The Appetites of Girls (5 page)

“Yes, just about! Until today I thought maybe I’d made a mess of it, but Miss Fielding said she liked much of what I’ve written, and I think I’ve almost fixed the parts that were wrong.”

“Oh, so fast?” Mama smiled, but her voice was low, as if the words were thick in her throat.

“I know—the ideas just flew out of me!” I grinned and twirled my pen between my fingers.

“Good, very good. Now that you’re close to finishing, perhaps I should take a quick peek at what you have so far—”

“What, Ma?”

“Just as a simple proofread, a second pair of eyes. Only to catch things you may have missed or to give a simple suggestion here or there. Especially if only yesterday you still had concerns. . . . It can’t hurt, can it? I’m sure it’s perfectly acceptable.”

As Mama searched for a pen in the desk drawer and pulled over one of the dining chairs, setting it beside mine, I was not entirely certain Miss Fielding would say it was
perfectly
acceptable; but suddenly fearing I could not possibly have sorted out my points so quickly, I nodded my agreement.

Mama read through the paper once and then a second time, and as she did, she found many things to question—things I had not yet considered, things that had not caught Miss Fielding’s eye. But Miss Fielding had given only minutes to my paper, and Mama hunched over my essay with me until long after midnight, until my eyes stung with fatigue. And gradually I saw that what had seemed so ordered earlier in the day had only been a tangled muddle. And I resented Miss Fielding for having made me believe I’d had only simple revisions left.

“What if you said this instead? Just an idea.”

“Oh, yes, Ma. Yes, that’s good.” Always her new phrase seemed better than what I had written. Change after change after change, until, by the time our final draft was done, I could no longer remember what the essay had once been.

I received an A− on the assignment Mama had helped with.
Well executed
, Miss Fielding wrote on the final page,
though I am surprised you abandoned the original plan for your paper
.

“A-minus, Ma,” I said later that day, and showed her the mark. But I did not mention Miss Fielding’s comment on the essay or that I wondered what my grade might otherwise have been.

The next September, as Mama had hoped, another small increase in Poppy’s salary allowed them to enroll Sarah in private school as well. “Your turn will come, too.” Mama had stroked Valerie’s hand the first morning before Sarah and I set off together as Valerie sniffled over her boiled eggs. I liked having Sarah’s company as we trod along Fieldston Road to school each morning and back each afternoon. I now looked forward to the walk, which had seemed lonely the year before—to the earthy smell of the leaf piles along the curbs of the landscaped yards, to the game Sarah and I sometimes played, imagining scandalous secrets of the inhabitants of the most stately homes. In the evenings, of course, with our many assignments, all games ended. And we toiled over our work as Mama remained close.

But during the third week of the semester, I brought home a slip of paper—a notice to all high school parents of the options for participation in some extracurricular activity. I could choose a club—drama, chess, or debate—or a sport—track, volleyball, or swimming. All activities met after school, the clubs two times a week, the sports teams five. The slip was to be signed, it said, by a parent or guardian.

As Mama scanned the paper, she adjusted the reading glasses on the bridge of her nose, pushing them close to her eyes, then pulling them forward, as if she could not find just the right position. “Do you really think it’s wise, Ruth, to take hours away from the time you need for schoolwork? And you’re in high school now—your assignments will only become more challenging.”

“But the activities don’t last the entire year, Ma. Besides, I’ve been keeping up with all of my quizzes and papers.”

I saw the pen Mama held in her hand. Already I knew which box I wanted her to check. The previous year, the windows of my homeroom had overlooked the school’s glass-walled pool, and at the end of the afternoon, as I packed my books, I had often caught glimpses of the swim team members stretching on the pool deck in their racing suits, diving gracefully into the water, skimming the surface like sailfish.

As I’d walked home that day, I had imagined myself gliding beside them and wondered if I could remember all of the swimming techniques Poppy had taught me. When I told Mama what I was hoping for, she nodded but looked past me, out the kitchen window, as if something there annoyed her. Over the weekend, we had driven to Scarsdale to visit Nadia and Leonid. Gregory had just joined his school’s Model United Nations Club. “They investigate
all
kinds of international affairs,” Nadia had told Mama. “Gregory was the ambassador from France in their last debate.” She showed Mama all of the materials Gregory had studied to prepare for his role and then the award he had received for Best Delegate. Mama had looked impressed. “It’s too bad your school doesn’t offer Model United Nations, isn’t it?” Mama had turned to me.

But now she said, “Five practices a week, Ruthie. What about the chess club? It’s far less time-consuming. And did I ever tell you Uncle Jacob and I used to play chess for hours together in the Shanghai ghetto? Jacob made us a set out of bits of wood. And then when we came to this country, our Papa bought us a real set with all the proper directions. I still remember lots of tricks. I could teach you—”

But when I begged and begged, Mama finally agreed, as long as I promised that if my grades suffered in any way, I would quit.

The first swim practice was scheduled for the following Monday. In my blue bathing suit with orange piping and wrapped in the beach towel Mama had packed in my bag that morning, I followed the other team members along the corridor of the gym and down the cold tile stairs that
led to the pool. The towel was meant to cover me when I was not in the water, but no one else, I noticed as we settled ourselves on the bleachers, bothered with such modesty. So before taking my seat, I quickly pulled at my towel, rolling it into a loose ball on my lap.

Coach Hadley, as I heard the older team members call him, stood facing us, his back to the room’s windowed wall. In the late-day sun, his gray hair, thick as steel wool, shone almost silver. With his fists plunged into the pockets of his satiny red jacket, a gleaming whistle dangling from his neck, he announced that we were forty-one strong this year, twenty-two boys and nineteen girls, an encouraging number in his estimation. He was particularly pleased, he said, indicating those of us new to the team, with the addition of nine freshmen.

Our practice, he explained, would begin with a simple warm-up. He would time us in heats of four to check our individual speeds. He reminded us to avoid splashing as we kicked, to pull at the water with deep strokes, to breathe only when necessary. Before my turn to race, I silently recited these directions, trying to recall simultaneously all of the pointers Poppy had given me in summers past.

By the time I finished the two required pool lengths, my chest pounded as if it would explode, but, much to my delight, I discovered that my time, though far from the fastest on the team, was better than many.

“Not bad, not bad,” Coach Hadley pronounced. I needed to learn proper flip turns, I needed to correct the alignment of my elbows, I needed a rubber swim cap to eliminate drag, but he could see that I had potential. He patted my shoulder, the same sign of camaraderie I had seen him give some of the returning team members earlier in the practice. I nodded to show my eagerness to comply, biting the sides of my cheeks to keep from grinning.

When I returned home that evening, Mama was already home from work, quizzing Sarah on the capitals of the fifty states for her upcoming geography test. She waved a hand at me, but did not look up from Sarah’s book. “It’s nearly dark outside. You must be worn out.”

“Only a little.” Then as Mama left Sarah’s side to spread the floral cloth on the dining table, folding five paper napkins into neat rectangles, setting out knives and forks and glasses of water, I described all that Coach Hadley had taught us that day. Mama nodded but said nothing so that I wondered if the topic held no interest for her. But the following evening, she told me she had a surprise. In the sporting goods store near Broadway Paperie, she had come across two magazines with articles on swimming. Managing to browse through them during her lunch hour, she had been impressed by the nuggets of information they contained, the descriptions of physical techniques as well as mental exercises that would most certainly be to my benefit. “See. Take a look, Ruthie.” She opened to a two-page diagram in one of the magazines. “Physiologists have studied how our bodies move best through water, secrets most swimmers don’t know. This is the newest research.” Over the next several days, I found these materials opened on the dining table when I arrived home, Mama’s reading glasses resting on one of the glossy pages to mark her place. As I washed my hands at the kitchen sink or unpacked texts and folders from my schoolbag, she would read aloud tips. But Coach Hadley had already critiqued our every move. He had shown us how to visualize our performance before we entered the water, how to dive from the starting blocks for maximum speed, how to angle our fingers and point our feet, how to roll our necks gently as we breathed, conserving motion. And for many afternoons after the cool-down, he had drilled me on my turns until I could tuck my body into a tight coil, propelling myself from the wall like an arrow.

“Yes, Mama. I know! These are things we practice every week!” And I would rotate my arms like a windmill to show off my new expertise.

“Oh, well then—” Mama shrugged, and the sports magazines were stacked with her other reading material on the kitchen shelf underneath the telephone. But now and then, when I mentioned some new skill I had learned in swim practice, she turned to glance at the magazines, as if she still believed they held information of greater value.

•   •   •

O
n the first day of the swim season, Coach Hadley had advised us about our diets—heavy meals could slow our systems; we were to think about eating for speed. For some time I had noticed how carefully my classmates, the girls especially, chose the foods they ate. I overheard them in the cafeteria comparing calories, sharing recipes for meals low in fat as they picked at half sandwiches, salads with cottage cheese, diced fruit. But until our coach’s warning, it had never crossed my mind that there was anything to be done about the plumpness around my thighs or the thickness of my middle. “You should be proud to have a healthy physique, Ruthie,” Mama had always told me. “No one’s frame is meant to be skin and bones like so many girls I see these days.” In temple or riding the bus, she would nudge me, jutting her chin disapprovingly toward women whose waists were as small as children’s. “They look as sickly as refugees!” Even Ruby, her new employee, had dropped ten pounds since summer, drinking only strawberry diet shakes for breakfast and lunch. “But now she tells me she is struggling to keep up with her classes,” Mama said. And the other day Mama had caught her incorrectly filling out an order for a wedding announcement—embossed instead of engraved. “Well, what did she think would happen from existing on fruit-flavored sugar substitutes! How can she possibly think straight?”

But after swim practice, in the girls’ locker room, as I blotted my hair with a towel, I began to sneak peeks at my teammates—at their stomachs flat as stone slabs, at the perfect slope of their breasts, at their arms and legs as lean as the classical Greek figures we sketched in art class. To me, they didn’t look bony, but beautifully muscled, feminine and strong. If I followed our coach’s guidelines, would my body slice through the water more quickly? Could I, too, be womanly and sleek? And I stared down at the protrusion below my waist, the lumpiness of my hips.

That evening, Mama, to my dismay, served a supper richer than usual—potato-lentil soup, buttered noodles, veal roast smothered with
fat mushrooms, glazed challah rolls. My mouth watered as she placed dishes of the steaming food on the dining table. But I was determined not to weaken. I requested only a single ladleful of soup, rather than the usual two or three. I handed the basket of rolls to Poppy without taking one. Later, when the platters of veal and noodles were passed around the table for seconds, I shook my head, “No, thank you.”

“Is something the matter, Ruthie? An upset stomach?”

“No, Ma. No, I feel fine!” But there was a good reason, I explained, for my modest portions, and I recited the suggestions Coach Hadley had given.

There was a pause in the scraping of Mama’s fork and knife. “It seems your coach has appointed himself the authority on all kinds of matters, hasn’t he?”

But Papa laughed before there was time to answer Mama’s question. “Sarah, Valerie, did you know your sister was turning into such a dedicated athlete!” And he stroked one hand with the other as he did whenever he was pleased, causing my face to warm with pride.

Sticking to my new diet regimen took more effort than I had anticipated. I craved Mama’s breakfasts—salmon scrambled eggs, buttermilk pancakes, oatmeal with brown sugar. And dinners of turkey with gravy, stuffed cabbage, kasha with onions. How easily I would have given in, but after some weeks, I thought I noticed what seemed almost a miracle—a slightly smaller bulge to my stomach, a bit less flesh around my upper legs. Was I merely wishing it? No! When I stood sideways before the full-length mirror on my closet door, I was quite sure I could make out a change. Along my route to school, I began to check my reflection in the windows of the nail salons, the coffee shops, Ganiaris’s fruit market. If I squinted my eyes, I could make my translucent self almost slender, curving only where I longed for curves. I thought of Cole Freeman, our swim team captain, who reminded me of handsome Luke Skywalker from my cousin Gregory’s
Star Wars
cards, and wondered if Cole would ever notice me the way I had noticed him. “Ooh . . . how do I look?” Sarah teased
if she caught me, one hand grabbing her hip, the other cupped behind her head, sashaying down the block until I broke down in laughter.