Chapter 3
“Perhaps they’ll be back soon,” I said hopefully. No such luck. Eventually we straggled back home and at seven o’clock Mum gave up waiting and we had tea. I think if Kevin hadn’t been there she would have given us hell but she kept saying things like “never mind,” and “they are adults after all,” through gritted teeth.
Kevin went home after tea and we did the dishes then Amber and I did our homework while we waited for the girls to come back. It was an hour past my bedtime and Mum was starting to get frantic when they finally arrived. Mum was very polite and asked if they wanted dinner. They said they’d had pizza and disappeared into the bedroom with Amber’s CD player.
I went to bed then finally fell asleep even though the music was still going. Amber told me in the morning that Mum had said the girls stayed up until 2 am playing CDs which probably explained why they didn’t get up for breakfast.
Mum was looking very frazzled the next afternoon when we got home from school. The girls had got up at 11am and washed their hair and that took until lunchtime. Next they insisted on having a siesta, which is a sort of after lunch rest that all people in hot countries have in the heat of the day. By the time we came home the girls had emerged from their bedroom and were all dressed up to go out again. As Mum tried to explain that they were expected to work they smiled and said, “ no understand,” and rushed off to Guy’s car which had pulled up outside with the horn tooting. Mum made Amber and me help her for an hour in the glasshouse and muttered that tomorrow would be better.
It wasn’t. It was worse. They came back that night with their noses pierced and gold studs put in. Amber said she thought they’d had their navels done as well, as they were wearing the belts on their jeans loose. Mum was counting the hours until Dad came home again but he was no use at all. One look at those two sultry beauties and he was putty in their hands. Amber said it was disgusting to see the way he leaped to his feet and gave them the best chair or offered to drive them to the shops to buy more nail polish. She was especially bitter about this as the girls sat round happily painting each other’s finger and toe nails at night then cleaned it off and replace it with a new colour the next night. Mum and Dad go berserk if Amber ever wears nail polish. They will only let her use clear stuff or stuff that has hardly any colour in it. They said that bright nail polish is ‘cheap’ and ‘gives the wrong impression.’ Amber said that nail polish definitely isn’t cheap as it costs heaps to buy the decent stuff at the Pharmacy. She also reckoned that whatever impression Juanita and Consuela were creating must have been quite something as they had heaps of guys panting after them. I could see that Amber was thinking that if nail polish was responsible for that then she was going to invest in buckets of the stuff, no matter what Mum and Dad said.
I think it had more to do with their clothes myself, or rather the way they filled them up. They wore these tiny little things on top that looked like elastic bands but which stretched over their boobs quite amazingly.
The girls spent hours in the bathroom as well and Mum had to let us use her and Dad’s tiny bathroom when she saw us queuing outside the door with our legs crossed. Juanita was quite capable of taking an hour to have a shower which meant the water was stone cold by the time we got in there. They also used about a dozen towels each time and left them on the floor all wet and dripping. Mum picked them up and washed them without saying anything, but we knew we’d be in big trouble if we did it.
Mum and Dad had a big argument when the girls went out a few nights later. Mum was really ratty from not enough sleep and having to do all the work in the glasshouse by herself and the girls not eating her meals that she’d slaved over. Dad made soothing noises but even he was shocked when Juanita proudly showed him the tattoo she had just got done on her arm. He muttered things like “bad influence” and it was probably just as well the girls were going the next day.
The Year I Turned Thirteen and Broadened my Mind Page 3