Blush

"Where did she go?" Elizabeth's mother wails from the laundry room. Shifting shirts and towels from one basket to another. "She just runs off." Maria Keaton always chats to herself about her children. This daughter though, she is the most excitable; the youngest. Youngest children tend to be the cutest. Something about their countenance.

Elizabeth is behind the radiator, maybe four feet from her mother. But she's quiet. So quiet, and in the warmest spot in the whole house. She's seven years old, has brown hair, but that pretty brown, not the mousy kind. When you're a kid your hair is soft and falls gently. Elizabeth's is long, but knotty, never preferring her hair to be combed. Earlier this morning she saw her mother putting on make-up in the bathroom. It consisted of Maria taking her Revlon "Cheeky" lipstick in the green tube, twisting the bottom to bring up the color, pressing it against each side of her face, then rubbing the color in aggressively with that part of ones hand right below the pinky finger, but before the wrist. It's little moments like this that made impressions on Elizabeth. Moments her mother would forget about in the same amount of time it took to create them.

She can see her mother from between the crack of space that separates the radiator from the wall. Maria's Ralph Lauren jeans sit on her hips tightly, but her legs are skinny, so there's just too much fabric there. You wouldn't call them baggy though. Perhaps boot-legged? Elizabeth's gaze takes in her mother completely. From Maria's jet black hair to her bare feet. Her toes are painted a shade of red, probably OPI Damsel in a Dress. Elizabeth makes a note to look in her mothers make-up bag later for the color.

The heat from the radiator gives Elizabeth comfort. Before her parents redid the playroom and made it into a guest bedroom Elizabeth spent hours in the back closet. It was a walk-in. She had collected various comfortable blankets and pillows from around their home, like a robin creating its nest, and made a soft safe place for herself, a place her brothers weren't allowed. One of the blankets was a really unattractive knit blanket. It was black, green, orange, and a yellow color akin to Yoplait custard. Her mother made the blanket while she was pregnant, and the only yarn she had were those colors. Elizabeth's drawings from school littered the walls of her tiny castle. One in particular, a giant whale took over the East wall. Behind it Elizabeth hid notes she wrote but never delivered to the boy down the street, Todd Allen. Various proposals for getting together to play. Her mother knew they were there. Sometimes she would find Elizabeth sleeping in there, and Maria would pick Elizabeth up like a rag doll and snuggle with her on the big chair in the living room until her daughter awoke.

Elizabeth's brothers are all older than her. And none of them could understand why Elizabeth needed her own time, alone from the rest. Her mother understood though, but not enough to not turn the playroom into a guest room, thus making the closet into a real closet unsuitable for nesting in. If Elizabeth is seven, which she is, that makes her four brothers logically age in the range of nine through fourteen. Maria and her husband Nicholas had everyone very close in age intentionally. They wanted their kids to grow up playing together. And the first four did and do. They include Elizabeth too, but in different ways and not all the time. If they were playing war, Elizabeth was more of a prop that stood for things that needed to be rescued. If they played movies, then Elizabeth would be the ticket seller. Soon she would bore of them, and leave to hide from everyone. It was her own game of Hide and Seek that only she was playing.

"Elizabeth?" Her mother again. Maria had left the laundry room for ten minutes. During that time Elizabeth moves from behind the radiator to the kitchen. She walks down the hall, turns right, and walks up five steps to the kitchen. No one sees her, except for the dog, David. He is a Schnauzer who does not bark, if you can believe it.

"Hello, David," she says to him, patting him on his bottom, then takes a seat on the high chair overlooking the island counter-top where her and her brothers ate breakfast an hour ago. Elizabeth thinks it is weird that David's name is David, and he is also a dog. David looks up at her from his puppy bed. One dog eyebrow up, then the other, then his head back down.

Maria moves from the laundry room, down the hall, turns right, and walks up five steps to the kitchen, effectively tracing Elizabeth's footsteps.

"Hi momsy," says Elizabeth.

"Elizabeth, where were you before?"

"Here." Elizabeth loves to tell white lies. Not because of the lying part, but rather because she likes to see if people will believe her simply saying something, over their own memory and knowledge of knowing she was in fact not there before. People generally believe her. She has an ongoing list of these mini tales, so she can inform her family and friends later that she tricked them. It's in her bedroom now under her copy of the book "Love You Forever" by Robert Munsch.

Maria wraps her arms behind Elizabeth, over the chair, embracing both. Her face next to Elizabeth's, their cheeks together, some of her Revlon lipstick blush rubbing on Elizabeth's face, despite the shield of brown and black hair between them.

"I love you," Maria whispers. Her mouth is warm and her words sweet. Elizabeth feels the heat on her left ear. "You," she stares into Elizabeth's brown eyes, "You are mine."

"I know," responds Elizabeth, her voice warbling slightly, like a child's does.