The Fat Girl Read Online Free PDF Page A

hands as she began pulling it up. Finally, one day in early December, with a lot of help from Norma, she managed to turn an ugly, lumpy bowl about eight inches high. She was proud of it and hovered over it during that week as it moved through drying, bisque firing, and finally glazing. She hung around that afternoon for the kiln to be unloaded, and her face was radiant as she picked up her bowl, covered in a muddy green glaze. She didn’t say anything, but she smiled at Norma and hurried away, carrying the ugly little pot with her.
    “Poor thing,” said Norma. “I don’t think she’ll ever really learn.”
    “I hope she’s not planning to take ceramics again next term,” I said, looking with satisfaction at my two pieces that had come out of the kiln. One was only an ordinary mug. But the other was a low bowl with a golden crackle glaze which, I thought, had an elegance and delicacy far beyond anything I’d done before.
    “Lovely,” Dolores said, looking over my shoulder. And even Roger whistled.
    I held it out toward Norma, and she smiled and nodded but didn’t say anything. It seemed to me this bowl represented a breakthrough for me, but Norma kept right on unloading the kiln and chattering away.
    “I think she’s planning to take ceramics again next term,” she said.
    “Who?” I turned the bowl in my hands and looked inside to the shimmering golden translucent center, like an open heart.
    “Ellen. Ellen De Luca.”
    “Somebody should tell her.”
    “Tell her what?”
    “That she’d do herself and the rest of us a big favor if she’d go bust up another class. It’s a real drag having her around.”
    The three of them were silent, silent and motionless. They were looking around me to the door of the room. What was there? I didn’t want to look. It couldn’t be the fat girl. Her entrances were always marked with loud bangs and crashes. And besides, she had taken her ugly pot and gone. It couldn’t be the fat girl.
    But it was. She was standing there, silently for the first time, holding her pot in one hand and her books in the other. Nobody said anything. She was looking at me, and I knew she’d heard what I had just said. She put down her pot on one of the tables and pulled a tissue out of her pocket. Very, very slowly. We all stood and watched her. Very slowly, she began crying. She moved the tissue up to her eyes in her large fist and began wiping them. Then she turned, crashed against the door, and left.
    “Wow!” Roger whispered.
    Dolores made a face. “She must have heard.”
    Norma said angrily to me, “Now look what you’ve done. You’re always going on and on about her. What did she ever do to you? What did she ever do to anybody?”
    “I didn’t know she was there,” I said.
    “She always makes a lot of noise,” Dolores said. “This was the first time she didn’t. Jeff didn’t hear her. It wasn’t his fault. He didn’t mean to make her feel bad.”
    “It was his fault,” Norma shouted. “He never stops saying mean things about her. If you keep saying mean things about a person, sooner or later she’ll hear it.”
    “Look, Norma, I’m sorry.”
    “A lot of good that’s going to do. You made her cry,” Norma yelled. “Now do you feel good?”
    “No, I feel lousy.”
    “Well, do something!”
    I ran out into the hall, but it was empty. I didn’t know which staircase she took, but I hurried down the closest one and out onto the street. What was I going to say to her anyway? “I’m sorry, Fat Girl—I mean Ellen. I’m sorry, Ellen. I don’t really think you’re a drag.”
    She wasn’t in sight in the street. It would be impossible to miss her if she were. What could I say to her? “Look, Ellen, I’m sorry I said what I did. I didn’t mean it.”
    But I did mean it. I didn’t want her in my class next term. I didn’t want her watching me and spying on me. And I didn’t want her making me angry and cruel. It was all her fault.
    I walked slowly upstairs to