“It’s pretty,” I say, cocking my head.

“Ladies, can I help you?” A sales assistant appears beside us. “Let me take these from you and start a fitting room. You just carry on browsing, and when you’re ready, let me know.” He takes the piles from me and my mother and disappears. My mom and I make our way through the racks. Finally, our arms laden with more items, we head to the fitting room area. The sales assistant opens up a big corner room for us with mirrors all around and our chosen outfits hanging from rails along one of the walls. He takes what’s in our arms and adeptly adds them to the rails. My mother sinks into a chair in the corner.

I try everything on. Some things are nice; some things are terrible. Some things we put in a “maybe” pile. After an hour, I am exhausted. I open my water bottle and sit cross-legged on the carpet looking at myself in triplicate.

“Okay, let’s make some decisions,” my mother says, standing up. She goes to the “yes” pile and starts holding things up. “This one for Tali’s; this one for Sophie’s. This one for Natalie’s. And this one for yours. You don’t need one for Rivkie—or Honey—because they’re not having parties; you can just wear a shul outfit, which you have plenty of.”

I look up at my mother through our reflections in the mirrors. “Mom, I’m not sure I need this many dresses.”

“Well, of course you don’t need something different for every bat mitzvah, but this should get you started.” She holds the peach one up against herself and smiles at her reflection.

I stand up and take the dress from her, holding it against myself. In the mirror, side by side, I realize that I am only two or three inches shorter than her. “I do like it, but I’d rather wear it to Natalie’s—I can even wear it to Sophie’s and Tali’s too—and get something else for my own bat mitzvah.”

“Something else? Like what?” She gestures to the rails covered in the dresses I’ve tried on.

“I don’t know.” I bite my lip. “Mom, it’s just not what I had in mind.”

“Well, what did you have in mind?”

“I don’t know. Just not this.”

She’s wearing the expression Uncle Dougie was imitating.

“Well, this is a beautiful dress,” she says. “Not to mention expensive. It looks perfect on you. What more could you want?”

“It looks perfect to you but not to me,” I mumble, feeling miserable.

“Milla Ruth, what does that mean?” she says, but I stop answering because I’m afraid I’m going to cry.

When we pay, I try not to appear ungrateful. We got some really pretty things. It adds up to a lot of money.

“What a lucky girl,” the sales assistant says with a smile as he carefully folds the dresses and puts them in two large shopping bags.

“I know,” I say quietly.