{"id":97418,"date":"2016-04-26T16:00:51","date_gmt":"2016-04-26T20:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97418"},"modified":"2016-04-26T16:16:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-26T20:16:21","slug":"at-the-county-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/26\/at-the-county-fair\/","title":{"rendered":"At the County Fair"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

An illustration by Garth Williams for Charlotte\u2019s Web<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

To a little kid, the county fair was pure enchantment. There was a puppet show and a 4-H cake booth and animals and gardens. There were kiddie rides, too, and a man who made wonderful charms out of molten glass. My favorite activity was the \u201cfish pond,\u201d in which you were handed a fishing rod, dipped the hook into a wading pool, and came out with a toy. I liked that it required no luck, no skill, and no courage.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I still have pictures of that day: my grandmother neat and ladylike in a cardigan and carrying a large beige handbag. We had attended the Lion\u2019s Club pancake breakfast in the morning, and later I was allowed to get a doughnut because the proceeds went to helping children with Down syndrome.<\/p>\n

I was at a stage in my life\u2014the summer between second and third grade\u2014when it seemed important to bring all subjects out into the open in the interest of radical honesty. Only a few days prior, I had scandalized the\u00a0Sunday\u00a0school day camp she\u2019d put me in by raising my hand and announcing, apropos of nothing, that I was half Jewish. Not to have spoken up would have seemed a lie of omission.<\/p>\n

Abortion was particularly on my mind, I don\u2019t know why. I had always known\u2014in the way one knew everything in my immediate family\u2014that my parents had terminated a pregnancy shortly before they conceived me. Lately I\u2019d been dwelling on this fact. \u201cI owe\u00a0my<\/em>\u00a0life to abortion,\u201d I would say urgently when we saw pro-life protesters at a nearby clinic. The phantom sibling was a source of guilt to me, too; in my mind I somehow endowed it with all the virtues (the way one might idealize a partner\u2019s ex) and imagined that I had somehow taken the place of a better, smarter, less weird version of my own mediocre self. I lay in bed thinking about this, saying \u201cI\u2019m sorry, I\u2019m sorry,\u201d over and over again. I had a small mechanical pencil that I associated with this line of thinking. I carried it with me everywhere and squeezed it in my pocket as a reminder. It had become a morbid obsession.<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you know that my mom was a little bit pregnant when my parents got married?\u201d I asked my grandmother as we walked to the garden tent. I had planned my wording carefully so as not to shock her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI did, yes,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you think that was wrong?\u201d I said. \u201cI mean \u2026 about the other one.\u201d<\/p>\n

I remember she told me about \u201cquickening,\u201d and how long it took before a fetus could live outside the belly of its mother\u2014but also when a sort of spiritual shift took place. Until that time, she believed, a baby was not a baby. I knew she was uncomfortable. She spoke awkwardly. But she also said, \u201cYou know \u2026 when two people love each other \u2026 that \u2026 sex \u2026 can be a very wonderful thing. I think it is why God created us.\u201d<\/p>\n

This gave me a great deal to think about. I clicked my mechanical pencil. And then we were at the fish pond. The old man handed me the makeshift rod, and I dipped it into the hole. The hook failed to catch anything, so the old man waded into the pool and manually attached a prize. I pulled out my prize: a\u00a0small, maybe-six-inch bear. I remember my grandmother\u2019s expression when the toy emerged from the pool. There was a flicker of\u2014something. But I was so thrilled, so proud, that I guess she couldn\u2019t stand to ruin my pleasure. The old man removed the hook. The bear was wearing a small T-shirt with a slogan: MY PLACE OR YOURS?<\/small><\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To a little kid, the county fair was pure enchantment. There was a puppet show and a 4-H cake booth and animals and gardens. There were kiddie rides, too, and a man who made wonderful charms out of molten glass. 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