There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me by Brooke Shields Page B

go with C or P ?”
    She always smelled good and maintained her own nails. I’d often smell the enamel from down the hall and knew the color she picked would be a subtle one. I made sure to paint my nails black whenever I visited. Didi always wore an array of yellow-gold bangles and bracelets. To this day, if I hear a jingling of bracelets, she comes to mind.
    By contrast, my mom was larger than life, disorganized, and often incited chaos. She was frequently boisterous, she drank and cursed like a construction worker, and she wore red lipstick and fire engine–red nail polish. She was clean but often disheveled. Mom’s idea of order was writing important phone numbers on tiny scraps of paper and losing them and tying up her credit cards with one of the thousands of rubber bands she had saved from delivered newspapers.
    My mother never seemed outwardly resentful about the other life that I had at my father’s, but there were signs that she wasn’t fully accepting of all it represented. She tried to control it. For instance, at the beginning of every summer, Dad took me to get my annual pair of Top-Siders and a few Lacoste short-sleeve shirts. I loved these outingsand couldn’t wait to wear what I knew the other kids would be wearing. Mom shopped for me only at thrift stores and would never buy me brand labels. In fact, every time I came home with a Lacoste shirt, Mom would painstakingly cut out the little signature alligator. This was not an easy task because the thread was a sturdy plastic, and a hole would inevitably be left. Mom would then sew up the hole with the same color of thread as the shirt, and even though they were brand-new, they looked secondhand. Only then was I allowed to wear the now no-name item. It amazes me how much she coveted the world of privilege yet thwarted its symbols. It was a confusing time for me, but I knew I was loved by both sides. They were each protecting me and caring for me in their individual ways and from their unique perspectives.
    Overall, there was a good relationship between the two families. I have always been pleasantly surprised and deeply relieved that neither my mother, nor my father, nor my stepmother ever spoke ill of one another. Nor did they try to pit me against the other family or try to prove their superiority. I went back and forth frequently and never felt like a traitor.
    One thing that never changed was my devotion to my mother and the feeling that our lives would be forever intertwined. The brakes on our new black Jeep once went out while we were traveling across the George Washington Bridge heading out to New Jersey.
    Mom screamed for me to get in the backseat and strap in because we had no way of stopping. I refused. I remember feeling strangely proud and looking straight ahead and saying, “No! If you die, I die.” I was steadfast.
    We veered off the bridge, onto the Palisades Parkway, and up an incline, eventually slowing to safety. We shut off the engine and were fine, but that Jeep model and year was soon after recalled. I am sure I remember the event so vividly because Mom herself loved telling thestory of how her daughter would rather die than be without her. She got to hear me pledge my undaunted love for her. What more could she ever want?
    •   •   •
    I continued modeling throughout my childhood. I was getting a few more commercials and did one for Tuesday Taylor, a Barbie-like doll whose ponytail grew when you pushed a button. This one was fun because I got to keep one of the dolls while the other girl got to take home Piper, her sister. I also did a Susie Q’s spot, which was not nearly as fun because I had to eat Susie Q’s all day and got supersick. It was a commercial with Mason Reese, and I remember thinking his mom was a real character.
    When I was nine years old, I was cast in my first film, then titled Communion ,which was later changed to Alice, Sweet Alice . The film was a horror story in which my character gets tortured by