A girl among boys is most ways alone. My brothers were mean, then sweet, then packed and gone. Mom was looking sideways at how I’d grown—my hair down my neck, my shorts too short. Too fast, too grown. She had hands that worked, dungarees, cotton shirts, not ruffled or pleated or flounced or flirty, and oft-times a little bit dirty. She kept house. And quiet and small and tenacious as a mouse, she kept us: three kids, a dog, a man. She made dinner and Christmas and plans and clothes. I don’t think she ever said no; more like an Oh. A careful sniff. So, I somehow lost my girlier gear, those things she called prissy: feathered hair, big hoops swinging. Years later she said she hadn’t meant to be tough. Her mama had been the salt of the earth. Cleaned nights at Mercy, though she’d sneak a spray of Oscar de la Renta on a holiday or for Sunday Best. Dressed clean for the Lord. Clean for his glory. Her mother before had gone to church and cooked the meals. Nothing less, but never more. What could I do but follow their ways, these sturdy women who’d brought me forth? Even now, the catch of getting out my door is lipstick on, then lipstick off, and bright blouse on, then something plain, asking, Can I be this thing? The kind of woman with night blue lips who’s flashing, perhaps, a gaudy ring? Fine thing, being grown. So, I step out in ways that can’t be seen, a liner-and-lip-gloss subtle sheen and, like my grandma, perfume that poof! like a dandelion puff, disappears into eternity. This femme I am, to whom I’m lost and held and bound, she’s cloaked in vapors, reading and scribbling deep in her papers, doing as her mama would want her to do. So when—when for Dolly’s lamé-wearing, high-heeled sake do I get to begin? This thing I wear that looks like grace or reserve or taste but sits on my skin like a stain or a sin, this thing I bear but cannot name, it may be this: a borrowed shame.