Culottes
I don’t remember why my father kept talking about my sister’s culottes. Did he point them out to teach me the word “culottes,” as distinct from shorts or a skirt? Did he want me to notice the dividing fabric between the thighs, or was that something only he noticed? Was he trying to explain why he made a painting of my sister wearing culottes? (On the canvas, She was looking out a window of our house, and her hair hung past her waist.)
I don’t remember how my sister felt about being singled out for wearing culottes. I don’t think she was particularly glad for the attention. I mean, she didn’t leave the room or say something harsh, like, “Stop staring at me and my clothing!”
But she did ignore my father and whoever else was looking at her.
She sat there on the living room floor, on her heels. She could sit that way, with her knees bent and her feet back, and watch television for hours. She’d sit close to the screen, because closeness made the picture bigger and her eyes were weak.
I don’t remember what she liked to watch, except for a soap opera about a family of vampires living in a castle in the Old Country. Those vampires, with names like Quentin and Barnabas, were attractive, well-mannered, and very pale, like the original Count Dracula. I don’t remember who were the good vampires and who were the bad ones. And I don’t remember when my sister stopped wearing culottes.
- Thaddeus Rutkowski
