Holding

Abstract

Y fourteen. Your mother is outside, picking apricots. You’re in the kitchen, watching Nadia Comăneci on a small black-and-white TV, the one wedged between the Stickley side table and a jumbled coatrack. Your mother comes in carrying four plastic bags of just-ripe fruit. Her pockets are bulging. She’s wearing last year’s Home Ec project: a denim apron you made out of scraps, the edges of each square fraying because you didn’t know how to stitch them right. “What time do you want to leave?” she asks. “Four o’clock,” you say. Tonight you start a new job, your first real job, meaning not a babysitting job, meaning you will be working the counter at Dee’s. Your mother begins cutting apricots, sliding them into a silver stockpot, pouring in sugar and water, then stirring. For the rest of the summer she will stand at the stove, stirring, waiting for the liquid to thicken. And you will spend your hours at your new job and at home watching Nadia on TV, Nadia as she stands on the beam, Nadia with her arms raised, Nadia with her back arched, Nadia with her toes pointed. You hold your breath. All summer you hold your breath.