Super America by Anne Panning

Author:Anne Panning
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8203-3571-1
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 2010-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

CRAVINGS

I first started eating chalk when I was in kindergarten, and couldn’t keep my hands off the box of pastels, which reminded me of miniature colored marshmallows. My teacher, Mrs. Finch, who actually looked like a bird with her clipped little mouth and tight white nose, caught me gnawing on a pink stick behind the kitchen center. I remember trying to hide the mushy, grainy mess in the toy refrigerator, but she reached in and grabbed my arm like I was a criminal. Later, Mrs. Finch told my mother, who thought it was very funny, that she was merely afraid I would choke and die. I’ll never forget her famous line, which our family still quotes to this day: “I don’t care to be picking up any corpses in my classroom due to chalk!” That was the end of it, although my craving never ceased, and I’ve since read about women who cannot quench their desire for dirt and eat it, pure black and crumbly like an Oreo, right out of their yard with cupped, savage palms. So I am not alone in this earthy, mineral insatiability.

I’m twenty-one now, in my sixth month of pregnancy, and the craving is back. I’m a thin woman and have barely gained more than the baby’s weight so far, but every night when I’m lying in bed, I get such a craving for chalk that I finally walked down to Ben Franklin the other day and bought a stash, which I keep in my nightstand, tucked in the drawer. My sister, Ardeth—a law student and my roommate—thinks I need to eat more and sleep less. She’s a constant, sensible woman with short auburn hair, round tortoise-shell glasses, and heavy limbs. Most often you’ll see her in long, floral dresses, navy leather flats, and dark blazers, all ordered from the same catalogue she’s been steady with since high school. She’s older than me by five years, and smarter than me, and more disciplined than me. You couldn’t exactly call her matronly or dowdy, but she rides the edge: she wears only white cotton briefs, listens to country, and won’t dare zip from the bathroom to her bedroom unless she’s got her full-length “Little House on the Prairie” robe wrapped around her tight, even when no one’s home. I know because she told me. We live on Main Street above Paesano’s Pizza Parlor in Greenwood, Ohio. It’s a small college town, but we get a lot of traffic. She’s afraid someone might see her dripping wet, half-naked in a towel—that’s what she’s concerned about. We’re very close, actually, which makes what’s happened worse, or rather, very complicated.

My due date isn’t until December 30, which is nice because I’ll be able to finish out fall semester and keep working at Briante’s Basement Bistro, which is the best restaurant in town. The professors from the university like to go there with their spouses, cozied against the brick walls, elbows leaning on the red-checkered tablecloths, little candles flickering in jelly jars.

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