I snarl.
She blows a raspberry. “You’re right.”
“I like one dress,” I tell her, pointing over my shoulder to a black-and-white-striped dress with red, pink, and yellow roses scrawled over the stripes, almost like they were hand painted.
“Maybe they have it in the back,” she says, even though the both of us know the answer to that question.
“Let’s just go,” I beg.
“Let me just ask.”
“Mom, please.” Not now.
I shake my head again, but Mom’s already charging toward the counter at the center of the juniors’ department. She dumps the reject items on the counter and rings the bell, prompting the woman behind the counter to turn around.
“Oh!” the woman emits at the sound of the bell. She’s tall with wide, round eyes and board-straight red hair. Her freckles are faint and spare across her pale cheeks. Something tells me she’s never had to ask if a dress her size was hiding in the back room of the store.
Mom squints at her name tag. “Judith?” She smileswarmly, turning on her therapist charm. “Judith, how are you on this fine day?”
The woman nods, a little stunned, like that somehow answers Mom’s question.
Mom nods back. “Yes, well, you see, my daughter and I were admiring that black-and-white dress with the roses.” She points past where I stand, trying to camouflage myself in a rack of swimsuit cover-ups. “Could you please tell me where we can find that dress in a juniors’ size eighteen?”
“Just a moment,” Judith says as she scurries over and grabs a dress off the rack. She holds it to her chest as she returns to the counter and scans the tag.
I know how this will end, and still my stomach twists into knots as Judith’s expression falls into a pout. My cheeks flush as I press my sweaty palms against my sides.
“Hmm,” she says.
In my head, I beg her to whisper as she breaks the news so that no one else around her will hear. Not only do I have to face the embarrassment of the store not carrying my size, but I know that my mom will not take it well.
Still, Judith fails to catch my brain transmission as she announces clearly enough for every shopper to hear, “I’m sorry, we don’t carry that size in the juniors’ department. You’ll have to check the regular women’s department or the plus-size department.” She points to a section behind me, and I don’t have to turn around to know it’smostly muumuus and sweatpants.
Mom’s shoulders rise and fall as her nostrils flare. I swear the woman breathes fire when she wants. “And why isn’t the dress made in a size eighteen, Judith?” Mom asks, overenunciating her name. “Because society has taught us that there’s no use in dressing bigger bodies in beautiful clothes, because we do not value bodies of all shapes and sizes. And you want to know who’s fed that lie to society?”
I can feel a small crowd gathering as everyone in the juniors’ section holds their breath.
Mom doesn’t give poor Judith with her perfectly numbered freckles and big, wide saucer eyes a moment to answer. “The patriarchy!” Mom’s voice echoes.
Mom whirls around and takes my hand as she drags me to customer service. Without even taking a breath, Mom requests to speak to the manager and the man behind the counter doesn’t say no, because it’s not very easy to say no to fire-breathing mom dragons.
Mom’s the kind of person who truly believes that it’s always possible to make things better. She writes letters to the newspaper when they misreport something. And she’s known to show up to town-hall meetings to make her opinion heard, because, as she puts it, the meetings wouldn’t be open to the public if they didn’t want to hear from us.
The manager, a bald man with a thick black mustache,shuffles out of his office, and Mom lets loose.
She lectures him for what feels like thirty minutes on their failure to stock merchandise for all their customers and the message that sends to people, especially people with larger bodies. The only sign of life from the store manager is the fact that he’s still standing and blinks every once in a while.
All the while, I sit slumped on a bench. I wonder what Miss Flora Mae would do or what she would say. I can’t help but think that Mom is right. Not having my size in the juniors’ department does make me feel like this whole store is one giant party and I’m not invited. It’s like when Oscar and I didn’t fit into the one-size-fits-all holiday recital robes that the school reuses every year.
I try not to cry, but I can’t stop a few of the tears. Mom and Dad have always made it a point to tell me that my body is perfectly fine the way it is.You only get one body, Mom says,and it’s a very good body. They even got in a fight with Coach Jeffers once when he mentioned at a parent-teacher conference that I should work out more. But sometimes no matter how hard I try to remember that I’m just fine the way I am, my head gets the best of me.
Outside the store we sit down on a bench. Mom sheds a couple tears, too, and I know it’s not because she’s ashamed of me or anything like that. It’s because both of us have this habit of feeling things—good and bad—so much thatall we can do is cry. And nothing’s worse than crying when you’re trying to yell at someone.
“Mom?” I ask.
“Yes, Sweet Pea,” she says.
“What’s the patriarchy?”
