Page 50 of Bitter’s Sweet

“That’s Gertrude,” Junie says. “She’s our mascot.”

“She’s also a tramp,” Lark adds.

“Gertrude is a professional woman,” Petal says. “Respect her.”

I smile down at the skull. “Sorry, Gertrude.”

Miss Mercy sighs. “I run an institution. I want that stated for the record.”

“You run a weird one.”

Her mouth twitches. “True.”

She puts me to work helping Petal organize clean towels, capes, brush sets, sponge trays, and little jars of cosmetics labeled in a careful hand. There are regular shades and then funeral shades, which makes sense once Mercy explains it. The dead don’t hold color like the living. You can’t slap on blush and hope for the best. You have to understand undertones, lighting, viewing distance, family expectations, and whether the deceased was the sort of person who’d rather haunt you than be seen with coral lipstick.

I love it. I try not to love it too openly because the day is already strange enough, but I do. There’s an artistry to it. Not vanity, not really. More like translation. Taking what time, sickness, violence, or plain old death has done and helping the family see the person underneath it one last time feels important. It feels honest.

Mercy catches me staring at the cosmetic trays. “You planning to admire them or learn something?”

“Learn.”

“Good answer.”

She leads me to a smaller practice station where a silicone restoration face sits on a towel. Someone has gouged an ugly crescent along one cheek and filled half of it with mortuary wax.

Mercy sets three little jars beside it. “Restoration ain’t filling a hole and painting over it. You build what should be there. Texture, contour, color. Too smooth and it catches the light. Too thick and the family sees makeup instead of Mama.”

My stomach twists a little at the word Mama, but I keep my eyes on the practice face.

Mercy notices. Of course she does. She simply hands me a narrow metal tool with a flat pointed end.

“Palette knife,” she says. “For wax. Fine edges. Small corrections. Sharp enough to ruin your day if you get careless.”

I turn it in my fingers. It’s smaller than anything I would call a knife, more like something an artist would use to mix paint.

Lark passes behind me. “Also useful for discouraging foolishness.”

Mercy points at her without looking. “We do not teach defensive cosmetology.”