Through her eyes.

 I hate the smell of this cedar trunk in the hallway closet, but it’s the only space in the house I can hide from my mother. 

As soon as she got on the phone with Aunt Betsy and said the dreaded words, dress, and heels, I knew it was my cue to disappear. I would have left out the backdoor and headed over to Lindsey’s house, but she would have found me way too fast.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother. I really do. I just hate how much she wants to make me into something I’m not, or rather someone I’m not. It’s been a year since Dad left and yet she’s still holding on to the image of what our last Christmas card photo portrayed. 

Standing next to our immaculately designed Christmas tree stood a smiling willowy blonde, with perfectly coifed hair standing next to her smiling husband and two daughters. One carbon-copy daughter smiling gleefully, and then there’s me…obvious to anyone looking that I didn’t want to be there. You easily could have found this picture in one of those prefilled photo frames in Target. It’s been a year since Dad stood in the foyer and announced he was leaving, yet mom has been pretending as though he just left for one of his business trips. I haven’t had the time to process this split because she refuses to acknowledge that we aren’t the perfect suburban picturesque family anymore. Although honestly, I’m starting to think we never were really one, to begin with.  

My sister, Claire, is lucky to be away in Georgia at college. Her absence serves her great benefit while simultaneously causing me great strife. Without my mom’s personal barbie doll Claire here to distract her with her pageants, cheer practices, and talks of homecoming dance dresses, it’s now as if my mom’s laser focus is targeted on me. It feels as though I didn’t just lose my dad living in the house, but my older sister too. As soon as she was accepted into her university she was preparing to leave as quickly as she could. I never understood why, because she and mom were like Barbie and Skipper, both alike and desiring to be around one another. She hasn’t come back home yet for holiday breaks, so it seems like my mom wants to act as though now I can just assume the role of the perfect daughter.

I’m not and I do not want to be. The way Claire was with our mother is exhausting to even think about. Weekly mani and pedis, shopping at the outlets, and talking about what’s the latest beauty trend… are not something that interests me. When Dad was still living here, he would try to encourage me to at least, “try for your mother and appease her, Melanie.” Which I found so hypocritical because when they would lock themselves away in their room to argue I could hear my mother cry out the words, “would you at least try to do these things for me.” What would follow would be the sound of my dad storming out of the room and heading into his office to spend the rest of the night there. My mom wants so bad for us to fit into the area that she begged my father to move us to 6 years ago. 

“That doesn’t fit with who I am,” I protested to my mother as she kept forcing me to look through the pins she placed on her Pinterest homecoming board for me. I had been wanting to talk to her about Dad’s now empty office and if I could turn it into a studio space for my artwork, but once again she diverts attention from what I’m saying and finds a way to have me follow her along to dress up and pretend that I’m the picture-perfect daughter. She has her heart set out on me following in the footsteps of her and Claire’s and joining the homecoming court. You have to be elected by your peers for that and I don’t even exist to most of them. I don’t fit in here and I honestly do think I would want to.

Everything in this town is the same. Just as everyone in this town acts the same. Houses that lined perfectly manicured lawns and each resemble one another. Tall white columns frame the front of brick homes that at holiday time mirrored a Norman Rockwell painting. Everyone wears what appears to be a uniform of Ralph Lauren and American Eagle. Families attend high school football games on Fridays, Luncheons at Pineville Country Club on Saturdays, and worship together on Sundays at First Methodist Church. I prefer to have just hung out at our neighbor Lindsey’s house and watch old episodes of Game of Thrones as we snack away on popcorn and M&M’s. 

 Lindsey was in my A.P. art history class freshman year and we hit it off the day we both showed up to school in a Pink Floyd band shirts. Everyone dressed and acted the same at Pineville High, so it was nice to see someone else not obsessed with BTS and Abercrombie and Fitch. I had been the new kid for a few days and unlike my sister Claire, was not immediately welcomed with open arms by my peers. Claire has always been a magnet of sorts. She favors my mom with her willowy frame, light blonde hair, and deep blue eyes. No one would guess we were sisters, let alone related or even the same species as her obnoxious cheer friends would say. With my dark brown chestnut eyes, I would look over at my sister being followed around, people clamoring for her attention, as I sat alone by the trees at lunchtime. 

That’s when Lindsey came and sat down beside me. 

“You just moved into the Smith’s old house, right ?” 

“Uh, yeah,” I answered shyly.

“And that’s your sister over there being swarmed like Kim Kardashian by the paparazzi ?”, She asked with her eyebrows raised as if to question how could that tall blonde beauty but related to a short, raven-haired freak like me. “Why are you not over there with her, instead of alone by this tree? Wouldn’t you want to be with your sister and her friends ?”

 “That doesn’t fit with who I am.”, I say sharply to her. I begin to explain to her the beyond obvious physical differences my sister and I shared, we also were tremendously different personality-wise. We both bonded over not exactly fitting in, especially in our own families, and we’ve been best friends ever since. 

I texted her from inside the closet that I’m hiding from my mom and to say she hasn’t seen me if she calls over there. I see her reply, “You should just tell her the truth about how you feel.”, but before I could reply I hear the footsteps of my mom approaching.

Before I could brace myself, I see the closet door open and hear the words of my mom fussing about not being able to find me and show me the dress she and Aunt Betsy both are fawning over for me.

“Honey, you’re a little too old to be playing hide and seek aren’t you? I have been looking all over for you.”

“I’m aware, hence why I found a space to hide from you.”

I waited for her to say something back about my “snarky attitude”, but instead she just got down on the ground near me and started scrolling through pictures of formal dresses.

“This one is cute. Or what about this one?” She smiled widely at me as she pointed out each frilly dress she saw.

“This is almost like the dress Claire wore when she won the Pineville County Miss teen pageant. That was such a nice day for our family, all together, happy. Wasn’t it ?”

“But…I’m not Claire!”, I cried out to my mom.

She sat stunned, outbursts weren’t normal for me and she was taken aback by the one I just had. I glanced at my phone, seeing the text reply from Lindsey, and realized she is right. It’s time to tell my mom the truth about how I feel. I sit straight up, clear my throat and quietly start to speak.

“I love you mom, but the dresses, homecoming, the heels…That doesn’t fit with who I am. I’m me !”, I said with a smile as I made eye contact with my mom’s now puffy red eyes. She reached out and touched my face and brushed my hair behind my ear.

As her gaze locked into mine, it was as if for the first time, my mom was truly seeing me.

“What is it that you want to wear?”, she asked me quietly.

“Nothing… I mean, I don’t want to go. I’d rather stay home and paint.”, I answer my mother.

“You see, none of the things I want to do are ever discussed or done in this house. I have been wanting to ask you to change the office into an art studio, but every time I mention changing anything you change the subject. It’s as if you want to keep everything in some strange shrine of what once was.” I continued on, speaking about how hard it is processing the divorce and Claire leaving for school without her acknowledging that things are not the same anymore.

The awkwardness of the silent pause almost had me reconsider and entertain the idea of homecoming when my mom said, “Well, I guess that would be fine.”

I was stunned. My mom never backed down from her insistent pushing of me being a Claire clone or better yet, her clone 2.0 version. Why now? What changed all of a sudden I thought.

“Really? So it’s ok for me to just not go, right ?”, I ask nervously.

“What changed? You and Aunt Betsy have been pushing me for days.”

“Nothing. I still want you to go, but I can see you and who you really are when I look into your eyes. They are the prettiest chestnut brown, unlike your sister Claire and I.”, she said with a smile as she wiped a tear from my eyes.

“I guess I figure Claire isn’t here, your dad isn’t here, that things were so different that I wanted them to stay the same. I figured if I could hold on to the image of these photos in real life, then things will be ok. But it’s not, you’re right. ”

I sat closer to my mom on the ground and proceeded to tell her all of the things I have been bottling up inside and what led me to hide in the closet from her. We discussed the divorce and she finally agreed to let me change the office into my art studio.

So we sat on the ground of the hallway and instead of looking at dresses, she pulled up Pinterest to start making a mood board for my new art studio. As we looked at different inspirations, I tried to see some that she would like and pointed them out.

My mom turned to me, smiled, and said, “It doesn’t fit with who you are.” I began to hug her and smile and realized for once, that she really was seeing me for me.