Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs Read Free Page A

the duck pen to see if they would toddle in circles around
     the water bowl as well. I believe we all grew as human beings.
    The tale ends bitterly, of course. It turned out Gus was not alone when she thought of my ducks as food. My own parents murdered
     my ducks.
    My mother—who gave birth to me, and who devoted years of her life to keeping me from watching the miracle of feline childbirth—cooked
     one of my ducks and tried to make me eat it. I couldn’t eat a bite. And neither could anyone else in my family because months
     of being herded around the water bowl by the spirit of the Serengeti had turned my ducks into about the toughest birds to
     ever waddle down the pike. My father claimed he broke a tooth and shot a baleful look at Gus.
    Once again, she was visibly pregnant.

eleanor
    I LIVE NEXT DOOR to Eleanor. Every morning that I don’t go to the gym I see Eleanor and her mother race out of their house, coats, scarves
     and book bags flying as they scrape off their car, jump in and speed off to wherever it is that Eleanor goes. Sometimes we
     speak. Sometimes we nod. Sometimes my coat, scarf and book bag are flying as well and we just duck our heads and get on with
     the going.
    Once, back in the fall when my leaves were all piled neatly in the street, waiting for the city to come get them, three little
     girls daintily rode their pink bikes into my leaf piles in what appeared to be an extremely feminine demolition derby. It
     was at that time that I realized that unless Eleanor is exactly where Eleanor should be, doing exactly what Eleanor should
     be doing, I really can’t tell which nine-year-old girl is Eleanor. I am a bad adult. While I still do vaguely remember how
     the world spun around me when I was nine, how none but only the most irrelevant adults could fail to recognize me and my significance
     to the universe on sight, all nine-year-old girls now pretty much look alike to me.
    Several weeks ago I stayed home for three days to nurse an ailing back, and sometime during that brief respite from work,
     there was a gentle tap on my door and when I went to look, there stood Eleanor. She had one of those color brochures of inedible
     candies in overpriced tins that seem to be the staple of education finance, and she inquired very politely, in a hurried and
     obviously memorized speech, which of these delightful tins I might personally wish to purchase. The simple answer would be
     “none,” but there was the noblesse oblige of neighborliness to consider. I gave solemn consideration to several possibilities
     until it occurred to me that none of the candy ever tastes quite like it should and I should just pick out the tin I objected
     to the least. So I did so. I asked her if she needed the money now or later and she said it didn’t matter—my order should
     come in X number of days/weeks/months and she would bring it to me. She thanked me very politely and made her escape.
    Eleanor is unfailingly polite.
    Some time went by.
    I don’t remember exactly how much time. I had been taking muscle relaxers when Eleanor sold me the tin and at the time I was
     lucky to have been able to figure out how to open the door to let her in.
    However, as my life clipped along, every morning I would see Eleanor and her mother making their run for the car and it would
     occur to me that I had not yet received my tin. The tin itself was inconsequential: what mattered was that if I did not pay
     for the tin there was the chance that Eleanor herself might have to pay for it and I didn’t want that to happen. No one should
     have to finance her own education at the age of nine.
    One morning I woke up and the whole world had turned white. I keep a male roommate for just that purpose and I listened a
     moment and heard the rewarding scrape of snow shovel against cement, but I hurried outside anyway to make it appear that I
     intended to help him, and while I was scraping off my car, Eleanor and her mother were scraping off