I knew my mom was fat. I used to play with her armpits. They were "out-ties," not "in-nies." I was trying to tickle her; anything to cheer her up. She seemed to tolerate this infantile behavior.
I was as big as she was, before I was out of elementary school. It was as if she had birthed an alien. She's skin and bone now. I would offer her a "bloody" steak, but she's vegan.
All the stuff her uncle did to get her into this country, including his last house in Elmhurst; before his real wife died, and he wound up living with his mistress in some nondescript tenement in Bushwick; cannot erase childhood memories of an airstrip in Queens. It had to be LaGuardia or JFK; there were only two.
One of them landed immigrants, like my mom. She's alive. Don't get nervous. My dad came in by boat, Ellis island. Black as he wanted to be, but more like the godfather. More ways than one. Funny. Dad was a hoodlum, mom was overweight, and they gave birth to an alien. The End