I'm Glad My Mom Died

When Jennette tries for the third time to get her mother out of bed for church one Sunday, her mother insists that she is too tired. Jennette thinks to herself that she works harder than her mother but feels bad for thinking it. They have not been to church in six months, and Jennette finds it strange that they stopped attending when Jennette found success and her mother’s health improved. She had once attempted to bring it up with her mother on the way home from the set, and her mother screamed at her that she was causing her too much stress. Jennette wonders if Makaylah was right all those years ago, and they are never going back to church. She reasons that maybe being inactive means things are going right: “Who needs God when you’ve got clear mammograms and a series regular role on Nickelodeon?” (199). She leaves her mom and goes back to memorizing lines.

While heading back to set after lunch, Jennette mentions to her mom that her stomach hurts. Her mother suggests that it may have been the salad that they split. Paparazzi appear, and as Jennette flashes her automatic fake smile, her mother gleefully carries on a conversation with a paparazzo. When Jennette gets back to her dressing room, she heads to the bathroom and discovers, to her horror, that she has started her period.

Feeling dizzy, she remembers when she first learned what a period was, six years ago from her neighbor Teresa. Teresa told her that a first period was a celebratory time when one became a woman. Now, she understands what Teresa meant. She tells her mother what happened, and her mother immediately embraces her and tells her how sorry she is. Jennette decides that she needs to start restricting her diet again: “I need to get back to anorexia. I need to be a kid again” (204).

Jennette and her mother are in Nashville for several months in order to work on Jennette’s country music career. Originally conceived in 2007 during a writer’s strike, her foray into music was suggested by her agent as a common move for today’s teen actors. She was eventually signed to Capitol Records after posting song covers on YouTube at her mother’s behest. When the strike ended and iCarly started shooting again, Jennette had to go back and forth from Los Angeles to Nashville constantly.

Now, they are listening to Jennette’s first single, written by people who work for Capitol Records. It is meant to be from her perspective, about loving and missing her mom. Jennette hates the song, but her mother loves it and begins crying. Jennette knows that these tears are a signal. She asks her mother if she has cancer again. At first, her mother denies it, but Jennette tells her that she saw an email her mother sent about the cancer being back. Jennette’s mother sobs that Jennette can’t miss her tour. Confused, Jennette tells her mother that she can’t go on tour now. Her mother reacts angrily, desperately making her promise to go on tour so she can be a country music star.

Jennette is on a tour to promote her new single, “Generation Love.” She is taking a tour bus across the country to perform in local radio stations for tweens in an attempt to leverage her iCarly audience. Her days are completely booked, from performances to press interviews to autograph signing. She finds the experience overwhelming and responds robotically to the exclamations of fans. She has noticed that she feels a huge sense of relief being away from her mother for the first time. Living independently has made more realize that curating every moment of her life in order to please her mother has been exhausting. She feels guilt for this feeling of relief, knowing that her mother is sick. Her mother has always regulated what she eats, how much, and when. Now, Jennette can eat junk food and feel full in a way she never has before. This new independence also comes with a heavy sense of guilt. She feels out of control as she gains weight. Jennette fears what her mother will think when she sees her next.

At 18, Jennette has her first real kiss at a hotel with Lucas, a 27-year-old who played guitar at one of her shows. He tells her that he really likes her. While she isn’t as certain, she likes that he likes her, and she is relieved that kissing is much better when it isn’t in front of a camera.

Since they met at a show three months ago, they have been texting nonstop, and while he always expressed to her how much he liked her and missed her, she could not bring herself to say the same things. She dislikes how he only wants to talk about music or give her generic compliments. Now that they have kissed, Jennette is relieved that she knows how she feels about him and that she wants to end things. She notices that her genitals feel strange and wet, which disgusts her and confuses her.

Jennette arrives back in Los Angeles, and as she walks off her plane, she anxiously pulls at her shirt to hide her weight gain. The voice in her head that she used to think was the Holy Spirit tells her to hold her breath for 10 seconds. Jennette has accepted for some time now that this is mental illness, not the Holy Spirit. When she sees her mother at the airport, she is shocked at her appearance. Already thin and small, her mother has lost a significant amount of weight. She looks gaunt, and her hair is gone. She realizes that she and her mother are both looking at each other with a combination of shock and horror. In the car, Jennette’s mom asks what happened and how she got “chunky” (221). Jennette apologizes, and her mother tells her that she will need to go on a diet. Jennette feels some relief that her mother is behaving this way because it is familiar; it means her almost unrecognizable mother is still there.