I'm Glad My Mom Died(2)

Mom’s watching too. Oh, Mom. She’s so beautiful. She doesn’t think she is, which is probably why she spends an hour doing her hair and makeup every day, even if she’s just going to the grocery store. It doesn’t make sense to me. I swear she looks better without that stuff. More natural. You can see her skin. Her eyes. Her. Instead she covers it all up. She spreads liquid tan stuff on her face and scrapes pencils along her tear ducts and smears lots of creams on her cheeks and dusts lots of powders on top. She does her hair up all big. She wears shoes with heels so she can be five foot two, because she says four foot eleven—her actual height—just doesn’t cut it. It’s so much that she doesn’t need, that I wish she wouldn’t use, but I can see her underneath it. And it’s who she is underneath it that is beautiful.

Mom’s watching me and I’m watching her and that’s how it always is. We’re always connected. Intertwined. One. She smiles at me in a pick-up-the-pace kind of way, so I do. I pick up the pace and finish peeling the paper off my gift.

I’m immediately disappointed, if not horrified, when I see what I’ve received as my present for my sixth birthday. Sure, I like Rugrats, but this two-piece outfit—a T-shirt and shorts—features Angelica (my least favorite character) surrounded by daisies (I hate flowers on clothes). And there are ruffles around the sleeves and leg holes. If there is one thing I could pinpoint as being directly in opposition to my soul, it’s ruffles.

“I love it!” I shout excitedly. “It’s my favorite gift ever!”

I throw on my best fake smile. Mom doesn’t notice the smile is fake. She thinks I genuinely love the gift. She tells me to put the outfit on for my party while she already starts taking off my pajamas. As she’s removing my clothes, it feels more like a rip than a peel.

It’s two hours later. I’m standing in my Angelica uniform at Eastgate Park surrounded by my friends, or rather the only other people in my life who are my age. They’re all from my primary class at church. Carly Reitzel’s there, with her zigzag headband. Madison Thomer’s there, with her speech impediment that I wish I had because it’s so freaking cool. And Trent Paige is there, talking about pink, which he does excessively and exclusively, much to the dismay of the adults around him. (At first I didn’t realize why the adults cared so much about Trent’s pink obsession, but then I put two and two together. They think he’s gay. And we’re Mormon. And for some reason, you can’t be gay and be Mormon at the same time.)

The cake and ice cream are rolled out and I’m thrilled. I’ve been waiting for this moment for two whole weeks, since I first decided what I was going to wish for. The birthday wish is the most power I have in my life right now. It’s my best chance at control. I don’t take this opportunity for granted. I want to make it count.

Everyone sings “Happy Birthday” off-key, and Madison and Trent and Carly throw in cha-cha-chas after every line—it’s so annoying to me. I can tell they all think it’s so cool, how they’re cha-cha-cha’ing, but I think it takes away from the purity of the birthday song. Why can’t they just let a good thing be?

I lock eyes with Mom so she’ll know I care about her, that she’s my priority. She’s not cha-cha-cha’ing. I respect that about her. She gives me one of her big nose-wrinkling smiles that makes me feel like everything’s gonna be okay. I smile back at her, trying to take in this moment as fully as I possibly can. I feel my eyes starting to water.

Mom was first diagnosed with stage four breast cancer when I was two years old. I hardly remember it, but there are a few flashes.

There’s the flash of Mom knitting me a big green-and-white yarn blanket, saying it was something I could keep with me while she was in the hospital. I hated it, or I hated the way she was giving it to me, or I hated the feeling I got when she was giving it to me—I don’t remember what exactly I hated, but there was something in that moment that I absolutely did.

There’s the flash of walking across what must have been a hospital lawn, my hand in Grandpa’s. We were supposed to be picking dandelions to give to Mom, but instead I picked these brown, pokey, sticklike weeds because I liked them better. Mom kept them in a plastic Crayola cup on our entertainment unit for years. To preserve the memory. (Maybe this is where Scott gets his nostalgic instincts from?)

There’s the flash of sitting on the bumpy blue carpet in a corner room in our church building watching as two young and handsome missionaries put their hands on Mom’s bald head to give her a priesthood blessing while everyone else in the family sat in cold foldout chairs around the perimeter of the room. One missionary consecrated the olive oil so that it would be all holy or whatever, then poured the oil onto Mom’s head, making it even shinier. The other missionary then said the blessing, asking for Mom’s life to be extended if it was God’s will. Grandma jumped up from her seat and said, “Even if it’s not God’s will, goddamnit!” which disrupted the Holy Spirit so the missionary had to start the prayer over.

Even though I hardly remember that time in my life, it’s not like I have to. The events are talked about so often in the McCurdy household that you didn’t even have to be there at all for the experience to be etched into your memory.

Mom loves recounting her cancer story—the chemotherapy, the radiation, the bone marrow transplant, the mastectomy, the breast implant, the stage fourness of it, how she was only thirty-five when she got it—to any churchgoer, neighbor, or fellow Albertsons customer who lends her a listening ear. Even though the facts of it are so sad, I can tell that the story itself gives Mom a deep sense of pride. Of purpose. Like she, Debra McCurdy, was put on this earth to be a cancer survivor and live to tell the tale to any and everyone… at least five to ten times.