By Jasmine Pittenger
Hawthorne Fellow 2012
Jasmine Pittenger was a humanitarian aid worker in Pakistan, Haiti and Darfur before returning to Oregon to write a book about love, war, beauty and body parts -- a book with the working title of My Ass (In the World).
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Billy Norton’s eyes burn hot on my butt, all the way up the stairs from Freshman Algebra. I hold my notebook behind me. My face is hot too. Red.
In middle school, Billy asked me to Go With Him every other week. Two summers ago, he leaned against his daddy’s old mud-spattered truck at the beach and said, like he’d been rehearsing:
“I see yer growin a fine pair uh womanhoods.”
Cold salt wind whipped hair in my eyes. Grey-green beach grass shivered on the dunes. I was eleven, skinny, didn’t need a training bra. I stretched my t-shirt away from me with my fists.
Just one more reason to shoot out of here like a rocket when I get the chance – and to keep reading National Geographic like some people read the Bible.
I think that was where I found the word, back when my sister first told me I was doomed to have the Huge Family Butt.
Ha’apori: Tahitians traditionally fattened up girls for presentation to the chief. Roundness symbolizes beauty, wealth, and happiness in Tahiti.
Top of the stairs. Billy’s right behind me.
Please, don’t let him say it loud so the Seniors can hear. I walk fast toward my locker. Ha’apori, ha’apori, I whisper.
A shoulder nudges in, heavy:
“Yer butt walkin in those jeans is jist like two Mack trucks passin on the highway.”
I look at Billy, his blond stubbly hair, his cheeks pink. I put on my best accent:
“Whereja git that tan, Billy? Ya bin fishin all summer and huntin all fall?”
It’s the best I can do as my stomach drops and the whole day turns grey.
I bet he practiced those words all the way up the stairs.
Like some kind of a poet. Shakespeare’s redneck brother.
**
“Tahiti. I’m moving.” I drop my Biology book on the desk Amy’s saving for me. It’s right in front of Billy. Great.
“Que pasa, Jazzy?” Amy crosses one thin leg over the other. “You’re beet red.”
“This town is so –” I say it loud for Billy: “So hick.”
“Ssh. Orange today. Uber-flattering!” Amy nods at Ms. Barnes’ sleeveless polyester pantsuit.
REPRODUCTION, Ms. Barnes writes on the blackboard. She underlines it twice, schhhk schhhk.
Billy snorts. He kicks softly at the back of my chair.
MATE SELECTION.
Ms. Barnes’ butt strains against polyester. Her arm fat dances.
I don’t just want to be thin, I want to be too thin.
Ha’apori. In Tahiti I will sway my hips when I walk. They will say:
“But she’d be beautiful, if only she’d eat more –”
I will lounge among fat white flowers on a green jungle floor. Cute teenage warriors will jostle to fatten me up.
“But you’re so thin!” they’ll say. “Your bottom’s hardly round at all, your thighs are tiny. Please, please eat this lotus blossom candy, this tamarind pudding, this crispy leg of roast pig.”
HA’apori. It’s like a laugh, loud from the belly.
It’s like the last laugh.
HA’apori.