I sat on the side with my daughter Maya beside me. Maya was nine, quiet in crowds, the kind of kid who watched everything before she spoke. She wore a little cardigan I’d bought on sale and the shoes she insisted were “fancy” because they had tiny bows on them. In her lap was a gift bag she’d decorated herself with glitter glue and stickers. Inside were sparkly hair clips she’d picked out because, as she’d whispered to me in the pharmacy aisle, “Aunt Serena likes shiny things.”
The table was crowded with women who shared my mother’s smile, my mother’s laugh, my mother’s ability to say something sharp and make it sound like a compliment. An aunt. Two cousins. Serena’s friends, who all seemed to have the same caramel balayage and the same laugh that rose like a chorus whenever Serena spoke.
I’d been invited because I was family, but I’d been kept on the edge of everything like a decorative plant.
Serena scrolled through photos on her phone, holding the screen up to my mother like she was presenting royal artifacts. Centerpieces. Dress options. A florist’s proposal that looked like a mortgage payment. A cake tasting where each slice sat on a marble tray as if it were too good for plates.
My mother nodded along, pleased, her eyes bright. When Serena showed her something particularly extravagant—a towering floral arch, white roses spilling down like a waterfall—my mother made the same sound she made when she tried on a new coat and wanted everyone to notice.
Then, in that bright little atmosphere of praise and planning, my mother turned her head just enough to include me.
