The mosquito is twelve years old when she comes to the breakfast table with make-up on for the first time. The little brother starts crying immediately. Christiane Tauzher must decide: is the child allowed to leave the house like this?
A week after her twelfth birthday, the mosquito appeared at breakfast with red lips, black-rimmed eyes, and a face powdered white. The mouths of Olaf and I fell open and the mini began to cry when the creepy Snow White sat down at the table with us. The mosquito ignored our startled faces and began to smear a piece of buttered bread. When she bit into it, the lipstick got stuck to the butter, which looked pretty gross. While I took care of the sobbing Mini, who was covering his face with his hands so that he wouldn’t have to see the ghost, Olaf collected himself. At the moment I could only hear him breathing in and breathing out. I kicked him under the table to get him to say something. The mosquito chewed noisily, looked out the window and pretended not to notice that the mini was crying and that we couldn’t find the words when we saw it. With every new bite into the bread, she ate the lipstick imprint. “Are you still going somewhere today?” asked Olaf, trying to keep a neutral tone.
“Yes,” said the mosquito, “to school.”
“So?” asked Olaf, “you look different somehow. Or are you having a theatrical performance?”
“Oh, you mean the bit of make-up,” said the mosquito, “everyone in my class is putting on make-up now.”
Olaf looked at me for help. I hid behind a large hidden object book with the Mini and was not yet ready to give up my protective shield.
“You call that a bit of make-up?” I asked from behind the hidden object book.
“You don’t have to like it,” she said, shrugging.
“I don’t like it either,” said Olaf. What followed was silence. It never happened that Olaf criticized the mosquito. Since Olaf couldn’t think of anything else, it was my turn.
I lowered the book, the mini stared at his sister in horror. “You’re still much too young to dress up like that. You don’t have to do that,” I said.
When I was at school, you used a blackboard eraser to remove your make-up
The mosquito looked at me pityingly – as if I hadn’t understood anything, as if I were blind and didn’t see how urgently the masquerade was necessary. “With the dark circles, the large pores, the eyelashes too light the shaggy eyebrows and the bland hair color, I can’t go out on the street anymore,” she said.
“Who are you talking about?” asked Olaf and didn’t know his way around at all.
“From me,” said the mosquito, “look at me!”
We, Olaf and I exchanged a look. Our mosquito was beautiful, just perfect, we couldn’t understand any of the “defects” she just listed. Her blond hair fell in soft waves around her face, her big blue eyes shone and her skin was smooth as porcelain.
“You look great,” I said, “not now with all that stuff on your face. But usually.”
Olaf agreed with me and repeated “great”, “really great”.
I told the mosquito that the teacher used a blackboard eraser to remove our make-up when I was at school. In the Catholic private school, painting of any kind was frowned upon.
The mosquito grimaced in disgust. “And Nonni wasn’t with the principal and complained?”
“Nonni,” I continued, “liked the chalkboard sponge method.”
Mücke: “And do you like them too?”
Taken from …
“I’m saying it now for the very last time! Stories from the almost perfect everyday life of a mother”, by Christiane Tauzher, Goldegg publishing house14.95 euros
I thought for a moment. “No,” I said, “but I still don’t want you to go to school with make-up on. That’s just not appropriate at your age.”
Seeking help, the mosquito turned to her father, who just shook his head, which meant “no comment”.
“Please take your makeup off!” I said. “You don’t leave the house like that.”
Olaf looked into his coffee because he couldn’t bear to see the mosquito sad. When she disappeared into the bathroom, he said he found my reasoning weak.
“Then why didn’t you open your mouth?” I asked him.
“Because I’m a man and I’m not familiar with women’s issues.”
“Coward,” I said.
The rest of the week passed in silence, the mosquito locked in her room and quarreled with her “terrible appearance”, which she was not allowed to spice up.
Nothing is like it used to be
The weekend was Kirtag (in German: fair). Before puberty caught the mosquito, she had loved Kirtage. At this stage, of course, Kirtag was “uncool” and we had to persuade her to go along for a long time. She stood next to us like a foreign body, the hood of her sweater pulled low over her face while the mini rolled around in the bouncy castle and petted the ponies and rode the carousel.
In front of the roast chicken stand we met an acquaintance whose daughter had been in the bear group in kindergarten with the mosquito. They still didn’t greet each other, which was probably because they didn’t recognize each other. I also unsuspectingly asked the mother how Leonie was doing, because I saw the young woman standing next to her, who looked as if she would never come back from a “La Cage aux Folles” performance with the small, inconspicuous Leonie from kindergarten would have connected. She wore glitter eye shadow, purple blush, eyeliner that was much too thick and kept bursting huge bubbles of chewing gum over her mouth, tip of the nose and chin, which she took back into her mouth with a sharp tongue as soon as it made a “thump”. I remembered Leonie, who I had last seen at the kindergarten graduation party six years ago, as a dark blonde, pale, freckled girl.
“I’m fine,” Leonie said in my direction, tossing her blue-black dyed hair back.
The mosquito, I saw, eyed her furtively. She couldn’t bring herself to say “Hello”. Leonie looked more like running away.
“I’ll let her,” her mother whispered to me, “what the hell. It’s just make-up, no ecstasy.”
I admired that attitude. Why couldn’t I be so above things? I thought about the way home and walked silently next to the also thoughtful mosquito. Olaf felt uneasy because no one said anything.
A new strategy
When I got home, I had come to the conclusion that Leonie’s mother was right. In the evening I sat down in the room with the mosquito and declared that the ban on make-up had been lifted. “It’s a stupid ban,” I said, “at your age I would have liked to use mascara too and wasn’t allowed to even though there was no reason to.”
The mosquito hugged my neck and I even saw a few tears in her eyes.
“But I don’t want to look like Leonie. Will you tell me if I look like that?”
I promised her.
Olaf had a good idea: “If Mini cries, then you’ve caught too much, if he smiles at you, it’s okay.”
We laughed. And it felt good, because we hadn’t laughed together for a long time. Then I got my mascara and showed the mosquito how to use it properly without clumping the lashes. For name day I took her to the beautician who showed her how to apply makeup properly without looking like a painted canvas.
Yes, puberty had arrived and I realized that it would be better to meet it with love and understanding than with regulations and prohibitions.
By the way, the mini often cried when he met the mosquito in the morning. But she stuck to our agreement and kept trying until he smiled at her. And Mini, a little man who fortunately knows more about women’s issues than his father, has never been wrong.
