B as in Beauty

by Alberto Ferreras

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2009 by Alberto Ferreras

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  All Rights Reserved

  Grand Central Publishing

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com.

  First eBook Edition: April 2009

  Grand Central Publishing is a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  The Grand Central Publishing name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-0-446-55081-9

  Contents

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  CHAPTER 0

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  To Myrna

  Olga

  Juline

  Teodora

  Trina

  Yolanda

  Diana

  And to all the wonderful women who

  have taught me how to love myself.

  “To think that this body that I hated so much could nurture another being…”

  —OLGA FERRERAS-ANDERSON

  CHAPTER 0

  There are a few theories about my weight. One of them places the responsibility of my extra pounds on my reckless behavior: I eat too much, I don’t exercise enough, I combine the wrong foods, I eat late at night, etc. The truth is that I watch carefully what I eat, I exercise every day, and I’d never eat carbohydrates past 7 p.m. So there goes that theory.

  There’s also the “I take after my aunt” theory—which implies that I’m fat like my aunt Chavela because we’re genetically predisposed. The problem is that Chavela is my aunt by marriage, so we don’t share a single gene. There goes another theory.

  My second therapist told me that I “avoid intimacy with my weight,” implying that I subconsciously got fat to avoid being touched. I know this theory is also bullshit, simply because I love being touched.

  But my favorite explanation of why I’m fat is the most complicated and romantic of them all. I call it “the nanny theory,” and it involves a crying mother, sharks, a military base, and sex out of wedlock.

  Allow me to explain. My mother hired a nanny when I was just a baby. Our nanny was a teenage girl from a small town in Cuba. Her name was Inocencia, but we called her “Ino.” She was young and naïve, she had never been in a big city like New York, and, like any other lonely teen, she was looking to fall in love.

  And she fell in love. Yes, she fell in love with pastries.

  My friend Wilfredo’s aunt claimed that after menopause all her sensitivity left her genitals and went up to her mouth, making her replace sex with food. I can imagine that something similar happened to Ino, but during her adolescence.

  I can almost see her. The year was 1975, she had just turned sixteen, and was bursting with the nervous energy of a high-school athlete about to compete in a cross-country marathon. The night was warm, but she was shivering as she gathered the courage to jump in the waters at Caimanera Beach, determined to swim through the shark-infested Guantánamo Bay. Was she alone? Was she with others on this suicidal attempt to reach the American base? I don’t know, but I can imagine her saying goodbye to her teary-eyed mother. I can almost hear her mother warning her—not only against the hazards of her trip, but of an inevitable danger, those blond and blue-eyed men who would—no doubt—knock her up and abandon her with her baby once she reached the United States.

  “¡Cuidado ¡con quedar preñada!” her mom probably said in a tone of voice that would haunt Ino forever.

  What a great example of Cuban motherly logic: never mind the risk of drowning, getting shot by the Cuban military police, or being eaten by a “great white.” The real danger here was that Ino could get pregnant out of wedlock once she reached American soil. I have to say that, even though I might be suffering the consequences of Ino’s love affair with cinnamon rolls, I do understand where she was coming from. Under such intense conditions, Ino must have made a secret promise to the Virgin of Regla to never give up the flower of her virginity, and to remain celibate if she made it safe and sound to the United States.

  My mother was the first one to hire Ino when she got to New York. She heard about her through what Cubans call Radio Bemba, a sort of Cuban-emigrant broadcasting service that consisted of a bunch of Cuban housewives calling each other every day to deliver news and gossip. Mom decided to hire Ino for two reasons: first, to help a fellow Cuban in need of a job; and, second, because she badly needed a full-time maid/nanny at home. My father’s food-import business was going down. His partner had stolen the company’s cash and moved to Florida, so Dad, on the verge of bankruptcy and too traumatized to trust anybody, asked Mom to run the business with him.

  Mom, understanding Dad’s desperate plea for support, was forced to work full-time in the Jersey City warehouse, keeping track of shipments of yucca and plantains, while she trusted the care of her home, her three prepubescent sons, and her baby girl to the sweet, young, innocent, virginal Ino.

  Every week while employed by my mother, Ino would spend her complete salary on pastries. She would even bring some to our home. My mother, who is certainly not the Mae West type, was so shocked by her oral fixation that she encouraged her to slow down her sugar intake and go out on the weekend to someplace where she could meet boys. But Ino showed no interest in men, romance, or sex. Just dessert.

  One day, Mom had a minute to spare and joined Ino and me for my spoon-fed dinner. Mom decided to taste the oatmeal that Ino had cooked for me, but as soon as it touched her lips she had to spit it out.

  “¿Qué carajo le pusiste a la avena?”

  “Un poquito de azúcar para que la niña la coma.”

  The oatmeal had so much sugar that it was virtually inedible. Ino confessed then that, given the natural reluctance to eat which most children show, she had been adding absurd quantities of sugar to all my meals, making me a tiny and plump sugar addict and probably screwing my metabolism for life. Mom never told me if this incident got Ino fired or not, but Ino left our lives very soon after that episode. I’ve noticed that Mom silently suffers every time I bring up Ino and “the nanny theory.” Often I hope that my Cuban nanny ended up fat, knocked up, and abandoned by the same ruthless young male that her mother warned her against.

  Thanks to Ino, my firs
t childhood memory is standing in front of a mirror and saying to my already overweight self, “I’m a three-year-old girl and I’m about ten pounds heavier than I should be.” I’m twenty-eight years old now, and I’ve always been fat—by a few pounds or a lot of them, since it kind of fluctuates. And I can proudly say that I owe it all to the sweet, stupid, and innocent Ino.

  I have never known what it is like not to be fat. I’m always trying to lose weight, or worried about getting even fatter than I already am. My size has varied considerably through the years—sometimes within weeks, depending on how absurd the diet of the moment was—but no matter what I do, the fat always comes back. Let’s see: I’ve tried the Scarsdale, the Atkins—the first time around and the second time around—the anti-diet, homeopathic remedies, acupuncture. You name it and I’ve done it. If it works, it’s only temporarily.

  My mom took me to a dietician in the eighties who helped me lose weight incredibly fast with little effort on my part. It was the infamous Dr. Loomis. He was so popular that the long line of patients spilled into the hallway outside his office. But the line moved fast, because Dr. Loomis ran four examination rooms at the same time. He would spend an average of five seconds with each patient. In that short time he’d manage to weigh you, make you stand naked in front of a mirror, and insult you.

  “Look at yourself,” he would say, contorting his face as if he were just about to puke, “look at those rolls of fat. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”

  This is what he called “encouragement.” Then he would give you a prescription for a powerful—and now illegal—drug whose long-term side effects will become evident one day. Unfortunately, permanent weight loss wasn’t one of them. Eventually, Dr. Loomis was incarcerated for giving speed to his patients.

  But enough with the whining, and let’s deal with the reality: I’m fat. I have big boobs, a chunky butt, and thick legs. I will say, in my defense, that my waist is kind of small, so at least I have an hourglass figure. Unfortunately, hourglasses are not terribly popular nowadays.

  The bottom line is that I’m fat. I’m a fat chick. We could come up with nicer ways to say it: plump, full-figured, overweight, chubby. But after all these years of fatness, I finally feel good about saying it the simple way: fat. Just fat. If you happen to be fat, I strongly recommend you to say it out loud at every opportunity you have. If “fat” is a word that defines you, you should embrace it, and never give other people the power to use it as an insult. And now that we’re discussing linguistics, I have to bring up another concern: my name.

  Latinos have an odd tradition of giving weird names to their kids. Sometimes we combine the parents’ names. If they are, for instance, Carlos and Teresa, they could name the baby girl Caresa. Other times we pick a word in a foreign language and slap it on the newborn without thinking of the consequences.

  There was a kid in school whose parents named him Magnificent. Yes, once I knew a Magnificent López. The only problem was that Magnificent was short and skinny, and he wore thick eyeglasses. To be brutally honest, he looked anything but magnificent, and his very name was a painful reminder of his shortcomings.

  I have a similar problem. My name is Beauty.

  Beauty María Zavala, to be precise.

  I have three brothers who bear standard Latino names: Pedro, Francisco, and Eduardo. But in my case, my parents decided to take a poetic license, and as a tribute to the land that saved them from Fidel Castro, they decided to name me Beauty. I’m sure that at the time it sounded very cool to them, but you have no idea what a pain in the ass it is to drag this name along with all my extra pounds.

  For obvious reasons, I ask people to just call me B.

  I’ve gone through life pushing this extra weight—that I simply can’t get rid of—and bearing a name that sounds like a bad joke. It’s particularly annoying when I’m on the phone with my bank, or the credit-card company, and they ask me to spell my name. I can’t blame them for being confused—let’s face it, there are not too many Beautys out there. But what really bothers me is that every time I spell it out for them, I do it in the same stupid way:

  “B as in ‘boy,’ E as in Edward…”

  Why do I say “B as in ‘boy’”? I’m not a boy. Why can’t I just say “B as in ‘beauty’”? The answer is very simple: I have never felt pretty. I’m fat, and I’ve grown up in a world where fat is anything but beautiful.

  At this point I have to take a moment to acknowledge that there are other things in life that are much worse than being fat. We can go through a whole list. I could be blind, deaf, paralyzed, starved, or brain-dead. The truth is that, in the category of curses, fat is nothing more than chump change.

  I strongly believe that the worst curse you can suffer in life is to be unhappy. I can tell you of many rich, beautiful, young, healthy, and—of course—skinny people who have tried successfully and unsuccessfully to commit suicide out of pure, plain misery. I’ve been sad, angry, and mortified about my weight, but, thank God, never suicidal.

  But I’m bringing up the happiness factor because I’ve realized that it’s the one thing I could change. Let’s face it, I might never be able to control my weight, but I’ve learned that I can choose to be happy. How did I learn?

  You’ll soon find out.

  CHAPTER 1

  I work in an ad agency in New York City. In case you don’t know it, let me tell you that New York is a bad city to be fat in. Most people actually manage to stay thin, and I have no idea how.

  If you go to any of the many fantastic restaurants in Manhattan, you’ll run into slender men and women who don’t seem affected by sugars, carbohydrates, or partially hydrogenated oils. I honestly wonder if they’re all puking after every meal, or if in fact they truly have an industrial boiler installed where I have my sluggish metabolism. These people are so thin—they must burn everything they put in their mouths at the speed of light. Meanwhile, I store everything, in preparation—I guess—for a nuclear holocaust.

  I see the skinny ones on the street wearing designer clothes, or in the gym fighting some extra milligram of fat that I couldn’t see with a microscope even if I tried. They sit comfortably in the bus or on the subway, in seats that are specially designed for people of their size. They cross their legs in positions that I can only imagine. They wear jeans and leather pants, never having to worry about wearing off the fabric between their thighs. I know, I know, I’m coming across a little obsessed with the differences between them and me. I’m not always like this; I don’t see myself as an outsider all the time. The feeling comes and goes with the seasons, or with the frustration caused by realizing that it’s time to go up one dress size. But in spite of this rant, I’m not prejudiced against the skinny ones. Some of my best friends are very thin. As a matter of fact, my best friend, Lillian, is particularly slender.

  Lillian and I met at the ad agency on my first day at work. That morning I was very nervous, and I didn’t know anybody at the office. Lillian came up to my desk and did one of the nicest things you could do to a rookie like me: she introduced herself, and took me out to lunch. Even though we work for different departments—I’m a copywriter and she’s an accountant—we have been inseparable ever since.

  Lillian is Asian, tall, slender, with perfect boobs, a tight little ass, and—believe it or not—she is sweet, nice, and friendly. She can be a little self-centered, a tad narcissistic, and a teeny bit insensitive, but the truth is that I love her to death. Based on my experiences with my mother, I’ve come to believe that people who love you are bound to push your buttons, and sometimes Lillian really knows how to push mine.

  In any case, my story begins—sorry, it hasn’t started yet—on the morning of April 14, just a couple of years ago. I’m bad with dates, but events that happened on Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, or Valentine’s Day are always easier to remember. This one happened on the day before taxes were due.

  It was a nice spring morning. I was particularly proud of my hairdo that day. My hair is lo
ng and curly, and I usually wear it in a tight bun because I think that makes me look skinnier and professional. I wear glasses—I’m a bit nearsighted, and I should have contacts, but I’ve been so busy at work that I haven’t had a second to go to the eye doctor and get a new prescription. I like my glasses, though, because they make me look professional, and I need to look professional as part of a long-delayed plan to get ahead at my job. There’s this unwritten rule in corporate America that establishes that if you are not promoted every two years, you are considered filler. I was two years overdue for that promotion, and I was starting to worry that if I didn’t see any movement soon, I might never be anything in life other than a senior copywriter.

  Let me explain what I do at the ad agency. I take a bunch of marketing information and I turn it into a paragraph, a slogan, or a word. If they tell me, “We need to sell more peanuts to eighteen-year-olds,” then I find the words that make peanuts irresistible to that demographic. Maybe you’ve heard of one of my masterpieces: “Gotta go nuts.” Yep, I came up with that one, even though Bonnie, my boss, took the credit for it. But we’ll get back to Bonnie in a minute.

  I like to think of myself as a poet who pays the rent writing infomercials, food labels, and even catalogue captions. I’m aware that I’m not writing the great American novel here, but my job allows me to be fairly creative. I perform what I call “art on demand.” I know we think that artists are not pressured by the needs of the market, but let me remind you that Leonardo da Vinci didn’t paint the Mona Lisa because he wanted to. He did it because someone paid him to do it. Some rich guy in Florence probably told his wife, “Hey, honey, maybe we should get someone to paint your portrait. Let me call that Leonardo guy.” That’s how Leonardo paid his rent.

  In this respect all artists—or at least most artists who make a living with their craft—whore themselves out. You give us cash and we sell our soul. What we should remember, though, is that we might be whores but we’re still artists. And making art—or coming up with a slogan for a new brand of tampons, as I was doing at the time—is really hard when you’re not being acknowledged.