Illustration by Luci Gutiérrez

Dear diary,

I have just returned from the Women’s March, and I’m feeling much better. Of course, I was in disguise: I’d removed the formfitting powder-blue Ralph Lauren bolero I’d worn over my Inauguration dress and added a down vest, Uggs, and one of those fun pink knitted hats that everyone was wearing. I had such a good time chanting “Keep your tiny hands off my reproductive rights!” and “Free Melania!” No one recognized me, although when one lady commented on the resemblance, I replied, “No, Melania is much younger and more wistfully melancholy.”

The Inauguration wasn’t easy for me. Mostly, I pretended that Donald was an elderly real-estate broker showing me homes in the D.C. area. While Donald was being sworn in, Ivanka kept whispering in my ear, “If Tiffany says one more word, I’m going to tell her that I’m not allowed to talk to goyim on Shabbos.”

After the ceremony, I clutched at President Obama and whispered, urgently, “Please take me home with you. I can help Sasha with her college applications and make you laugh by imitating the noises Donald makes whenever someone tries to touch him.” Barack gently removed my fingers from his sleeve and murmured, “But you are home, Melania. Deal with it.”

As Donald and I walked the parade route, I tried to distract him from all of the empty bleachers by saying, “Look how many trees showed up!” There were several violent protesters, who I assumed were objecting to Donald ranting about “American carnage” in his speech. But I don’t think they realized that American Carnage is the name of Donald’s newest aftershave, which combines top notes of Bengay and Purell with a heady rush of Metamucil, the digestive powder that Donald also uses as a bronzer.

I wasn’t sure if I was going to survive all of the balls we had to attend, which reminded me of the mixers I’d gone to as a teen-ager in Slovenia, filled with snoring retired men in uniforms, older women in gowns they’d stitched from tractor covers, and a few young girls like me, hoping for better lives. I remember daydreaming through my Modelling Theory course at university, wondering if there really were soaring skyscrapers in America, with branches of Starbucks in the lobbies. I would marvel at the photographs of Republican wives that I saw in magazines, with their handsome bowl haircuts, sturdy forearms, and handbags brimming with those miniature airplane bottles of gin.

That night, when Donald and I finally returned to the White House, he turned to me and asked if, as a way to mark the specialness of the occasion, I would like to make love. For a moment, my heart leapt, and I wondered if Donald was about to surprise me with a visit from Vanko, my long-ago Slovenian boyfriend. But this was not the case, so I changed into a negligee and performed my wifely duties, meaning that while Donald tweeted I used a new app that Photoshops Donald’s head onto the slim, young body of Jared Kushner and makes him do the chicken dance.

The next morning, I wandered around my new home, where I will be spending at least two long days each year. Donald had already started to hang the oil paintings of his many golf courses, along with that wonderful framed photo of his sons Eric and Donald, Jr., from the week they attended the murder trial of the Menéndez brothers. As I wondered if I’d ever feel at ease in these grand hallways, I ran into Kellyanne Conway, whose wisdom is always a comfort.

“Oh, Kellyanne,” I began, as I admired her cheery smile and gleaming hair. (Donald is quite jealous of Kellyanne’s hair, and he once asked me, “Is it true that her hair stylist is Rumpelstiltskin?”)

“What’s wrong, Melania?” Kellyanne asked, putting her arm around me, as she always does, and pinching my waistline.

“I’m just trying to decide how I can best serve America as the new First Lady,” I said.

“Oh, honey, hasn’t your husband taught you anything?” Kellyanne replied. “You don’t ever need to think about it. It’s like when I go on CNN, and they try to confront me with facts. I just smile and say random words, and I keep repeating them until, finally, whoever I’m talking to just gives up.” She added, “And, remember, your cause is going to be cyberbullying.”

“You mean fighting cyberbullying, right?” I asked.

“Sure, why not,” Kellyanne said. “But I’d steer clear of Sean Spicer. As your husband keeps saying, that hydrant is gonna blow.” Then she brought up the Tiffany gift box that I’d given Michelle Obama on Inauguration Day. “What was in that box?” Kellyanne demanded. I smiled in my alluringly mysterious way, which makes people wonder if I have wads of cash duct-taped to my body at all times, in case I need to flee the country.

“It was just a gracious parting gift,” I said. I will never reveal the box’s true contents, except in the pages of this secret diary: it was a framed photo of me modelling swimwear in a JCPenney catalogue, on which I’d written my cell-phone number and the words “Please come to visit. And never leave.” ♦