Olivia languidly peeled off the rest of her sweat-soaked clothes, but left on her new underwear. Untangling her bandoleer from her top and draping it around her neck like a scarf, she got off the bed and strutted over to her dresser. She was feeling more content and relaxed than she had in years, despite her rumbling stomach. Rummaging through her clothes she found herself digging all the way to the very back of the long middle drawer, her 'boneyard' of old and forgotten things.
As she found what she was looking for she experienced a strange pang of nostalgia, mixed with an inexplicable yet intense awareness of her long-neglected femininity; it stirred restlessly inside her. She held up the only dress she had ever owned, her mother had given it to her when she was still a girl, it had trailed down to her ankles then, billowing around her middle like a fluffy cloud. The memory was vivid, a happier, gentler time.
The white variegated fabric was smudged and stained in several places, it seemed so strikingly thin and fragile she worried she might tear it with her ragged fingernails. Olivia shrugged and pulled the bottom down cautiously over her head. It wasn't loose anymore, with delight she realized that it fit her well, she had grown into it. The hem came to rest just above the tops of her knees, the middle was cinched tightly around her waist. The material didn't just feel thin, she could see the vague shadowy outline of her underwear underneath.
Olivia left her room, walking slowly so that she could enjoy the sensual swishing of the dress as it brushed coolly against her skin. She left her door ajar, an invitation of sorts, and headed towards the kitchen. There was a large bundle of tamales in the fridge along with a bag of goat's milk, she helped herself to three and a full aluminum pint of the slightly sour liquid. She ate them cold, it was sweltering inside, too hot for hot food, the milk seemed to curdle before she had even finished the first swallow.
A sudden noise caused her to jump, the fridge door opened creakily behind her, she whipped around in shock. Marcella casually took out the milk and poured some for herself, adding a shot of her homemade liquor. "M-mom!?" Olivia could not remember the last time she had seen her mother in the kitchen. Marcella turned her head slowly, her eyes filmy but also glinting wildly, she grinned bashfully but did not lower her eyes or look away.
"Hi baby." She sat down. "I thought you'd be asleep." She added, sipping her milk gingerly and then grimacing at the first taste. Olivia stared blankly at her mother's chest, she was sitting at the opposite end of the table, it was just a small card table, but at that moment it felt a mile long.
"I got hungry." She croaked, clapping her mouth shut and cringing at the sound of her own raspy voice.
"A midnight snack." Marcella nodded, glancing at the clock Olivia noted that coincidentally it was actually midnight. "I remember when I was still young, I would wake up ravenous and need to eat before I could go back to sleep. Back then we had all kinds of things in the fridge: exotic meats, real chocolate cake, fresh vegetables from as far away as Antarctica. You were just a baby then." She looked sad, but only for a split-second.
Olivia found herself salivating, she tried to imagine the taste of real chocolate. The stuff she got at the bazaar was synthetic. The cocoa plant had been extinct for decades. "Mom, does the synthetic chocolate taste like the real thing?" She blurted out plaintively. Marcella's face wrinkled in a patronizing way as though she were laughing at her daughter's naΓ―vetΓ©, but also pitying her lack of experience.
"No, but..." She held up her glass of goat's milk. "Real chocolate tastes like cow's milk in the same way that synth tastes like this." Olivia scowled, she'd never tasted cow's milk either and her mom must have known it, she was teasing her cruelly. But then Marcella flashed her daughter a beguiling grin. "That dress is making me nostalgic, I didn't know you still had it hidden away. You're lucky, I would have sold it.
I never told you but it was a gift from your grandmother, the material is rayon, it's made from real wood. I wouldn't wear it outside unless you want to disappear. The Favelos will kill you in the street and take it off your dead body. That much rayon, probably worth 40,000 to a collector." Olivia was speechless, she glanced down at her dress and swallowed hard. 40,000? She could live for three years on that, opulently. Marcella interrupted her growing excitement. "Don't even think about it filha."
Olivia nearly snarled, her mother hadn't called her that in years. Here she was getting all familiar, as if she could just phase in and out of her daughter's life, call her pet names from her childhood. Even so, Marcella's face contorted with genuine concern, it was just for a moment but it felt like someone threw a bucket of cold water on her smoldering anger. "No one would fence that for you in the Favela, they would slit your throat instead, it's what we call intocΓ‘vel, untouchable."
Olivia begrudgingly bowed to her mother's superior knowledge of the Favela's seedy underbelly, she was a junky but she wasn't an idiot, she worked in the Bazaar and knew most of its dark secrets. "Besides." Her mother remarked, a whimsical smile turning up one corner of her wide mouth. "It looks like it was made for you, my filha has finally grown into a beautiful young woman." She pretended to wipe away an invisible tear. The other side of her mouth joined the first, forming a dirty grin that made Olivia's heart skip a beat.
"Not to mention it goes so well with your new underwear." Olivia blushed, she didn't need to glance down to know that the way she was sitting with the dress wrapped tightly around her legs and ass, its partial-translucency would reveal everything underneath. "When I was a girl we had these things called 'slips' that we wore under our skirts, to keep things from showing." Olivia shrugged, glancing down automatically and noticing more by feel than with her eyes that her nipples were hard, they showed up as she shifted; pale brown circles clearly visible even in the dim light of the bioluminescent tubes.
Marcella licked her lips and pushed back her chair. "Don't get me wrong, I wasn't saying it bothered me, and I know you're not dumb enough to wear that dress outside. I just thought you might find it interesting how the world used to be." She started to leave but then turned her head for a backward glance. "I hope you never outgrow that dress." Olivia puzzled over her mom's parting comment, honestly she was pretty confused about a lot of things, her own feelings perhaps most of all.