Free Tales From My Closet by Jennifer Anne Moses

that. But I never will. And that’s because I’m what my mother calls “petite” and I call “I look like I’m twelve.” Every time I’ve tried to wear clothes with a little flair, I look like a little girl playing dress-up. I’m so small that I didn’t even wear a bra until ninth grade! Mama says that, with a father as tall as mine is, I’m sure to grow, but in the meantime, I’m stuck with my jeans and T-shirts, my cords and pullovers, my denim skirts and button-downs. Not to mention that Mama has a thing about girls who dress, in her words, “like women of the street.” By which she means in platform shoes, heels higher than an inch or two, miniskirts, bandage skirts, clingy tees, camisole tops, short-shorts, strapless or figure-hugging dresses, and any makeup other than a trace of lip gloss.
    “It’s plain disgusting, the way girls your age advertise their bodies like they’re looking for customers,” she says before launching into one of her typically endless stories about some teenager or another who she’s trying to help: She’s a social worker, and, as she puts it, she’s “seen it all.”
    “College is where you’re headed,” she says. “College and maybe grad school, too. One way or another, though, you’re going to have yourself a career. No detours for mess, no ma’am.”
    Hence my button-downs, my pleated skirts, my straight-leg Gap jeans, my cardigan sweaters, and my Mimi Chica dresses. You heard right. I still wear Mimi Chica flowered and printed junior dresses and skirts, even though no one else has since the year all the Jewish girls were having bat mitvahs. But Mama just loves Mimi. So much so that I’m surprised she didn’t name me Mimi. Instead she named me after her own mother, Mama Lee. Mama Lee Livingston.
    I love Mama Lee. She’s the only one in the whole family who I can tell things to — true things that no one else knows, like how I want to be artist, and that even though I’m a mousecake, I love clothes so much that I want to launch a fashion blog. But the blog I’d do wouldn’t be a typical teenage blog, with lots of “WOW” and/or “MUST HAVE” with uploaded pictures of clothes I like. I want to make it more artistic, and deeper, than that — more about how clothes are their own art form than mere fashion — except that I don’t really like to write. As in: I hate it! I even told Mama Lee that since school started, I’ve been spending my afternoons in Ms. Anders’s art room, learning figure drawing. “Well, that’s just wonderful,” she said. Versus Mama and Daddy, who pitched a fit last year when I signed up for Techniques in Painting, arguing that to fulfill my arts requirements, I should do computer design and journalism, like my perfect sister, Martha (aka Robot Girl), did. I mean, it’s downright weird, how crazy they got about my taking an art class. The way they talked about it, you’d think it was dangerous, like experimenting with drugs or having a skydiving hobby. But when I asked them why they were both so freakanoid about my taking a basic high school art class, they both clammed up and changed the subject. And I know it’s pathetic, but now I’m so scared that they’ll find out about my extra time in the art room that I came up with this huge whopper of a ridiculous lie and told Mama that I was going to Debate Team meetings. I mean, really. Can you see me on Debate Team? I can’t even open my mouth without putting my foot in it.
    Robot Girl had been on Debate Team, culminating with her triumph as Debate Team captain. And now she goes to Princeton, goody-goody for her. But me? Ever since I’d launched that lie, a small, hard knot had appeared in my stomach and wouldn’t go away.
    “I’m so proud of you, making Debate Team sophomore year,” Mama said over and over. “But the one thing that makes me proudest of all? It’s that you and your sister are so close.”
    Were so close. I have a picture of the two of us on her bike,