“Girls like us don’t get to have passions,” is what Lacey told me when I started canceling my Sugar Club appointments to practice. “Girls like us have to be practical. You really think you’re ever gonna make enough money to pay for your ma’s treatment by playing the freakin’ piano, Kate? No. Focus on the Sugar Club. Business is booming.”
But just this once, I didn’t want to think about money or my body or the Sugar Club. I wanted to think about me and music and a life I could’ve had if I didn’t have this one. I stayed after school. I played.
I learned Beyoncé and Celine Dion and a Gaga number, because I wasn’t about to play any classical bullshit. For the talent show, I’d be playing a Christina Aguilera ballad that I practiced and practiced, pounding at keys until the pads of my fingers bruised blue.
On show night, I wore a dress Lacey stole from a thrift store. It was long, red, sparkling, and it hung from me like drapes, two sizes too big but still beautiful. I shone like something precious. Lacey lined my lips red and she glued fake eyelashes over my real ones, and when I looked in the mirror, the costume felt like a disguise.
“This is stupid,” is what Lacey said, looking at me in the mirror. “Girls like us don’t—”
And I said, “I don’t want to be a girl like us tonight.”
The auditorium was full and the spotlight was so bright it made the audience look like a swarm of monsters, hiding in the shadows, waiting to pounce. When my name was announced, I felt famous. Ma kissed me on the nose and reminded me not to smile on account of my teeth. I walked onstage badly. I couldn’t remember what to do with my arms.
The stage fright got me, held me tight, too tight, and I sat, center stage, hands over the keys, still. The audience started to laugh. I knew that to avoid thinking about one thing I needed to think about everything else, but I couldn’t, I was stuck. I looked out at the auditorium, dark figures, faceless, all watching me, waiting for me to do something, to perform. I couldn’t move even when there were shouts of Get off the stage, bimbo! Mrs. Callahan marched out from the wings, took me by the elbow, helped me off the stool, let me lean on her as I limped out of the spotlight.
That night, after the show, Ma made us mugs of hot water sweetened with sugar packets from the Hobbes staff room. It was our version of cocoa, and it tasted like home. You looked like a star up there, bunny, she said between sips. Even doing nothing, even just sitting there, everyone in that audience could tell you were special.
* * *
When someone looks at you and thinks you’re the whole world, and then that person leaves? You realize you existed mostly in their perception of you. You wonder if you even exist at all. Ma died of breast cancer, but I died of my mother’s death.
* * *
Don’t you let yourself end up like me, bunny, is what Ma said one night, late, when a manfriend slammed the door so hard the frame splintered and the house shook. I thought she’d stop seeing them once she got sick, but no, she was seeing more manfriends than ever. I looked at her, cheek pink and bloody as meat, red gloss smeared down her chin like a split lip, mascara weeping black beneath her eyes. She stroked the back of my head with her nails, which were neon green and sharpened to a point. I sighed into her touch. There were worse things to be than my ma. When I told her that, she shook her head and took me by the shoulders, hard.
She said, You’ve got it all, bunny. Looks, talent, the way you are, you’re a star, she said. Once we figure out those teeth, you’ll be perfect, she said. Famous, she said. But really, teeth aside, I looked like a million other faces, my body like a million other bodies. Sometimes I looked in the mirror and saw this catalogue girl, a paper doll, exactly the shape she’s meant to be, and then I smiled and my teeth bucked and I sighed in relief. Feeling, at least, like a self.
Do Paris Hilton, Ma told me. I tied my hair into pigtails and lifted my voice by an octave. She clapped and clapped and said, Do Michael Jackson, and I touched the tip of an imaginary fedora and slipped backward on the hardwood. She laughed and laughed and she laughed until she cried and maybe those tears were for me or for herself, but I was just glad to see her smile. Just as soon as we fix those teeth, we’re going to be rich. We’re going to have a great big life.
I don’t want to be famous.
You’re going to have so much more than this.
I don’t need more than this.
There were bruises around her neck. I touched each one softly. I hated when her manfriends hurt her because they never hurt her hard enough that she’d stop inviting them over. I covered the purpled handprint with my own palm and imagined squeezing her throat until I left that kind of mark. Still, I’d never hold Ma’s manfriends against her. I, more than anyone, understood the power of desire. I knew what it was to want, to want to be loved so much it hurts.
Fame is love, bunny. Fame’s to be loved by the whole world, all at once. Can you imagine how safe you’d be with that many eyes watching you? Fame’s the biggest love there is.