I had never before worn a family hand-me-down.
“I know there are some issues with it, but Graciela said you’d be able to fix it up, no problem.”
“Lucille is amazing,” I said with a nod.
“Mom will be able to make it perfect,” said Maya, looking over at her mother, who nodded. “And with a good laundering, it will be right as rain.”
“Try it on,” said Bronwyn.
“Yes, try it on, already,” urged Graciela.
“Dude,”said Conrad.
I felt shy, and finally realized why some of my customers held back a little. Even though the vibrations felt right and the dress beckoned me, it was a little bit scary to be the center of such attention.
“I’ll help you,” said Selena, taking my hand and leading me into the big dressing room.
I took off the polka-dot dress that matched Selena’s; then Selena helped me to pull my mother’s family wedding dress over my head. The fabric slipped easily down my body, encasing me in silky softness. It fit loosely, in the style of the twenties. And though I didn’t have a boyish body, it was big enough in the right areas. It needed some alteration, but not much.
“Wow,” said Selena.
“Really?”
I stepped out of the dressing room. You could have heard a pin drop.
“Well?” I said, wondering at their silence.
Bronwyn gasped and teared up.
“What?” I looked down at myself, suddenly doubtful.
My mother came up to me, gave me a hug, and then turned me around so I could look into the three-way mirror.
I looked beautiful. I looked like a princess. Best of all, I looked like a very happy witch.
Everyone started talking at once,oohing andaahing, pulling a little here, a little there.
“All you need now is the perfect veil,” Maya said. “We must have some in boxes next door, right?”
“I have one here,” my mother said as she pulled a lace veil out of her sewing bag. It was attached to a tiara. It was antique, but not fancy, made of cheap wire and rhinestones that had been cleaned up and polished.
“I know it’s silly,” my mother said. “But that’s the tiara I won when I was crowned Miss Tecla County. That was the closest I’ve ever come to feeling magical.”
“It’s amazing,” I said, wishing I had a better word for it. I smelled daisies, and my mind was flooded with images of home, and Texas, and sitting in my mother’s lap while she read me a story when I was little. I thought of what Patience had said, that my thoughts were expressed in scents and symbols. Maybe this was what she meant.
“Thank you,” I said, tears stinging the backs of my eyes. I knew if I had been able to cry, I would have done so. “It’s amazing. It’s exactly what I’ve been hoping for.”
While saying, “No time like the present,” Lucille trailed me back into the changing room and pinned thedress for alterations, then helped me to take it off without stabbing myself.
After I had changed back into my polka-dot dress, Bronwyn excused herself to take Imogen and Selena to their respective homes, Maya and Lucille begged off as well, and the last of the crowd began to disperse. My mother and the Texas coven climbed back onto the school bus to drive to Calypso’s house in Bolinas. Only my grandmother and Oscar stayed behind to accompany me in my Mustang. Graciela insisted on hunting for a sparkly jacket in my inventory piled in Lucille’s Loft, and then wanted to ride with the top down, because she’d once seen a movie in which a glamorous actress—was it Audrey Hepburn, or Grace Kelly?—drove across the Golden Gate Bridge in a convertible and she wasn’t about to miss a chance to do the same before she died.
“You really taught my mother knot magic?” I asked her while we packed the last of the leftovers into boxes to take to Calypso’s.
Graciela laughed. “She’s atrocious. Truly. Still and all, it’ll be interestin’ to see what she came up with in that trousseau. Have you looked yet?”
“She told me not to, yet.”
Graciela lifted an eyebrow.
