MELBA POPADOPOLOUS, PIN-GIRL

Thick Eyebrows and a Dented-In Forehead

(Dec 20/05)
Melba Popadopolous had thick man’s eyebrows and a dent in her forehead where a bowling ball hit her when she worked as a pin-girl at the local bowling lanes on Donegani Avenue next to the Shell station and the Charmco. Her father owned the Diary Bar and drove a lime green Ford Gremlin with tinted windows and a CB antenna on the back hood next to the gas cap. Her mother wore sarongs and these leather sandals that she bought at the Pier One store on sale on Boxing Day with two gift certificates she got from Mr. Popadopolous’ mother before she died from a massive stroke.

Melba attended the same high school as me, and sat two desks from me near the window. She never had more than one pimple at a time, generally on the space between her nose and her upper lip, and a pockmark from Rubella or chicken pox on her forehead just below the dent mark from the bowling ball. She wore her hair in one long braid that ended somewhere near the place where your tailbone meets the crack in your ass. When she bent over to pick something up off the floor, or tie a loosened shoelace, you could see a faint tracing of black hair, almost like eyelash hair, starting at her tailbone and disappearing into the crack of her ass.

One day when she was bending over to pick up a scribbler someone had shoved off her desk, I noticed that her underwear had a tear in it, right where the elastic band is suppose to be hemmed to the underwear itself. That, and the faint black hair like eyelash hair, made me increasingly sad for her, and to this day I can’t look at another person bending over to pick something up off the floor or tie their shoes without thinking about Melba Popadopolous and green Ford Gremlins.