I'm Glad My Mom Died(5)

Mom starts filling out the representation paperwork. She points her pen at the dotted line I’m supposed to sign my name on. It’s next to a dotted line she’s already signed—she has to sign too since she’s my guardian.

“What are we signing for?”

“The contract just says that the agent gets twenty percent and we get eighty percent. Fifteen percent of that eighty percent will go into an account called a Coogan account, which you can access once you’re eighteen. That’s all the money that most parents let their kids have. But you’re lucky. Mommy’s not gonna take any of your money except for my salary, plus essentials.”

“What are essentials?”

“Why are you giving me the third degree all of the sudden? Don’t you trust me?”

I quickly sign.

Goatee comes out to give each of the parents feedback. He comes to Mom first and tells her that I have potential to do principal work.

“Potential?” Mom asks, critically.

“Yes, especially since she’s only six, so she’s getting an early start.”

“But why potential? Why can’t she do principal work now?”

“Well, I could tell in her monologue that she was very nervous. She seems quite shy.”

“She is shy, but she’s getting over it. She’ll get over it.”

Goatee scratches his arm where there’s a tattoo of a tree. He takes a deep breath like he’s getting ready to say something he’s nervous about saying.

“It’s important that Jennette wants to act, in order for her to do well,” he says.

“Oh, she wants this more than anything,” Mom says as she signs on the next page’s dotted line.

Mom wants this more than anything, not me. This day was stressful and not fun, and if given the choice, I would choose to never do anything like it again. On the other hand, I do want what Mom wants, so she’s kind of right.

Goatee smiles at me in a way that I wish I understood. I don’t like when grown-ups make faces or sounds that I don’t understand. It’s frustrating. It makes me feel like I’m missing something.

“Good luck,” he says to me with a certain heaviness, and then he walks away.





4.


IT’S THREE A.M. THE FRIDAY after signing with Academy Kids when Mom wakes me up for my first day of background work on a show called The X Files. My call time isn’t until five a.m., but since Mom’s scared of driving freeways for the first time, she wants to get a head start and leave plenty early.

“Look at me, getting over my fear for you,” Mom says as we pile into our 1999 Ford Windstar minivan.

We arrive at 20th Century Fox studios an hour early, so we walk around for a bit in the dark. When we pass the giant Luke Skywalker vs. Darth Vader mural on the side of one of the soundstages, Mom squeals with delight, whips out her disposable camera, and snaps a picture of me standing in front of it. I feel embarrassed, like we don’t belong here.

By 4:45 a.m., Mom figures it’s close enough to my call time to show up, so we check in just outside the soundstage with a short, bald production assistant. He tells us we’re early, but we can stop by background crafty before it’s time to head to set.

Background crafty is a cool place. It’s a tent at the edge of the soundstage with food everywhere. Cereal and candy and jugs of coffee and orange juice and silver trays of breakfast foods—pancakes and waffles and scrambled eggs and bacon.

“And it’s free,” Mom says excitedly as she wraps various muffins and croissants in napkins and tucks them into her oversized Payless purse to give to my brothers later. There are a bunch of whole eggs sitting in a tray. Mom says they’re hard-boiled. I pluck one out to try it. Mom teaches me how to roll the egg on a hard surface to crack the shell, then peel the shell off the egg white. I sprinkle it with salt and pepper and take a big bite. I love it. I grab a bag of Ritz Bits mini cheese sandwiches, too. I could get used to this.

By the time I get to the last bite of the egg, all of the other background kids—there are thirty of us—have shown up, and we’re all called to set at once.

We trail behind the bald PA as he guides us to the soundstage where we’ll be shooting. As soon as we cross onto the soundstage, I’m in awe. The ceiling is so high, and it’s covered with hundreds of lights and poles. There’s the smell of fresh wood and the sound of hammers and drills. Many people in cargo pants pass us, some of them with tools hanging off their belts, some of them with clipboards in their hands, some of them whispering urgently into walkie-talkies. There’s something magical about this. It feels like so much is happening.

We get to set and the director—a small man with light brown hair long enough to tuck behind his ears—ushers us in, talking quickly and frantically. He looks at me and the other twenty-nine children and tells us excitedly that we will all be playing children who are stuck in a gas chamber and suffocating to death. I nod along, trying to remember each and every word so that I can relay them to Mom on the drive home when she asks. Suffocating to death, got it.

The director tells us all where to stand, and I’m near the back of the blob of children until he asks for the smaller kids to come up front, so I do. He then points to each of us rapidly, one right after the other, and says to give him our best “scared-to-death” face. I’m the ninth or tenth kid he points to, and after I give my face, he tells the cameraman standing next to him to get a close-up of me. I have no idea what this means, but I assume it’s good because the director winks at me after he says it.