What My Mother Gave Me by Elizabeth Benedict Page B

lines and Renaissance flourishes. Th ey sat in the city’s commercial center, the downtown Loop, flanked by hotels, theaters, and office buildings. Proclaiming the union of exclusivity and accessibility.
    Today’s common wisdom says we’re inundated with sensory data, bombarded by images. But it started long ago—these late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century department stores were the first to make sensory bombardment a stately art. Th ey were the self-contained ancestors of the mall. Counter after counter of lipsticks, powders, perfumes; cases filled with gloves (wrist-length, mid-arm, lined, unlined, cotton, suede kid, white, cream, black, tan); leather goods; candies—and we haven’t even reached the escalators. We’re still on the ground floor, which stretches across two city blocks.
    For girls like my sister and me, bourgeois girls of the 1950s and early ’60s, shopping was an intricately plotted expedition. Our mother was the leader and guide. She showed us what to look for as our eyes wandered and wondered. She showed us what to pass by. She directed the gaze.
    Marshall Field, where Mother took us to sit on Santa’s knee at Christmas in a maze of giant wreaths, candy canes, and glazed whirling ornaments.
    Marshall Field, where Mother took us to lunch at the Walnut Room.
    Marshall Field’s 28 Shop, where Mother told her mother, “You really shouldn’t smoke here,” and her mother answered, “As much as I pay for these clothes, I’ll do what I want.”
    Marshall Field, where my father’s aunt Nancy passed for white to work as a saleswoman in the 1920s.
    AT SAKS AND Bonwit Teller the exclusivity-accessibility balance shifted. Th ey were smaller, more discreet stores. Th ey were on the posh Near North Side, not in the “come hither all ye consumers” Loop. Th e rhythm of buying and selling was more decorous, the conversation quieter. And you knew when you entered that fewer people felt they could take the liberty—claim the right—to simply walk through as tourists. Mother didn’t take us there before 1960. As Negroes we had to secure our place downtown before we ventured North.
    EVERY MONTH A coffee-table-sized Vogue arrived at our house. Every month I devoured it. Th e models were starting to be known by name. My favorite was red-haired Suzy Parker: tall and lissome, her face a perfect assemblage of curves (the lips, the eyebrows) and lines (the nose, the cheekbones). Th e models wore the grand European designs of Dior, Givenchy, Balenciaga, and Madame Gr è s. Th ey showed off the clothes of Americans with rhythmically deft, alliterative names: Norman Norell, Bill Blass, Geoffrey Beene. Th ey were muses and fetish objects, sumptuous offerings on the altar of feminine glamour.
    And I worshipped offerings to feminine glamour, in magazines, movies, and in life. Th e clothes; the lingerie; the array of handkerchiefs, some lace-trimmed, some initialed; pocketbooks of leather and alligator, bearing their own mirrors and coin purses; peau-de-soie clutch bags for evening or small beaded ones with handles that just slipped over your wrist. Th e perfume and cologne bottles on Mother’s vanity table and dresser. Th e earrings, bracelets, necklaces arranged in the leather jewelry box with its Florentine design.
    I learned to accept the verbotens, too. One summer day I came downstairs wearing a red blouse and a purple and white flowered skirt; I was sent right back upstairs to change. You don’t wear certain colors together, especially loud colors. Denim is only for weekend play and summer camp. Little girls don’t wear nail polish. Little girls wear white socks with their Mary Janes.
    I accepted the verbotens because I longed to be a perfect girl, and if a girl lacked perfect prettiness—which I did—then this was a route to compensatory perfection. I accepted the verbotens because they came from my mother, whose