The Queen of Peter Street

L'auteure se rappelle les nombreuses visites de sa tante qui voulait dorloter sa mere en lui offrant manucures et coiffures pour l'embellir et la faire ressembler a une reine ou encore a sainte Cecile. Sa fille la revoit plutot avec un balai a la main, un tablier tache autour de la taille et des ipingles a la bouche tout en changeant les couches du bebe. There are so many aunts who pop in and out of our house, like ladies jumping on and off the Ferris wheel. Some aunts are crabby and some are nice; some wear long black nuns cloaks and others wear pumps with matching mini-skirts and jackets; some smoke cigarettes and some turn up their noses at the smell of smoke. When the non-smoking aunts come over to our house, I hide out in my room playing dolls and trying to stay out of their hair. They'll cook up a massive pot of stew or clean out the closets or vacuum up the floors. My Mom is so glad when they do the vacuuming because you need two hands and usually one of her hands is holding one of my little sisters. When the smoking aunts come to visit--Auntie Lorraine and Auntie Bernice and Auntie Jeanie--filling up the ashtrays with half-smoked butts and rings of red lipstick that circle around the filters like lucky red horseshoes, I sit as close to them as I can. They fill up the house with cackles of laughter. They pluck their eyebrows bald, and draw black eyebrow pencil lines that curve above their eyes like Chinese brush strokes. Sometimes Auntie Lorraine gives me loose change, pressing a quarter or dime firmly into my hand. After that, I'm glued to her like a baby kitten to its mother. The smoking aunts usually come over to the house to cheer up my mother or take her out. Sometimes they paint shiny red nail polish onto her fingernails. The nail polish lasts an entire eight days, even if my mother does have her hands in dish water or laundry soap for most of the day. I watch as my mother's red nails slowly chip off, becoming tiny flecks of red dots as if her fingernails have the red measles. Today, my aunts have brought my Mom to the Nu-Fashion Beauty Parlour to get her hair done. When she comes in through the front door, she is wearing a new blouse with sea shell buttons and a white kerchief on her hair. She looks like she just floated up from the big lake--a pearly water angel. When she takes off the kerchief, I see she has shiny hair with soft curls sitting like a crown on top of her head. I wonder if maybe there are little flowers or birds hiding inside her curls. I'm pretty sure if I asked her to do cartwheels, she would do it. Or if I asked her to take us to the beach, she would scoop us out the door--like the moms on television with pink lipstick and not a hair out of place. But it's winter and by the time summer comes, she will be back to her old self--a mop in her hand, an apron with sticky splotches and safety pins clenched between her teeth as she gets ready to change a diaper. But it doesn't matter because today she is perfect; she is the queen of Peter Street and prettier than all the other moms. My Mom is smiling at us from the hallway when my aunts tell her to sit down and relax. She is about to sit on the orange couch with upholstery that looks like a manic cat chewed it to bits. But before she sits, my Auntie Dee scoots us all off the couch and puts it back to the way it is supposed to be. (It isn't really one couch; it's three little couches sectioned together, like a wiener dog candy dish with one part of the dog fitting into the next part. But because my sisters are always bouncing up and down on the furniture, the parts separate and clothes and toys get stuck under the cushions or in between the couch sections.) I snuggle up beside my Mom until I'm close enough to smell her hair. It smells like perfume and soap and potatoes. Her hair-do is put together with hidden bobby pins that match the colour of her dyed hair. I know I shouldn't touch her hair because I might muss it up, so instead I touch her hands. …

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