Small Fry

by Lisa Brennan-Jobs

She tilted the plane of my palm to make the indentations catch the light. “Oh, God,” she said, wincing. “What?” I asked. “It’s just … not so good. The lines tatter.” Her face looked stricken. She went distant, quiet. We went over this same routine many times in different variations, accruing details as I got older, each time my mother making the same mistakes, as if it was new. “What does that mean?” Panic in my chest, stomach. “I’ve never seen anything like it. The lifeline, the curved one, this one—holes, bubbles.” “What’s wrong with bubbles?” “They mean trauma, fracturing,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” I knew she wasn’t apologizing for the hand, but for my life. The start of my life that I didn’t remember. For how hard things were. She might have assumed I didn’t know what a family was supposed to look like, but once, around this time, as I’d chased a boy in a playground wearing a pair of too-big shoes, she overheard me say to him, scornfully, “You don’t even have a father.”