The Appetites of Girls by Pamela Moses Read Free Book Online Page B

soon, I had new reasons for excitement—another third-place medal, and a tie for fourth at an invitational meet where five teams competed. In my bedroom, I hung my second award with the first where theywere visible to anyone who entered, from the latch of my window beside the stained-glass flower I had made in art class. Some evenings I draped one around my neck like a necklace, feeling the sway of it below my collar.
    Other members of my team were still faster than I, but Coach Hadley began to compliment my progress, and each afternoon I burst through our door to announce to Mama, Sarah, and Valerie the strides I had made in practice that day. I predicted the medals I thought I could win in future competitions, then repeated these boasts for Poppy as soon as I heard his footsteps at the entry.
    So full was my head with dreams that I swallowed the food on my plate each dinner almost without tasting. How easy it was to turn down seconds now, and more often than not, my first servings went unfinished. I began to refuse anything in heavy sauce. I peeled the thick skin from Mama’s spiced chicken legs, cut my pot roast into strips, avoiding every marbled streak of fat.
    “What passes the lips resides on the hips!” This was the rhyme other girls in my class sang as they assembled their lunches of sliced pita and unsalted rice cakes and raw vegetables, and I repeated it now for my family as they stared at what lay untouched on my plate.
    Poppy would laugh and rap the top of my head with his knuckles. “Dieting like the fashion models, heh!”
    “We’re fashion models, too!” Sarah and Valerie would giggle, thrusting their shoulders back in an exaggerated manner, cutting their food into tiny mouse bites.
    But the more Poppy and my sisters joked, the quieter Mama grew. For three nights in a row, she said little throughout supper. Silently, she stacked our dishes and carried them into the kitchen, shrugging off the work as if it were nothing when we offered to help. Even her plate washing seemed quieter than usual, only the light scratching of knives on platters, the gentle splash of water. One evening when I followed her into the kitchen for a glass of water, I found her poking with a fork at a plate on the counter.
    “Did you eat anything at all tonight, Ruth?” Mama pointed to the bits of lamb chop I had discarded, the remaining pile of barley.
    “Yes! Yes, of course I ate! But I’m on the diet of champions—lean, lean, lean!”
    Mama pushed the food across my plate. “Do you know you left your geography text and notebook here this morning? I discovered them after you left for school. Last week I found your French homework loose on your dresser.
    “Ruthie—” Mama smiled at the medal around my neck in a way that made me feel suddenly silly for having worn it. “If this diet is so effective, don’t you think you would see, well, other results?” And though she said no more, I knew what she meant. But I would get other medals—seconds and even firsts! I had only been improving! And as Mama reached a hand to brush my cheek, I quickly ducked my head and began pulling at a thread hanging from my shirt cuff, afraid the tears I felt choking my throat would spill out at the first stroke of her fingers.
    •   •   •
    I n January, the culminating event of our swim season was scheduled to take place, the final championships in which every team in our league would be competing. This was the final push, Coach Hadley said, the time for us to show what we were truly made of. He assigned me to swim the one-hundred-meter backstroke, a race I had swum before, but in this meet I would have many more than my usual number of competitors.
    For days preceding the competition, my stomach clenched with a nervous excitement I couldn’t seem to quell, even with the deep-breathing exercises Coach Hadley had taught us. And in the mornings, I found I could swallow no more than teaspoon-sized bites of oatmeal or boiled egg. Coach