A Fistful of Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

cookie jar, last night’s leftover lasagna in the fridge, they all whined behind me, saying I was neglecting them. Yet I left the kitchen.
    What was wrong with me?
    Maybe if I could just get away from the house. … I still had some allowance left. I could go buy Hostess Cupcakes at the liquor store down on the Old Coast Highway. Or head up to the village, where we had a charge account at the market, and stock up on all kinds of stuff.
    My body had other ideas. I went up to my room and changed into my bathing suit, then went outside and jumped into the pool.
    I never jump into the pool. I believe that such a move can be deleterious to the health. Getting into a pool takes time. One toe at a time, specifically. Okay, then you have to go down a whole step. Then another. Then another. Once you’re standing on the bottom and your suit is wet up to the waist, you can take ages edging along toward the deeper water, until your body has time to get used to the water decently.
    That summer I had an awful black-and-yellow suit Mama had helped me buy. The suit didn’t have any of those features that helped disguise how fat a girl was, like a little skirt to hide the upper thighs, or extra material to disguise one’s width. It was a tank suit that showed every bulge. Mama had even tried to get me to buy a bikini. Insane! That had made me suspicious, too. My mother was a total fashion plate. She always looked great. I should have suspected something was up when she made me look terrible.
    The result of having an ugly swimsuit was that I hadn’t gone swimming so far that summer unless nobody else was home. And the beach? Forget about it.
    The only saving grace about this situation was that no one was around to see me.
    I plunged into the pool. My skin screamed in horror at its coldness, and then I found myself swimming from one end of the pool to the other.
    Those Y-camp swim lessons I’d had when I was twelve w ere finally coming in handy. I guessed I could do the freestyle and the backstroke and
    the breaststroke, after all.
    I sure did them that morning. I swam until my sides heaved and my muscles ached, back and forth, back and forth as the sun crept up the sky behind the house and the passion flowers on the poolyard fence opened.
    I woke up at the bottom of the pool, trying to breathe water. I lunged up, coughing, and dragged myself out of the water to collapse on one of the chaise loungues on the pool’s cobbled rim. My chest heaved. My arms and legs felt as though they had been beaten with sticks, and my stomach gnawed on itself, I was so hungry. I coughed my throat raw. Everything hurt so much I doubted I could crawl to the house and ask someone to help me. Who was even home?
    A vision of loveliness drifted into focus above me.
    “Gyp! What’s the matter, honey?”
    “I don’t know,” I whispered hoarsely.
    Mama, warm and jasmine-smelling, sat beside me on the chaise and felt my forehead. “What happened?”
    “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I swam and swam until I started to drown. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
    “A little too much oomph,” she muttered, and tapped signs with hot fingertips on my forehead. I felt something tight inside me loosen a little.
    “What are you doing?” I rasped.
    “It’s for your own good, honey.” She smiled and stroked her hand across my short dark hair. “You know I worry about your weight. It’s holding you back, sweetie. How can you enjoy your womanhood if you’re hauling around all that fat? I thought it was time for you to get a taste of another way of life.”
    I groaned. She’d been on my case to go on a diet ever since I was twelve. When she got too pushy, I complained to Dad, and he told Mama to back off. Dad said I was perfect just the way I was.
    Dad wasn’t witchy, the way people in Mama’s family were, but Mama listened to him anyway.
    Which was probably why he wasn’t here now. “Don’t do this,” I whispered to my mother. “Oh, honey.”