Mom

When I was seven years old, I was fat. When I was ten years old, I weighed more than what I do now at twenty-eight. But it started when I was seven. When before I was chubby, now I was fat. Just like my mother. Just like most of the other women in my family. Fat, we were all fat.

About this time in Hobart, there was a Katie’s Potato Chips. In the strip mall by Paragon Family Restaurant. At least I think this is where it was, in my memory it was, and so in this story there it is. My mother and I were in this strip mall, and I was whining, probably because I wanted candy. I was throwing a tantrum. I don’t remember any of my other sisters being there. This makes me think that maybe I wasn’t seven. Maybe I was five. Maybe this was before I started kindergarten, and it was just the two of us, me and mom. Just the two of us out running the errands that a mother needs to run, and she would rather not run them with her five-year-old daughter who was becoming fat.

So we were out on the sidewalk of the strip mall, and I was throwing a temper tantrum. Maybe Pop Rocks. Let’s say that I wanted Pop Rocks. I want Pop Rocks Pop Rocks Pop Rocks. We were probably just coming out of Save More. The grocery store. I want Pop Rocks Pop Rocks Pop Rocks. She wouldn’t let me have any, for whatever reason. Probably too much sugar. Maybe because I had horrible teeth as a child, she didn’t like the idea of me chewing on some Pop Rocks. Of course, this is all speculation, because it probably wasn’t Pop Rocks that I wanted. I’m just using them as a placeholder.

But I wanted something, and I wanted it bad. We were on the sidewalk of the strip mall, and I was throwing a fit, and all the housewives of Hobart were staring.

My mom tried to compromise. I wonder how many compromises she had to make with four daughters. I imagine she was wearing a threadbare lavender shirt, and her hair was messily pulled back. And she was fat, and we would all be fat with four daughters.

She tried to compromise. "How about we go to Katie’s and get some potato chips?" She grabbed my hand and we walked that way, and I dragged my feet and whimpered, “I don’t like potato chips.” I was probably wearing Velcro shoes. Cotton shorts that rode up my chunky little thighs.

Of course I liked potato chips. But I didn’t like to compromise. I was seven, I was five, I was a bratty little kid who had a mother worn down by three older children, a mother who was mid-thirties and whose huge spirit was hidden by her huge body and huge pain of all that had not gone right.

So I said, “I don’t like potato chips.”

My mother yanked my arm in the other direction, into the parking lot towards the station wagon. “Fine,” she said, her tone tired and angry. “Then you won’t get anything.”

I got nothing. That’s what I remember. The nothing that I got. I also remember that as soon as my mom yanked my arm, as soon as that tone made its way to my understanding, I felt like a horrible person. I was seven, I was five, but I understood that I had made my mother sad, that she was trying to be nice, that she was trying to be generous, but I was being a brat, I was being ungrateful, I was being a hurter of feelings.

This is my earliest memory I have of my mother. I have a poor memory, but I remember this. It was the first time I realized that I had the ability to cause pain.