What We Hold In Our Hands Read Online Free PDF

checked their makeup in sneaky compacts.
    I believed that the sea had been trying to take me back, and it would have succeeded if my mother hadn’t been such a strong swimmer—a good Ontario girl who grew up beside the lake, swimming and rowing.
    Off comes her little white sweater. Off the gingham dress. Into the sea she runs, diving after me where the beach drops off into deep water.
    My mother was a queen, an Amazon, a beauty. She tied herself to my father with a thick scratchy rope they both called “love,” the kind of rope that hung from the ceiling in my school’s gym, a big knot tied at the bottom. Some girls could shinny up that rope no problem, but all I could do was hang on, dangling back and forth like the clapper of a bell or the weight of a cuckoo clock.
    I reached both hands up the rope as far as they would go, and pulled hopelessly, begging time to hurry me past the torture of gym class and all the other classes to come.
    â€œFatty Fatty Fatso,” whispered Jane Pemberly from a few feet away.
    I stuck out a leg to see whether I could kick her in the face. Maybe. But how to make it look like an accident? I leaned my weight to one side then the other, swinging farther out, back and forth. The girls cleared a space around me. I was flying, spinning in a wonky circle. The gym teacher tried to grab the rope, but had to jump away when the bulk of me came barrelling towards her.
    â€œStop that this instant, Susan. Just you stop that!”
    â€œI can’t,” I yelled. “I don’t know how.” I was crying already, thinking how I would be teased for this.
    Some of the girls screamed, “Stop, stop,” while others yelled, “Go, Fatty, go.”
    Watching their wild faces swing by, I grew calmer. The thick gym mats lay below me. All I had to do was to let go and fall, but I wanted to make a heroic gesture, to leap and land standing on the leather horse several feet away. I could see myself tossing a cape over one shoulder like Zorro. As I swung close to Jane and her friends, I released the rope and cast myself in their direction, knocking over Mary Bright, a tall girl who usually stayed out of my way. She fell against Jane, causing the whole class to tumble onto the mats, more of a psychological domino effect than a real one. Everyone was laughing or crying. I chose to cry, which is probably why they hated me. If you’re fat, they expect you to be jolly.
    I had decided to hate school when my mother first left me there alone, staring at the green snot that oozed from Jane Pemberly’s nose, while the kindergarten teacher said, “Susan, would you please go to the end of the line,” because I hadn’t known the protocol and had stood facing Jane in the teacher’s place at front. Walking past the other girls, observing their pale hair and slim freckled limbs, their blank, sullen, or friendly faces, I took notes on how different I was. They belonged to the same tribe as my mother—the blonde, pale, and thin—while I had my father’s black hair and deeply tanned Mediterranean skin, his round barrel belly.
    What I failed to notice was the absence of brown faces in the line. I’d yet to learn the word, “segregation,” or that the teasing and targeting I was about to experience were not the same as outright exclusion.
    â€œHow did you like school?” my mother asked.
    â€œThere’s an orange fish in a bowl and paste for gluing pictures,” I said, choosing not to mention the helpless disgust I’d endured, staring at Jane’s crusty nose all day. The teacher had made us partners, which meant we’d had to sit together, and hold hands on the way to lunch. Neither did I mention the shame I’d felt every time I did something wrong, like tasting the smooth milky glue or slapping Jane’s hand away while we said grace. I didn’t want my mother to think I was one of those difficult children she