2002

New York, NY

Let’s begin with my body. Look to the corner of west Forty-Second and Eighth, where a girl is reaching for a magazine on a newsstand. Around her, skyscrapers beheaded by mist, the stink of a city weaning off summer.

Women are splayed out like bars of candy, ready to be unwrapped. The girl picks up the latest issue of Rolling Stone, recognizing me on the cover. I am draped in fabric the color of honey, of syrup, of ooze. She flips through the heavy paper and finds the article—“WE ARE ALL TRAPPED IN AMBER”—nestled between perfume and cigarette ads. Sonny said I owed everyone an explanation, and here it begins: “Amber Young licks her lips before she speaks. Now they are wet as sap. Her auburn hair is the color of redwoods, her eyes mahogany brown. She speaks so softly I have to lean in closer to hear her properly. This is what she wants, right? When she looks up at me through thick lashes, I can’t help but wonder if the rumors are true. Did these eyes blink and, like a Trojan horse, cause the great city to come crashing down? The city, in this case, being the relationship between Gwen Morris and Wes Kingston?”

If the girl loiters too long, the man behind the counter might ask her if she wants to buy something. She’ll return the magazine to the stack, the pages closing like legs. Or maybe she’ll buy it.

When I imagine what this girl might presume about me, how I might flicker in the backdrop of her life, I want to suck up everything I’ve ever done, wipe away anything I’ve ever stained.

1990–1991

Morristown, NJ

The night before the Christmas talent show, I can’t sleep because of the crickets. Dozens have escaped from our bearded dragon’s cage, and now they are singing. If not for the lines of snow on our windowpanes, it could be summer, the air thick with vibration and sound.

When we first moved here, my brother and I asked for a dog, not a lizard, but my mom said our apartment was too small. Where would it run? At first, I didn’t understand—we drove by tidy houses with buzz-cut lawns and bicycles kicked over in driveways, sleek retrievers that chased us to the edges of their electric fences. But then our sedan slid into the lot behind our apartment complex, only a few doors down from the orthodontist’s office where my mom works as a receptionist. I immediately understood what she meant. The stairwell was littered with cigarette butts, the halls moldy with neglect. There would be no space for an animal here. No space even to spread my arms out wide. To open my mouth and have something come out.

This is why I hide my voice away, I think. I have pushed all my urges down, past my ribs and into my gut, because I am afraid of the hair growing between my legs, the hard buds in my chest. When I asked about these changes, arriving too soon, my mom said, “You’re becoming a woman,” and I started to cry.

So the crickets keep me up. Might as well practice alongside them. I stand in front of my mirror, pretending my hairbrush is a microphone. I’ve chosen “Tell It to My Heart” by Taylor Dayne for the talent show, and when I let myself sing, I understand the purpose of gods. It is belief taking on shape. Something I can’t name moves inside me; something finally magnetizes. I release all that is pent up, yearning to burst forth. From every corner of the apartment, crickets hum.

* * *

The next night, I walk onto the stage, a rickety old thing with a stack of dusty gym mats in the corner. A red curtain hanging over my head like a guillotine. Rows of parents and grandparents with itchy holiday sweaters and grocery store flowers. My mom, chewing her Nicorette gum, and Jack Nichols, sitting in the second row with Lindsey Butler and Rachel Morrow. Just last weekend, a group of us gathered in Lindsey’s basement and pushed The Silence of the Lambs into the VHS player, but none of us actually watched; the television was only color and sound in the background. Inside me, a similar glint. First shaft of desire. All my shapeless lust thrust at Jack Nichols, warped, then returned to me. He is the boy at school everyone wants; a collision of eyes always follows him. So when the spinning bottle landed on me, and he took my hand and led me into the closet, all the other girls visibly withered, and I expanded. In the dark, we leaned toward each other. Warmth bloomed between my legs, but the swipe of his lips was like a credit card through a slot. Behind the door, I could hear the others breathing, someone stifling a laugh. And, after, Lindsey took me into the bathroom. Said, “You know why he likes you, right? He only likes you because you have big boobs.”

I glanced down at my chest.

“Do you want to date him?” Lindsey asked. “Like, you have a crush on him?”

“Yes.”

She exited the bathroom and returned a minute later, then told me she had spoken with Jack.

“He’s not into you,” she said. “Sorry.” She tried not to laugh but a little escaped. She’s not the type to push someone over, but she loves pointing when they’re already sprawled on the ground.

This humiliation is still fresh. Now they will watch me perform. Good. I am desperate to prove them wrong.

I step into the spotlight, my small hands wrapped around the microphone. My heart punches my ribs. The audience is whispering. I want to drag their eyes to me and hold them all in place.

As I begin to sing, I don’t know a talent agent named Angela Newton is somewhere in the back row. She’s driven down from the city to watch her nephew perform magic tricks. Her sister promised her the show would be only an hour, but now it’s stretching into the second, an endless train of tap dancers and baton twirlers and pitchy singers. Then the light travels from the stage to her eyes. There—who is that? She sees a girl wobbling on unsteady foal legs. She sees a girl who would burn the stage if she could, just to step beyond it. Reaching for a pen in the dregs of her purse, she circles my name in her program.

I remember this performance as if it is trapped in amber. Memories like this sink into the earth in perfect condition, fossilize, and become a life.

* * *

Days pass. The year curls up. Many months later, in October, the phone rings. My mom taps her fingers impatiently against her jeans. There is a lasagna in the oven, Anita Hill’s testimony crackling on our small television.

She places a finger in one ear and leans into the phone. “Sorry, who am I speaking to?”

“Angela Newton,” says the voice on the other end. “I’m with Newton and Croft Management. I’ve been trying to reach you for months. I’ve left messages. Didn’t you get them? I’m calling because I want your daughter to audition for us.”

“I’m sorry, what? Audition for what?”

“For representation.”

“Representation for what? I didn’t sign up to receive your calls or anything, did I?”

“I saw your daughter perform at her talent show back in December. I’d like to have her come to New York. It’s just an audition, of course. I can’t offer representation at this time, but I’d like to see her again.”

1992

New York

After I am signed by Angela, my mom calls in sick to work and takes me to auditions. Most are for acting, not singing, which is what I really wish I could do. And they are all in Manhattan, an hour and a half away on a good day, two hours in traffic.

At a tollbooth, she picks through her wallet, plucks out a dollar bill. Then she curses, searching under the seat and inside the cup holder for stray coins. When we are ground back into traffic, she says, “You know, I have to pick up your brother from school right after this. Look.” She points to the lane going in the other direction. Cars inching forward, like ants carrying heavy leaves. “That’s our way home.” She sighs. “Do you have your headshots?”

I do. I pull the heavy manila folder out of my bag. The photos inside are thick and glossy. The photographer who took them kept asking me to try on different sweaters, and I pulled and pulled but there was always a small gap in the curtain as I changed, his eyes always waiting there.

Now I run my hands along the edge of the photographs. Amber Young, it says. Newton and Croft Management.

We have trouble parking in the city, as always. There is the stench of fried food, piles of trash that shudder with rats. My mom curses again, turning onto a one-way street. “We’ll have to use a garage,” she says. What is left unsaid: we can’t afford all these parking garages.

The car doors slap shut, and I fish my underwear out of my butt crack, straighten the long jean skirt so it rests below my knees. My mom licks her hand and flattens my flyaways with her spit. A swipe of lip gloss across my mouth, gooey and sweet, but I lick it off by the time we’ve found the audition location: an inconspicuous door next to a dollar pizza joint.

In the waiting room, girls fidget while their mothers flip through magazines: Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, McCall’s, the bibles of white suburban women. Michelle Pfeiffer on one cover. Strategically placed around her face, the headlines say: “What She Did to Become a Star,” “The Sex Life of the American Wife,” “AIDS & the Woman Next Door,” “GREAT GUYS: What Turns Them On.” Each daughter is a miniature of her mother, and I can see exactly how their noses will lengthen, their limbs will stretch. I think daughters must lie inside their mothers like Russian dolls. Stacked bowls, one on top of the other.

Instead of taking a magazine, my mom sets her purse down and pulls out a shiny copy of Jewels by Danielle Steel. Last week, I searched for a sex scene, eyes darting like hummingbirds to flowers, but then I heard the floorboards tremble and shoved the book back onto her nightstand.

They call names. My mom’s eyes flit over the pages, I strum on a hangnail. Then, my name. It is time. I enter a white room, where a casting director and her assistant stare dully at me. The assistant reaches for my headshot, glances at it, then flings it onto a table already piled with stacks of girls, all of us white, slim, beaming. From the top of the pile, I grin in my green sweater, an adolescent gap between my teeth. My mouth and eyes too big for my face.

“Name, age.” The casting director smacks on gum. It is the sound of wet batter being stirred. “Look into the camera, please.”

I raise my voice two octaves. “My name is Amber Young, and I’m twelve years old.”

“Great. Now, what I want you to do for me is to look here.” She points to a piece of tape on the floor. “That’s where the Easy-Bake Oven and Snack Center will be. Pretend you wanted it more than anything, and now you have it. You’re totally shocked. You can’t believe it. Okay? Can you do that for me?”

I kneel on the ground and cup my hands around the invisible Easy-Bake Oven. Crumbs from their lunch dig into my knees. I stroke the air and lean forward, widening my eyes. “Wow! An Easy-Bake Oven! This is so great!”

The casting director shakes her head, confused. “No, honey. Can you start again, but this time act surprised? Pretend your dad surprised you with it. You’ve been wanting it for Christmas, and you finally got one. Okay?”

“Wow! Dad, this is the best present ever. I’ve always wanted an Easy-Bake Oven!”

The casting director and her assistant exchange a glance. “Thank you, honey. That’s enough.”

Months later, the commercial comes on during an episode of Beverly Hills, 90210. I recognize a beautiful girl from the waiting room. She’s ecstatic about the Easy-Bake Oven her dad got her; she wants it more than anything. She makes cupcakes and cookies and brownies that drip with molten chocolate. And I want to shove it all into my mouth at once. I imagine the softness of the cake, my teeth bursting the cherry on top of it, the rush of juice down my throat.

I feel like a fruit swinging from a tree. Plump and flush with color, waiting to be plucked.

* * *

The auditions sting for days afterward. They are scrapes all over my body. I leave school early most days, don’t turn in my work on time, return with nothing. I float around inside myself. Before auditions, I watch the older girls in the waiting rooms. Some of them are so beautiful, I pray to trade faces with them at night.

* * *

I hold the hairbrush up to my mouth. My dad’s old tape recorder is perched on my dresser. I rewind the tape. Begin again.

My brother, Greg, bangs against the wall. “Will you shut the hell up?”

“Um, no!” I scream back. Doesn’t he understand? I can’t stop. Because I can only find well-oiled gears in my lungs, I love this part of my body more than anything else. More than my thighs, my chest. My eyes, which jolt away like an engine each time I catch another man staring. But my lungs, my vocal cords? These haven’t changed. They are dependable in a time of great betrayal.

My mom throws open the door. She is always upset after her shift. “What’s with this noise?” she slurs. “What are you doing?”

“Making an audition tape.”

Her eyes mark the clothes on the rug, a wet towel slung over my desk chair. She picks each of them up one by one, lets them fall and crumple again. “Do I look like a maid? Clean up.”

I put everything in the hamper.

“This place is such a pigsty,” she mumbles under her breath. The door slams. Then she knocks on Greg’s door, and their voices seep through the walls. It’s your fault dad left. Move out, then. I hate you. You’re an asshole. Bitch. Your grades are shit. You’re a terrible mother.

I take a deep breath and press record. When my voice shields me from the outside world, it is the strongest it will ever be. I sing myself into silver armor, into tough lichen that crawls on volcanic rock. This is the tape Angela will send to Star Search. Until we hear back, there’s nothing to do but wait to be plucked from a pile.

Later, Greg sits on my bed, pink and bristling from their argument. “I’m leaving here and never coming back,” he says. “I’m going to go to college across the country, in California or New Mexico or Arizona.”

“Will you look up Dad?”

He laughs. This makes me feel stupid for even suggesting it.

“Maybe living with him would be better than this,” I say.

“Yeah,” agrees Greg. “Maybe.”

Greg and I have never been very close; we both retreat behind closed doors. At seventeen, he has been cultivating a type of manhood I don’t particularly like, moving in a throng of boys from the liquor store to the park. If our mom is out drinking, he brings girls home. Some are perky and athletic, others inky-haired and pierced. Each has made a clear choice about how to present herself. Most are prickly around him—cruelty that is just flirtation—but I can tell this is for their own protection; they really want him to slash through this front, to find what is soft. Greg is too dumb to understand this.

Sometimes I can hear him having sex with them. On these nights, I fall asleep listening to my mom’s Walkman, the volume on full blast.

Copyright © 2024 by Isabel Banta