Beautiful Skinny

My mommy is the most beautiful person in the world. She smiles like an angel, and when she gives me hugs, her hair tickles my face. Sometimes I sneak into her room when she’s getting ready, and watch her put her paint on her face (Mommy calls it makeup) and spray her delicious par-fume. In the morning, she always smells like flowers and fruit, but by night, her hugs smell of almost burnt cookies and chicken soup. She hugs me with strong arms, squeezes me tight. She sings in the kitchen, loud and shaky, but I think it’s perfect.

My mommy doesn’t think she’s beautiful. When she’s putting that chalk dust on her cheeky-bones, she sighs, and talk about the imaginary lines on her face. They must be imaginary, because I can’t see them. She bakes the cookies, but leaves it all to me and Daddy. She stares at the melting chocolate bits, a little sad, while Daddy asks her about her die-et. She frowns while Daddy jokes about the tummy of hers. She reaches for an apple.

There’s a pretty dress in Mommy’s closet. It’s lacy and pink, and Mommy says she wore it when she was young and skinny.

I look at her. “When will I be ‘skinny’?”

Mommy frowns. “Darling, you already are. I wish I could be as beautiful as you.”

She worries. Every morning, when I peek into her and Daddy’s room, I see her stand on that scale, and sigh a little. She looks over pictures, and when Santa Claus gave me A Little Princess and The Wind in the Willows, he took our cookies and gave Mommy a weight-loss book to make her “skinny”.

One day, I see herself sitting in the closet, holding the dress in her lap and crying over the scale. That day, she only had carrots for breakfast.

 Later, I go into the closet and look at the dress. The next day, when I look closer, I begin to see Mommy’s lines. Maybe I can only have apples when I grow up. Maybe I don’t want the tummy.

Maybe I want to be skinny.