“Actually—” I start.
“Oh! This guy looks Chinese!” It’s the same excitement she shows when she finds a size 8 Tory Burch ballet flat at a shoe sale. Good deal on designer shoes = appearance of cultural competence. She jots his name down in her notebook. I am glad Richard Lin is not here to hear this conversation.
“Actually,” I start again, “I already found one online that looks good. It’s got really good reviews.”
“Don’t you think you should try it on?”
“I’ve tried the ones at Master’s. None of them fit right. But this one online says it’s specifically for women with, um, who need more support.” This is a subject that Mom and I don’t talk about directly, either.
“All right, you want to show me?” she says, turning the computer my way.
I pull up the Sports Supports site and find the page with the Stabilizer. I am very aware of how awful the site looks and for a minute I think I should just go to Master’s and get something off the rack and hope for the best. But then I remember the reviews, and they sound real to me, like real girls and women wrote them. No pain, no bouncing, no monoboob . . . I turn the computer back to Mom and watch her face.
She curls her lip like she’s looking at a Facebook post of someone’s bike accident, the kind with pus and skin flaps. She clicks through a couple of views and says, “Well, it certainly looks different.” She pages down to read some of the reviews and her expression looks more interested. And then her eyebrows pop up into her hair.
“I know it’s kind of a lot.”
“Kind of? I got mine at Target for twenty bucks.” Mom’s sports bra looks like a pink-and-green headband, more fitness accessory than anatomical support.
“The reviews say it’s worth it.”
“Jeez. How much better can it be than a normal one?” She catches herself, too late. “I mean, ah, like, ah, the regular kind.”
I don’t feel it coming, but suddenly my eyes fill, and my face is prickly. It’s not just that she said “normal one,” aka a bra that fits “normal” breasts, the kind “normal” bodies have. It’s also that I feel like an idiot for putting so much hope into a stupid sports bra. Like some bizarro contraption is suddenly going to make my body feel and look like other girls’ bodies. Like I’m going to start playing volleyball and be really good. And I’ll stand up straight, and no one will think twice about my chest and I won’t think about it either. And if I have to jog down a hallway because I’m late to class from talking to Jackson for too long, it won’t feel like I’ve bruised my nipples and the skin over my ribs is ripping in two. And I won’t be afraid that if somebody ever liked me, my boobs would become some big joke about him, too, until we were both embarrassed about them. But it’s stupid to think I can get all that—that I can buy my way to normal—from a website that puts an apostrophe in ASK OUR CUSTOMER’S.
I can’t say anything to my mom because I will cry for real. I can’t look at my mom because I will cry for real. I can’t close the laptop because I will cry. For real. I look over to the shelf where Grumpy isn’t and wipe the corners of my eyes with the edge of my hand.
But whatever else she is, Kathryn Walsh isn’t stupid, and now she’s actually looking at me and not at the feng shui list.
“You really want to try this one?” she says.
I still can’t talk, but I nod.
And Mom says, “Go grab my purse from the kitchen.”
And the Stabilizer is on its way, with free shipping.
CHAPTER 15
Seventh grade was the year my grandparents moved from Long Island to Florida, and the last time they visited in the winter. Dad and Ty were playing Mario Kart. I was lying on the couch with my feet in Dad’s lap, rereading The Hunger Games, and half paying attention to the race. My grandparents’ flight would be landing in a few minutes, which meant that with the rental car pickup, the hotel check-in, and the drive to our place, we had two hours to make the house and ourselves presentable.
“Fold!”
Mom dropped the basket at her feet, making eye contact with each of us so we couldn’t say we didn’t hear her before she stepped out of the way of the TV and on to some task she didn’t trust us with.
“One sec,” Dad mumbled. I slid off the couch, pulled the basket closer, and snatched some of my own things before the boys could get to them. Dad sped Baby Peach over the finish line and leaned down to grab a pair of Mom’s yoga capris. Ty clicked through the menus to switch to single player. “Ty. Come on.” Dad reached for the remote, but Ty squirmed out of reach.
“It’s still waaarrrrmmm,” I cooed.
Ty looked sideways at me with a grin. My brother had a weak spot for things just out of the dryer. He dropped the control and tipped the basket over himself.
“Oh my god. So warm. This is amazing.” He pulled Mom’s lavender fleece over his face and flapped his arms in the pile like he was making snow angels.
Dad rolled his eyes at me.
“Come on, dummy.” I grabbed Mom’s sweatshirt off him. Dad and I peeled through the laundry, neatly folding and stacking everybody’s clothes. Ty could only fold rectangular things, so he focused on matching socks. “Do you wish you lived closer to Grandma?” I wondered about this a lot. Mom’s mom died when I was little, and my grandpa and his new wife lived in Madison. But my dad was a long way from where he grew up, and a long way from his parents.
“Sometimes.” It didn’t sound like a yes, but Dad has always been diplomatic. Now I understand that he loves his parents, but he might love them better from a distance.
“Whose is this?” Tyler held my bra by one strap. I had meant to grab all my underthings from the pile before he crawled in it, mostly because he is dirty and the clothes were clean, but I’d missed this one. It was one of my first—tiny, white, and useless, more like the idea of a bra than an actual bra. The cups were hardly cups at all, because they didn’t need to be. They’d poof out from my body like an unfilled balloon if they were any bigger.
“Mine.” I grabbed it from him.
“Greer has bras?!” Ty said it like it was a scandal. “Oh my god.” Ty’s mouth was open, and he looked at my dad, like was he not hearing this?! Dad shrugged his shoulders like he did not understand what Ty was getting at, but he was trying not to smile.
“Yeah, that’s what happens, Ty,” I said. “Girls wear bras.”
“And that’s your bras? It doesn’t look like Mom’s.” I swatted him with it. It took a long time for Ty to stop calling one bra “bras.” I guess because there was space for two breasts he assumed it was supposed to be plural. He might be right. We call pants pants. A pair of bras? Maybe. Now I’m sure Ty knows the terminology, but he doesn’t talk about bras in front of me.