Our parents got married one year after meeting on Match.com, and four years after my own mother had left us for the supposed better offer from her boy toy. I’ve always been told my mom had been a “free spirit” and “her own person,” which pretty much means she was selfish and decided being a wife and a parent weren’t for her anymore. It made sense that my dad would choose someone who was more family-oriented and responsible the second time around. He and Belén had a civil ceremony attended only by Blanche and my grandparents, who are now deceased.
I was super excited to have a sister. As awesome as Dad was, having someone my own age around to play dolls with and make pillow forts with and watch cartoons with sounded like the best thing ever. The minute Belén and Tilly moved in, I wanted to take back that thought. Belén didn’t believe in idle time for children. Or adults, actually. Tilly took piano lessons, ballet lessons, and martial arts classes three afternoons a week. The other days were strictly for schoolwork. Tilly wasn’t allowed to watch any TV until she had completed not only her daily homework but also an additional hour of practice in whatever subject Belén chose for that day. And the only TV she was allowed to watch was educational. Animal documentaries all around!
Belén, obviously thinking only of my best interests, tried to use the same system for me. Dad hadn’t had time to put me in lessons or sports before, and it sounded like fun, so we both agreed. At my first ballet lesson, I figured out that tulle is itchy and I had two left feet. I also didn’t so much like watching myself stumble around in a gigantic mirror. In Tae Kwon Do, I talked back to the instructor one too many times, and they politely offered my dad our tuition money back if he agreed not to bring me again. Piano went slightly better because I picked up on patterns quickly. But I hated to practice with a passion that burned hotter than a thousand suns, which got me into more than a little trouble with Belén.
“You will never succeed unless you practice. Do the work, Tatum,” she preached.
My eight-year-old lips quivered. No one had ever spoken to me like that. Not my teachers. Certainly not my daddy. I was scared speechless, and for the first time ever, something that felt like disappointment set in. Belén watched over me like a hawk when it was time to practice, staring so hard, I felt like I might sink through the piano bench and into the carpet. I started making excuses as to why I couldn’t play. At first, I was hungry. So she would fix me a snack and point toward the piano. And then I had to go to the bathroom, where I purposely took ten minutes longer than I needed. In a matter of days, Belén caught on to me and shut down my shenanigans. So there I sat, resenting her for making me sit on the ugly bench and play the ugly notes that stopped making sense because I just didn’t want to do it. I dug my heels in, or my fingertips as the case was, and didn’t play. I let my hands hover over the keys, an inch of air between me and the ivories, and didn’t move.
“You’re wasting time, Tatum.” Belén glared at me.
“I don’t want to.” I tried to make my glare as forceful as hers, but I’m sure I was just amusing her.
“Tatum, I will give you until the count of five to begin your scales, and if you do not comply, you will go to your room for the rest of the night.”
I hesitated. “Fine.”
“Fine what?”
“I’ll go to my room.” I stood up from the bench, took the stairs up to my bedroom, and shut the door. No one came to tell me dinner was on the table, and my stomach rumbled. I got into bed, pulled the covers up to my chin, and read Charlotte’s Web until the sun had gone down and the sky was completely black. As my eyelids were beginning to droop, my door opened and my dad came in.
“Having a rough night?” He sat down on the bed with me.
Tears pricked the corners of my eyes. “I don’t want to play.”
He smoothed my hair back and kissed the top of my head. “I know, sweetheart. But don’t you want to be successful at something?”
I’d never heard him say “successful” before.
“That’s what Belén says,” I said, pouting.
He sighed. “She just wants what’s best for you, honey.” How did she know what was best for me? She’d never asked me what I liked to do or what I wanted to try.
“I don’t like it anymore, Daddy,” I whispered, wiping away the water threatening to drop down my cheeks.
“Would you do it for me?” He sounded as unsure as I was. Guilt was a new tactic for us.
The waterworks came on in full force, and I buried my face in his chest, unable to speak. My chest heaved up and down so violently, my cheek felt raw from the friction against my dad’s shirt. He held me tight until I calmed down a little bit, stroking my hair in silence.
“Will you at least think about it?” he ventured tentatively.
I stuck my face in the crook of his arm and shook it.
He sighed again, more deeply, giving in. “I’ll talk to your stepmother.”
Eventually, piano disappeared from my social calendar and I found myself in art lessons instead, which quickly became my happy place. But the car rides there, as Belén shuttled me to the community center and Tilly to her dance studio, were silent and uncomfortable. For years.
Standing next to Tilly, waiting for the cab door to open, reminded me of that initial awkwardness between the two of us. Maybe if we’d been able to bond over a shared interest, like dance, we could have forged some kind of friendship, but I accepted long ago that it just wasn’t meant to be. I always believed some of that was because of Tilly, and some, maybe most, came from Belén’s desire for her child to only have what she deemed to be positive influences. Which didn’t include the stepchild who wouldn’t stick to the approved plan, it seemed. Never mind the fact that I was regularly praised by my instructors and earned good grades in my classes at school.
Tilly and I exchanged exactly zero words while we waited for Blanche, proof that our frosty acquaintanceship remained intact.
The back door of the cab finally cracked, and a tiny foot sporting a leopard-print ballet flat stepped out onto the pavement. The rest of her equally tiny body emerged, all in form-fitting black, and I raised the other eyebrow, impressed with what good shape Blanche was in for a woman in her late sixties. Self-consciously, I glanced down at my own very average-sized, very average-curved body and shrugged.
At last Blanche’s head popped up, and I found myself smiling at her before I could stop myself from showing positive emotion. Her face, just as perfectly made as her daughter’s, only showed the slightest hint of age. If I passed her on the street, I probably would have guessed mid-fifties, max, when I knew she was at least ten years older than that. Her golden skin was still mostly smooth, only betraying her age around the eyes and the mouth, leaving me wondering if she laughed a lot. I hoped so. Her eyes were kind as she surveyed us and her new domain.