“Sorry, but he’s taking us both to the Summer Arts Festival.”
“Well, you have twenty-four hours to convince me that that is a good idea,” I said between bites. “So what are we going to do?”
“There’s a club here in town that has teen night from nine until eleven.”
I rolled my eyes. I imagined a Chuck E. Cheese’s with a disco ball.
“It’s called the Coffin Club,” my aunt exclaimed.
“Excuse me?”
“It has your name written all over it. I don’t mean the coffin part, of course. But it’s very goth and I think you’d enjoy it.”
“I’d love to go!”
“I’m a bit old to be hanging out there, but hey, why not?”
That’s why Aunt Libby was so special—she didn’t care what people thought. Ever since I was a little girl, my aunt marched to her own drum, African or not.
“So we have a few hours to find something appropriate for me to wear,” my aunt stated. “I don’t have anything darker than yellow.”
Whatever my Aunt Libby did, whether it was drumming so hard she got calluses or performing so much she lost her voice, she put forth 110 percent. Hanging out at a nightclub with her sixteen-year-old niece was no exception.
“Where are we going?” I asked as we hopped into her car. “Hot Gothics?”
Aunt Libby let out a loud laugh. “I have to find something that I can fit into, right?”
A few minutes later, we were driving into a gravel parking lot and walking up the stairs of the vacant elementary school, which was now home to the Village Players Theater.
Along with a car key, mailbox key, building key, and door key, my aunt possessed a Village Players Theater key. It took her a minute or two to figure out which key opened the front entrance door, but she eventually found it.
We sauntered down the main hallway, passing Village Players posters of West Side Story, The Sound of Music, and South Pacific, an empty principal’s office, and a cafeteria.
We passed a tween-sized water fountain, which still had a wooden step stool placed before it, and stopped in front of a door marked “3.” What was once a classroom for ten-year-olds now had a sign above it that read: COSTUME SHOPPE.
The blackboard and filing cabinets were still in place, but the teacher’s and child-sized desks had been removed, perhaps sold at an auction or sent over to the new elementary school. Dozens of boxes, labeled BROACHES, HATS, SCARVES, sat on the floor in the front of the classroom, while racks of dusty costumes were lined in rows where the students’ desks once belonged.
The room was filled with the combined scents of thrift store clothes and textbooks.
Aunt Libby and I stepped over boxes and dug our way through the old clothes with the sole purpose of bringing out my aunt’s inner goth.
“This is so awesome,” I said as I began looking through a rack of clothes. “I don’t know anyone else who would do this for me.”
“Are you kidding? I live for this stuff.” My aunt beamed as she sifted through a rack of dresses. “That’s one of the reasons why I love acting. I can always wear a different style than what I’d normally wear. I’ve been stuck in the same look for decades.”
“I couldn’t imagine you any other way. The way you dress is who you are. It’s more than beads and bangles. You aren’t doing it to be like someone else, or fit in.”
“I gave up fitting in years ago,” my aunt said with a laugh.
“That’s what my mother doesn’t understand about my lipstick and dark clothes. I don’t wear tattoos to freak her out; I wear them because I have to. It’s me.”
Aunt Libby paused.
“My mother never understood my inner style, either,” she confessed. “That’s what it is, really,” she said wisely. “It’s not about designers or labels but about self-expression. And attitude.”
I smiled inside as well as on the outside. Aunt Libby and I dressed as differently as day and night, but we shared the same values.
“It took me years to figure out who I was,” she said. “But really, I’ve always known who I was, since I was your age. It was just that so many people around me wanted me to be like them and tormented me when I wasn’t. Your dad grew up and blended in nicely with the establishment. But I always kept my hippie beads, Pink Floyd albums, and left-of-center ideas. I eventually found people who dug me the way I am.”
“That’s why it’s so cool and meaningful to me for you to change your image for one night on the town together.”
“Well, now we’ll be more alike than ever.” My aunt smiled.
“Here’s a black corset,” I said, taking a costume off the rack.
“I wore that in A Midsummer Night’s Dream when I played Helena,” my aunt gushed. “I couldn’t breathe for a week.”
“How about this?” she asked, modeling a witch’s hat presumably from an over-the-top production of The Wizard of Oz.
“I think it might be a little overkill,” I offered.
Aunt Libby found a Puritanical high-collared black dress. “We wore these in The Crucible. If I hike it up a few inches…it might be quite fabulous.”
“I think it would be ghastly,” I complimented her.
Cardboard boxes marked MEN’S, WOMEN’S, and CHILDREN’S lined the wall underneath the windows.
I removed a box from the top of the stack labeled WOMEN’S, 9 and sifted through it. The box was full of everything from cowboy boots to tap shoes, galoshes to stilettos.
“Here’s some Mary Janes. With a pair of black tights and that Crucible dress, you’ll look like…”
“A grown-up Wednesday Addams,” my aunt said halfheartedly.
“Perfect!” I declared enthusiastically.
Now was time for a Raven Madison Extreme Dream Makeover. The closest I’d ever gotten to being a fashion or cosmetics consultant was when I applied pink blush to Becky when she was preparing for a date with Matt.
If I ever had my own style show, I’d tear into a suburban style-challenged participant’s closet and throw out anything pastel, floral, or rhinestoned and replace it with bloodred tones, acid hues, and morbid blacks.
Today was different from anything I’d experienced when consulting Becky. From her auburn-topped head to her lime-green-painted toes, I got to transform my aunt from a flower child to a lady of the night.
While one hand soaked in lavender water, I painted her other hand’s fingernails bat black.
“So, tell me all about the date!” I prompted her like a professional cosmetologist.
Aunt Libby giggled as if we were best friends as she described her dinner date with Devon.