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Biting down on the inside of her cheek, Emily forced herself
to breathe regularly. She didn’t want people to look over at her
and see her sitting there with her nostrils flaring and her
cheeks pink with anger. She’d suffered enough mortification in
private lately. She’d barely said a thing to her mom and dad
over the past week. Her dad barely noticed, and Sandra was
now too busy preparing for her upcoming show, spending days
at a time locked in her studio or at her gallery. If Emily wanted
to complain or beg or plead her case, no one would have been
around to hear it.
Realizing she still hadn’t read the text, Emily blinked hard
against the tears clogging the bridge of her nose and glanced
down at her phone again. Her vision was swimming, not
because she was upset, but because she was just so frustrated.
She was so, so tired of not being seen. Of not being heard. Of
being nothing at all. She wondered if she jumped up on her
chair and started waving her arms wildly above her head and
shrieking like a rooster at sunrise, if people would even notice
her.
Oh, they’d notice. I’m not invisible here, but it doesn’t really
matter. What matters is Sandra and her show.
Emily thought that if her mother’s life depended on it, she
probably wouldn’t be able to come up with a kind thing to say
about her daughter’s artwork. She never had. All she’d ever
done was tear Emily’s work down or stare at it in silence,
probably checking off a list in her head of all the ways Emily’s
talent would never measure up to her own.
That’s also uncharitable. Or is it? When they had that
argument, she basically said Emily’s stuff wasn’t good enough
to make it. She thought mothers were supposed to lie to their
