Big Summer(34)
“Juice is nothing but sugar. And white food is bad food,” Nana said. “It’s basically poison.” Poison? I thought. My parents wouldn’t give me poison! But I kept quiet as Nana ransacked the pantry, dumping out the canisters of sugar and flour, the box of shortbread cookies, the cereal I liked to eat in the morning and the wheat crackers I had with cheese and an apple in the afternoon. “Processed carbohydrates,” she explained, waving the box in an accusatory way.
“Those are bad?”
Nana confirmed that they were, and said more things about hydrogenated fats and added sugar. Finally, she rummaged around in my mother’s desk until, with a muttered “A-ha!,” she found the stashed Toblerone and Cadbury bars that my mom would share with me sometimes at night while we watched TV. Into the trash they went.
For the next half hour, Nana bustled through the apartment, opening every drawer and cupboard, humming tunelessly as she threw things away. I thought about trying to rescue one of the chocolate bars, but even as I thought it, Nana was twirling the ends of the bag and tying them into a knot.
“You and I are going to eat healthy while your parents are gone,” she said. “Just wait until they see you when they get back! They’ll be so happy.” That was the first time I’d heard that there was something wrong with how I looked; the first inkling that my body was disappointing or somehow problematic. I knew that I was bigger than other kids, but until then I’d never realized that “big” was a bad thing to be.
For dinner that night, Nana prepared broiled salmon with lemon juice squeezed on top, with broccoli on the side. When my father made salmon he marinated it in soy sauce and garlic and a little maple syrup, and when my parents gave me broccoli they served it with a saucer of ranch dressing, but the ranch dressing, I knew, had been dumped down the sink, along with the maple syrup, and this salmon was unpleasantly fishy, dry on top and slimy inside. I poked at my food and moved it around my plate, hoping that Nana would take the hint that I was still hungry. Instead, she looked at me with approval. “Only eat until you’re full, and then stop eating!” she said. “The most important exercise for weight loss is the push-away. Want to see it?”
I didn’t. I wanted to cry and then have a dish full of ice cream. But Nana was looking at me expectantly, so I nodded. Nana set her hands on the edge of the table, pushed herself back, and stood up. “Get it? You push away from the table!”
My heart sank.
“And now, let’s have dessert!” Nana said. For a minute, I felt hopeful. Maybe we’d walk downstairs and sit on the stoop and wait for the ice-cream truck’s jingle. Maybe Nana had thrown away the packaged shortbread cookies because she didn’t like store-bought things. Maybe Nana was going to bake, like Bubbe did!
Instead, Nana reached into her purse and pulled out a tiny foil square of chocolate. “Let it melt on your tongue. Savor it,” she instructed, but I gobbled my square in one bite and looked at the clock. It was just after seven. My stomach growled. Nana narrowed her eyes, like I’d made the noise on purpose.
“Let’s go for a walk,” she said. And so out we went. We walked over to Broadway and followed it uptown, past the Chinese grocery store and the Korean chicken-wing place, past the ramen restaurant and the ice-cream parlor. Nana didn’t stop, or even glance at these places. She set a brisk pace, arms pumping, moving so quickly that there was barely time to look around. Every block or so she’d glance down at her watch, until finally she said, “There! That’s forty-five minutes!”
Back in the apartment, while Nana took a shower, I scoured the pantry and every shelf of the refrigerator, but I couldn’t find a single thing that would taste good. There was whole-wheat bread that I could toast, but I only liked toast with sugar and cinnamon sprinkled on top, or with apricot jam and butter, and Nana had gotten rid of all those things except cinnamon, which was no good on its own.
When my parents called, I told them that I loved them and that everything was fine.
I went to bed with my belly aching from hunger and loneliness. When I woke up the next morning, I could smell coffee coming from the kitchen, a good, familiar smell. Maybe it was a bad dream, I thought, and when I heard Nana call “Breakfast time!” I jumped out of bed, used the bathroom, washed up, and raced to the table, where I found a poached egg, a single slice of dry toast, an orange, and a large glass of water. I inhaled the egg, the orange, and most of the toast while Nana took her time, sipping and nibbling, setting her slice of toast down between bites and giving me meaningful looks until, with my remaining crust, I did the same, before going to my room to paint.
For lunch, we ate tuna fish, mixed with lemon juice instead of mayonnaise, and celery chopped fine, served with lettuce and another slice of toast. After lunch, Nana hustled me to the bus stop, and we rode uptown and walked to the pool at Riverbank Park. Nana’s spine seemed to stiffen at the sight of the kids playing in the sprinklers. We could hear English and Spanish and languages I didn’t recognize. I saw her elbow clamp down tight against her purse and tote bag. But maybe that was just to keep me from even thinking about asking for money when we walked by the snack bar near the roller-skating rink, and I could smell French fries. When we reached the pool, Nana stood by the chain-link fence as I pulled off my shirt and shorts. “Swim laps,” she suggested. I couldn’t find the nerve to tell her that what I normally did at the pool was play Marco Polo with other kids, or swoop down toward the bottom of the deep end and then back up, pretending I was a mermaid. On the way back to the bus, she said, “I brought you a snack!” This time, I didn’t even let myself get hopeful, so I wasn’t disappointed when she gave me twelve almonds in a plastic bag and a plum. Dinner was the same as the night before, only with a chicken breast instead of salmon and, instead of the chocolate square, two dusty brown oval-shaped SnackWell’s cookies for dessert. They had a chalky texture and were so sweet that I could feel my face pucker. “See? Zero grams of fat,” said Nana, tapping the box with her fingernail. I’d left a bite of chicken and two broccoli trees on my plate, at Nana’s instructions. “Always leave food on your plate,” Nana said.