The Appetites of Girls Read Online Free PDF Page B

assigned an eight-page English essay comparing the characters of Edward Rochester and St. John in
Jane Eyre
, the dense novel we had been required to read over the summer. Casually my classmates folded the essay instructions into their notebooks, none of them seeming alarmed by having to complete a paper of this length within just ten days.
    For several evenings after dinner, at the corner living room desk, I studied the book, scribbling pages of notes then erasing much of what I’d written, a pile of crumpled papers forming at my feet. Each time I tossed a balled sheet to the floor, I thought I could see Mama glance up from her reading. Since the start of the school year, I’d noticed, rather than spending her evenings at the kitchen table with order forms for holiday cards or sealing wax or decorative stamps for her shop, she had taken to sitting in the upholstered chair not far from where I worked.
    “Can I get you anything from the kitchen, Pea?” Standing up, she would give my shoulder a squeeze. She smiled, but I saw, before I answered, that she scanned what she could of my scrawled paragraphs, and that, for a moment, her bottom lip drew inward, as if she were pinching back some remark.
    I would shrug. “Yes, okay. Are there any more of those oatmealcookies?” Then, as soon as Mama walked away, I would read again the sentences I had just written, wondering if they flowed in a logical manner.
    As the deadline for the paper drew closer, I spent longer and longer evening hours poring over the chapters of the book, but the more I tried to organize my thoughts, the less sure I was of them. This was nothing like helping Poppy with his stories, which seemed alive and whole before we ever put them on paper, like songs already playing in our heads that needed only their notes recorded and embellished.
    “How is it coming?” Mama would ask.
    “Making progress!” I would say cheerfully. I did not tell her that as I worked I found myself drawing absentminded doodles of Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester around the margins of my pages, or that I was not certain my paragraphs contrasting St. John’s morality with Rochester’s expressed all I meant to say.
    “Yes? Oh, good, good.” But she squinted at the growing mound of papers beneath my chair and the untouched plate of cookies. And I thought I heard the small snap of her tongue when I raised my fingers from my lap, revealing the newly bloodied skin around my nails.
    Then, four nights before my essay was due, I saw that Mama, in her chair, her feet propped on the ottoman, was carefully inspecting the pages of a new book. Its cover was hidden by her hands, but when she rose to fill the kitchen kettle with water, I peeked at its title—
Jane Eyre
,
by Charlotte Brontë! A silver Doyle & Co sticker was adhered to its spine, a brand-new copy from the bookshop next door to Mama’s store.
    Before I could return to my seat, Mama emerged from the kitchen sipping a mug of tea. “Oh!” She waved an arm toward the book and laughed, as if she’d almost forgotten what she was reading, her cheeks pink as carnations. “You don’t mind if I read the story, too, do you? And this way, if you have any questions—”
    “I don’t think I’m allowed to accept any help on this assignment. Anyway, I can do it on my own.” I yanked at the neck of my wool sweater, which had begun to itch, and hoped I sounded confident as I tried torecall the long list of essay rules my English teacher, Miss Fielding, had written across her blackboard in yellow chalk.
    Mama flicked her hand and smiled, as if to say she understood perfectly, but for some time I could hear, over my shoulder, the scratch of her pencil as she underlined passages, and, now and then, to my annoyance, when I turned around, I caught her turning down the corner of a page.
    The following day in English class, while Miss Fielding led a discussion about the meaning of symbols in our novel, I studied my fellow students. How rested and