The Girls I've Been(18)
Diana wants a daughter like Samantha: frilly and lacy and very, very pink.
Her daughter is not like that. We spend most of our playdate bouncing on her trampoline, and she’s all about the double bounce, even though we’re not supposed to. Victoria is fearless and free in a way kids are supposed to be, and every second I spend around her, it sinks in how different we are. How different I am from Victoria and Samantha and any other kid who was raised to live childhood instead of fake it.
When Mom comes to pick me up, Diana sighs over how lovely my dress is and how she wishes she could get Victoria out of her jeans and into such a pretty dress, and Victoria rolls her eyes. I want to shoot her a smile, because I don’t like the dress much either, but Samantha likes the dress. Samantha is perfect. The perfect daughter. Always obedient and smiling. Playing quietly in her room with her stuffed toys and her tea set, her hair angelic gold down her back. She’s so sweet. What’s your secret, Gretchen?
Samantha has no needs or wants. She exists to serve someone else’s.
When we’re in the safety of our own home, the expensive curtains drawn and Mom finger-combing my hair free of the tight braids, she says, You did good, baby, and the hot glow of pride almost blots out the twist of guilt when I think about Victoria rolling her eyes.
I sink into the role of the delicate little doll-daughter that Diana wants easily. She loves me, and she spends so much time hovering in the doorway, watching Victoria and me play. You’re such a good influence, Samantha, she tells me, and I don’t understand it then, what she’s actually saying. I don’t understand what she’s afraid of.
I guess Diana would be surprised that the one dressed in frills turned out to be the one skipping down the rainbow path toward bisexual city. Though, who knows, maybe Victoria realized her mother’s worst fears. I kind of hope not, because looking back, Diana seemed like the disowning not in my house type. Back then, I didn’t know enough about it—or myself—to see the coded worry in her, but Mom does. Mom creates Samantha to stoke it. It’s sick. It’s twisted. It’s dangerous.
It’s my mother, in a nutshell.
Mom wiggles her way into Diana’s life so neatly; they have coffee together most mornings, dropping Victoria and me off at school while they go off to yoga and then errands, and then one day Mom is casually mentioning this business idea she has, a knitting store, and Diana is falling, hook, line, and sinker.
Mom is good; there are inventory lists, and they tour storefronts and talk supply chains and it’s so convincing and Mom’s the kind of support system that Diana needs and I’m so perfect. I’m the kind of daughter she wants, the kind she imagined she’d have, who’d be soft inside and out and sew her own doll clothes and not double-bounce on the trampoline or run gleefully through the greenbelt behind our houses until the burrs stick to her jeans and I have to bend and pick each one off Victoria’s cuffs because Samantha doesn’t like mess.
“Why can’t she just be happy?” I ask Mom, once. “Victoria’s nice. She doesn’t get into trouble. Why does she want someone different?”
“We’re hardly ever happy with what we have,” she tells me, one of her universal truths.
My stomach sinks. “Are you happy with me?”
Most mothers would rush to reassure. They wouldn’t pause and contemplate.
“You’re learning so fast,” she says. “Faster than your sister did. Faster than I did.” She leans over and smooths a hand over my hair. “You’re a natural. We’re gonna be something, baby.”
It’s not an answer, and she’s honed me enough, even this young, to see that. But I’m too young to play the game she’s shoved me in.
I won’t be for long.
— 20 —
10:36 a.m. (84 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: Maybe working
He drags me down the hall by the back of my shirt. Iris screams my name, and the sound scrapes inside me worse than my knees against the carpet.
“Stay there and watch them,” he tells Red Cap, and the anger in his voice is enough to keep Red Cap from doing anything but obeying.
I go limp. I do not fight. I let him yank me like a doll across the floor and heave me into the lobby. Then I’m on the ground and my cheek’s pressed against the cold tile, and I roll away and up before he tries to kick me. They always try that. It’s like they can’t resist. Getting to my feet hurts, but so does getting kicked in the ribs.
I hadn’t expected this level of anger. What had Lee said to him? She would’ve known better than to antagonize him, so whatever she said, she hadn’t realized it was a land mine.
That was bad. What if I stepped on it, too?
We’re three feet apart, and I can see the front doors from here. They’ve moved the big cabinets from the back against them, blocking them completely, holing up for the long haul.
Whatever’s in that safe-deposit box is important.
“You think you’re smart?” he asks.
“I think I want to survive . . . and you wanted in that office.”
He lets out a breath that maybe is a humorless laugh in another reality. He doesn’t have the shotgun on him, I realize. There’s a gun at his hip, but the shotgun’s out of play.