Click!
The camera gasped, and it was like a reunion—an unwanted reunion. I had left behind those red dresses, soft skin, and full hair. “Those were the days,” people always say when they reminisce, but those were not my days. They were fine, full of many things, but those were just days. They were actually my mother’s. I tried to pose elegantly, but I had lost all attention.
Standing here, in front of film lights that blinded me felt like I travelled back to 2005 with blond curls falling to my shoulders, smiling on the whim of my mother’s command, feeling like those lights were too bright. “Oh! How well you have followed your mama’s grace,” my aunt told me once, which made me feel like this was it. That I had made it in life. From hiding behind the wooden cabinet, barefoot on the greasy tiled floor of that house, to being printed on Vogue with stilettos on a white backdrop. That’s all anyone would want, really, is what my mother thought.
She could do it well, so why not me? That’s what I constantly thought while buying endless bottles of products that could make me shine like a polished gem with the never-ending money of my mother’s new, eccentric husband. Spending hours on end with bruises on my feet, learning how to walk like a cat. “Pain will help you reach happiness, trust me,” she replied to me when I asked if I could be human and not a cat. My thin wrists cried for nutrition, bones stabbed my skin, yet that was defined as beauty. A beauty I craved in order to survive. I wanted to live, and I wanted to be something. Those were not my days.
“Can you look at the lens this time?” I snapped back to the present at the photographer’s command. The present, the consequence of those days.
This morning, I smashed foundation on my wrinkled skin, defining what I have left of my body with fabric, I had walked here today. If only my mother was here, she would start nitpicking like a woodpecker about how I could have applied more makeup. Or maybe how the shade of my dress didn’t fit my skin.
All my life, I could never tell if she was ever happy. She operated like a machine with no emotions, like she was set to follow a script. Her bogus eyes were always set to achieve something. She didn’t even cry when father got arrested. Nor did she care. I kept looking at her in thirst for a reaction. Just anything. But she cleaned up the red stained glass and mopped the floor with Drops of Jupiter playing on the radio. I sat in the corner, stomach growling, staring at the hole in the ceiling and the water droplets falling on the floor in sync with the song. Hair like a nest on my head while I tried to rub the stains off my skirt. She hummed along the tune like it was a sunny day on a beach, while I pinched my nose to avoid the stench.
I was relieved he was gone, but I wasn’t happy. It was too much of thoughts and things happening. After we moved, I had hoped that it would be a new beginning. Life would feel normal and simple. We would eat warm dinner in a clean kitchen and might even laugh at a comedy show on the television. Maybe she would talk to me more and go outside with me to get me that book I really wanted. If she even knew that I read a lot. But she was a lifeless human. Like her body was functional but she was dead. She did talk to me more, but it was strange. She ordered me around, wanting me to be a script-following machine like her. But this time she wrote the script like I owed her because she gave birth to me. That’s why they were her days.
“That’s a wrap! Just go to the other set, and we can start there,” a young woman told me, snapping me back to reality again. This feeling of me being at this studio was familiar but in a hurtful way. I had decided not to be here again, but I couldn’t help it when I got offered the price. Just for the sake of Sara, the only reason I am even alive. She is like a precious daughter to me, and I am glad I am not like my mother.
All of it was my mother’s fault. Since the beginning. She started slowly looking at me and seeing herself in me. Or that’s what I thought, at least. Like I was her second chance at life, but not my own person. Surely not. I had thought she had finally realized that I was her pretty daughter. She would bring me new dresses, do my hair with pretty flowers, click photos of me in different poses. Finally, she was acting normal, but oh boy was I wrong to think that. It was like an addiction for her. I was a brand-new doll that she could experiment with. That she could control and make me bring to her what she couldn’t herself. I could never say no to her. Not after what my father did when I said no to him.
I blinked and realized I had already walked to the chair and sat down. Ready to be an open book in front of all these people. It would have been better if I had not encapsulated myself in the past again but too late now. Why do brains do that? Those days have been long gone yet here I sit still thinking about them.
“3… 2… 1… And start!”
“Firstly, I just want to say I am so honoured to be here with you today. It is lovely to see your glowing face, I am sure everyone at home has missed it a lot,” I chuckled in response while observing her energy that I once had too.
“To start with the questions, I, and I’m pretty sure all your fans are curious to know, how did this all begin? What made you want to be a model?”