"No Bra Shopping in Bad Weather"

Sam wants to take me bra shopping for my double D breasts. School starts in a week and she is obsessed with containing my breasts before I enter my freshman year at Sayview High School. She perpetually looks at my breasts like they are a threat, like I can’t be her daughter and have gigantic boobs.

“Oh, Amelia Bedilia—what are we going to do about your breasts? We need to get you some bras with real support,” she says. She bites at one of her already chewed fingernails and nudges my breasts likes she is feeling for ripe melons.

Amelia Bedilia Fluchter: my full and sadly un-fictitious name. Sam was a children’s theater actress and fell in love with playing the big British moron from the Peggy Parish series. The fact that my mother never considered how that name might play out off-stage for her firstborn is only one stitch in the frustrating tapestry of Sam Fluchter.


But the sky outside of our apartment looks like a worn SOS pad so I’m thinking that she won’t make me go bra shopping today. Sam’s terrified of the rain. It is why she gnaws away at her chewed fingernails, and flicks her eyes up toward the ceiling as if G-d himself might speak up any second.

My mother’s phobia began after my dad’s car accident. Seeing or hearing the slightest hint of a storm causes Sam to shake and flitter about—a pinned moth flapping its wings in a vain attempt for freedom. It’s her conscience that makes her jump at any innocent rumble of thunder. Guilt imprisons her.

As everyone who meets Sam Fluchter adores her, they assume that she is just a grieving widow doing her best. They don’t know that she killed my father. Her irrational fear of thunderstorms is her self-induced punishment. Taking in her panic gives me a temporary reprieve from the bubbling anger I normally feel for her. Her anxiety gives me hope, makes me think that maybe beneath her flat chest is a heart that swells with remorse, that maybe her heart still feels at all.

My brother, Jack, worships our mother. He is me two years ago and noting this is nothing short of heart-breaking. He doesn’t realize that he’s in love with a mirage, a shell—a Stepford wife. It’s not Jack’s fault. He was only nine year’s old when our mother ended our dad’s life, his mind and heart dangerously pliable. But somehow knowing all of this doesn’t unclench the fist in my heart; it doesn’t stop me from wanting to shake Jack until he sees our saccharinely sweet mother for what she is: a weak shell.

By the end of last summer, while still dizzy with shock, my mother packed up what little possessions her guilty conscience allowed us to keep and exiled us to the unknown and uninteresting town of Sayview, Long Island. My breasts seemed to grow at an accelerated rate in those last few weeks before leaving our Houston home. It was as if my heart knew I needed protection and my body too-generously responded

Here’s the truth: it’s hard work trying to hate my mother. That’s right, trying. Despite the fact that Sam’s eyes grow like marbles whenever I ask about my father, despite the pit of anger that churns in my stomach whenever I think about what she did, I still adore the woman.

Sometimes it feels like I’m mourning both my parents. It’s why I can be a real bitch towards my mom. In my own warped way, I’m fighting for Sam to climb out of her rabbit hole; I’m aching for her love, desperate to unearth the heart I need to believe is still there.