I'm Glad My Mom Died(6)

“One more, even more scared!” the director shouts at me. I widen my eyes a bit, hoping that will work. It does I think, since he says, “Got it, moving on!” and pats me on the back.

The rest of the day consists of segments of set-work and schoolwork, which we are required to do on set, so we go back and forth between the two. Since Mom homeschools me, she pulled my schoolwork for the day and paper-clipped all the worksheets together into a little packet. The twelve-year-old girl seated next to me in the schoolroom keeps elbowing me and telling me we don’t have to do any schoolwork if we don’t want to because we’re background actors, and the studio teachers assigned to background actors don’t care how much work gets done because they just want to teach the principal actors. I try my best to ignore her and fill out my page on the state capitals. After our half-hour-or-so schoolwork segments, we’re pulled from the classroom by the PA to go do the scene again. The same scene. The whole day, the same scene.

I have no idea why we have to keep doing this one scene so many times, and I figure it’s best not to ask questions, but I notice that each time I come back to the set, the camera is in a new position, so I have a feeling it has something to do with that. Oh well, at least every time I’m brought to set, I get to see Mom.

Each time the PA walks us kids back to set, we pass the “background parents holding room,” where all the parents are stuffed into a small bungalow. I wave to Mom, who notices me every single time. No matter how engrossed in her Woman’s World magazine she is, she dog-ears the page, looks up at me, smiles big, and gives me a thumbs-up. We are so connected.

By the end of the day, I’m exhausted. It’s been eight and a half hours of being on set and doing schoolwork and walking from the stage to the schoolroom and taking directions and hearing drills and smelling smoke (there was a fog machine on the gas chamber set to enhance the ambiance). It’s been a long day and I haven’t particularly enjoyed it, but I did like the hard-boiled egg.

“Suffocating to death,” Mom says eagerly on our way home, as she recounts everything I told her about the day. “And in a CLOSE-UP. That’s gonna really show off how good you are. I bet once this airs, Academy Kids is gonna beg you to be a principal actor. BEG.”

Mom shakes her head in disbelief as she taps the steering wheel with excitement. She seems so carefree in this moment. I try to soak in her expression as deeply as I can. I wish she was like this more often.

“You’re gonna be a star, Nettie. I just know it. You’re gonna be a star.”





5.


“WE HAVE TO LEAVE FOR church in fifteen minutes!” Mom shouts from the other room before I hear the distinct smack of a makeup brush being thrown against the mirror. She must’ve gotten her eyeliner crooked again.

The church my family goes to is the Garden Grove Sixth Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Grandma was baptized a Mormon when she was eight, and then Mom was baptized a Mormon when she was eight—just like I’m gonna be baptized a Mormon when I’m eight, because that’s when Joseph Smith said you become accountable for your sins. (Before then, you can sin scot-free.) Even though both Grandma and Mom were baptized, they didn’t go to church. I think they wanted the perk of going to heaven without doing the legwork.

But then right after Mom was diagnosed with cancer, we started attending church service.

“I just knew the Lord would help me get better if I was a good and faithful servant,” Mom explained to me.

“Oh. So we started going to church when we wanted something from God?” I asked.

“No.” Even though Mom was laughing when she said it, she sounded kind of nervous, maybe even a little annoyed. And then she switched the subject to how handsome Tom Cruise looked in the new Mission: Impossible 2 trailer.

I’ve never again asked when or why we started going to church. I don’t need to know the specifics of why we go to church to know that I love it.

I love the smell of the chapel—pine-scented tile cleaner and a whiff of burlap. I love my primary classes and all the songs about faith and Jesus, like “I Hope They Call Me on a Mission” and “Book of Mormon Stories,” and my personal favorite, “Popcorn Popping,” which, come to think of it, I’m not sure has anything to do with faith or Jesus. (It’s about popcorn popping on an apricot tree.)

But more than anything, I love the escape. Church is a beautiful, peaceful, three-hour weekly reprieve from the place I hate most: home.

Home, like church, is in Garden Grove, California, a town not-so-affectionately referred to by its inhabitants as “Garbage Grove” because, as Dustin puts it before Mom always shuts him up, “There’s a lot of white trash here.”

We get a good deal on renting the house, since Dad’s parents own it, but apparently not good enough since Mom’s always complaining about it.

“We shouldn’t have to pay anything at all. That’s what family’s for,” she’ll vent to me while doing dishes or filing her nails. “If they don’t leave the house to your father in their will, I swear…”

We’re late on our rent just about every month—Mom’s always crying about it. And the payments are often short—Mom’s always crying about that too. Sometimes it’s just not quite enough even though Mom, Dad, Grandpa, and Grandma all chip in. Grandpa and Grandma moved in with us “temporarily” while Mom was battling cancer but just wound up staying even after she went into remission because it worked out better for everyone.