#for phoenix

BOTH SIDES

Putting on the Zoya costume makes Ruth feel like she did when she played house as a girl, fighting over who’d be the husband and who’d be the wife, secretly wishing she could somehow cast herself as both.

As the husband she’d come in shouting, loud and blustery and slapping her palm against the bark of the tree in her neighbor’s backyard to emphasize every word. “When a man comes home he expects certain things, Cindy” she’d say, pushing up against her neighbor.

They weren’t really even friends, just neighbors who’d play together when the summer days stretched out too long. Cindy with blonde hair and apple cheeks and a family who Ruth was pretty sure never yelled. Cindy, who if Ruth was honest might not have been much like she remembered but who still reminded her so much of Debbie that it sometimes made her squirm to sit with the thought of her.

“Where’s my dinner?” She’d say it in the closest approximation of her father’s voice that she could find, squeezing Cindy’s hip and trying to puff up to be taller. “That’s more like it,” she’d say when Cindy brought over a pretend dinner and set it down before sitting in Ruth’s lap, legs out to the side and throwing her arms around Ruth’s neck. She’d curl into Ruth, smelling like sweat and baby powder and the sunscreen her mother put on her nose to keep it from turning lobster red, and all that softness would make Ruth wonder why her father bothered yelling at all if even a pretend wife felt this good.

As the wife, Ruth channeled her mother. A cigarette in one hand and staring off into the middle distance when Cindy came in, her embodiment of the “husband” role a pale shadow of Ruth’s. Her voice was too soft, and she never said the right things, but in the end it didn’t matter much. Ruth could be cold and quiet and say she forgot dinner, and Cindy would just say, “there, there, dear,” and pull at her until she was sitting with her legs to the side, Cindy stroking a hand over her messy braid. Ruth liked being Cindy’s wife, even if she was pretty certain that no husband would ever be as soft or as kind as that.

Ruth stares into the mirror and gives her hair another blast of aqua-net for safety. Debbie’s right there next to her, cleaning up her eye makeup and turning her beauty queen smile on and off like it’s nothing, and it makes Ruth wonder whatever happened to Cindy. Is she married to the boy who used to flick whirligigs into her hair, or did she leave her small town like Ruth had? Did she meet someone who pulled her into his lap and held her? Did she still smell like baby powder, or had she switched to White Shoulders and never looked back?

“Ruth.”

Debbie’s voice cuts through Ruth’s thoughts and she shakes her head, turning to look at her. The costume makes her ass look even more perfect, and Ruth makes a note to do more aerobics, even if it never really helps. “Sorry,” she says, her voice smaller than she means it to be. She clears her throat and lets herself slide into character. “I am ready to crush stupid American,” she says, punching into the flat of her hand so it makes a satisfying smacking noise.