She cut and permed my hair like a late-nineties Shirley Temple, bought me tap shoes instead of the light-up jelly sandals I’d wanted, and made me practice my baton twirling every night before my prayers. I learned that we ate our salads with dressing on the side, only drank sparkling water so as not to stain our teeth, and that sunscreen “was for Catholics.”

The morning of a particularly ill-fated audition, my dad snuck me a Boston cream donut. My dad was always doing things like that. Monday through Saturday, I was Ada Mae’s project, Sundays belonged to Jesus, and my dad got whatever was left over. So, he’d sneak little things in. Like donuts while Ada Mae was in the shower or Johnny Cash while Ada Mae was snoring in the front passenger seat. I’d savored that donut. To this day, I can still picture the thick layer of gooey chocolate frosting, the feather-light layers of dough, and the smooth, cool custard filling. In my mind, it’s like this delicious symbol of Before, but in that moment, I’d licked my fingers clean and then finished off the Ada Mae–approved apple slices before she’d made an appearance, none the wiser. My dad had smudged a whiskery kiss on our cheeks, winking over the top of Ada Mae’s head at me, and left for work. Later, we did the same.

The problem wasn’t the donut. I will swear to that until the day I die. It was that I hated the smell in the casting director’s office. Even now, I will tear up whenever I encounter someone who overdoes it on the Acqua di Giò. And I never really loved auditions in the first place—everyone staring at you, straight-faced and assessing. Even at age seven, I was uncomfortable with the scrutiny, and that’s all it took for my throat to close up and my eyes to fill.

It was for some cereal commercial, but when I opened my mouth, no lines came out. Just sobs. Heart-wrenching, soul-shattering, earth-quaking sobs. And Ada Mae, queen of spin that she is, convinced them I’d done it on purpose. She said we’d interpreted the lines in such a way that we wanted to express our disgust with other cereals and, presumably, the utter tragedy that my commercial parents would feed me anything else.