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I introduced my mother-in-law by the name she calls me. My mother-in-law has never once used my actual name. Not at the wedding, not in the birth announcements, not to my face across her own dinner table. I'm 29 married to her son Marcus for four years, and to Diane I have always just been the girl. At first I thought I was imagining it. Marcus would say, "Mom, this is Rachel, and Diane would smile and go, 'Oh, so this is the girl.' Fine. New relationship, whatever. But it never stopped. Four years. Two Thanksgiving's hosted at our house. I carried her grandson for nine months, and after the delivery she walked into the hospital room and said, 'How's the girl holding up?' I brought it up to Marcus early on. He said, "That's just how she is. Don't read into it." I said, "She knows my name right? He laughed like I was being dramatic, so I started testing it. At Christmas, I sat next to her and said, 'Diane, you can call me Rachel, you know?' She padded my hand and said, 'Of course, sweetheart.' Then two minutes later, to her sister, the girl made the stuffing this year. Her sister looked at me. I just smiled. It got worse after the baby.' Diane decided the way I did everything was wrong. I was holding him wrong, feeding him wrong, dressing him too warm. But she never said it to me. She said it about me. Someone should tell the girl he needs a hat. I'd be standing right there. The girl lets him cry too long. Right there. I tried the direct route one more time. I said, 'Diane, it kind of hurts that you never use my name.' She got this wounded look and said, 'I don't know what you mean. I love you like a daughter.' Then she turned to Marcus and said, 'Is the girl feeling okay? She seems sensitive lately.' That was when I stopped explaining and started planning. Marcus' father turned 60 this year. Big party, rented hall, about 70 people, half of them Diane's friends from her church and her book club and her decades of dinner parties. People who had heard about the girl for four years but had genuinely never learned my name because Diane had never given it to them. Diane put me in charge of greeting guests at the door. I think it was meant to be a slight sticking the girl at the entrance like co-check. I said I'd be happy to. The party started at 7 p.m. Diane stationed herself near the front so she could hold court. And every single person who walked in, I greeted and then I turned and gestured to her and said, 'And have you met the girl? This is the girl.' The first time a woman named Carol frowned and said, 'The girl? I said that's what we call her. She loves it.' Diane's face did something complicated. She said Rachel and I said brightly, 'See she knows my name too. I did it to everyone. Come meet the girl. The girl will take your coat. The girl bakes. You should try her lemon bars.' Diane kept correcting me. I'm Diane and I kept saying she's so modest by 8 p.m. at head spread. Her own book club was calling her the girl to her face, thinking it was some inside family joke. Her pastor said, 'Diane, or should I say the girl?' and chuckled. She laughed along because what else could she do in a room full of people watching? She cornered me by the dessert table. She hissed, 'What are you doing? That is so disrespectful.' I said, 'What's disrespectful?' She said, 'Pauling me that in front of everyone. Like I'm nobody. I looked at her for a second.' Then I said, 'That's the first time you've ever cared what somebody's called.' She went still. I said, 'I've been the girl for four years, Diane. In front of your sister, in the hospital, to your grandson. You've never once said my name. I picked up a napkin. It's Rachel. It's always been Rachel. But I figured if names didn't matter to you, you wouldn't mind sharing one. Carol was standing close enough to hear. So was the pastor. Diane opened her mouth and nothing came out. Marcus walked up right then and said, 'What's going on?' Diane said, 'Your wife is humiliating me.' And Marcus, who had spent four years telling me not to read into it, looked at her and said, 'Rachel. Her name is Rachel, Mom. Why is that hard for you?' The whole table heard him say it. His father heard it from across the room and raised his glass and said, 'To Rachel and everyone drank, and Diane stood there holding a plate of lemon bars I'd made.' She's called me Rachel every single time since. She says it carefully now, like she's afraid of dropping it.