce court and the cashier is the looming judge. Also the judge is wearing an enormous black wig and way too much make up and I think is a chinese drag queen. This is maybe the best part, the unfortunate lack of beauty in a sea of colorful drapey gauze. This slipping wigged cartoon wart in enormous glasses.
She takes my money like she's doing me a favor.
Bess and I walk out of the store the dresses on the lined up, headless mannequins bowing and whispering at our good fortune. The street steams and looks ragged and the sun seems perplexed why its beaming rays seem to bounce back on a flat mirror, the sun can't make things look joyful in this section of town. But my little daughter in her tennis shoes and jean shorts, her high school career wrapping up on this stenchful street, her quiet walk and the white bag with her coveted dress, for one night she will be the star.
