by Tessa Shea Whitehead
The costume designer never thinks of bodies except as molds. The spangling her domain. When into her home a dancer comes she can tell is new – no makeup, unwhitened teeth, a cartilage ring the Team would never allow – she tries not to be mean. But Mary and Joseph, this one’s skin is cream and peaches. Not the shine of cherrywood tan the Judges look for.
Miss Laurel chooses to ignore the girl’s nose wrinkling under her baseball cap and rolls out the glitter rack of audition clothes. Six cats in she knew her home would have an odor, an old spinster aroma — she’s not an idiot. But she didn’t care. The skinny children who visit and their upturned noses be damned. Miss Laurel can tell the girl is doing her best to fix her face and smile as she selects an extremely incorrect green.
She sighs. She is shepherd to so many before they even make the Team. And mostly, they don’t. Still, they buy their audition outfits from the attic of her single-bedroom home, the jewel box of Greenwood Street. The room bursts with silk charmeuse, shimmer lycra, tulle, and Swarovski crystal rhinestones reflected in the floor-to-ceiling mirror on the south wall. Miss Laurel’s sequined two-pieces have made her a name, famous for her sewn trophies. And, not to forget, her blunt mumblings:
“Your hair cannot look that way,”
“you are awful wan for a T– Dancer,” and
“not that shade, no.”
If the girl had done her research, these are things she would know. Miss Laurel lifts a fuchsia from the rack and holds the hanger to the girl’s body. They both look in the mirror. The girl’s eyes go big, her smile bitten between her lips.
“Now, that’s your color.” Also Miss Laurel’s favorite. She used to rock a fuchsia tube top in her senior year at Washington State. Their coloring not too dissimilar.
The girl grasps the hanger, and Miss Laurel turns away. A two-piece doesn’t leave a lick to wiggle. So the girls are often fully nude in her home for a moment, their underwear huddled in a pile in the corner. She gives her little mannequin some privacy and pets her calico Candy.
For now, there is only the dressing. Then if this girl isn’t released, Miss Laurel will form some semblance of friendship with her and give – she sighs again – guidance in as few words as possible. The best advice is fitted.
And finally, if the girl succeeds, she’ll assimilate to the Team, come in once a year for fittings and snicker with the other girls about how ironic it is that the costume designer is a frump.
“Ready?”
Laurel turns and steps back, struck. It’s like looking at the past.
Cap off, clothes gone, the girl’s form has familiar etched edges. Muscles from swimming maybe? For Laurel it was. She feels a pull she hasn’t felt since she was in her twenties. The girl’s beautiful acne ripe and ash hair down the back stirs warm butter in her. The fuchsia flushes her cheeks. The shiny nylon grips her perfect curves. Legs tender as flower stems.
Laurel stands behind her in the mirror. Widths wider, she outbodies her, the girl could be her apple core.
But Miss Laurel wields a needle and wears a thimble. She has a job to do. Pulling together the hem, she touches the memory of having slim hips pinched and pitted dimples below high school colors. What does she remember of wanting? Being wanted? The swell of having a body like a gun: slick efficiency bottled and high-heel booted. Distilled to the root of sex breath and hands in her hair. Walking through campus when all the right parts of her jiggled. The tingle of seeing herself in a mirror.
“What do you think this says about me?” the girl asks, tilting her head.
The two-piece fits in a ziplock. Laurel watches the girl go down the steep and narrow stairs – she knows more than one person has wondered how she squeezes her body up there. Before the steps is the living room where the sofa, ruffles, valances, and even the teapot cosy are covered in ditsy print and dander. Out the front door to the overgrowth of vines and sowthistle. The whole effect is off-putting to some, but how Laurel likes it. After staring at tiny ciré tops and rhinestones all day she wants something soft. Something proudly dowdy.
What does she hope her costumes say?
Certainly not “come fuck me,” but maybe a tiny cry that she is, in fact, erotic.
Tessa Shea Whitehead is a writer and former NFL cheerleader—yes, she’s still got the pompoms. Her work explores the performance of femininity and subverts it with heightened language, mythic figures, and broken forms. Her writing has been published in Beyond Words, Across the Margin, Voicemail Poems, and more. Her story “Man-Made” was shortlisted for the Fractured Lit Ghost, Fable, and Fairy Tales Prize. She is currently pursuing her MFA in poetry at Columbia University. Find her on Instagram @tessasheaw.