Read Online It Was Me All Along: A Memoir by Andie Mitchell - Free Book Online
Authors: Andie Mitchell
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full-time rotating shift—nights and days—as a gas control operator.I hadn’t known many men to work so tirelessly. I hadn’t known even one, in fact, who not only went to work at multiple jobs but also helped to clean the house, cooked dinner, and would still be present for every Youth Soccer game his three daughters had. The seasons that I played in that soccer league, Mom only made it to one game. But Paul was there, on the sidelines at every game, running down the field and cheering for me as I dribbled the ball—just as he did for Nicole.
Perhaps because of the baking, perhaps because of Paul’s unbelievable spaghetti and meatballs, surely because of the way I ate, I gained twenty-five pounds during seventh grade, bringing me to two hundred pounds total. And though I had only ever grown outward, Mom hadn’t made me aware that she noticed. In fact, Mom was the only one, other than Anthony, who never acknowledged my size. I look back in amazement that Anthony had never once hurled the word
fat
at me as an insult the way my classmates had. Not many people in my family did, except Dad’s mom, Nana. She was the one who had been microwaving Lean Cuisines for me all the years I could remember.
Each summer, when Anthony and I stayed with her and Papa in South Carolina for the month of August, Nana made sure to stock up on food for our stay. On her counter sat a box of twelve sticky cinnamon-pecan buns glazed so thickly with white frosting, you could barely see their coiled centers—and they were all for Anthony. Next to them, for me, sat a package of sugar-free, fat-free Jell-O pudding cups—and not even the ones with the vanilla in the middle. The freezer, too, was split between Anthony’s food and mine. He had the Klondike bars, I had the Lean Cuisines, and we all had the tray of lasagna that she’d made a decade before, give ortake a year. In the mornings, Nana suggested I sprinkle Equal on my Rice Krispies so that I could “keep my sugar down,” just like she did, to manage her diabetes. Still concerned, she sat me down one afternoon to tell me that she was disturbed by how many bananas I’d eaten. I hadn’t even realized one could eat too many bananas, let alone be concerned about it. I looked at Nana and nodded, ashamed of my fruit consumption. But as she started to get up, I noticed the trouble. She was stuck within the arms of the chair. At five feet two inches tall, Nana weighed well over three hundred pounds. Her belly—like Dad’s—preceded her. Perhaps she didn’t want me to end up as she had. Perhaps she thought she could fix me. But all I gathered from her actions and suggestions was that fat people should eat diet food, while skinny people could eat delicious food.
Mom wasn’t like that. She never even brought a scale into our home. For better or worse, she let numbers and measurements live in doctors’ offices and in the mall beside the bathroom where people could pay twenty-five cents for an unpleasant reality check.
Instead, she rubbed my back when people in school began to tease me more. When I came home and cried after being humiliated in homeroom, she supported me rather than suggested I change. My weight was something that we both wished were different, but neither of us spoke of it as something fixable. We treated my fat in the same way we treated New England winters: wishing they weren’t so burdensome, but accepting that they probably wouldn’t change anytime soon.
It wasn’t until my annual physical in eighth grade, just after I turned fourteen, that Mom and I began to think differently about my weight. We sat in the doctor’s office, just as we’d done year afteryear, waiting for my doctor to comment on how big I was before letting us go. This time, though, he breathed deeply and then held my growth chart in front of him for us to see. I looked at the graph, marveling at the line that rose steadily upward and to the right, from 1985 until that day in 1999. He traced a
Perhaps because of the baking, perhaps because of Paul’s unbelievable spaghetti and meatballs, surely because of the way I ate, I gained twenty-five pounds during seventh grade, bringing me to two hundred pounds total. And though I had only ever grown outward, Mom hadn’t made me aware that she noticed. In fact, Mom was the only one, other than Anthony, who never acknowledged my size. I look back in amazement that Anthony had never once hurled the word
fat
at me as an insult the way my classmates had. Not many people in my family did, except Dad’s mom, Nana. She was the one who had been microwaving Lean Cuisines for me all the years I could remember.
Each summer, when Anthony and I stayed with her and Papa in South Carolina for the month of August, Nana made sure to stock up on food for our stay. On her counter sat a box of twelve sticky cinnamon-pecan buns glazed so thickly with white frosting, you could barely see their coiled centers—and they were all for Anthony. Next to them, for me, sat a package of sugar-free, fat-free Jell-O pudding cups—and not even the ones with the vanilla in the middle. The freezer, too, was split between Anthony’s food and mine. He had the Klondike bars, I had the Lean Cuisines, and we all had the tray of lasagna that she’d made a decade before, give ortake a year. In the mornings, Nana suggested I sprinkle Equal on my Rice Krispies so that I could “keep my sugar down,” just like she did, to manage her diabetes. Still concerned, she sat me down one afternoon to tell me that she was disturbed by how many bananas I’d eaten. I hadn’t even realized one could eat too many bananas, let alone be concerned about it. I looked at Nana and nodded, ashamed of my fruit consumption. But as she started to get up, I noticed the trouble. She was stuck within the arms of the chair. At five feet two inches tall, Nana weighed well over three hundred pounds. Her belly—like Dad’s—preceded her. Perhaps she didn’t want me to end up as she had. Perhaps she thought she could fix me. But all I gathered from her actions and suggestions was that fat people should eat diet food, while skinny people could eat delicious food.
Mom wasn’t like that. She never even brought a scale into our home. For better or worse, she let numbers and measurements live in doctors’ offices and in the mall beside the bathroom where people could pay twenty-five cents for an unpleasant reality check.
Instead, she rubbed my back when people in school began to tease me more. When I came home and cried after being humiliated in homeroom, she supported me rather than suggested I change. My weight was something that we both wished were different, but neither of us spoke of it as something fixable. We treated my fat in the same way we treated New England winters: wishing they weren’t so burdensome, but accepting that they probably wouldn’t change anytime soon.
It wasn’t until my annual physical in eighth grade, just after I turned fourteen, that Mom and I began to think differently about my weight. We sat in the doctor’s office, just as we’d done year afteryear, waiting for my doctor to comment on how big I was before letting us go. This time, though, he breathed deeply and then held my growth chart in front of him for us to see. I looked at the graph, marveling at the line that rose steadily upward and to the right, from 1985 until that day in 1999. He traced a
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