Chapter 2: I'm Glad My Mom Died
“ONE MORE ROW OF CLIPS and we’ll be done,” Mom says, speaking of the butterfly clips that she’s carefully pinning into my head. I hate this hairstyle, the rows of tightly wound hair fastened into place with painful, scalp-gripping little clips. I’d rather be wearing a baseball cap, but Mom loves this style and says it makes me look pretty, so butterfly clips it is.
“Okay, Mommy,” I say, swinging my legs back and forth while I sit on the closed toilet seat lid. The leg swing is a nice touch. Selling it.
The house phone starts ringing.
“Shoot.” Mom opens the bathroom door and leans out of it, as far as she can go to grab the phone that hangs from the kitchen wall. She does all of this without letting go of the strand of my hair she’s currently working on, so my whole body is leaned all the way over in the same direction that Mom is.
“Hello,” she says into the phone as she answers it. “Uh-huh. Uh-huh. WHAT?! Nine p.m.? That’s the earliest?! Whatever, guess the kids will have to get through ANOTHER NIGHT without their DAD. That’s on you, Mark. That’s on you.”
Mom slams the phone down.
“That was your father.”
“I figured.”
“That man, Net, I tell ya. Sometimes I just…” She takes a deep, anxious breath.
“Sometimes you just what?”
“Well I could’ve married a doctor, a lawyer, or an—”
“Indian chief,” I finish for her since I know this catchphrase of hers so well. I asked her once which Indian chief she dated, and she said she didn’t mean it literally, that it’s just a figure of speech, a way of saying she could have had anyone she wanted back in the day before she had children, which has made her less appealing. I told her I was sorry, and she said it was okay, that she’d much rather have me than a man. Then she told me I was her best friend and kissed me on the forehead and, as an afterthought, said that she actually did go on a few dates with a doctor, though: “Tall and ginger, very financially stable.”
Mom keeps clipping my hair.
“Producers too. Movie producers, music producers. Quincy Jones once did a double take when he passed me on a street corner. Honestly, Net, not only could I have married any of those men, but I should have. I was destined for a good life. For fame and fortune. You know how much I wanted to be an actress.”
“But Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t let you,” I say.
“But Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t let me, that’s right.”
I wonder why Grandma and Grandpa wouldn’t let her, but I don’t ask. I know better than to ask certain types of questions, the ones that go too deep into specifics. Instead, I just let Mom offer up the information she wants to offer up, while I listen closely and try to take it in exactly the way she wants me to.
“Ow!”
“Sorry, did I clip your ear?”
“Yeah, it’s okay.”
“It’s hard to see from this angle.”
Mom starts rubbing my ear. I’m immediately soothed.
“I know.”
“I want to give you the life I never had, Net. I want to give you the life I deserved. The life my parents wouldn’t let me have.”
“Okay.” I’m nervous about what’s coming next.
“I think you should act. I think you would be a great little actress. Blonde. Blue-eyed. You’re what they love in that town.”
“In what town?”
“Hollywood.”
“Isn’t Hollywood far away?”
“An hour and a half. Granted, freeways are involved. I’d have to learn how to drive freeways. But it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make for you, Net. ’Cuz I’m not like my parents. I want what’s best for you. Always. You know that, right?”
“Yeah.”
Mom pauses the way she does before she’s about to say something she thinks is a part of a big moment. She bends around to look me in the eye—still holding my unfinished hair strand.
“So what do you say? You want to act? You want to be Mommy’s little actress?”
There’s only one right answer.