Made to Order

The small black line on Brooklyn’s computer screen blinked curiously at him from the top of an empty document. He stretched, cracked his knuckles, and rested his fingers on the keys. He was still for a moment more, before his fingers began to move, and words began to appear on the screen.

Once upon a time, he wrote, his fingers gaining speed  with every word they brought into being, there was a young girl. Her mother left when she was very young, but most of the time it didn’t matter. She was Daddy’s darling girl, and as such, her father would do anything to make her happy. She was greatly loved, and loved greatly in return.

But one day, the girl’s father hesitantly decided that, perhaps, it was time to think of his own happiness. Caring for his only daughter was fulfilling, but he missed the feeling of a woman in bed beside him. He crept onto the dating scene, leaving the girl at home in their reasonably spacious apartment at nights, on weekends. He didn’t want to scare a woman off with the idea that he was looking for a nanny, not a wife.

And then he found The One, as this mythic idea of a soul mate is called in romance novels and chick flicks. She was beautiful, and smart, and funny, and when he told her about his daughter, her eyes lit up and she begged to meet his “first girl”. So, one night, the woman came to the apartment for dinner, and met the man’s daughter. But she saw not competition, or a potential family, but profit. The eight-year-old was adorable, with silky aqua-blue curls and a smile that could turn a drill sergeant's heart to sugary, strawberry-flavored goo. A model in the making, the woman thought, and immediately sought permission from the girl’s father to take her to an agent.

The girl watched her father grow ever more infatuated with his new wife, who grew ever more infatuated with her stepdaughter’s career. She modeled, showing off a glowing smile that was trained in the mirror every night before she went to bed. She posed for the cameras, giggling coyly for an audience that would never hear, only see. Her father was proud of her when she modeled--she was his beautiful girl, he’d say with pride, and then kiss his wife and proclaim her a genius for recognizing their girl’s talent. Not just his. The girl belonged to her stepmother, too. Without her consent.

Desperate for the attention she had once received, the girl sought out a talent scout with a self-recorded demo and that winning charm she’d developed during a four-year long modeling career. She had always known she was a good singer--une belle chanteuse, her mother had called her in her earliest memories--and maybe, she thought, if I took the initiative myself, Papa will love me again.

But she got more than she had bargained for. The record company adored her. The crowds adored her. And her father was proud, but she had a half-sibling on the way and he couldn’t just leave his wife to go with her to a show in Rome, would she be alright just traveling with her agent? Of course, Papa, she told him with an only-slightly disappointed smile. If he didn’t love her, the crowds could compensate.

The screams of the fans soothed her desperate soul for a few hours, leaving the smile genuine when she left the stage. And it would stay genuine, for a little while. It would stay genuine through the after-parties, and sometimes all the way to the bus, if the masses screamed loud enough. She signed autographs and left pink lip gloss marks on photos and shone that dazzling, mostly-fake smile everywhere. But when she got back to the hotels, and asked if anyone had left a message for her, the answer was always the same--plenty of messages, but none of them her family. Her half-sister was four, and had the same giggle that she had at that age. The girl, now walking the delicate balance between childhood and the realm of women, adored the child, simply for the fact that the girl was everything she couldn’t be. She couldn’t be innocent anymore, and she couldn’t be happy. Not without the screaming fans, the glowing reviews, the eight-year-old girls who ducked up to her and asked her to sign their backpacks with a shy smile and a fervent “I want to be just like you someday.”

And then, the inevitable happened. The crowds were distracted by the next rising stars, the next big thing. The girl, just barely a woman now, struggled to gain them back. She retained a few loyal followers, like Cher or Kim Wilde, but they were the few, the proud, the brave. Much like Marines, ridiculed in schoolyards for their staunch dedication to a has-been cause, a one-hit-wonder.

Her next launch was found in a sport familiar for its dangerous and wildly extreme nature. I met this girl when she was sixteen, and although her foray out of the music industry had left her bruised, she still had the air of someone willing to work for approval. She learned a sport she hated, sang songs she didn’t feel like singing. I asked her once, out of morbid curiosity, why she did everything she hated. She sniffed, laughed without humor, and told me that if she didn’t, no one would love her. I promised her I would love her always. And I did, but that’s not important now.

Like all things do eventually, this venture fell apart. Quite literally, all of our reputations and a few of our bodies were in shambles for months. We all bear scars from the fallout, some more visible or felt than others. I escaped relatively unscathed, which isn’t fair because I certainly did the most damage. But I digress. The girl was attacked, for selling her soul, disrespecting the true nature of a sport no one could agree on, anyway. They ripped her to shreds, for lack of a better scapegoat to sacrifice for all of our sins.

The girl retreated, beaten and left for dead, back into the industry that had raised her up from upper middle-class obscurity. She posed for covers, center spreads, any page that would have her. She donned scraps of cloth and leather and lace that could hardly be called clothing, and occasionally fishnet stockings or a bed sheet or two. Her family refused to allow her to speak with their daughter, to have any contact with them at all. She went home to her tiny LA apartment and cried, clinging to Jack Daniels, her only earthly friend, she felt. Some nights, she didn’t go home at all.

The girl cried to me that no one loved her anymore--they only loved her for what she could do, the shapes she could stretch herself into, the things she was willing to do in public, on camera. She would do anything for a few moments of acceptance. A few moments of feeling loved again. She didn’t know how to be loved for something other than her body.

And then, as if my heart wasn’t already breaking for her already, she smashed it to pieces. After giving birth to a beautiful, if slightly premature, baby girl of her own, she dialed her agent’s office number, set the phone in the crib, and drowned herself in the bathtub.

Michella Beaumont, better known as Ming-Ming, was laid to rest two weeks ago. I held her daughter during the eulogy.

I hear you whisper “good riddance to bad trash” as you walk past the newsstands. I know what you say about her--that she was disturbed, that she wasn’t a fit mother or a fit role model for your children.

And I would like to tell you something: You have no right.

I knew Ming-Ming. I knew why she got up on stage, and why she launched a beyblade for the first time in her teens. She did it for you--her life was crafted for your enjoyment, for your attention. She loved the fact that you loved her, until you didn’t anymore.

I’m not blaming you for her death. No, I blame myself just as much as anyone else. I held her baby girl the week before she died--I should have seen it coming, should have offered her help, if nothing else.

But I do blame you for her life. I blame you, Mr. Beaumont, for teaching your daughter that she had to win your attention, by being louder and brighter than anyone else. I blame you, modeling companies, for accepting an eight year old girl into the world of sexualized women in the first place. I blame you, record companies, for thrusting her into an addiction for applause that haunted her until the day she died. I blame you, dear reader, for egging her on, for watching her downward spiral and shaking your heads and muttering “that whore, she deserves it”, but secretly you loved every minute.

She tailored her life to suit what you wanted. She was an artist in one respect--her life was a fabrication, meant to please the eye and not much else. It was for you. Dedicated to you. Her drug supplier, her catalyst for self-destruction.

I hope you enjoyed the show, while it lasted.

Brooklyn scrolled back to the top of his article and read what he had written. Usually he’d tweak wording or sentence structure before sending it to the editor, but he decided against it. The wound he’d reopened within himself was too raw for him to attempt to polish it without throwing the whole thing out and starting over.

He sighed heavily, attached the document to an email, and sent it with a brief message to his editor. A baby cried somewhere in the other room. Wearily, he spun away from his computer and the dark window beyond and shuffled into the spare bedroom, now a makeshift nursery until he could properly convert it.

“Hey, hey, shh,” he whispered tenderly, scooping the tiny squirming bundle out of the crib and cradling her to his chest. “It’s okay, MiMi, I’m here.”

An hour later, Brooklyn Masefield and Michella Angel Beaumont were curled up on the bed, asleep. His computer gave a quiet ding before falling silent again, signaling a new email.

Brooklyn cracked one eye open, looked at the computer, and then at Michella. He shook his head and rolled over.

He had more important things to pay attention to right now.