Emma's Table by Philip Galanes Page B

hands.
    Tina walked into the room.
    She saw a trail of crumbs running down the front of Gracie’s shirt.
    â€œWhat’s going on in here?” she asked, failing to keep her voice as neutral as she’d intended. “Sweetie,” she added—in recognition. She watched her daughter stash the box of cookies behind her back, her head hanging down as she salted the evidence away.
    â€œSweetie?” she said, but much kinder this time. She hated to see her feeling ashamed.
    â€œI’m supposed to say, ‘Come in,’” Gracie told her, “before you open the door, Mommy.”
    â€œThat’s true,” Tina replied.
    No defense like a good offense either, she thought, admiring the girl’s pluck. “Next time I will,” she told her. She decided not to say anything about the cookies for the moment.
    Where the hell did she get them? Tina wondered.
    She’d never bought a box of gingersnaps in her life. Every once in a while, Tina caught Gracie with a small stash of secret food—cookies, usually, or those awful little snack cakes. She suspected her father of breaking down, giving in to the girl—when he picked her up from school maybe, or when she visited him at his apartment. He swore he didn’t give her junk though, or not much of it anyway, and Tina believed him. What’s more, she knew it would take a lot more than an occasional gingersnap or Hostess Twinkie to have gotten the girl to the state she was in—twenty pounds overweight at the age of nine.
    Tina gazed back at Gracie’s bed, as if to change the subject.
    It wasn’t just the dress. She saw a pair of bobby socks, all snowy white with lacy yellow edging, and a pair of patent leather shoes, their shiny toes peeking out from under the bed.
    You’d think she was going to a wedding, Tina thought.
    She began to have misgivings about the Diet Club. She knew that Benjamin wanted them to go. It might be useful for a concerned mother, but Gracie was only a child. What could they possibly do there, she wondered, that would be worth a damn to her? Talk about calories and exercise?
    She pictured cautionary filmstrips about the lives of fat children.
    Tina saw a long yellow ribbon dangling over the edge of the bed, not quite touching the floor. Gracie liked to wear it in her hair.
    Her heart sank deeper.
    She wasn’t taking her daughter to the Baptist church that night; she knew it in a flash. She wasn’t going to sit her in a room brimming with fat kids. Tina might not have a solution to Gracie’s problem yet; she might not have a diagnosis even, but that was her problem, not Gracie’s. She was going to shield her daughter from places like the Diet Club, and Benjamin Blackman could go straight to hell if he didn’t like it.
    Gracie didn’t need to be told she was fat.
    It’s not exactly breaking news, Tina thought.
    The little girl was already powerfully aware of her body, she was sure of that much—ashamed of the rolls of fat that showed when she sat in the bathtub, the way she towered over her classmates on the playground at school.
    How could she not be? Tina wondered.
    She wasn’t going to rub her nose in it, not any more than she already had.
    â€œMommy?” the girl asked softly.
    Tina looked down at her.
    â€œCan you turn that frown upside down?” she asked, repeating a line from one of her favorite television shows.
    Tina was instantly sorry she’d let her concern show.
    She looked back at Gracie, as if weighing the request—tapping an index finger against her chin. “You know,” Tina said, dragging it out, as if she could go either way, “I think I can turn my frown upside down”—all the words coming out in a rush. She made a funny face too: a big, toothy smile, and her eyes as wide as she could manage.
    Gracie giggled.
    Tina sat down on the floor beside her and wrapped an arm around her daughter’s