The Fat Girl

by Marilyn Sachs

  “Thank you, Mrs. De Luca,” I said. “I won’t be staying long.”

  I could hear her talking and laughing with her sons, the bustle of getting out, the door slamming, the sound of the car starting up, and then silence. Ellen was still looking at the cookies on the table.

  “Hey, Ellen,” I said. “I’m sorry you’re sick. I brought your little pot over, and . . . well, we missed you in class today.”

  She looked up at me then, and the tears began streaming down her face.

  “Hey, Ellen,” I said, “. . . listen Ellen, don’t cry. Listen . . . I . . . I’m sorry. I didn’t mean what I said.”

  “Yes, you did,” she said. “You did mean it.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I lied. “It was just a lousy day for me. You know how it is sometimes. You have a lousy day, and you just say stupid things that you don’t mean. Honestly, Ellen, I didn’t mean it.”

  “I’m going to kill myself,” she said in a flat voice.

  I could feel the terror twisting up inside my stomach. I wanted to open the window and yell for help. I wanted to get up and run away from her, away from what she was saying. She was going to kill herself. My God! I didn’t even want to be in the same room with her.

  “No,” I cried, “no, don’t . . . .”

  “I’m going to kill myself,” she repeated.

  I wanted to get out of that room as fast as I could. But I knew I couldn’t leave her alone there in the house. Where was her mother? Oh, God! Her mother wouldn’t be back until she dropped Matt off at the park, bought Ricky his tennis shoes, and picked up a few things at the store. Maybe a couple of hours. I was all alone with the fat girl in her house, and I was going to have to stay with her until her mother returned, and I was going to have to stop her from killing herself. I was so frightened and so close to bawling myself, I could barely say to her, “Please, Ellen, don’t talk like that. Don’t! Just because a creep like me says a dumb thing . . .”

  “It’s not you.”

  “I didn’t mean it, Ellen. Honestly.”

  “It’s everybody else too. Nobody likes me. I’m going to kill myself.”

  “Don’t Ellen! Don’t say it!”

  “Why not?”

  “Nobody should say it. And you’re only a kid. Kids shouldn’t talk like that. There’s all sorts of wonderful things ahead of you to look forward to.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . well . . . like . . .”

  Her arm lay on the table, huge and pale like lard. I should’ve reached out and held those swollen fingers in my hand and showed her I cared about her. A shudder of revulsion ran through me.

  Her fat face glistened from all her fat tears. Her nose began running, and she sniffled and snorted and said, “Nobody cares about me.”

  “Sure they do. Your family . . .”

  “They’re ashamed of me. My brothers don’t want to be seen with me. They don’t want anybody to know I’m their sister. Nobody cares about me.”

  I reached out and took her hand in mine. I felt her hot, clammy, fat fingers in my palm, but I held on. The tears were bouncing off the plate of cookies in front of her. “I’m going to kill myself,” she said again, but it sounded different this time, not so fierce, as if it mattered that I was holding her hand. I could feel the panic inside me begin to ease.

  “Look, Ellen, stop talking like that. Things are going to be different from now on. Maybe the kids in school haven’t been very nice, and maybe I’ve been a jerk too, but . . .”

  “You’re not the only one.”

  “It’s going to be different from now on, Ellen,” I said very slowly, stalling for time. I looked at the clock over the refrigerator. Only eight minutes had passed. I had at least another hour and three-quarters to go before her mother returned.

  She looked at me, and I smiled and squeezed her hand. Then she looked away, as she always did when I caught her watching me. She was embarrassed. Good, I thought, sneaking another look at the clock. Nine minutes gone and all I had to do was stall her until her mother returned. What should I do? Ask her to play cards or Monopoly?

  “Why don’t you just go and leave me alone,” she said.

  “I’m not leaving,” I told her.

  I checked the clock again. Not even ten minutes had passed. I felt exhausted, but I knew I couldn’t just get up and leave her alone in that house. As long as I remained, she would stay alive. I didn’t want her to die. I didn’t want anybody to die, not even the fat girl. I loathed her, loathed her fat, ugly face and the fat, ugly fingers I was holding in my hand. But I didn’t want her to die—even if it meant she would be in my ceramics class next term.

  “Look,” I said, dropping her hand carefully but moving my chair closer, “Promise me you won’t do it.”

  She shook her head but kept her eyes averted.

  “Let’s just talk to your mother when she gets back.”

  She snapped her head back. “No! Don’t tell my mother. Promise you won’t tell her.” Her fat face was flushed a kind of purple, and her pale, little eyes were glittering like small pieces of green Jell-O.

  “Okay, okay, Ellen, calm down. Let’s make a bargain. I promise not to tell your mother, if you promise not to kill yourself.”

  “And I don’t want you to tell your girlfriend either,” Ellen yelled, her face full of blotchy, purple spots. “I don’t want her laughing at me. That’s what she’ll do if you tell her. She’ll laugh at me.”

  “No, no, no, Ellen. You don’t know Norma. She would never laugh at you. She likes you. She . . .”

  “Well I don’t like her, and I want you to promise that you won’t tell her. I want you to promise you won’t tell her, or my parents, or anybody else.”

  “Okay, Ellen, I promise. Just calm down.”

  She did calm down. Then she began talking, while I listened and watched the clock.

  “I’ve never had a friend. Once, in second grade, there was another girl who was fat too. And everybody kept acting like we had to be friends because we both were so fat. I guess I was willing, but she wasn’t. She wasn’t as fat as me, and she acted even meaner than the others. They didn’t like her either, but she would rather sit by herself during lunch than have anybody see her with me. Once she even told me to stop watching her all the time. She always thought I was watching her. But I wasn’t. Why would I watch her anyway? If I’m going to watch somebody, it wouldn’t be her. It would be . . .”

  She hesitated. I tried not to look at the clock.

  “It would be somebody good-looking, somebody like you. I know you hated it because I kept watching you. But I didn’t mean anything. It was only . . . well . . . I’ve got my dreams like anybody else. I can’t help that. Inside, I’m just like anybody else.”

  “Sure you are, Ellen. Just don’t get so worked up. Here, have a cookie.”

  I held one out to her, but she shook her head and went on talking, her small, squeaky voice high and shrill.

  “Why should you be interested in me? No boy’s ever been interested in me. I’m like any other girl inside. I’m nearly seventeen, and I want what everybody my age wants. But there’s no way I can have it.”

  “Sure you can, Ellen,” I told her. “People will get to know you, and they’ll like you.”

  She shook her head.

  “You knew I was watching you, and I knew you knew and you hated me, but I couldn’t help myself. I used to watch you and that girlfriend of yours. I’d see you kissing and making out, and it made me feel good, like I was a part of it. But you hated me, and you gave me all those mean looks, and then you said . . .”

  “Look, Ellen, I’ve been a jerk. Okay? A real jerk, and I’m sorry. It’s going to be different from now on. I’m going to be your friend, and Norma’s going to be your friend. You’ll feel better and you’ll have
friends and nobody will ever say mean things to you again, because . . . because I won’t let them.”

  Her mother didn’t come back for two and a half hours. Ellen stood up and walked with me to the door. “Remember,” she whispered, “you promised you wouldn’t tell anybody.”

  “Sure, Ellen,” I said. “I remember.”

  six

  From the first phone I could find, I called her house. If Ellen had answered, I would have hung up. Luckily it was her mother.

  “Mrs. De Luca, this is Jeff Lyons.”

  “Who?”

  “The boy in Ellen’s class. I was just at your house.”

  “Oh yes, J—”

  “No, no, please, Mrs. De Luca! Don’t say my name. I don’t want Ellen to know I’m calling.”

  “Oh?”

  “Is she there, Mrs. De Luca? I mean, in the same room?”

  “No, she’s upstairs watching TV. What is it? What’s wrong?” Her voice was worried.

  “I’m very sorry to tell you this, Mrs. De Luca, but Ellen told me she was going to kill herself.”

  God, that felt good! Telling her! Getting it off my back and onto hers. Now I’d done my duty, and I could go home and stop worrying about her. Now it was her family’s worry. They could lock her up or send her away or do whatever you have to do to stop a nutty, fat girl from committing suicide.

  “Oh!” said her mother.

  “I feel bad about telling you this, Mrs. De Luca. She made me promise I wouldn’t tell you, but I knew you had to know. Maybe you don’t have to tell her I told you. And if there’s anything I can do . . .”

  “Yes, you can, Jeff,” said her mother. “Just don’t tell anybody.”

  “No, of course not,” I said, “but I knew I should tell you.”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “I was afraid she . . .”

  Her mother laughed. “She won’t. You don’t have to be afraid. She’s always saying she’s going to kill herself. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “But . . .”

  “At least once a day,” said her mother, “she says she’s going to kill herself. Usually before dinner. But once she gets some food in her, she feels better. And tonight I’m making stuffed breast of veal, one of her favorites, so she should really cheer up.”

  “She said she was going to do it today, Mrs. De Luca. I was really worried. I’m still worried.”

  “No, it’s fine, Jeff. Believe me. I’m her mother. She doesn’t mean it. But it was nice of you to call, and I won’t tell her you told me. Goodbye.”

  I called Norma and told her.

  “But there’s nothing to worry about, Jeff. You heard what her mother said.”

  “I know. But you didn’t see her when she said she was going to do it. You didn’t see how her face turned purple and the words came out between her teeth.” The panic began twisting up inside me again. “Suppose she really does it, Norma, suppose she . . . I don’t know . . . but suppose she does.”

  “Jeff! Jeff! Stop worrying. You did what you could. You went over to her house. You spent the afternoon there, and you made her feel good. Then you told her mother. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  “Do you really think so, Norma?”

  “I really do. And from now on, just be nice to her. I’ll try too.”

  “But don’t tell her I told you. I promised I wouldn’t tell you. She thinks we laugh at her.”

  “Of course I won’t tell her. And maybe I can get some of the other kids to treat her better.”

  “I wonder why she said she was going to kill herself if she wasn’t going to do it?”

  “Maybe she does it to get attention.”

  “But how can she even say it?”

  “She doesn’t mean it, Jeff, so it doesn’t count.”

  “No, I guess it doesn’t—if she really doesn’t mean it.”

  “And isn’t it funny how her mother said she was making breast of veal tonight for dinner and that would cheer her up?”

  Norma began laughing and so did I, just as the fat girl said we would.

  That night, I woke up so frightened, it was like being five years old all over again. Things crouched there in the darkness around my bed, and I leaped up and ran down the hall to my mother’s room. Her door was closed.

  The small night-light from the bathroom calmed me down. I leaned, still trembling, against my mother’s door and felt the terrors begin to leave. I moved on into the kitchen, snapped on the light and looked at the clock. Only two thirty. It felt much later.

  What would she have said, my mother? I grinned foolishly. She would have reasoned with me. She would have spoken slowly, logically, with just an edge of impatience in her voice.

  “There is nothing to be afraid of, Jeff.”

  “But I’m afraid, Mom.”

  “What are you afraid of, Jeff?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid.”

  “You can’t be afraid of nothing, Jeff.”

  “There’s something there, Mom. It’s going to get me. It’s going to kill me.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of.”

  “But I’m afraid.”

  It was always a draw until she put the lock on the door. And it worked. Up until now. Up until the fat girl.

  I hadn’t been dreaming about her. She wasn’t even in the dream. But when I woke up, I was thinking about her as I’d been thinking about her all through the evening. The fat girl—Ellen—said she wanted to kill herself. She didn’t mean it. Her mother said she didn’t mean it, and Norma said she didn’t mean it. But she said it. Maybe she wasn’t afraid to say it, but I was afraid. I’ve always been afraid of dying. I don’t want to die. I don’t even want to think about dying. And I don’t want to think about anybody else—even the fat girl—dying.

  I opened the refrigerator and inspected the interior. Food—I suddenly needed to eat. You couldn’t eat if you were dead, could you? I passed over the four cold artichokes, the leftover pork roast, and reached for the cold mashed potatoes.

  “What’s the matter, Jeff? Can’t you sleep?”

  My mother stood in the doorway, watching me eat my cold mashed potatoes.

  “I just woke up, Mom, and I guess I was hungry.”

  My mother nodded and moved up to the table. She didn’t have the rumpled look of somebody who had just been awakened.

  “I didn’t wake you, did I, Mom?”

  She shook her head and sat down. “No. I was up. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Want some?” I indicated the bowl of potatoes.

  “God, no! I can’t think of anything worse than cold mashed potatoes in the middle of the night.” She laughed suddenly, and I swallowed another spoonful and grinned back at her.

  “Different strokes for different folks,” I said.

  “But I am a little hungry.” She opened the refrigerator and looked inside. She pulled out a cold artichoke, put it on a plate and joined me at the kitchen table. We both munched away for a while in a comfortable, friendly way.

  “Mom,” I said, “can I ask you something?”

  Her teeth made sharp, little parallel lines in the artichoke petal. “Sure, Jeff, what is it?”

  “Did you ever work with people who said they were going to commit suicide?”

  “Not recently. But when I was younger, I worked on a psychiatric ward, and some of the patients threatened to kill themselves.”

  “And did they?”

  “Some of them did,” said my mother, picking up the heart of the artichoke and biting off a small piece.

  “But . . . do most of them . . . I mean, if people say they will . . .”

  My mother swallowed the last bit of artichoke, daintily licked her fingers with her small, pink tongue an
d looked at me. “Why are you so interested, Jeff?”

  “I’d just like to know, Mom.”

  “Is it for a school report?”

  “No.”

  “Well . . .” She was looking worried now. “That’s not what’s keeping you up, is it, Jeff?”

  “I guess it is, Mom. I know somebody who says she’s going to kill herself.”

  She was still looking at me. I thought to myself, Why don’t I tell her about Ellen? I was bursting with it, and I wanted to tell my mother. I wanted to share it with her like we were sharing the quiet kitchen in the middle of the night, sharing a good, close feeling that we never usually had during the day. Maybe after I told her about Ellen, I could even tell her how scared I was that night. Maybe she’d laugh when I told her, and then I’d laugh, and then she’d say, “It’s not so terrible to be afraid.”

  “Jeff?”

  “What is it, Mom?”

  She was still looking at me, a troubled look on her face.

  “It’s not Wanda you’re talking about, is it? It’s not Wanda who says she’s going to kill herself?”

  “No, Mom, it has nothing to do with Wanda.”

  “You’re sure, Jeff? You’re not trying to hide anything from me?”

  “Mom, I swear it has nothing to do with Wanda. It’s this fat girl in my class. Why do you keep worrying it’s Wanda?”

  “Because suddenly she seems to be going through some kind of stage or other. And there’s something else. She hasn’t said anything to you, has she?”

  “About what?”

  “About what’s bothering her. She . . . she’s been going over to your father’s house a lot. Suddenly. She hasn’t done that in years.”

  “Dad’s house? Wanda’s been going to Dad’s house?”

  My mother’s face showed relief at my surprise. She bent closer toward me over the table and lowered her voice. “You know I don’t like to nag you or butt into your relationship with your father. I don’t ask any questions, and I don’t expect you to tell me anything. I don’t even want to hear anything about him. You know, Jeff, I don’t pry.”