Yes.
Sneaking into this bedroom that isn’t your own.
Not my own, not my own.
Whose? Whose bedroom is it? Tell me.
I look at the little girl there on the glass screen. The answer is a bubble leaving the mouth of the black box. The answer is a single word. Out with it.
“Mother’s,” I say with my dead lips. The word leaving my mouth fogs the aquarium glass, fogs the film being projected by my eyes. But I still see the girl outside the room that isn’t hers. The giant red jellyfish moving through her little body. I feel my mouth stretching open.
“I’m in Mother’s bedroom.”
13
I’m in the dark hallway with Mother. Mother’s gloved hands are on my shoulders. Her face hovering over mine is like a pretty, pretty cloud. She’s telling me that she has to go out now. She won’t be long. But don’t wait up. All right, Belle?
“All right, Mother.”
“And don’t go snooping around in my room while I’m gone. Especially you know where.”
I nod. I know where.
“I won’t.” I’m lying, of course.
“Promise?”
“Promise. Where are you going?” I ask even though I know. I know by her clothes and her hair and her perfume that smells of violets and smoke. She’s wearing the white suit by Yves Saint Laurent today. Her hair’s done into an old-timey wave like the women in the black-and-white movies Mother likes to watch at night, and sometimes she lets me watch with her. It’s Nicholas, her hairdresser, who Mother calls a genius, who did this wave for Mother so that her hair is like a soft cloud of S. He tells her every time she sits in his salon chair that she’s his very own Elizabeth Taylor. He told her this today when we went to get Mother’s hair done for tonight. And Mother smiled at herself in the mirror. She loves when he says that. I watched the smile creep across her face from where I sat in the waiting area, flipping through a magazine called Sky. Tom Cruise was on the cover, and I knew there’d be more pictures of him inside. Who’s Elizabeth Taylor? I asked her. Someone beautiful, Mother said, out of the corner of her red mouth, as if that were all I needed to know. Someone beautiful, I repeated to Tom Cruise, his smile white and blinding. There were more pictures of him inside. Quietly, I tore out the one I liked best.
After mother got her hair done, she let Nicholas give me a trim—just a half an inch, just the bangs, she said—and I hated when Mother said this. It was like she was sentencing me to myself, which is not a place I want or asked to be. I wanted Nicholas to defy Mother. To give me the S he gave her. In my dreams, he does just this and then we run away together, hand in hand. But today, Nicholas just gave me the trim Mother said to give me, talking to Mother the whole time about something called “the single life,” making Mother howl with laughter while she smoked her Matinée 100 in the next chair. He didn’t tell Mother to put her cigarette out. He didn’t tell me I was his anything. Nicholas smells like shampoo and his eyes sparkle and his hair is very crisp. For a while, I had what Mother called a crush. Though I told her nothing, she knew. She knew by my face alone, which Mother says she can read like a book. Every page. And she said, Nick doesn’t go that way, Sunshine, sorry. I pretended not to know what Mother was talking about. And Mother read that page too.
“Mother,” I ask her again now. “Where are you going?”
“Twenty questions,” Mother says, which is a warning. And then she says, “I’m meeting someone.”
A man, of course. Always a man. Which one? Mother is seeing two men these days. Will she be meeting Chip or the Troll? I hate them both, but the white suit and the violet perfume probably mean Chip. She wears another dress, another perfume that looks like a poison apple and is actually called Poison, for the Troll. It smells like spiced secrets. The lipstick she has on （that I love） is the one she wears for them all: Russet Moon by Chanel, a deep red that makes Mother’s mouth look like it’s bleeding. The shiny red shoes on her feet are for all of them too. Not my favorites. My favorites are still in her bedroom closet, second shoe shelf from the bottom, third pair from the left. But these are pretty too. I look at Mother’s strappy feet, her made-up face with the Russet Moon mouth, her hair done by Nicholas, for whom she is someone beautiful.
“Can I come?”
“Not today, Sunshine.”
“Why not?” There’s a whine in my voice. A whine I can’t control. A whine Mother hates. I watch her wince at the sound of me. Touch her white hand to her white temple like I’m too much. I’ve followed her into her bedroom, where she’s pulled a hat from the closet and set it on the bed by her purse. The broad-brimmed white hat with the beautiful black ribbon to protect her face from the sun. Because the sun is our mortal enemy, sweetie, Mother always says.