Member-only story
This Is Us
Fat Girls of Color Grow Up Too Fast
We lose our childhoods in a million different ways
When I was 11, the most stressful place on Earth was the Flynn O’Hara store near Westchester Square. It was the only retail store that sold the uniforms I needed for my brief stint in Catholic school.
Flynn O’Hara was the place where my mom usually realized I had gone up a size or two from the year before. The unforgiving cotton-polyester pants had no stretch and left marks on the lower part of my stomach in ways my jeans and skirts did not. My skirts were longer than those of the other girls, but too big around my waist. Her veiled disappointment in my body revealed itself in its entirety by the time she paid carefully budgeted money at the register.
On one visit, I walked out from behind the flimsy curtain of the dressing room wearing pants that fit too tight around my hips, but were too long and covered the tips of my toes. I could see my mother’s frown in a mirror nearby and the unflinching stare of a man with his wife a few feet away. I turned toward him while my mom inspected the pants. We met eyes before my mom told me to go back into the dressing room. The intensity of that stare followed me home, like I had looked too hard at a lightbulb.
