The Appetites of Girls Read Online Free PDF Page A

with red trim, her wide-brimmed hat tied beneath her chin with a red ribbon. Always she brought the Sunday
Times
crossword, which she later liked to tell her sisters she had finished in its entirety (though I thought, on more than one occasion, I had caught her checking the answers in the following week’s paper, then filling in the spaces she had missed).
    “Don’t you want to come in, Judith? It’s warm once you get used to it!” Poppy would call to Mama, running up from the water onto the first ridge of dry sand. He looked handsome, I thought, in his black bathing trunks, his hair slicked from the wet. But Mama, who had admitted to us once she’d never learned to swim well, would tuck her feet under her chair—her legs, from lack of sun, much paler than the rest of ours—and wave her hand in a way that meant, “No, go ahead without me.”
    Though one morning, after many requests, Poppy did convince her. She waded in with small steps, raising her elbows as she slowly reachedwaist-deep water, then waiting for a long break in the waves before edging out farther.
    “Come to where we are, Ma!” my sisters and I cried from where we swam with Poppy. But as she stretched out her arms to paddle, her chin up, her neck stiff, a wave broke over her. And as soon as her head was above water once more, she quickly retreated to the shore, coughing into her hands.
    “Come on, Judith! Give it one more try! We’ll go together,” Poppy offered as Mama made her way back to our belongings.
    But she only shook her head and resettled in her chair with her crossword. She did not even notice Sarah and Valerie, some time later, tossing back their hair with their eyes closed, puckering their mouths like the man and woman embracing near us in the water. It was Poppy who eventually declared, “That’s enough, girls,” shielding his eyes from the sun to look at Mama as my sisters and I giggled bubbles into the salty water.
    Mama stayed put until precisely noon, when she signaled us to come towel off and break for lunch. Then she pulled from her basket liverwurst on chewy rye. Or some Sundays, tuna salad with chunks of pickle, even deviled eggs with paprika sprinkled on top, setting it all at the center of our checked beach blanket for us to sit around. Now and then she would turn to glance over her shoulder at groups gathered nearby, families with hot dogs and pretzels from the concession stands, teenage girls drinking diet sodas, nibbling from small packets of chips. And as she sniffed then looked back to us, munching our sandwiches and eggs, I knew what she was thinking—that our meal was far superior. But this seemed the only part of the day she enjoyed, and, guiltily, I would sometimes wish she had not come. I knew it was because Poppy sensed Mama’s impatience that he shortened our afternoons, the parking lot still packed with cars when we drove off. The radio remained silent now on the ride home as Mama read aloud a book of Aesop’s Fables from the library. And so I would pretend drowsiness, closing my eyes until Mama believed I was asleep so that Icould imagine I was still bobbing on the surface of the waves, drifting with the rhythm of the vast ocean.

    Summer days seemed to pass more slowly than those of other seasons, but the summer I was thirteen seemed to disappear before its time. The Tuesday following Labor Day weekend, school began again. But this fall I would not be returning to the public school in our district. Since the previous autumn, I knew, Mama and Poppy had argued over where to enroll me for my eighth-grade year, their voices sometimes waking me hours after I had gone to bed. Poppy was eventually expecting a raise from the factory where he worked as a mechanical engineer, and partial scholarships, Mama had recently learned from our neighbor Babbie Schafer, were available for qualified students at her son’s private school. If they could find the money for the remaining tuition, shouldn’t I be given every