Chapter 9
When I get home later that afternoon, there’s an email waiting for me from my mother.
To: theghostwriter@hotmail
From: Geneva.Santana
As I said before, I would very much like to come and see you and help choose your dress.
I’ve been to so many award shows and galas and I know which dress will be most flattering for your particular body type.
Please don’t tell me you’ve already decided on one.
I will pay for the wedding dress; money is no object.
I know Christopher’s family has money, but don’t forget I starred for years in Desperate Hearts.
I couldn’t have lived in Los Angeles for all these years without money, could I?
Ladies and gentlemen, my mother. The soap opera star.
The woman who inserts herself into my life whenever there’s drama to be had because she doesn’t leave the histrionics for the screen.
I’ve been avoiding her and haven’t told her about my broken engagement, not that we have the kind of relationship where I’ll cry my heart out on her shoulder.
She went off to pursue her dream of being an actress in Hollywood, wound up in Puerto Rico for a time on a telenovela, then graduated to soap operas in Los Angeles by way of New York.
However, she was killed off Desperate Hearts a few years ago and there hasn’t been much success since then.
But even if I’m only a short plane ride away, I haven’t seen her in five years.
Unlike me, my mother remains the definition of cool.
I’d hoped to have her level of sophistication, but I’ve never fully understood fashion.
My idea of style is to wear the latest trends and hope they flatter my particular body shape.
This happens about two out of ten times so the odds are never in my favor.
The Geneva Santana shape was always in style.
Mami was long legged and slender, with the kind of shapely breasts that accentuate but don’t take over the landscape.
Later I would learn how much surgery she had in order to look the way she does, even before turning forty.
Eddie said she was beautiful, like me, before all the “plastic stuff” ruined her, perhaps ever so conscious of how much I resemble my mother.
The last time I visited her I’d boarded the plane to Los Angeles as a thirteen-year-old unaccompanied minor.
I hadn’t seen my mother for a year, and I had so much to tell her.
My body had changed, was still changing, and I’d been indoctrinated into the society of monthly menses.
Fun times. My moods shifted from Texas hot to Alaska cold and Eddie, with whom I’d always had a close relationship, avoided me, as if I was a creature from another planet.
My abuelita and tias did their best, taking me to the pharmacy and instructing me as to the particulars.
As luck would have it, I was the first of the female cousins to “become a woman” so I became the practice they would need for their own daughters.
As I boarded the plane that summer, and said goodbye to my cousins, I knew that I’d come back a much hipper version of myself.
Mami would be so happy to see me she wouldn’t notice all the extra weight that had bunched on since last year.
For reasons not quite clear to me, most of my clothes didn’t fit, and I kept going up in sizes until my tias shopped for me in the women’s section.
I thought that since I was a woman, like Mami, we would talk like besties, stay up all night, and she’d give me tips on hair and makeup.
We’d go shopping for the best designer clothes and have lunch in Beverly Hills.
But instead, my mother picked me up at the airport with her new husband.
Sebastian “Seb” Caballero, a telenovela producer.
He was the first man I’d ever seen her with besides my father.
Not that I would have ever loved him anyway, but I found him oily, loud, and hairy.
Privately I’d always expected Mami would never remarry because she’d loved my father too much to compare to any other man.
Seb was the evidence my mother had moved on, and I hated him for that in the way only teens can.
That first encounter with Seb was the first time a man spoke Spanish in front of me expecting I didn’t understand a word of it simply because my hair was blonde.
“Ella esta muy gordita,” he’d said with a chuckle as he drove us out of the airport lot.
“My daughter speaks fluent Spanish, Seb,” Mami said.
Her new husband had just called me “very chubby.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard myself called chunky, but not by any member of my family.
Seb wasn’t my family, not technically, and by the sound in my mother’s artic-freeze tone, I knew she would defend me.
Any minute now she’d chime in and explain I was her daughter, therefore, this had to be simply a stage I was going through.
She would take me to find clothes that would flatter my figure and then hairy Seb would see I was gorgeous, no matter the size.
Instead, Mami muttered, “I can only imagine what they’re feeding her. It’s not her fault. Believe me, if I ate the way her father’s family does I’d be big too.”
And the way she looked at me…it wasn’t disappointment in her eyes. I knew disappointment. This was shame. Her mini-me was not living up to potential.
There almost wasn’t enough room in my still-growing body for the agony that pierced and pulsed through me.
My own mother, embarrassed of me. She didn’t disagree with Seb when she had a chance, only offered her feeble explanation of why I might not be thin, like her.
The subject of the shape of my body, or anyone else’s for that matter, was not a common one in a Latina household.
In our culture, we ate good food, danced, and enjoyed life.
Some people were bigger than others and this did not concern us.
That evening, we had salad for dinner. A green salad with five croutons. This was the summer for me to discover carbs were the devil. My mother nearly starved me, even taking me to her doctor for the “stars.”
“She’s a beautiful girl as you can see, is there anything we can do?” my mother asked, wringing her hands, sounding like I might be dying, and he should for the love of God, save me.
I thought the doctor would disagree with my mother and tell her I was fine and still growing. But they put me on a diet. There’s nothing quite like having your caloric intake restricted to make you crave everything in sight. I ate even when I wasn’t hungry, which wasn’t often.
When she took me to a soap opera taping, I hung by the food table and grazed all afternoon when she wasn’t looking. Sandwiches with ham and cheese and mayo on crusty bread, cookies, cake, and soda. All food never allowed in Mami’s presence. Never allowed in her home.
I ate so much I wasn’t hungry that evening for my green salad.
“See? Your stomach is already shrinking!” Mami said.
No matter how she hurt me, I still loved her. For a young girl, that love became toxic when it was mixed with a heavy shot of contempt.
“You realize I’m doing this for your own good, don’t you?” Mami said, “You’ll thank me some day. Wait and see.”
Here’s the funny thing.
I’m still waiting to thank her for that. It’s not going to happen.
My life feels like fodder for a women’s fiction novel some days, but maybe that’s why I write romance to take me away from real life.
Most people are familiar with the peculiar burdens of family, the way obligations pull and push until they break you in half.
Family love and devotion can splinter and crack.
Some say real love is unconditional, but that’s also why it hurts.
Because love is not always healthy. Even when it should be.
It’s time I tell Mami the truth. I no longer need a wedding dress, or her help shopping.
I’d hoped planning the wedding would be a way we’d connect. We could repair our relationship. But she was often too busy to talk about invitations and favors. The dress, however, was of interest.
There’s still so much I want to say to her, but the timing has to be right. I thought the time would be on my wedding day when I’d be glowing and bathed with the happiness of marrying a man who loved and accepted me for who I am.
I have a speech, which I’ve written and revised about a dozen times over the last few months:
This is something I should have said long ago, but it took being a little bit older and wiser to find the right words.
You are my mother and above anyone else, you should accept me as I am.
Instead, you let a thirteen-year-old girl feel inferior because I didn’t match the version of me you had in your head.
Guess what? There are many versions of me.
I’ve been a size twelve and I’ve been a size six, but I’ve never changed the person I am inside.
I still love books and reading and castles and unicorns.
There is nothing wrong with my body, or anything that needs fixing.
But for a while, you made me think there was.
It took years to fix what you broke in one summer, but now I’m happy and whole. No thanks to you.
Oh, by the way, thank you for coming.
I planned to say this to her at my wedding, but I’m honestly not sure that speech will ever be given. I’m beginning to think the entire speech was just like everything else I write—fiction. My issue might not be my weight anymore, but I’m still falling second to others.
I need to let her know the wedding is off, but I don’t need to see her in person. A simple email will do. I’ve been putting it off because of the phone call it might provoke. She might think I need her comfort, or some little life lesson about love. I don’t want to hear any of it.
At one time, I needed her. Not anymore. I have Eddie, Abuelita, Sofia. My family.
Later that night, I compose an email to my mother:
Dear Mami,
I thought you should know there isn’t going to be a wedding.
Chris and I broke up. You’re probably curious and want to know why.
Maybe you won’t be surprised he found someone else.
Yes, she’s thinner than me. Big deal. The point is, it’s over.
Dress shopping is unnecessary. By the way, I wear a size eight in case you were wondering. A very small size eight.
Best regards,
Luci
In a way, what I’ll miss the most about the wedding is the fact that I won’t give her my little speech.