Red Room Where the Writers Are

The third time I showed up to grade school in the same costume, my friends started to wonder if my mother was nurturing a secret fascination with witches.  As I once again stood awkwardly before my second grade classmates in my dyed bed sheet turned dress, raggedy wig, and black hat that had miraculously survived a run-in with the neighbor’s cat the year before, they shook their heads.  My then best friend, dressed in a fabulous hippy costume adjusted her Afro and peace sign necklace and then whispered in my ear, “Why doesn’t your Mom just make you another costume?”

In 1968 when mothers actually had the time to utilize their sewing machines, my own mother took full advantage. The month before Halloween during my kindergarten year, she sewed madly into the night, creating three matching witch costumes for my two sisters and me.  She held them up to us and exclaimed, “I’ve never seen three more beeeeeeeautiful witches in my life!”  As I stared at myself in the mirror, all I could think was that I probably could have easily melded in with the others persecuted in the Salem Witch Trials I had heard about so much in school.

“Whatever happened to establishing my own identity?” I asked myself in the mirror when everyone had left the room.  I sighed as I smoothed the black bed sheet around my body.  I didn’t want to hurt my mother’s feelings, but I had a much different idea of what I wanted to wear for Halloween and it didn’t involve a caldron, a broom, or an evil laugh. I begrudgingly wore the costume that year and the year after, smiling in all the photos as if I was having the time of my life.

After I entered third grade, I saw an absolutely fabulous princess costume hanging in the seasonal aisle at the local five and dime store the week before Halloween.  The dress sparkled, the crown dazzled, and the wand glittered. I reached up and pulled the dress down off the rack and held it up in front of me just as my mother walked by with the cart.  “Oh honey,” she said, “Put that back.  You’re going to wear the same costume you wore last year.  No sense in spending the money when you have something perfectly good to wear, is there?”

“Right,” I muttered as I hung the dress back up and stared at it longingly. I knew right then and there that I loved that dress more than I had loved my first grade crush when he read “See Jane Run” flawlessly in front of the class.  But it didn’t matter.  I appeared I was destined to be a witch for the rest of my days as a trick-or-treater.

The night before Halloween, I dragged out the bed sheet, the disheveled wig that now looked like it had been mauled by a mountain lion, and the black hat, and arranged it all on my bed. Then I put my face in my hands and cried.  I just didn’t think I could wear that ugly costume again.  Suddenly, I felt my mother’s hand on my shoulder.  I quickly turned around and gasped.  My mother held up the beautiful princess costume.

It was my best Halloween ever.