Pretty Things Don't Break

by Lauren Jayne

  I grabbed one of my sweatshirts, put it on, and looked in the mirror. I was enormous, like a monster with boobs that would not disappear. Tugging and pulling on my sweatshirt to get a little more room between me and it, I finally gave up. I threw my hair in a ponytail and ran down to Mrs. Miller’s. I had read somewhere that sprinting burned twice as many calories, so like a streak of lightning I sprinted down to her house right on time.

  At the picnic, I walked across the grass with Mrs. Miller, carrying one of her famous cherry chip cakes, terrified when I got a glob of pink frosting on my hand. When I put the cake on the picnic table, I stared down at my hand like it was covered in blood and wiped it off on my baggy Levis. Ceci and Jeani ran up to me from across the field; they were playing soccer with about twenty other kids from our neighborhood.

  “Come on, let’s go!” they said.

  After the Carrie incident, I was so filled with shame and self-loathing that I’d gone into hiding and hadn’t really been out for months; it was nice to be out and seeing my old buddies. We played soccer and Frisbee in the park for hours; I was thrilled that I wasn’t going to miss my afternoon workout. I had gotten used to running in my room and doing jumping jacks in front of my mirror until I fell on the ground, so it was a treat to be running outside.

  By this time, the girls were starved and wanted to go and feast on the bounty that covered two long picnic tables. The thought of hot dogs and beans and cake and noodle salad brought barf into my mouth. I stared at the food as Ceci mounded her plate and motioned for me to grab one too.

  “Oh, I had a huge lunch before I came down. I’m good, but I’ll sit with you guys,” I said.

  When Ceci came to join me on the bench, she accidentally kicked over her lemonade, covering me in sticky juice. I stood up and tried to shake it off, but I was drenched, my shirt and pants sopping wet; I was wearing her entire drink. Ceci just looked at me as my wet clothes dripped into my shoes.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. “I have clothes in the back of my mom’s car; you can wear those.”

  I almost burst out laughing. Ceci was a string bean, willowy and tall, and I was huge.

  “Oh, I’m OK. It’ll dry,” I said.

  Then Mrs. Lacy went over to her little light green Honda and popped the trunk, grabbing a bag of Ceci’s clothes. The pressure in my head was pounding. Why are they doing this to me? They’re trying to embarrass me; they know I’m fat and Ceci is tiny. They want me to look like a fool, and I’m not going to do it.

  Mrs. Miller walked over, “Honey, go behind the big tree and try Ceci’s clothes; you kids are having such a blast, I’d hate to see your time together cut short. If they don’t work, I’ll bring you home. Just go ahead and try.”

  I took the clothes from Mrs. Lacy and said thank you in my most polite voice, not wanting to chance hurting her feelings. Walking behind the big tree, part of me wanted to wait a few minutes and come out and say they didn’t fit, but the other part of me wanted to stay here playing soccer and Frisbee until the sun set, so I’d have an excuse to burn more calories. I sat down on the soft green grass in my sticky, wet clothes and looked around to make sure that I was alone. Then I took off my sopping, heavy sweatshirt and threw it on the ground next to me. I was wearing a bra since my body wouldn’t really allow for me not to, and an undershirt, because I never left the house without one. The undershirt was wet, but my bra was ok. I put my arms into the tiny holes of Ceci’s short-sleeved t-shirt and was amazed that I was able to pull my big head through the top. It fell over my body. This shirt must have been huge on Ceci. Then I held up her little shorts and knew they would never ever fit on my body. I held my breath as I pulled them up, one foot at a time, sure that they wouldn’t make it past my knees. Standing up, I pulled them around my waist and was shocked that they buttoned without a problem. Embarrassed that I was wearing these tiny clothes, I walked out from behind the bushy tree holding my wet clothes in my hand and using my other hand to pull the t-shirt from my body.

  “Oh my G!” Therese said as I came up to the table. “Look at your adorable body! You’re tiny! How is it possible to have that body? I’d kill for your boobs; they don’t move.”

  Mrs. Miller gave her a scolding look and said, “Honey.”

  Then she turned to me and said, “Well, sweetheart, why do you always hide your figure? You have just a lovely little figure.”

  I was embarrassed and told her I was going to go and find the girls. Ceci and Jeani just stared at me as I walked up to them, looking at each other and then at me.

  “My clothes fit you perfectly! You need to keep that shirt; now I know what it’s supposed to look like. I look like a third grader in it and you – well, you need to keep that shirt.”

  We ran down the field and joined the rest of the neighbors in a game of touch football.

  *

  In the midst of writing my weekly meal and exercise plan, my old friend Jenny called to invite me to brunch with her family. Knowing I would have to deviate from my plan of emptying my drawers, vacuuming them out, and then reorganizing them (as well as doing my hundred and three jumping jacks, leg lifts, and push-ups) I said thank you, but no, to Jenny. Then she told me that her sisters and mom were all going to be there and that they really wanted to see me. If her mom wasn’t so nice to me and hadn’t all but let me live with them during elementary school, I would have said no, but I just couldn’t.

  “OK, I’ll be ready,” I said.

  So I did my exercises as fast as I could and then I started to panic. Brunch, did she say brunch? How will I eat brunch?

  I put on my paisley print velvet skirt and a blouse and headed down to the car where Jenny and her sister Dee were waiting for me.

  “Hey Lauren, you look amazing! When did you grow up? Do you remember the first time I picked you up?” They both started laughing so hard they were crying. “You told me that was your house,” she said, pointing to the Tip’s perfectly painted white house with a covered porch and potted plants. “I wanted to wait until you were in safely and you just milled around; then we saw you walk up to your house.”

  Heading to Seattle, I watched out the window as we drove across Lake Washington. No matter how many times I had done it, it still left me breathless every time the car buzzed over the grated bridge deck. The mountains and water were always just as majestic and awe-inspiring as the last time, glistening and beaming and proudly encircling our little city.

  Walking up to the table and seeing Jenny’s mom and sister, Misty, with their dark curly hair and beaming smiles, I was grateful that they were always so nice and welcoming to me. Their mom jumped up and gave me a huge hug.

  “It’s so good to see you, honey; it’s been forever,” she said. “We’ve missed having you around the house.”

  “It’s so good to see you guys; thank you for inviting me,” I replied.

  “Why don’t you girls grab a plate and help yourselves.”

  Those words almost paralyzed me. I picked up my fork and was sure it was dirty, so I swirled it in my water and rubbed and rubbed until it sparkled like Booboo’s silver on cleaning day. Jenny told me to go with her. She grabbed a plate and handed it to me, but I couldn’t use it. It was on the top of the pile, so everyone had been breathing on it and touching it and I knew it was filthy, so I put it down and then grabbed a few of the bobbing plates from the holder and took the third one down. It didn’t look exactly clean, but I took it anyway. All of the smells were making me feel sick – salmon and cinnamon, roast beef and French toast – nothing made sense, and everyone was piling their plates higher and higher. I had to leave. I couldn’t do it. It was too much. I took a few deep breaths, pulled my shirt over my hand, and grabbed the dirty tongs and took a piece of watermelon, three strawberries, and seven blueberries and sat down. The girls looked at my plate and started to laugh.

  Misty said, “Lauren, your little skirt wouldn’t fit around my pinky and it’s hanging on you. Go make yourself a plate. You’re so skinny; it’s a litt
le scary. You need to eat.”

  “Oh, I will, I just wanted a little fruit.”

  Hoping they would forget while they stuffed themselves with bite after bite of the potpourri of food, I watched, feeling nauseated.

  Then Misty, her beautiful brunette sister, told me to come up with her.

  “Here, you have to have a cinnamon roll, you just have to, and one of these scones. If you don’t taste it, you’ll die, trust me.”

  I looked at my plate with the gooey cinnamon roll dripping with butter, and tears welled up in my eyes. For months I had eaten grapefruit for breakfast, chicken and broccoli for lunch and dinner and a lifesaver for dessert; there was no way I could eat this. As I stared at the food, I thought about who’d cooked it – did they wash their hands, did they sneeze on it, was there a hair in it? I almost dropped the plate as I walked back to our table.

  The girls were all laughing, chatting, and eating and Misty asked how my cinnamon roll was.

  “You haven’t taken a bite; I’m not kidding, you have to try it.”

  I grabbed my scrubbed fork and took a tiny bite and put it into my mouth. Saliva filled my mouth, but I chewed and swallowed as the entire table watched me.

  “Isn’t it delicious?” Misty asked.

  “It is,” I said.

  I ate a few more bites, thinking that I could go for a long run when I got home, then took a few more and felt like my skirt was going to rip off right there in the restaurant, then looked down at my plate and it was empty. Feeling like my body was growing and growing like Veruca Salt, I excused myself to the bathroom. Needing to catch my breath, I went in there to breathe and looked in the mirror. I was a fat beast.

  I shook my head and thought, “What have you done? You are fat and stupid and ugly, and you shouldn’t have come here.” In a whirl I turned around and slipped into a stall; I fell to my knees and pulled my long hair back and wrapped the ponytail holder that was on my wrist around my hair. For the first time, I stuck my finger down my throat and tickled the thing that hung down in the middle, gagging a few times. I did it again, and then the toilet was full. After five more flushes, there was nothing left but gags. I opened the stall and looked in the mirror at my bloodshot eyes; releasing my long hair, I washed my hands three times and went back to the table feeling empty and clean again.

  Chapter 12

  Peach

  On a sunny, late spring day, I walked home from junior high in my too-big Levis and baggy sweatshirt. Looking up at the new bright green leaves with soft spring bellies, deeply breathing in the sweet cedar-scented air, I followed the clouds home and thanked God. Thank you for my vision, thank you for letting me smell this air, thank you for letting me walk, thank you for…then I snapped out of my lolling state. With my brown hair pulled back in a pony, I walked as quickly as I could past the big park after hearing that a few girls had been raped there on their way to and from school. The metallic brown car in the driveway signaled that Dad was home. As quietly as I could, I crept into the house and up the stairs, but he heard me and bounded out of his office, sounding like a tribe of hungry elephants.

  “Look at you. You look like a real slut. Only sluts wear red lipstick!” Then he went back into his office, slammed the door, and started wheeling and dealing.

  Walking into my room, I checked the mirror that I hung above my desk so I could watch my form when I did my exercises. My lips were chapped from running home; I tried to wipe the cherry ChapStick from them, but it was only making them redder and seemingly bigger, so I left them alone. Locking my door, I dropped to the floor and started my routine. My first step was to lie down and check my body. First my face: cheeks still round and full. I wondered when they would ever go away. Next, collar bones: check. They were hard and when I knocked on them there wasn’t any cushion left. Then, the worst part: boob check. Still there, unchanged, round, full, dense. What did I have to do to lose this body? Down to hipbones: check. If my undies didn’t touch my body, but just the tops of my hips, I was in good shape.

  Now on to the good stuff: 103 push-ups, 103 sit-ups; since I couldn’t break two leg exercises into numbers divisible by three or seven, I just did 73 of each, figuring my two favorite numbers glued together couldn’t be bad. Then on to leg lifts and window leg lifts, which meant I held onto the window and kicked my leg back and up. Mad that Dad was home and I couldn’t do my jumping jacks, I ran in place as quietly as I could in my silent room, with only the sound of my quick, short breaths surrounding me.

  Lying on my floor, my head spun and my breath was so fast it seemed to be choking me. As my heartbeat came down, I stared at the ceiling and thought, “Slut. Whore. How? Why?” When a lone tear rolled from my eye down my cheek and into my ear, I shot up. Violently wiping the tears from my face, I said in a voice softer than a whisper, but directed at my dad who sat in his office one wall away, “How could I be a slut when yours are the only hands that have ever touched my body? You think if you say it enough, I’ll believe it?” Then I re-did my ponytail and listened in on his phone call.

  “Peach, how are you, buddy? Yeah, it’s Joel. You still have that gold available? Well, I know, how can we miss on this one? I’ll be over later to finish up the details. Good to hear from you too, buddy, and thanks for including me on this one.”

  Rolling my eyes, I pulled myself up off my pink-carpeted floor and headed to the shower. The thought of letting my sweat sit on my body was enough to make me sick. Following my daily ritual, I grabbed my clean towel and clothes and headed into the bathroom. Lifting one foot and then the other, I was in the shower, fully dressed. Once behind the curtain, I peeled off my clothes and threw them on the bathroom floor. Before turning the water on I’d stick my hand out from behind the curtain and stick my middle finger up at the mirror. After washing my hair for 33 seconds and conditioning for three minutes, I stood under the water and repeated “God washes over you” again and again with my eyes closed until I knew it was true.

  For about ten showers before this ritual came to me, I noticed that no matter what Dad was doing, when I got ready to take a shower, he went into his bathroom. Our bathrooms shared a wall, and I knew it would just take a tiny hole for him to see me, so I took down our see-through plastic curtain and replaced it with a cloth one and then began my ritual. Dad watching me shower was not going to happen if I could help it.

  *

  A few minutes into my ninth-grade gym class, my teacher said I looked as white as a ghost and she didn’t want me to run, so she sent me to the office.

  “Hi, Mrs. Hartman sent me down here. I don’t know why, but she told me I had to sit with the nurse and have her check me out,” I said apologetically.

  “OK dear, have a seat in there and we’ll send her in,” said our school secretary (as round as she was tall, with shoes that squeaked with each step) as she unsuccessfully tried to clear her throat of the thick coating of phlegm that rested there. The office smelled like paper, spaghetti and old lady perfume.

  When the nurse walked in with her foamy-looking white shoes, she went through her routine and said, “Sure enough…you have a temp, sweetie. We need to send you home to get a little rest.” She came out and told the school secretary, who said she’d call my folks to come and get me.

  “No, they aren’t home. I can walk,” I pleaded.

  “Where do you live, dear?” the secretary asked.

  “Just down the street,” I lied.

  She pulled up my file to get our number and looked at our address. “I know right where you live; it’s got to be close to three miles. You are not walking home with a fever. Have a seat; I’ll call your Mom.” After a short conversation on the phone, she smiled at me and said, “OK dear, your dad was home, and he’s coming to get you.”

  “Umm, I really feel better, I’ll just head back to class,” I begged.

  “Sorry dear, school policy. Now go and get your things together, your dad will be here soon.”

  When Dad pulled up to school I felt completely defeated
; having to willingly crawl into his car made me want to run as far and as fast as I could. As I opened the back door, Dad told me he wasn’t my chauffeur and to get up in the front seat – now. Sitting as close to the door as I could, I stared out the window. Dad missed our turn and headed towards the freeway. I just shook my head and gazed out the window at the bright blue sky and whispy white clouds; I was transfixed. Pulling into an old chalet-looking apartment building behind Denny’s in Renton, Dad got out and told me to come with him. “You can’t just sit in the car.” I followed three steps behind him. A shirtless guy answered the door with a cigarette hanging from his mouth.

  “Oh hey, Joel, come on in. Who do we have here?” He looked at me while putting on his t-shirt that had been hanging over a dirty green chair dotted with holes.

  “This is my daughter, Lauren.”

  “Well, look at her.”

  I kept my arms crossed around my body and gave a good tug at my shirt, trying to keep it from resting on my chest, and kept my eyes on the door. They talked for a bit, and he laughed at Dad’s jokes, and then out of nowhere Dad turned around and lifted my shirt and undershirt almost up to my bra and ran the back of his hand over my stomach in front of his friend. Pulling my undershirt and sweater down to cover my bare stomach and exposed bra, I glared at my dad and at Peach. I looked at them and through them like a prizefighter before the first round bell then walked to the door and down the stairs. The fifteen-minute ride home seemed to last hours. I wished I’d had the balls to walk home from Renton, but instead I sat silently in the back seat, staring out the window.

  When he dropped me at home, I watched his car pull down our hill and ran to my bathroom, turning the hot water on until the steam choked me. Safe behind the locked door, with the sound of the pounding water and spinning fan, my salty tears came like a flash flood. Bringing the soap to my bare stomach, my body lurched away from me. My hand was his hand. The water in my ears was replaced by their laughter; his voice wouldn’t leave me: “Look at this,” as my dad pointed out the one beauty mark I’ve had right under my bra forever like he was pointing out his favorite ride at an amusement park. Squeezing my eyes shut, I couldn’t shake the visual of Peach’s slow smile as he went to touch my stomach while Dad held my shirt up. Their laughter when I ripped my shirt down and walked out followed me like a dark shadow. Dropping to my knees, I prayed that the pelting water would wash the day away.