Page 61 of The Unraveling

I draped myself over the couch and watched Gene Kelly woo Debbie Reynolds, licking the cookie dough and feeling like the luckiest girl in the world.

At home, I never got food like this. Sometimes we’d have pasta or veggie burgers, but it was never junk food. To be fair, Mimi didn’t usually do this kind of thing either, only for special occasions like my birthday. Or if I was really sad or something.

The smell of cookies started wafting through the house, which was filled with the sound of washing dishes, my old movie, and the pitter-patter of rain that could be heard through the open windows. I was warm inside and out. But it was almost nine, and that meant my mom would soon be there to take me back to our house. Our dark, decidedly unlovely home with its thrifted couch and loud fans.

She arrived a little while later, late, which was fine with me as usual.

“Is that cookies?” was the first thing she said.

My mood plummeted. She didn’t say it cheerfully. She said it like Mimi and I were both about to be in trouble.

“It’s her birthday, Brandy, for crying out loud.”

Mimi’s tone was exhausted and low, but I could hear her voice in the kitchen from where I sat in the living room.

I hid the whisk attachment I’d been relishing, and waited to be found. I stared at the screen, alive with Technicolor.

“She can’t be having this shit, Ma, have you seen her? She’s getting big.”

“She is not getting big,” she whispered sharply back. The house was too small for an angry whisper to go unheard.

“Jocelyn!” my mom hollered for me. I considered pretending not to hear her, but again, if you can hear a whisper…

“Coming,” I said.

“Now!”

I went into the kitchen, where my mom gestured at me, as if I were the muddy mess brought in by the dog’s paws.

“Do you see?” she asked. “She’s getting”—she dropped to a whisper—“big.”

“I am, I grew an inch,” I said.

My mom lifted her arms and let them fall down to her thighs with the jingle of her keys. “Do you know what happens if we let her get out of control?” she asked Mimi.

“Honey, why don’t you go get your things together? Don’t forget your new bathing suit!” Mimi directed all this at me, and I knew she just wanted me out of the room.

I could never disobey Mimi, so I left with a nod. But I could also never resist hearing what adults were talking about, so I gathered my things in the blink of an eye and then hid on the staircase to listen.

“—waste of money,” my mom was saying. “I’ve got an opportunity for her to possibly get a scholarship to a prestigious ballet school. They’re not gonna want her if she’s a fourteen-year-old with love handles.”

“Love handles? Honestly, what is the matter with you? I don’t know that this is the healthiest thing for her. Maybe she shouldn’t be doing ballet.”

“She loves ballet. More than anything.”

“Does she?”

“Yes!”

There was a long pause, then the sound of a dish being put away, and the cabinet shutting. Mimi said, “I remember another little girl who very badly wanted to be a ballerina.”

Another pause. “Every little girl wants to be a ballerina. But unlike you, I’m not going to treat her childhood dream like something silly. Is it better that I grew up to be this, Ma? A half-employed bartender with a chip on her shoulder?”

“The rest of your life was on you; it wasn’t up to me. All I knew was that I didn’t want you running around worrying about your body when you were just a little girl.”

“I’m not having this conversation again. That girl”—I could almost hear her pointing in my direction—“is going to be a ballerina. It’s what she wants. No more of this shit. Steamed vegetables and fish. She’s too young to know how bland it is anyway.”

“Brandy—”

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