Wednesday, November 30, 2016

blue eyeliner

My sister was a hellion.  This is well established.  And although I am thinking of her today-- tho I do every day-- it's only notable cos I saw somebody's Twitter post of their sister; fairly reeking of the late 80's, early 90's-- resplendent in big hair and blue eyeliner.

If there was ever a hellcat to wear blue eyeliner, my sister had cheap-o cosmetic company, Wet n Wild, at her feet.  Smaller feet than mine, may I add, and two inches taller.  I could digress...  but I won't. (Perhaps at a later date.)

Elke got busted on a drug charge in New Mexico, and when they pulled up her records?  Florida dragged her back to serve a grand theft auto charge first.  Her harrowing tales of being subject to having her period, chained up with a van full of men, were nothing I ever could have dreamed in my worst possible nightmare, yet, she persevered.

Soon after her arrival in Broward County, my mother and I were informed we were not allowed a visit because she had landed herself in solitary confinement for fighting.

It took six weeks before we could actually visit-- and though Mom and I had put money in to commissary-- I was surprised by my sister's makeup when she ended up on the other side of the glass.

"You look...." I stammered, "...beautiful.  How do you get makeup in here?"

"Ah, we just use colored pencils," she said.

She had scrubbed on a dark blue pencil inside her upper lid, and an aquamarine for her lower.  The result was truly lovely.  And hard-- when you knew where it came from.

...

A few years down the road, my sister was sick, dying--- though I didn't know that quite yet--- and I met a very handsome boy in a club.  On a night.  A great night.  (Also, a different story.)

We went on a date.  And I found out he was a corrections officer.  In Broward County.  And through the craziness of that date, he figured out me and mom; going to visit my sister.

"Oh god, I remember you and your mother coming to visit 'the crazy girl'", he said.  "That's your sister?  She was hot."

Ha.

He finally explained her stint in solitary to me:  "She smashed some chick's head against the concrete to assume dominance.  It took six guards to get her off the other girl."

"And when she was released back in to general population, she always had blue eyeliner on."