Little Earthquakes
never give up face your life
Purse. It’s not a purse, really. Before, I had purses - a fake Prada bag, a real Chanel baguette Sam had bought me for my birthday. What I have now is a gigantic, pink, floral-printed Vera Bradley bag big enough to hold a human head. Now, nobody stares, and nobody asks, and nobody spares me so much as a second glance. I might as well be a piece of furniture. Last week a squirrel ran over my foot.
Fine as we pulled into the parking garage and Sam held the door for me and walked me into the red-velvet lobby that smelled like popcorn and fake butter. “Lia?” Sam asked me. I shook my head. I was remembering the last time we’d gone to the movies. “Lia?” Sam asked again. I couldn’t stay. I couldn’t stay and hurt him anymore.
The woman I’ve been watching walked across the park, reddish-gold curls piled on her head, a canvas tote bag in her hand, and I leaned forward, holding tight to the edges of the bench, trying to make the spinning stop. She set her bag down on the lip of the fountain and bent down to pet a little black-and-white-spotted dog. Now, I thought, and I reached into my sleepover-size sack and pulled out the silver rattle. Should we get it monogrammed? Sam had asked. I’d just rolled my eyes and told him that there were two kinds of people in the world, the ones who got things monogrammed at Tiffany’s and the ones who didn’t, and we were definitely Type Twos. One silver rattle from Tiffany’s, unmonogrammed, never used. I walked carefully over to the fountain before I remembered that I’d become invisible and that nobody would look at me no matter what I did. I slid the rattle into her bag and then I slipped away.
You could find the book HERE.
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Barack Obama Book; The Audacity of Hope.
