Member-only story
I’m sorry, Nadia
It was 1982. I was eleven. I was spending the night at my best friend’s house. Her house had so many exotic and interesting things: two parents, a silky black setter dog, and two teenaged sisters. Most of the time when I went there, I kept quiet and marveled at every strange thing about her family until we went up to my friend’s room to put on costumes and make up characters for ourselves.
Nancy and I met in second grade. We were both on the edge of the playground, wandering in ever widening circles away from the raucous rowdiness of the boys and the popular girls. I was just starting to get “chubby,” the first stages of growing into being “the fat girl,” the identity that defined my life until I was 16. Nancy was one of the smallest girls in the class.
In second grade, my mom still cut my hair into a boyish, short, easy-to-manage style. Nancy had a long brown ponytail and bangs that hung down over her eyebrows. She smiled at me as we wandered and asked, “Do you wanna sleep over?”
Throughout elementary school, we spent the night at each other’s houses on a fairly regular basis. She was the only person outside my family who saw my dad get really stomping mad — and knew how scary that could be for me. We stayed up late into the night telling stories and making cassette tapes of our songs and comedy routines.