You don’t usually wear makeup, do you?

Pete's Vagina
91. Showtime
by Erin Halfelven

Leadfoot Mom managed to get us to the studio almost half an hour before they needed us. I was surprised to see so many cars in the parking lot at 7:30 a.m. on a Sunday. Even so, we had to wait at the door for someone to come out front to let us in.

The girl who opened the door looked about sixteen and gave me an appraising look, the kind I’d been getting from other girls at school lately, but her gaze settled on the hangers Mom and I were carrying. “Is that your football uniform?” she asked. “It’s so clean!”

“Well, I washed it yesterday,” Mom protested.

“That’s fine,” said the girl. “I’m Maude Hitchens. I’m interning from the college. As a gopher, ha!” she added cheerfully. “So if you need something, I’m probably the one who’ll get it for you.”

“Thank you, Maude,” I said. “Do you know what they want me to be wearing? The uniform? Or I brought some other clothes.” I pointed at the two dresses Mom was carrying.

Maude’s mouth started moving before her voice showed up. “You know, no one has told me that. Let me show you to the dressing room, and I’ll go find out what the director needs first.”

We followed her along a hallway that seemed a bit humble for existing so close to the glamorous world of television. She found a door and held it open for us. There were three cubicles with curtains that could be pulled, a large theatrical makeup desk, and tons of lighting. “Bathroom over there,” she pointed. “I’ll be right back!” she called as she left, but stopped at the door to look at me standing there with my uniform, including pads, helmet and cleats, all arranged on hangers to be carried.

She beamed at me, and I smiled back. Then she said, “But you’re so pretty!” before leaving almost at a run.

“Hah?” I said to Mom.

“There are rods for hangers and shelves for other stuff in this cubicle,” she noted, pulling one of the curtains aside. We distributed our loads. I’d brought both pairs of my shoes, since I didn’t know what kind of flooring they might have, and my steel-tipped cleats would leave gouges in any wooden floor. It occurred to me then that I could have just brought the pair with the plastic-only cleats, and no one would have known the difference, even if I never wore those in actual games. Oh well, authenticity matters?

“Cute kid,” Mom commented, hanging my dresses at one end of the rod.

“Maude? Yeah,” I said. “Awfully young?” I stared at the dresses hanging there, actually hoping that they didn’t end up wanting me wearing them in front of the cameras.

A stray memory came in from a siding, derailing my train of thought. Lee said he liked how I looked in a dress.

Mom smirked at me, exactly as if she had been reading my mind. “Ppfbbt!” I said, because I was reading hers.

Suddenly, Maude was back with two other people, a man in a suit and a tall woman with a harassed look. “I’m Teddy Todd,” said the man. “Producer-director of Sun-Day.” That was the show I was going to be on. “And this is Amy Stockhouse, our makeup artist.” He spotted the uniform on its hanger. “Oh!” he exclaimed. “Perfect!”

Then he was leaving. “Amy, help her get dressed. Twenty minutes! I’ll be in the booth. Nice to meet you, Mrs. Peterson, Miss Peterson. Gayle, isn’t it? Maudie, come with me.” Then he was gone.

I blinked. Amy smiled at me. “You don’t look like a football player,” she said. “But what do I know? You don’t usually wear makeup, do you?”

“Uh, no, just eye-black for a game face…” I trailed off. I wasn’t even sure what the stuff was called. You usually had someone else put it on with a black grease pencil Coach supplied.

“I could tell,” she commented. “Teenage girl with skin like yours, and why you’re here,” she grinned. “Makeup is like a foreign country for you.”

I nodded.

“Well, let’s get you togged up, and I’ll make sure you have some color when the lights hit you, and you can do the eye-black, okay?”

“Uh, togged up?”

“Costumed. They want you in your football uniform for the first segment.” She was smiling.

It was a little awkward changing clothes with her right there, but after the ice cream party last month, it didn’t seem that odd. Mom stood at the door to keep anyone else from barging in, and I “togged out” in my gear.

Then Amy used sponges to paint my face with foundation that would stand up to the TV lights, and looking in the mirror, I applied my own eye-black strip.

“Hideous,” Amy said in an approving tone, and I laughed. “Carry the helmet,” she advised. “Don’t put it on unless they ask you to.” She took a few swipes through my hair and misted hairspray to keep it in place. It smelled of lavender, which I wasn’t that fond of.

Someone knocked at the door, and Mom opened it. Maude peeked in and squealed when she saw me. “So fierce!” she exclaimed. Then she grabbed my hand. “C’mon, they want you backstage.”

“Backstage,” I murmured, but I let her tow me down another plain industrial hallway. And suddenly we were in a space with green curtains and bottles of water on a little table next to one of those horrible couches no one ever sits on.

“This is the Green Room,” Maude said.

It wasn’t really a room, but I nodded.

“Mr. Todd will have something to say, and then you’ll go on after a break. There’ll be a chair for you on the left, and Guy Turner and Sheila will be at a desk in front of a screen.”

“Okay,” I agreed. I’d seen the show and could picture it. Everything here looked cruder and more blue-collar than I had expected. Glamour was something they apparently did inside the cameras.

“Oh!” said Teddy Todd. I hadn’t seen him come in. “You look fantastic! Beautiful girl that plays football! We are going to win Sunday this week!”

I blinked at him. “Win?” I said. Apparently, broadcasting is also a game. I ignored him calling me beautiful. Everything he said seemed tinged with hyperbole.

He got right in my face and peered intently. “Amy!” he squawked. “She needs some mascara and lip color!”

“Wait a minute!” I protested. “I don’t wear that stuff on the field!”

“You do for television. The lights will make you disappear if you don’t. Quick, Amy!”

He got out of the way while the makeup lady opened her little case on the table. She looked at me apologetically, and we both shrugged. It wouldn’t be authentic with mascara and lip gloss, but maybe it would be television. I hadn’t worn mascara or lip color much before—only when I dressed as a cheerleader for the Halloween skit, and maybe a few times since.

Mom was suddenly beside me, gripping my arm and sniffing. Why was she sniffing?

“Miss Peterson?” someone said, holding a curtain out of the way. “I’m Phil, the A.D. That chair there is for you. When we come back from commercial, Guy will say your name, and you come in and sit down. Where’s your helmet?”

I had it in my left hand and waved it at him. Teddy Todd interrupted whatever the A.D. (assistant director?) was going to say. “Don’t wear the helmet. We want the audience to see that gorgeous face!”

My mouth fell open. Someone called out, “Gayle? Miss Peterson?”

Mom squeezed my arm. “Go get’em, girl!” she whispered.

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