Nude
by ROBYN PERROS
Robyn Perros, Trophy heads, 35mm double-exposure photograph, 2017. Courtesy of the artist.
NUDE
ROBYN PERROS | MAR 2024 | Issue 31
My mother never went anywhere without wearing lipstick. Whether she was going to the mall, the traffic department, or just popping into the corner shop for bread and milk — she refused to exit the car “without my face on.” My mother had no signature lipstick brand or colour she routinely bought and used. The lipsticks in her collection were comprised mainly of Testers; freebies from her job as a cashier at our local pharmacy. The Testers she was given were mostly tubes of the unsellable colours, or the expired ones, or the ones with naughty toddler bite marks in them. But no matter what the condition, brand, or offensive colour these Tester lipsticks my mother inherited were, she’d ensure she used each and every one, right to the end. Whenever a tube began running out, she’d scratch in and around her car seats in a panic, searching for a toothpick or a hair clip or a clean earbud to scrape the last of the soft wax out over her lips. From the backseat of our Citi Golf, I grew up watching my mother stretch her cupid’s bow through every un-sellable season of pink. Electric Orchid, Berry Me, Angel Whisper, all the way through the spectrum to Forbidden Fuchsia. From her deathbed, I watched the air leave those very same lips, that even then, appeared robbed by their own shade of nakedness.
Robyn Perros is a South African writer and artist. Her work has appeared in South Africa’s Short.Sharp.Stories Anthology (Fluid 2023), New Contrast Literary Journal, Isele Magazine, Alchemy Spoon, The Woolf, Decolonial Passage, Rat World, and Ons Klyntji zine, among others. Her novella manuscript, Choosing an Outfit for the End of the World, was longlisted for the 2023 Island Prize for Debut African Fiction. She has a Masters in Creative Writing, is currently a Ph.D. candidate, and occasionally teaches in the Rhodes University School of Journalism & Media Studies. She lives in Makhanda.