“Oh, you’re okay! Just smile, Honey,” her mother had interrupted.
Morgan, stirring soggy circles of cereal in a bowl of milk, had just revealed to her mother that since waking she had felt tremendously sad and didn’t know why.
“Better get a move on. It’s getting late. Your lunch is by the door,” her mother sang.
Now, shuffling past the line of hodgepodge houses on her street, watching her breath hover in little clouds and wisp away, her sadness turned to anger. Her shuffle became a march.
“Just smile, Honey,” she mocked aloud, adjusting the heavy backpack that dug into her shoulders through her jacket. Smile. Morgan had days when her cheeks were sore from smiling so much. Recently, in a selfie with friends, she saw herself smiling so widely, the top of her nose wrinkled like a Sharpei, and her eyes were nothing but cartoon half-moon lines. It looked unnatural, and she had deleted it from her phone.
“How would I know you’re mad? You’re smiling,” Christy had told her Friday, startling her. They were fighting about Christy’s choice to date Torrin, who Morgan had a huge crush on.
“Well, I’m not that mad,” Morgan had shrugged, running her hand along the side of her open locker, “I mean, he wants to date you. And like, what can I do. You know, I’m just disappointed, that’s all. I’m happy for you though, honestly.”
“Well, thanks. I totally get it. I’d feel the same way. I’ll try not to like shove it in your face. Gucci?”
Christy had squeezed Morgan’s shoulder, “And dude, I love your smile.”
They had hugged and parted for their next classes as friends, but Christy’s words, “How would I know you’re mad? You’re smiling” kept repeating in her head like a sample in a rap song.
At the crosswalk on Mountain Boulevard, Morgan waited to cross. The distracted commuters in SUVs and Priuses pretended not to see her. Finally, stepping off the curb, she waved to a black van. It slowed down. The dyed-blonde woman at the wheel sipped a silver travel mug, either resigned or annoyed. This cued a white pick-up truck coming the other way. Three men were crammed inside. A lawn mower, rakes and brooms branched out from the truck bed like a bad bouquet. Morgan crossed and continued on the opposite sidewalk towards the village center and the school bus stop, which was in front of the only liquor store in town.
A young mother clutching the hand of a little girl in a fire engine raincoat and pink tutu passed her, and Morgan nodded and smiled.
Smile. Smile. She knew there was nothing wrong with a smile. A well-placed one could make someone’s day. A well-timed one opened doors. Still, smiling for her at least, had somehow become a bad habit.
Then she had a lightbulb moment, just like in old cartoons, an ah-ha moment. She loved it when that happened. Epiphanies, that was what they were called. Much more satisfying than the slow “burn and learn” it took to solve algebraic equations or get better at doing the Madonna in soccer. Epiphanies rushed in. Boom!
And this lightbulb idea was this: that smiling had been forced upon her.
Distorted scenes played in her head, like video clips on a cracked smart phone screen:
She was four years old, crying on Santa’s lap who smelled of day-old cologne, peanut butter, and tired old man after hours at the mall, “Smile for the camera, Honey!”
She was jumping up and down at seven, telling her mother how she figured out exactly what she wanted for her birthday, an ice-skating party. “Oh Honey, I’ve planned all kinds of games at home that you’ll love. Come on, let me see that smile.”
She was ten, clutching her backpack to her chest in the doorway. It was the morning after old Maggie, their Australian shepherd had to be put down, and grief still streaked her face, “Just smile through your day, Morgan. It’s okay.”
Enough was enough.
A couple of the regulars, two guys she knew from elementary school, now gangly and with fuzz on their lips, were already at the bus stop. They sat on the far ends of the two benches, against the face of a local real estate agent and some graffiti, hunched crab-like over their cell phones.
When each looked up, Morgan did not smile at them. She didn’t feel like it. She simply nodded. Both boys returned to their video games, their thumbs moving rapidly. It amazed her, the amount of control it took not to smile. What was worse was the immediate guilt, which didn’t make any sense at all. But, she thought, as she sat on the other end of one of the benches and watched the CO2 clouds of the passing cars dissipate into the air, she refused to wear that mask anymore.
Photo by Ahmed Zayan on Unsplash