‘The Body’s Defenses Against Itself’ by Nafissa Thompson-Spires

The Body’s Defenses Against Itself by Nafissa Thompson-Spires, 2018

The magic trick:

Expertly jumping back and forth through time

Yoga, I’m told, helps put you in touch with your body. The narrator in this story, though, doesn’t need help in that department. She’s been painfully aware of her own body since she was a child. We know this because she shares with us various scenes and memories from throughout her life. The story expertly jumps back and forth through time, always tethered to the present-tense scene in the yoga studio.

And that’s quite a trick on Thompson-Spires’s part.

The selection:

The back of the woman’s neck is already sweaty. Liquid pools in the dark creates behind her ears and around the collar of her oversized t-shirt. She is wearing loose sweatpants – the cotton kind – and thick white socks to class. She stands at the back of her mat, scratching one ankle with a big toe, turns around suddenly and smiles. I avert my eyes, annoyed by her expectation of familiarity and focus on aligning the front edges of my mat with one of the faint slats in the polished hardwood. I watch her face in the mirror. She could be a distant cousin, her nose not unlike mine. But she is fat.

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