The First Day of November
- Dec 6, 2024
- 2 min read
by Brooksie C. Fontaine
That year, we became obsessed with Jackie Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. To a lesser extent, we were interested in JFK, whom we perhaps unfairly treated like the optional Ken doll to our favorite Barbies.
We went as them that Halloween — which, in hindsight, could be regarded as tasteless.
Our costumes, and the stereotypes associated with them, ran counter to our personalities. I went as Marilyn, because I looked more like her. I was the blonde, and donned a facsimile of her champagne white dress from Seven Year Itch, but I was always the shy one, good as a glass of whole milk, the one who didn’t drink and didn’t put out. It made guys scoff at me, and want to dirty me more.
Because your hair was brown, you were Jackie, dressed in a watermelon pink suit. You were the party girl, with a catlike appetite for sex. You’d already had a threesome, and you bragged about it a lot.
When guys at school walked past, they’d sometimes smirk and mutter, “whore,” like they’d spit you out but not before they’d savored chewing you.
You’d bat your eyelashes, and answer, “Did someone say my name?”
Sometimes, you’d crawl into my window and into bed with me at night, because you didn’t want to be at home. That Halloween was one of those nights — you were still wearing the watermelon pink skirt, and I knew your brother liked it more than he should. He was always home while your mother worked, nothing to give to the world, just hands that grabbed and eyes that fed and a mouth and a throat where things disappeared.
We held each other like sisters, or like lovers, or like mother and daughter, even though we were both fourteen, young enough to trick-or-treat but old enough to be eyed up by the fathers that answered the door. Old enough to start wearing the costumes we’d be expected to wear for the rest of our lives, to avoid overwhelming anyone with the magnitudes we contained. But they were there.
We contained universes. We were souls in the night, who’d known each other before and would know each other again.
“We’re going to be alright,” I said, as you were falling asleep. I think I was too, but in a slow, drifty way that made it difficult to tell.
“You are,” you said, your mouth tickling against my chest when it moved. “I’m not.”
“You are,” I said, though I didn’t believe it until the next morning.
When I woke, you were still asleep, your head warm against me, your hair soft and fanning.
The first snow had fallen, so early and abundant it was miraculous. The world was champagne white as my dress, and the sky was watermelon pink, and it felt like a blessing.
Brooksie C. Fontaine is an obnoxious coffee addict who got into college at fifteen and annoyed everyone there. She is a teaching assistant, illustrator, and recipient of MFA degrees in English and Illustration. Her work has been published by Bending Genres, Defenestration Magazine, Eunoia Review, Aureation, Report From Newport, Boston Accent Lit, Anti-Heroin Chic, the Cryptids Emerging and Things Improbable anthologies, and more. Her Twitter is BrooksiesBooks, where she posts daily microfiction.
