I can feel a small crowd gathering as everyone in the juniors’ section holds their breath.

Mom doesn’t give poor Judith with her perfectly numbered freckles and big, wide saucer eyes a moment to answer. “The patriarchy!” Mom’s voice echoes.

Mom whirls around and takes my hand as she drags me to customer service. Without even taking a breath, Mom requests to speak to the manager and the man behind the counter doesn’t say no, because it’s not very easy to say no to fire-breathing mom dragons.

Mom’s the kind of person who truly believes that it’s always possible to make things better. She writes letters to the newspaper when they misreport something. And she’s known to show up to town-hall meetings to make her opinion heard, because, as she puts it, the meetings wouldn’t be open to the public if they didn’t want to hear from us.

The manager, a bald man with a thick black mustache, shuffles out of his office, and Mom lets loose.

She lectures him for what feels like thirty minutes on their failure to stock merchandise for all their customers and the message that sends to people, especially people with larger bodies. The only sign of life from the store manager is the fact that he’s still standing and blinks every once in a while.

All the while, I sit slumped on a bench. I wonder what Miss Flora Mae would do or what she would say. I can’t help but think that Mom is right. Not having my size in the juniors’ department does make me feel like this whole store is one giant party and I’m not invited. It’s like when Oscar and I didn’t fit into the one-size-fits-all holiday recital robes that the school reuses every year.

I try not to cry, but I can’t stop a few of the tears. Mom and Dad have always made it a point to tell me that my body is perfectly fine the way it is. You only get one body, Mom says, and it’s a very good body. They even got in a fight with Coach Jeffers once when he mentioned at a parent-teacher conference that I should work out more. But sometimes no matter how hard I try to remember that I’m just fine the way I am, my head gets the best of me.

Outside the store we sit down on a bench. Mom sheds a couple tears, too, and I know it’s not because she’s ashamed of me or anything like that. It’s because both of us have this habit of feeling things—good and bad—so much that all we can do is cry. And nothing’s worse than crying when you’re trying to yell at someone.

“Mom?” I ask.

“Yes, Sweet Pea,” she says.

“What’s the patriarchy?”

She lets out a huge belly laugh. “Oh, baby. I’ll tell you another day. I don’t want to ruin your day any more than it already has been. Now, we’re still on for those pretzels, right?”