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because she was the teacher and I was the pregnant teenager making a pink dress with five seams so I could let one out every time my stomach grew another inch.
    Then came graduation, which I couldn’t attend because of my big belly, not to mention that I wasn’t invited. My friends called me the next day to give me the details. They told me the principal had stood at the podium after handing out the diplomas and said, “And congratulations to Beverly Donofrio, who couldn’t join us today.” My friends swore to me that nobody, not one person, snickered or yelled out a joke, and I was so grateful, I felt love for every single classmate I had formerly called a jerk or moron or imbecile.
    I wasn’t so in love with my friends, though, because they’d deserted me to go have the best time of their lives at a cottage they’d rented by a lake an hour away. So all summer long my main companions besides Raymond were Bam Bam, a retarded three-year-old, and my mother, who stopped by every morning and every afternoon too, since my house was on her way to everywhere and since she figured I was lonely and needed her.
    One morning she came in the back door and called, “Yooo hooo.”
    I’ was still in bed. It was ten-thirty.
    “You up?”
    “Yeah.”
    I heard her banging around in the kitchen, and pulled on my jeans with the stretchy stomach pouch, which my mother had bought me on one of our afternoon jaunts to Barkers, Stars, or Caldor. I padded down the stairs and into the kitchen.
    “It’s gonna be a scorcher,” she said, placing two coffee cups on the table.
    “I don’t want any.”
    “What do you want, juice?”
    I nodded.
    “I brought you some leftover stew. ” She pointed to a plastic container in the refrigerator. “And there’s some of those stuffed peppers, too.”
    “They give me heartburn.”
    “That’s one thing I never got. But I held my water, especially with you. My legs swelled up like balloons. And the poison ivy that year? I thought I’d die. Ray likes peppers. Warm them up for him.”
    She sat down, lit another cigarette, and took a sip of coffee. “When’d you do the wash last?”
    The last time I did the wash was when she’d done it. “I don’t know,” I said.
    “You got to keep on top of it. Do you want to do a load now?”
    “No, Ma, it’s too hot.” She was beginning to piss me off.
    “You can do it tonight, you know. I used to do that. Once it cools down, throw a load in, then hang them out, they’ll be dry before noon.”
    “I’m so bored I can’t stand it.”
    “It’s not like you don’t have plenty to do—you just don’t do it. When did you mop the floor last?”
    “I don’t want to talk about housework.”
    “I’m just telling you for your own good. You get into a routine, then it’s easy.”
    “Ma!” I yelled. “I don’t want to talk about housework, okay?” She got up and started sponging off the counters. I looked at the clock. I still had an hour before my first soap opera.
    “Tell me how you and Daddy met.” I said it to change the subject and keep her around, even though I’d heard the story a hundred times, like I’d heard all her stories a hundred times—because I’d been her main confidante since the day I was born, only back then she was fun. She used to sing in the kitchen, tap-dance down the hallway, and sometimes do back bends on the lawn.
    She sat down and lit another cigarette. “We were at a dance at Rockaway Park. All the big bands came there. Your father was with his buddies and they were teasing him in front of me, saying, ‘Why don’t you jitterbug with Grace?’ He wasn’t asking me because he had the piles and they knew it.”
    “He couldn’t dance because he had piles?”
    “Well, you know, they were uncomfortable. He was shy. The next Saturday I asked him to dance. You know your father, he’s a good dancer. And then we started dating, and six months later we married.” I figured my mother must’ve been a hot number