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Dedication

For my dear family, Ella, Asa, Samaria, and Caylao, and for anyone doing their best to be all of who they are.

Before Summer

Who Am I?

The life in my head seems

so different from the life outside,

where I am so big

that everyone stares,

but no one sees the real me.

My name is Ari Rosensweig.

This year, I am the newest seventh grader

at Mill Valley Middle School.

I have sandy-brown hair

and green eyes like my father’s.

I’m average height, but

I am a fat kid, and I hate it when

people call me names.

Even though I’m overweight,

I can still do everything

everyone else can—

ride my bike, play video games—

but people just see me as different,

only notice who I am

on the outside.

My mother is an artist

who sculpts giants in clay

and paints the world

on canvas, on murals,

and even on clothes;

my father sells what she paints.

I’m an only child.

Sometimes I get lonely,

wish for a brother or sister,

but I get so much time to myself

to do what I like to do,

and no one interferes.

I make role-playing games.

I’m going to be a cryptozoologist.

I want to find the creatures out there,

like Bigfoot, that might seem so different

but that belong to this world too.

My mother says we are going

to spend the summer at the beach;

Out in nature, she says.

I like the beach, but I don’t like

taking off my shirt.

I always have to hike up my pants,

and I worry that there isn’t enough food,

because I’m always hungry.

More than anything, I think,

I want to lose weight,

and I don’t know how.

Why Are You So Fat?

people always ask (not always out loud)

I’m not fat.

I sit up straighter,

feel the rolls on my body unbuckle.

I just have big bones. That’s what my mom says.

I have big bones and bigger spaces in between them.

Why are you so fat?

Well, they say my grandfather, from eastern Europe

had a mysterious disease that made him big;

he carried it with him,

and he gave it to my mother

and my mom had it and now I have it.

Why are you so fat?

Because my grandmother made me eat every bite,

told me to never leave anything on my plate.

Why are you so fat?

It’s a gland problem.

I’ve got bad glands.

Someone told me about glands,

so I think I have bad ones.

Why are you so fat?

The doctor says I can’t help it.

He says I may not look normal,

but I’m healthy enough to carry the stars,

and this fat keeps me safe.

Why are you so fat?

Because I love school lunches: meat pies and yogurt cups

and a giant cookie, and then after school

I take the five dollars my parents give me

and buy slices of pizza from Mario’s and play the old Pac-Man machine until dark,

stack quarters along the edge

until I pass the second apple.

Why are you so fat?

My parents are never really home anyway.

They’re busy,

and I fill myself up with food and watching TV,

comic books, and going to the park, and hot dogs with ketchup and onions.

Why are you so fat?

Sometimes I get home to an empty apartment

and the echo of the cars going by on the street outside.

Why are you so fat?

Because if someone asks enough times,

then the question becomes the answer.

Moving

When your mother is an artist,

you move a lot.

We stretched ourselves

across the whole country

from New York to San Francisco,

far from our family

and everything we knew.

For the artist,

making a new life

is as simple

as scraping off a palette,

setting up a new studio.

For me

the studio means

quiet corners

with slabs of clay,

sketch pads

and universes,

hands and face chalked

with pastels, potato chip grease,

and Pepsi.

Spider-Man comics,

The Hobbit, and Bridge to Terabithia.

For me it means waiting.

It means space,

suspended in time

between the mother

who is the Artist,

the father who is too busy,

and a son

whose story is about being

the new kid in seventh grade,

awkward, big, different

from everyone else.

Since Leaving New York

we haven’t celebrated

the high holidays like we used to,

with the rest of the family.

It’s like things that used to matter

suddenly don’t anymore.

I didn’t know I cared.

I thought of it as something we just did,

who we are, but now that it’s gone,

I think about those long tables

back in New York,

overflowing with food

and candles at Shabbat,

and the grown-ups

talking long into the night,

the cousins playing ring-a-levio

outside, or capture the flag.

When we left,

they stopped talking to us,

or we stopped talking to them,

like we were all suddenly

not in the same story anymore.

When I tell this to my father

on the way to the rabbi’s office,

his eyes get wet,

so I don’t say anything else.

Rabbi’s Office

Right away I am nervous

because we are already

a year late in the process

of my bar mitzvah because my parents

just didn’t make the time.

My father waits outside,

and I go in.

The first thing I notice

is a little glass globe.

Inside is a blue river

and green trees in the center,

a whole world, so peaceful,

a storybook inside glass.

If I could, I would sleep

next to the trunk of the tree

closest to the rock,

where words are etched

in delicate precision:

“I will pour water on the thirsty land,

and streams on the dry ground.”

The rabbi tells me that his grandson

brought the globe back from Israel.

He lets me hold it.

He gives me saltwater taffy.

He’s calm,

and everything he says

sounds like a story

I might be a part of.

I make promises to practice,

and he writes down some dates

for when to come back,

all the way through the summer.

It’s a good meeting. A start at least.

It won’t be the worst thing

to come here.

Grown-Up Talk

In my room, I watch

The Greatest American Hero.

It’s an old show

I watch with my dad about these aliens who

give a suit to some guy

and it makes him a superhero.

I think about what I would do

if I had the suit.

How I would fight for good.

How I would streak across the sky.

How I might look in that skintight suit.

I would have to get in shape and exercise,

or maybe the suit would change me

just by my putting it on.

I hear my parents

talking in a low hum

in the dining room,

a gentle

stream of words

flowing through the house.

It’s comfort,

the uncomplicated vibration

of grown-up talk,

the sound, not the words.

But then, in the middle of the second commercial,

I hear a crashing sound,

the dining room table, the pewter cup,

the dinner dishes falling.

The bass of my father’s yell vibrates

through the wall.

I hear the shriek

of my mother’s angriest voice.

I hear

crashing,

bumps,

door slams.

I hide in my room and wait.

The Greatest American Hero

slides under a car

to stop it from crashing

into a school bus.

My parents yell,

but it’s when I hear crying

that I try to be brave.

I open my door,

sneak down the very short hallway

until the sound burns like fire.

My father sits on top of my mother,

holds her head down,

screaming, Fatso, you’re killing me!

She screams back

every word

I have been told

not to say.

Other words too,

about traveling,

about lying again,

another woman’s name,

about businesses. About money.

Words in spit and terrible angles.

His body hangs over her,

his weight over hers, trying to maneuver

their awkward, swollen adult bodies.

I want to rush in and knock him over.

I want her to stop screaming.

I’ve heard yelling before,

always shouting at each other

as if this pitch and fury

is just a part of who they are,

but I’ve never seen them like this before.

When my father finally notices me, his eyes are broken,

pleading, guilty, hopeless.

She’s driving me crazy, he says.

He stops, stand ups, grabs his cigarettes,

walks out of the apartment.

My mother gets off the floor too,

stops crying,

tries to pull herself together,

takes a drink of whatever is on the table,

stares at the door, left slightly open.

Grown-up talk, Ari, she says,

and sits down in her chair.

Just grown-up talk.

School over the Bridge

I should be going

to school in San Francisco,

where we live,

but my parents

send me over the Golden Gate,

to Mill Valley Middle School.

They say they want to send me to the best school.

It’s won all the awards, my mother tells me.

I ask her if she’ll get me a phone now

since I will be going so far every day,

but she tells me, No!

Under no circumstances, she says.

Those things stifle creativity!

You can always reach me on the school phone.

At first, my father drove me every day,

and we laughed and talked about school

or the family in New York

or the best ways to talk to girls,

but after doing it for a while,

I could tell he didn’t like

driving over the bridge every day.

One day he got really quiet,

played the music a little louder,

and we didn’t talk at all.

This drive is too long, he said.

There’s got to be another way.

I Will Fight You

Words are the source of misunderstandings.

—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

When you are fat,

you get picked on.

It’s just how it is,

especially if you’re the new kid.

I don’t know what to say

most of the time.

I just want them to like me.

I want to fit in.

At the Ping-Pong table

before school,

Frank tells me

that he is afraid of Mark,

that he made him mad somehow.

Frank’s one of the people

I see before school,

because his parents drop him early

for the breakfast program,

and sometimes I get there early too.

We eat doughnuts between games,

and I eat way too many.

Powdered sugar

wafts onto the table,

white flecks

on a green field.

I want Frank to be my friend

but usually he is mean to me,

picks me last at PE,

makes fat jokes,

even pushes me.

Sometimes, on bad

days, he chases

me on the bike path after school.

One time he called me “Jewboy.”

When I told my parents,

they said to stay away,

but there is

nowhere else

to go.

For now, we are

battling on the table,

and for once I am winning.

You’re pretty good, he says.

I used to have a table at home, I reply.

I didn’t. I try not to lie,

but I’m scared to tell him

that I learned to play

with my parents, in New York,

on vacation in the Catskills

and at Camp Shalom.

I don’t want him

to ask me questions

about being Jewish.

Mark is weak, I say between serves.

Mark is not weak. Not at all.

The mini-doughnut wrapper blows across

the table. Powdered sugar

covers the green field, the paddles, our hands.

You are way tougher, I insist.

Frank is strong, but not the toughest,

maybe in the bottom of the top ten,

behind the obvious choices,

mixed in with the dark-horse contenders,

strong kids, good athletes,

kids who do karate and kung fu.

I tell Frank that he can kick

Mark’s ass, that he shouldn’t worry.

The bell rings.

Frank smiles and grabs his bag.

Later, he says.

I feel the pride of helping,

and soon, in my mind,

I am standing on the far field,

across from the basketball courts,

right alongside him and the other cool kids.

I see Frank later in PE.

He stands next to Mark.

They are looking at me and laughing.

Mark is the tallest in the class.

In the mile run,

he glides past us

like some action hero.

Crushes baseballs,

spirals footballs.

After lunch, in the bathroom,

Brian Yee whispers to me,

I hear Mark and Frank are going to kick your butt.

Why did I open my big mouth?

I meant well.

I just didn’t think past that moment,

that I was the outsider,

but I can’t go through people

to get inside.

I don’t fit into those spaces,

no matter how much I lie to myself.

I am too big,

even in theory,

to hide,

too slow

to run.

I shouldn’t have said anything.

We’re gonna get you, Fatboy, they say.

How long do I have?

First Friend

On one of my first days

in this new school,

the counselor ducks me into class,

unannounced, sits me near the back,

close to a wiry, brown-haired kid

with bright eyes and a square jaw.

I’m John, he says.

Ari, I reply.

His desk is filled with notebook pages

of robots and mechs from Transformers,

Robotech, Voltron, and Battle of the Planets

drawn in blue pen and scratched eraser marks.

I watch him smear ChapStick on his lips every ten minutes,

even digging out the last bits of lip balm with a toothpick.

One day, John drops the toothpick

on the floor and mumbles, My pick …

And that’s where it really starts.

For a while, I try to call him ChapStick,

or Chap, Bot, or anything else he might like better,

but it always becomes the nickname

Pick.

Finding the nickname

finally made me feel like I lived here,

like we shared something just between us.

Pretty soon it’s me and Pick all the time,

watching cartoons together on long Saturday mornings,

Spider-Man, The Transformers, Avatar,

and Pick’s favorite,

an old anime called G-Force.

I love 7-Zark-7, he says,

a round, trash-can-looking robot

who is always afraid

but who helps protect Earth

from nine hundred fathoms below the sea.

Dolan Avenue House

Halfway through the year,

my father starts to spend

his days and nights

in the garment district,

selling the hand-painted

clothes my mother designs.

He tells me once,

on his way to work,

This is how we survive.

I hardly see him.

They let me

take the bus now,

over the Golden Gate

on Sunday nights

to stay with Pick’s

family on Dolan Avenue

off Shoreline Highway

a few days a week.

They even bought

me a bike to keep

at Pick’s house.

Every day, from the house,

we ride our bikes

to school along

the bike path,

through the marsh.

At first,

it feels like

long sleepovers,

whispering stories

in the dark,

learning not

to be alone.

This family, so kind to me,

even though they pack

mostly gross vegetables for lunch,

eat salads every day,

eat nearly invisible

portions at dinner,

even though I am

always starving.

The First Time I Meet Lisa

I spin the combo

on my bike lock,

but it won’t open.

I breathe heavy

and groan in frustration.

The first bell is about to ring.

Frank laughs as he walks by.

What’s the matter—

are your fingers too fat

for the lock?

I don’t look.

Why don’t you just shut up.

I hear her voice

like a bolt of lightning.

The lock pops open.

Her long blond hair

shines against her green

military jacket,

her arms filled with books.

She puts out her hand

with a thousand silver bracelets.

I’m Lisa.

But I know this.

I saw her my very first day,

the rebel girl

who misses school sometimes,

who looks like she’s in high school.

I’m Ari, and we shake,

walk toward the bike racks.

How is it being the new kid?

Oh, it’s great, I lie.

She looks at me

like she’s waiting for the joke to end.

Where did you move from?

New York, I say.

Wow, she says. I wanna go there one day.

You know, I say, it’s a grid.

What? She looks at me.

A grid.

You know, the way the city is built,

like on a big sheet of graph paper.

Like this? Lisa opens a journal

filled with blue-and-white graph paper

with drawings of dragons, and daggers,

and castles against dark skies.

Wow, those are amazing.

Thanks. She smiles,

turns to walk toward class.

I blurt out,

Hey, we are making a game

about giant robots!

Cool, she says.

Maybe you can show me some time?

She waves with her notebook,

so comfortable

in her own body,

curves and all.

I can tell because

I’m an expert

in uncomfortable.

Bye, Ari!

and she runs

toward her homeroom.

Pencil Space

I am box-shaped.

I waddle when I walk.

When I sit down,

my sides

squirt out from my pants

and create a ridge.

The skin on the surface of that ridge

must aggravate the nerve endings,

because it can feel the metal

part of the school chair.

In class, I take my pencil,

lay it between the edge of the desk

and my stomach and measure

in a T-shape

the distance in between,

how many pencils of space

between my stomach and the desk.

For Mark, two at least,

For Diana, at least two and a half.

For me, less than one,

even when I suck it in,

even when I push my jacket into my body,

less than one pencil space.

Carlos, no pencil space at all,

gets stuck when he tries to stand up too fast.

Other kids say he’s been like that since first grade.

They leave him alone now,

like they don’t even see him anymore,

like he doesn’t exist,

but that seems worse.

In the mornings,

kids sit sideways in their desks.

Pick is talking to Abra,

and Noah is laughing at something

that Grace just told him,

moving his body freely up and down,

his legs crossed, comfortable;

I see the angles of his body

with space all around.

When Skye talks to me,

I wish so badly I could

sit sideways in my chair.

I want to turn around

and see her eyes.

She always smells like candy.

I turn as much as I can,

my stomach pressed against

the wood lip of the desk,

my neck aching.

I want this one simple thing

to open up more space

between my desk and my body,

to stop seeing

life in pencil lengths.

Shadow Father

By the end of seventh grade,

my father becomes a shadow,

tired, distant,

weighted down,

the business swollen,

sculptures,

paintings,

and prints,

and hand-painted dresses,

my mom’s designs

arcing across

silk and cotton,

a life fleeced

with fabric,

the world puffed up

in San Francisco showrooms

and design expos,

important meetings

way past my bedtime.

One weekend day before summer,

I go with my mom to the giant warehouse

where they make everything.

I have something to tell everyone,

she says, and I want you with me, Ari.

I love the warehouse,

acrylic paints and oil slicks,

messy palettes, blue jeans,

bundled fabric, stacked canvases

like bright packages

waiting to be ripped open,

and jars of brushes

in water pots planted on

gesso-stained coffee tables

and wooden supermarket crates.

The sinks in the back,

swirled into muddy rainbows.

She floats inside

like she has wings for real.

Her paintbrush poised as always

for correction and for instruction,

forever the mentor

where artists work

to repeat her designs now on shower curtains,

pillowcases, sweatshirts, and blankets,

each one original, each one

poured out from the well

of a single imagination.

I run ahead of her

into my father’s office,

a goliath door

in the center of the work space,

I unhitch the latch, push.

This is the first time I see her,

his assistant, on the leather couch,

her legs crossed,

my father pacing.

Ari? he says, surprised, and pulls me in,

sits me in his desk chair,

gives me the name of the woman on the couch,

who smiles as if she knows me.

Look at all these orders!

Bright-white paper scratched with squid ink,

some numbers and names unrecognizable,

stacked and folded in uncertain order.

The Artist ignores him,

moves from table to table

in an unbreakable orbit.

This will be her last day

of showing everyone

how to paint her designs,

of overseeing other artists,

of meetings and questions

and business that she doesn’t understand.

Spirits beg for her to release them

into terra-cotta and canvas.

I’m going to work on my collection,

she announces. The other artists gasp.

Somewhere near the beach.

Artists all over the showroom

clap and cheer for her.

My father stands at the edge of the room,

claps his enormous hands

in rhythmic exhalation,

relief.

I want this relief to find me too,

but all I can think about

is how much change is about to happen,

and I might not ever see the warehouse again.

Her Hands

On Thursday afternoons

after school,

my mom teaches drawing classes

at the Marin County Rec Center.

The best part is that Lisa

and her mom both go.

Lisa’s the youngest student,

but my mom says she has a real gift.

She paints the entire canvas

without any fear. She just lets

the colors explode wherever she wants,

unafraid to get her hands dirty.

Sometimes we all get dinner after class,

and soon our moms become friends,

drink wine and talk

while me and Lisa write stories

and build worlds together.

She loves vintage music,

and I tell her about

the old TV shows and movies

I like to watch.

Once after the drawing class,

Lisa, with her long, wild blond hair,

her hands full of charcoal and paint,

in her torn jeans, her Def Leppard T-shirt,

and her tall white boots,

took my hand and walked me outside.

What’s it like having a mom like yours? she asked.

My mom drinks all the time, Ari.

All. The. Time. Even more after the divorce.

But all I could feel was her hand,

like it had stretched itself

over my whole body.

I didn’t know how to answer

right away. I thought

about telling her what

I imagined she wanted to hear,

about art and studios

and books everywhere,

but being with her

made the truth just come out:

She smokes too much,

yells all the time,

and I never know

what will happen next.

I could see in her eyes

she was looking for something,

squeezing my hand tighter now,

like she might squeeze even more truth

out of me, a key to something.

I didn’t know what to do.

but

this hand

in my hand

would unravel me.

Marzipan Potato

Sometimes after school, I skip

the first bus,

take the two-mile walk

home with Lisa.

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