Samantha is eight, and she wears her hair in double French braids, because mothers in the rich suburb Abby’s moved us into have the time to French-braid their daughters’ hair each morning. She has a tea set in her playroom and a mountain of stuffed toys. Sometimes I slip one of them into my own room and sleep with it like it’s something secret and shameful. I edge away from comfort without understanding why, already drawing the line between them and me. Why would Samantha’s stuffed bear soothe me when I slip free of her after the lights go out, and then it’s just darkness and the girl no one is allowed to know?
She is hard to escape. She is hard to hold on to, in the dark or the day. So I hold on to the bear instead.
Samantha is a test. A soft rollout, if you will. Abby needs to make sure I can play the perfect daughter before she twists her way into the life of a man who wants one. So she doesn’t target a man. Abby’s mark is a woman—the woman who lives next door, a mother named Diana, who has a little girl the same age as me. Her husband died, and the money he left her is what Mom wants.
Mom is Gretchen this time, a widow like Diana, which is true, but also it’s not. So many things are true, but not.
She spins a tragic story of a man who loved her, who died too soon, before he could even meet his little girl. It tugs at the heartstrings, and we slide right into place in the cookie-cutter house in the beige neighborhood, into playdates and ballet classes and fresh-baked brownies on the counter each Friday.
I go to school for the first time, and it’s easier than I’d expected and more boring than I could have dreamed. I don’t like it. I read under my desk, but my teacher calls me back after class when she catches me, and I know not to cause ripples like that, so I stop.
Samantha can’t cause ripples. Samantha has to be perfect. Dainty, delicate, and demure.
Mom gives me three words for each girl I have to be. Rebecca had been sweet, silent, and smiling.
The quieter I am, the more they forget I’m around. And people—men, especially, I will find—say and do the most secret things out loud when they don’t think you’re important. When you’re sweet and you fetch beers and slice limes and are never a bother. I wasn’t real to any of them, and when you’re not real, the things you learn are endless.
But the men are not important yet. Samantha’s mark is. Because I have a bigger role to play in this con than I ever had before.
Diana has no idea what to do with her daughter and no interest in finding out how to. I walk into the house for the first playdate, and by the time I walk out, I understand why Mom dressed me in patent leather shoes and lace socks and a neat, prim dress that goes with the double French braids hanging down my back, tied with ribbons.
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.