I'm Sandra Dee
Fictive Dream
My fashionista grandmother could track down bargains like a trained bloodhound. She taught me her skills and I’ve been on the hunt ever since.
“I’m Sandra Dee” was published by Fictive Dream (2/3/2022) as part of Flash Fiction February 2022. Thank you, editor Laura Black.
Thank you for reading.
I’m Sandra Dee
MY NEW YORK grandmother told me I’d look like the actress Sandra Dee when I grew older, vivacious and blonde with a crooner for a beau like Bobby Darin. Black would be my color, not blue to match my eyes, not brown like Sandra’s, who by the way looked fantastic in black with her platinum hair and Bobby on her arm before their love went up in smoke. But for now, your color is red, red, red! The blush of youth!
Together, we toured her three points of Mecca: Loehmann’s and Marshalls and Macy’s, piling the cart with all shades of red. The strawberry baby doll swimsuit I’d wear all summer. The raspberry peek-a-boo blouse my mother made her return along with the two pairs of chili pepper fishnet stockings. The cherry red shoes, she let me keep. Delicious shiny patent leather pumps with stacked two-inch wood heels I practice-wore grocery shopping with my mom. I’d catwalk a chunky clip-clop-clip-clop along the linoleum floors strutting my cut off jeans and cheerleader legs, Boo Berry and Tony the Tiger and Lucky the Leprechaun snapping a beat to Bobby Darin singing “Mack the Knife” from the Winn Dixie sound system. I shrined the delicious red shoes center of my closet, candy apples for the first day of junior year. ‘Splish splash’ the boys crooned, my clip-clop past the whisper of their desert boots and Chuck Taylor high tops red hot.
To think “Grease” depicts my mother’s generation helps explain why I lived on “restriction” as a teenager. Funny (now).