I'm Glad My Mom Died(33)

“Shoulders back.” Mom does the gesture herself, to lead by example.

I pull my shoulders back the way she loves and I hate. I don’t like puffing out my chest. I’m not proud of my chest and the little nipple buds on it, and the only reason for puffing out something is if you’re proud of it. I hate this. I want to be done with this wardrobe fitting. I asked if I could please just try on one-pieces with board shorts, the way that I feel most comfortable in a bathing suit. Being covered up. But our wardrobe designer said that The Creator explicitly asked for bikinis, and so she had to at least have me try on one or two of them so he had the option.

“Okay, take a few steps toward me so I can get a picture,” our wardrobe designer tells me as she pulls her Polaroid camera up to her eyes.

I take a few steps forward. She snaps the photo.

“What do you say, want to try on the last bikini?” she asks me like she’s tempting me. It confuses me when people throw a spin on the delivery of something to overcompensate for the fact that the thing they’re delivering is unpleasant.

“Can I just… um… can I not?” I ask. “Can I leave it at the one I just tried?”

“Well, he wants options,” the wardrobe designer says, pulling an overexaggerated “you know him” kind of expression that doesn’t resonate. Because I don’t know him. Not really. I’ve only met him a few times. He seems effusive and boisterous to me, but Mom says she’s heard rumblings from crew members that he’s got a “hair-trigger temper” and to “be sure not to get on his bad side.”

I pick my nails.

“Come on, Net, just one more,” Mom urges me.

“Okay,” I say.

I try on the last bikini. It’s blue with a green stripe around the edges of it. There are ties on the bottoms. I hate the way the ties trickle down my legs. I feel sick to my stomach. I look at myself in the dressing room mirror.

I’m small. I know I’m small. But I worry that my body is fighting the smallness. That it’s trying to develop. To grow. I feel like I’m barely hanging on to my childlike body and the innocence that comes with it. I’m terrified of being looked at like a sexual being. It’s disgusting. I’m not that. I’m this. I’m a child.

I step out of the dressing room. The wardrobe designer snaps my picture.

“You look great,” the ever-sewing wardrobe assistant calls out again without looking up.





32.


OUR LIPS ARE TOUCHING. HE’S moving his mouth around a bit, but I can’t move mine. I’m frozen. His eyes are closed. Mine aren’t. Mine are wide open, staring at him. It’s so odd, staring at a person while your faces are touching. I don’t like it. I can smell his hair gel.

“Move your head around a bit more, Jennette!” The Creator yells from off-camera.

Sometimes, even when the camera’s rolling, producers or directors shout things off-camera. So long as they’re not overlapping a line of dialogue, the editor can just take out the yelling in postproduction.

I try to do as The Creator tells me, I honestly try, but I can’t bring myself to do it. My body is stiff. Unflinching. My body is rejecting my mind. My mind is saying who cares that this is your first kiss, that your first kiss is on-camera. Get it over with. Do what you’re told. My body is saying no, I don’t want this. I don’t want my first kiss to be like this. I want my first kiss to be a real first kiss, not a kiss for a TV show.

I disdain the part of me that’s romantic. I’m embarrassed by it. Mom’s been very clear about how boys are a waste of time and will only disappoint me, and how I should just focus on my career, which I get. So I try to force it away. But as much as I try to force it away, that romantic part of me is there. And it’s been there for a while.

I wonder about boys sometimes. What it would be like to love one. I wonder if one will ever love me. I fantasize about watching the Disneyland fireworks together, about holding hands, about resting my head on his chest, about laughing together. I used to wonder about kissing. How it would work. It’s a thing you can’t practice ahead of time. It just happens at some point. Do you just go with it? Is it difficult? What do lips taste like? These are all questions that now, in this moment, I have the answers to.

You try to just go with it, and if you’re Nathan, my co-star, it seems like you can. But if you’re me, you can’t. If you’re me, you’re just thinking about every single little thing that’s happening, and your mind is racing, and you can’t wait for it to be over with. It is difficult. Lips taste like Blistex chapstick.

I start to wonder if all of this would be different if I loved the person. Maybe that’s the secret ingredient. The missing piece. Maybe if I were kissing somebody I loved, it would be magical and incredible and not this terrifying rush of anxiety.

“Cut!” The Creator yells off-camera, his mouth full of something. I hear his footsteps as he pads over to us, carrying a paper plate piled with cheese slices and unwrapped mini candy bars. The crew parts like the Red Sea, letting The Creator pass by them and walk up to us.

The Creator looks me right in the eye but doesn’t say anything for four or five seconds. I almost start to laugh, thinking he might be messing with me for fun like he does sometimes, but then I recognize that there is a deep anger in him. This is no time for laughter. Finally, he speaks.