Bigness of the World

The Day You Were Born

when annabel comes home from school on tuesday, her father is back, standing at the corner of Indian School and University, across the street from where the bus drops her and the other children from her apartment complex. When the light finally changes, the two of them cross hurriedly toward each other, and so their reunion takes place in the middle of the street, her father twirling her around several times and then releasing her abruptly in order to present his middle finger to an old woman in a Volvo station wagon who has beeped tentatively to let them know that the light has gone red. “So, are you surprised?” her father asks as they pass through the front doors of the complex, and because his tone is light and he is holding her hand and yanking her arm about in a happy, frenetic way that does not match their steps, she responds honestly, “Yes,” without pausing to think through the possible implications of his question or her answer. “Why are you surprised?” he asks, stopping suddenly and squeezing her hand hard to underscore the question. “Did you think I wasn’t coming back?” The pressure on her hand increases. “Did your mother say something?” She looks down then. “Look at me, Annabel,” he says, and she does. “She said you were in the hospital and the doctors didn’t know when you would come home,” she tells him, which is more or less the truth, the less part of it being that her mother actually told her, just two days earlier in fact, that the doctors were not sure that he would ever be able to come home. “I’m so happy you’re home,” she adds because she is and because she does not want to talk to him about her mother. The฀Day You฀Were฀Born 62 * the day you w ere b orn They stand outside their apartment door for several minutes as her father searches through his pockets for his key until Annabel suggests that they use her key, which she takes from around her neck and hands to him. His hand trembles slightly as he fumbles to insert it in the lock, and Annabel looks away, breathes in deeply, and concentrates on thinking absolutely nothing. This works, for when she turns back, her father has the door open and is gesturing, with a gentleman’s low bow and flourish, for her to enter. “So, are you ready for a snack?” he asks, his tone light again, and when she nods, he says, “What are you in the mood for?” “Anything,” she tells him, and she goes into her room to change, knowing that when she comes out, her father will have made something awful, something like sardines and melted marshmallows on saltine crackers. “How much do you love your dad?” he’ll ask, motioning with his head for her to be seated, and though she always tries to think of new ways to answer this question, she never comes up with anything but the same old responses—a whole lot, very much, tons. “Enough to eat sardines with marshmallows?” he’ll say, setting the plate in front of her. And she does—does love him that much, does eat it, polishes off the entire plate, in fact, of whatever he puts before her while he sits watching her chew and swallow and demonstrate her love in a way that she does not know how to do with words. “That’s my girl,” he’ll say when she’s finished, words that prove to her that it was worth everything—the awful taste and the feel of the food sitting in her stomach like a stone or tumbling about like clothes in a washer. Sometimes, the nausea overwhelms her and she excuses herself, slips into the bathroom, where she leans way down into the toilet bowl, her face nearly touching the water, and vomits as quietly as possible. Today, when she comes out in her after-school clothes and they go the day you w ere b orn * 63 through the usual routine, what her father sets before her is a plate of celery sticks, three of them, arranged like canoes, overflowing with mayonnaise and topped generously with chocolate sprinkles. Her father, of course, knows that she hates mayonnaise more than anything, that she finds even the smell of it unbearable. It occurs...