I'm Glad My Mom Died(37)

35.


IT’S A SUNDAY MORNING AND everyone else in the house is asleep. I reheat the mug of Mom’s favorite raspberry royale tea that I first made an hour ago and wake her with it.

“Mommy,” I say gently. “Here’s your tea.”

“Nnnnn,” Mom half groans in her sleep while she twists onto her other side.

I eye the clock nervously, debating whether or not to keep trying to wake her. This is the third time I’ve tried, and technically the latest possible time I could wake her without us being late.

“Mommy,” I say with a bit more urgency in my tone. “We have to leave for church in twenty minutes or we won’t make it in time.”

“NNNNN,” Mom groans more aggressively.

“Do you not wanna go?” I ask.

“Mmm too tirrrrr,” Mom mutters. Then she swallows and the words come out a little clearer. “I’ve worked too hard lately. I’m too tired.”

She burrows her face deeper into the pillow and her breathing gets heavy. I study her.

I’m tired too. I’ve worked hard lately too. I actually think I’ve worked a lot harder than Mom has. And then I feel guilty for thinking this.

She does drive me to and from work, which has to be tiring, a part of me thinks. Yeah, but I do homework on the drive, plus memorize lines, then spend ten hours on set rehearsing and performing and being “on” under bright lights and intense pressure, while she sits up in my dressing room perusing Woman’s World and gossiping with my co-stars’ moms, the other part of me thinks.

I try and swallow these conflicting parts of me. They’re unhelpful and distracting from the issue that needs to be resolved right now—whether or not we’re going to church.

We haven’t been to church in six months, our longest stretch ever. I’m concerned about this, but I’ve brought it up to Mom as much as I can without making things uncomfortable, and she just keeps reassuring me that we’ll “definitely go back someday, when things settle down a bit.”

I find it strange that we’ve stopped going to church since my career has taken off and Mom’s health has normalized. I tried to broach the subject gently one night when we were driving home from work, but Mom started screaming and saying she was losing control of the steering wheel and that I was causing her tremendous stress that was putting both of us in danger, so I quickly learned to never bring up the subject again.

But now, in this moment, as I’m looking down at her sleeping, I’m starting to accept for the first time that our church days may very well be behind us. I guess Makaylah was right after all.

I used to think going inactive was a terrible thing, a sin to be ashamed of. But maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s a sign that things are going right.

Maybe people go to church because they want things from God. And they keep going while they’re wishing and yearning and longing for those things. But then maybe once they get those things, they realize they don’t need church anymore. Who needs God when you’ve got clear mammograms and a series regular role on Nickelodeon?

I let her sleep and start memorizing my lines for Monday.





36.


“I HAVE A STOMACHACHE,” I tell mom as we walk back from ArcLight Café, where we met with my manager Susan for a quick lunch.

“Maybe the chicken on the salad was bad,” Mom offers of the no blue cheese, no egg, no croutons, no dressing, no bacon Cobb salad—aka grilled chicken and lettuce—that we split for lunch.

“Maybe.”

We’re running down Sunset Boulevard to make it back to set on time. A half hour is hardly enough time for a lunch break, especially if you try to have it outside of set.

“Smile for the paparazzi,” Mom orders me.

Without even spotting them, a vacant puppetlike smile crosses my face automatically. My eyes are dead, my soul is nowhere to be found, but a smile is on my face and that’s all that counts.

FLASH, FLASH, FLASH. The light hurts my eyes.

“Hi, Glen!” Mom shouts to a paparazzo like he’s her neighbor.

“Hi, Deb!” Glen says as he walks backward while snapping more photos. I’m shocked that Mom doesn’t seem aware of how strange this whole interaction is.

We approach Nickelodeon Studios and cross into the parking lot. My smile immediately falls off my face. We race into my dressing room so I can change into my wardrobe for the next scene, and I go to the bathroom to take a quick pee beforehand. That’s when I see it.

Blood. On my underwear. I’m immediately dizzy. I’m not exactly sure what this is, but I think it might be my period.

I first learned about a period—sort of—six years ago. I was ten, my neighbor Teresa was ten-and-eleven months. She never let me forget our eleven-month age gap, whether in attitude or explicit reminders.

“Do you know what a period is, or not? I feel like maybe you don’t, since I’m older than you and know more things.”

“Sure,” I said, assuming she meant the period that comes at the end of a sentence.

“No, not that period. The other period.”

“Yeah,” I said again, thinking she must’ve meant a period in time.

“Again, not that period. The other period.”

I racked my brain to think of what Teresa could possibly mean, then I had it.