The non-girl...

Mother always looked beautiful in all the pictures in our house: her engagement picture in the dining room, in the photo album, the Maid of Honor picture from her sister's wedding, standing with my father, the precision of youth polished on their faces...I used to think they were breathtaking, those pictures. I could never be sure which one of them I most closely resembled. Neither of them seemed to me they could be responsible for what I was. The older I became, the larger I grew, the harder it was for Mother to look at me as she did her other daughters. My sisters and brothers sensed it as well, and whether it was more me or more them, I did not know or even wonder: I knew that this body would allow anyone, even my tribe, to look at me as their cross, their shame. I would wake for school, and head for the bathroom, only to see through eyes full of sleep Mother standing in her bedroom doorway, standing still, but looking like she was vibrating with fury, waiting for me to appear, waiting as if she had been there all night, standing and waiting and vibrating; my shoulders would slump and I would take the walk of shame to the bathroom as she followed, and pointed to the bathroom scale. I would step on, she would scream the number out loud, and this was the rest of the family's cue to whoop and roar over the expanding non-girl; at thirteen I remember one of these eary morning bombardments ending with her telling me that no boy would ever like me, and if he did he'd never admit it because he would be embarrassed in front of his friends to do so.

In remembrance...

It's amazing to me that I can so easily go back to that time that appears in front of my eyes and removes me from the now... I remember thinking how I could just fall in love with him, like just flowing away. Even with all his trials and burdens which I could see instantly, not because I'm a keen judge but because well, there they were; I simply wanted to be loved. To be beholden to someone in a pair, one of the someones in a pair...and soon I am back to here. Here is my wisdom of age: no one knows what is in store for ourselves, where life rides through. You just end up there. Recently I was out amongst with friends and we were talking with a man who was the drummer in the night's entertainment. My friends, both female, petite, (as a woman is smaller than most men: smaller hands, smaller waist, narrow shoulders) were relaxedly sitting on the high pleather bar stools; I was leaning against mine, unable to actually sit on the tall small slippery seat. This man turned to me and as he was speaking to me, clamped his hand on my left shoulder. I stood there, my eyes locked on his face but no expression in mine; I had known immediately the view of the fatgirl that this man had that made him be at his ease to touch me, when he had not touched either of my friends. I have lived in this body my whole life. Oh yes everyone does, but a body of layers is much different. I was aware of the distortion (as was everybody else) as early as six years. A boy in my kindergarten class used to follow me home, knock me down and then sit on me, grinning while I squirmed under him, not crying but full of fear. My parents asked the school crossing guard to walk me home after she had gotten all the children across the busy Park/Court Sts. intersection towards their homes. However they never told me; so all I knew was that this stern-looking woman in a very official uniform would tell me to "wait here until I'm done". I thought I would be arrested, so I would run away from her as soon as she turned her back, cutting through the church with a quick terrified prayer to God to please tell me what I'd done. At about nine years of age I remember the realization that I was not just a disappointment to my mother but also an embarrassment, and that while she could maybe live with the former, she hated me for the latter. Mother grew up in the days of WOP, dago, greaseball, and she never wanted us to be the big wild guinnie family with a ton of kids, literally. Some of my sisters were chubby but no one was like me. At family gatherings my father's sisters would sidle up to my mother, whispering feverishly in her ear that they were so sure she was frantic at how fat I was and what was she planning to do about it? And with each of these instances she resented me a little more.