If You Don't Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons on Your Pigtails Read Online Free PDF Page A

called him "Fat Ray Joe Potty Macaroni Colontoni"), had given me an empty milk bottle that morning, and I had the bottle and a ball of yarn in the basket of my blue bike. I was going to the Hudson River to catch a big fish. (Well, okay, a silver guppy. But magnified in the bottle, it would look like a big fish.) I was going to put it in a glass bowl, hide it under Ellen's bed, and keep it as a pet.
    "Well, Barbara Ann?" Sister Stella Marie interrupted my daydream. "Can you read the next page, please?'
    Not wanting to admit I didn't know what page she was on, I told her, "No." Sister leaned over, close enough for me to see the black hairs twitching on her chin. "Barbara Ann. if you don't pay attention," she scowled, "you'll always be stupid."
    I sucked in my breath, counted to a hundred, and concentrated hard so the tears burning my eyes wouldn't leak out. After class, I

    cried my way back to our house on Undercliff Avenue, ran up to the woods, and sat on my big rock by the stream. I just knew I would never learn to read. Every time I guessed, I was wrong. And when I knew I was right, I was wrong. It wasn't that I wanted to daydream; it just always happened. I couldn't understand the words unless they were read to me: b always looked like d, p looked like g, and e just looked weird. When I tried to read, my brain was like our Christmas-tree lights that went out when one of the bulbs went bad.
    I stifled my tears in time for dinner, not wanting anyone to know that Sister Stella Marie thought I was stupid. How could I be? I was the family entertainer, I created the games, and I was the director of all our basement Broadway shows! I had to be brilliant! I couldn't be stupid. Could I?
    After the table was cleared, my mom asked me to stay with her in the kitchen. "I got a call today from Sister Stella Marie, Barbara Ann," she told me while sweeping the floor. "She said you're having trouble reading." I said nothing, but my eyes welled with tears. Mom put down the broom, held my shoulders with both hands, and looked lovingly into my eyes. "Barbara Ann," she said encouragingly, "don't you worry about it. You have a wonderful imagination. And with it, you can fill in any blanks. "
    She smiled and picked up her broom.
    I knew I had to use my imagination to fill in the blanks with my customer the next day. Combing through the Times that evening in the new apartment I shared with Ray, I realized that the New York market was changing. I had been so busy hustling rentals over the last two years, I hadn't noticed that the "For Sale" section of the paper had grown larger than the "Rental" section. Over half the classifieds formerly "For Rent" were now being offered "For Sale."
    The whole town seemed to be going co-op. The city's longstanding rent control laws had slowly strangled landlords' profits, pushing them to find a new way to make money. The answer was an

    "only in New York" harebrained scheme of selling apartments on a cooperative basis. This meant that the buyers of co-ops didn't own their apartments outright, as with condominiums. Instead, they owned shares in the building. Condos were the norm everywhere else in the world; New York just had to be different.
    I picked up my phone and called the first two-bedroom apartment that was advertised by its owner—a RIV VU, 2 BR on Sutton Place—and began what would become my standard sales pitch:
    "Hello, this is Barbara Corcoran of Corcoran-Simone Real Estate. I'm working with a wonderful young engineer from Union Carbide who has been transferred to New York. He's in town for only one day and needs to buy an apartment tomorrow at the latest. He s asked me for an apartment with ..." Then I read the seller the detailed description from his own ad, and he responded that his apartment sounded "just like that!"
    "I know this might be a terrible imposition," I talked on, "but could I possibly show my customer your apartment at either nine-fifteen or nine-thirty tomorrow morning?"
    After the