Choose Somebody Else

by Yvonne Fein

  MONDAY 23RD AUGUST

  Rafe’s mother, calls to thank me for Friday night. I’m wary from the get-go.

  ‘Those profiteroles, darling,’ she says. ‘Outstanding. I would’ve asked you to pack some up for me to take home, but I have to watch my figure.’

  Bitch! She’s as long and thin as Pinocchio’s nose.

  ‘Oh, and sweetie pie, you haven’t forgotten the Aaronson wedding? Only three weeks away.’

  No, I haven’t forgotten it, you sociopath. It’s one of my deepest pleasures to go out in public at this size.

  ‘Tell you what,’ she says, ‘if you lose four kilos before the wedding, I’ll take you shopping for a new dress. Wouldn’t that be lovely?’

  ‘I have a dress, thank you, Hannah.’

  ‘But it’s a wedding, darling. You don’t want to go in one of your dowdy brown shmattes. Besides, shopping together is such fun.’

  Whatever my size, shopping with Hannah won’t ever make it onto my bucket list. Having done it once I swore never again. Her narrow neck craned over the changing-room doors. Sometimes just her nose insinuated itself into the changing rooms proper. Did she think she’d be able to smell what was going on inside?

  Every so often when I enter a room, Rafe’s parents and Rafe himself, fall silent. I know they’ve been talking about me. My size is an endless fascination. And Rafe’s no dauntless knight. No way he’d be defending me.

  TUESDAY 24TH AUGUST

  Big fight with Rafe, tonite. Beyond feeling anything but rage and pain.

  WEDNESDAY 25TH AUGUST

  The doctor is nonplussed. By now I should be at least 3 kilos down. Am I sticking to the programme? Am I walking 2 km a day? Yes, Doctor.

  FRIDAY 27TH AUGUST

  I’d love to confront some other outsized human and ask, Is there anyone—partner, lover— who looks at you and, if you’re quick enough, do you catch them in mid-reaction, their aversion making their gorge rise? Someone who’s embarrassed to be seen in public with you?

  There’s this little number my father tells me was a dumke, a tune, from the Russian steppes. The Jews appropriated it, adding minor chords and a lyric to break your heart. It loses something in the translation because the way he does the English version, it comes out sounding like: cabbages rot in the field, children are hungry and my love has a hole in her head.

  I don’t get the sense of romance he seems to think it’s imbued with, though it probably speaks to a common, if grim, predicament. But the melody, the harmony he taught me… I have this dream I could belt it out with say, Barbara Streisand, to audiences as cool as Greenwich Village poets, or to patrons of Bourbon Street bars or even to my own Yiddn in the Lui Bar high above the Melbourne streets—all of us soaring into the stratosphere, fuelled by Polish vodka. But what I do instead is squander my voice on geriatrics. Well, not really squander so much as exhaust, although part of me feels it’s a kind thing to do…

  SUNDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER

  So, okay. Today it’s the OAPs, the old age pensioners.

  Periodically I have ’em rocking in the aisles with favourites from the old country. My audiences chiefly comprise of octo- and nonagenarian, full-time residents at various Jewish aged-care facilities who, to a resident, believe I’m the dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter they lost before or during the Holocaust.

  So today I visit Tents of Jacob to sing to another set of ancients. They do love me. Each time I perform the old favourites, they clap and sing along: Tumbalalaika; My Yiddishe Mamme; Raisins and Almonds. I know why they cry to the music and lyrics: families lost, children estranged, stuck in this facility where no one sees them beyond the dreary present. No one appreciates them for what they once were, animated with a quicksilver life-force that made each day a courageous salute to survival.

  My parents also survived Hitler’s whirlwind of blood and tragedy. In fact, Hitler introduced them to one another in one of his concentration camps. I realise from a very early age that I wouldn’t have been born were it not for the Holocaust. The idea becomes jammed inside my brain, enough to make anybody eat. Only not everybody does. Why do I?

  ‘Darlink,’ says Ina, rolling up to me on her walker, ‘Sweetheart, Darlink, you look to me a bisl fatter, a bisl bigger than last time you came. Is everytink all right by you? Is your husbant, heaven forbid, lookin’ at udder women. You know dis happens when you let yourself go.’

  I swallow my rage (maybe if I didn’t swallow it, I might also not have to swallow so much food. I swallow that thought quickly, too), but driving home, I fantasise about grabbing someone’s walking stick and delivering a sharp whack to the backs of Ina’s legs. A sort of kneecapping from behind.

  LATER THAT NIGHT

  This hurts to write. Rafe and I barely speaking. Our niece has what her school calls its ‘Presentation Ball’. Parents and close relatives invited. You mortgage the house to pay for a new outfit and 2 tickets even if the kid’s not your own. I tell Rafe I won’t be seen in public at this size. He says I have to go or number-one niece will be scarred for life. I say what about me? He says, ‘What about you?’ and leaves the house. I leave too. My local 7-Eleven has a special on Violet Crumbles.

  BREAKFAST

  ½ cantaloupe, low-fat yoghurt, black coffee, no sugar.

  LUNCH

  other half of the fucking cantaloupe.

  wholemeal crispbreads

  cup of black tea, no sugar

  SNACK

  tomato

  6 green olives (pitted)

  black coffee

  DINNER

  cup lettuce, lemon juice

  1/2 cup steamed cauliflower

  200g grilled whiting

  SNACK

  kiwi fruit

  fennel tea

  MONDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER

  The doctor is unamused. Profanity, he says, is the last refuge of the uncultivated. I say I only slipped it in to make sure he was reading it all, considering the money Rafe was paying him. He asks if I am really eating as indicated by the food diary. Cholesterol 8.3, blood pressure off the charts. Madame, you are quite simply killing yourself. Your diary is a work of fiction.

  TUESDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER

  I’m seeing this fat specialist purely at Rafe’s behest. If I said I’d stopped caring long ago about the sight of me, the size of me, I’d be lying. Whenever there’s a wedding or bar mitzvah to attend, I want to hide. I hate having to wear ballooning garments which only emphasise my shape. I hate seeing the slim beautiful people in designer rags I’d buy and wear in a heartbeat if I could. Still, the kids have no problem with it; maybe eight and ten-year-olds just don’t see the world as adults do. Mind you, the kids never knew the svelte and limber me. Rafe did and can’t get past it. But he doesn’t know that not long before we met I’d gone on this nasty-arse diet with a mean gym coach who trimmed 50 kilos off me. Through our courtship and the first year of marriage I managed to keep it off. Then, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far, I lost my elasticity. The number of calories grew exponentially, exercise decreased to zero and again I found myself inflating.

  I decide to make the next entry into my food diary a work of unmodified non-fiction.

  WEDNESDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER

  BREAKFAST

  3 country-style sausages

  2 fried eggs, toast with butter

  cup white coffee, 2 sugars

  LUNCH

  Big Mac

  large fries

  apple pie

  Coke

  another apple pie

  AFTERNOON SNACK

  Mars Bar

  LATE AFTERNOON SNACK

  walnuts, cashews, hazelnuts, sultanas, dried apricots

  DINNER

  1/2 chicken, skin on; potato salad apple crumble, ice-cream

  BEFORE BED

  4 Tim Tams;
cup of tea with milk, no sugar

  (Don’t want to overdo the sugar thing)

  THURSDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER

  The doctor’s eyes cross when he reads it.

  ‘Why do you keep coming?’ he asks.

  ‘For my husband’s sake.’

  ‘But he must see you haven’t lost weight in months.’

  ‘We’re both in denial. He’s convinced if I’d only do as you asked, our problems would be over. To him, it’s that simple.’

  ‘And to you?’

  ‘I cling to the hope he won’t walk out on me if I stay as I am.’

  ‘I can’t see you anymore,’ the doctor says.

  ‘You’re firing me?’

  ‘You could try Gluttons Anonymous.’

  ‘Glu…Glu—–’

  ‘I won’t charge you for this session.’

  At home I find the babysitter looking after the children.

  ‘Where’s Rafe?’ I ask.

  ‘Gone.’

  ‘Gone where? The supermarket? The library? The bookshop?’

  ‘Gone, gone. Three suitcases and golf clubs gone.’

  I try to pay her but Rafe’s taken care of it. Typical. He’s hard to hate. But he hasn’t even left a note. I start to cry.

  FRIDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER

  I’m thinking of changing my status on Facebook to ‘abandoned’. I don’t have a job; I’m entirely dependent on Rafe; I can’t even write about it. Who’d download a song about a forsaken tub of lard? My mum would nod sadly and say, ‘Nobody was fat in Auschwitz’. My dad would blame me. ‘Of course, he left. Who wants a partner with a tuches the size of Tasmania?’

  SATURDAY 11TH SEPTEMBER

  Sometimes I wake in the middle of the night thinking, Oh God, did I really eat all that today? I Google Gluttons Anonymous but they don’t have an Australian chapter. I find Overeaters Anonymous (OA).

  SUNDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER

  Rafe comes over on Sunday. It’s easy not to run into his arms because he hugs himself so tightly, as though someone’s shot him in the stomach. The children dance around him, pulling at his hands until he is forced to pick them up and embrace them. His eyes water; he’s suffering.

  ‘Here’s eight hundred dollars. I’ll give you that amount every Sunday. You and the children shouldn’t go without, so until we’ve settled with the lawyers this will do, won’t it?’ I nod. We’re both miserable. I want to ask him if we can give it another go, but I don’t. He was the one who left. I’m not going to drag him back.

  SUNDAY 17TH OCTOBER

  Five weeks of OA and I haven’t lost a cracker. True, I haven’t stuck religiously to their diet but I’ve done some serious culling. No fizzy drinks, no peanuts and—well, that’s about it. Oh, and no more sugar in my coffee.

  MONDAY 25TH OCTOBER

  OA meets on Mondays. I suspect its format is similar to AA’s, though I’ve never been to their meetings. Alcohol was never my thing.

  So, each Monday night we proceed to the seats we occupied the previous week. I’ve landed next to the weirdest of guys, Jake. Only vaguely chubby and tells me he’s been coming for eighteen months, lost 68 kilos. I almost swoon. He wants to lose another ten and he’s out of here.

  ‘Why are you here?’ he asks that first night. I figure he’s a moron so I turn my back.

  The following week he sits by me again and says dreamily, ‘I love big girls’.

  MONDAY 1ST NOVEMBER

  700 grams down!

  Sugared coffee, peanuts, soft drinks out! Schnitzels, out! Now it’s broiled chicken or fish. At OA they tell you to remove all the crackly skin from chicken, but where’s the pleasure in that? There’s only so much self-denial I can bear.

  I must miss next Monday’s session. It clashes with the kids’ parent-teacher night but still I delete potato chips from the menu.

  TUESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER

  Rafe turns up at the school. As we wait our turn, the silence between us is heavy. He breaks it, his eyes searching my face and body for answers.

  ‘Have you lost weight?’

  ‘A tad, maybe.’

  Enough to bring you back? I wonder, clamping my jaws shut to prevent the words from escaping. Then we are called in.

  Walking into the fifth-grade classroom I see a shower of gold stars next to Joseph’s name on the chart. He’s always been that good. Amy’s teacher feels that by third grade our daughter should know her times tables better than she does. She says Amy has started drawing pictures with only me, her brother and herself. Sometimes there’s another small figure but usually it’s just a party of three. Rafe moves uncomfortably in his seat and stands.

  ‘I think we’ve covered all our bases. I’ll look forward to their end-of-year report cards.’

  I’d like to stay a little longer but what could I add to the mix? That my husband walked out on me because I ate too much? That I’ve joined OA? Mostly it’s better to say nothing at all.

  THURSDAY 11TH NOVEMBER

  I have this fantasy that I could rise, huge and splendid—like Queen Latifa, maybe—from the waters around Torquay and sing my heart out. I know my voice is nothing like hers but it’s decent enough to warrant an audience better than old folks waiting in line for their turn to clock off. If I could only do that, perform for an audience whose minds aren’t too clouded or hands too weak to applaud, maybe I could forget my billowing stomach. Maybe I could sing till my heart was no longer broken and I could stop eating my frustration: the frustration would be gone.

  I think of those big, black, blues singers and musicians who never gave a flying fuck for outward appearances: Fats Waller, Fats Domino, Winifred Atwell, Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey. Not Billie Holiday. Heroin-thin but still with that huge power—exception proving the rule. Did the rest of you all refuse to downsize for fear of losing your matchless sound?

  I read somewhere that Barbara Streisand was never sure her impressive honker wasn’t the source of her extraordinary range and resonance. So she opposed rhinoplasty because she never knew whether it might fatally compromise her voice. And Mama Cass? Was she scared to lose weight because it might have caused her voice to dwindle to skinny nothingness? We could have been sisters except they say she choked on a ham sandwich. A Jewish girl with a voice like an angel. What an appalling death. Not true, of course. It was a heart attack, but the tabloids had much more fun with the other…She was thirty-two.

  I’ve never sung thin. (Time with Rafe in my thinness was too filled with pleasing him to find the space). Was never paid a fee for performing. The way the aged-care board members viewed it, they were doing me the favour: let the fat girl sing .

  I finally look inside the OA recipe book. Maybe I’ll replace McDonalds with home-made burgers—leanest mince, no buns. Maybe steamed vegetables to go with them. Am I really writing this?

  MONDAY 15TH NOVEMBER

  Jake of 68 kilos fame asks me out for coffee after the meeting. I’m proud I no longer use sugar.

  ‘How’s the weight this week?’ he asks

  ‘None of your business.’

  I hug the answer to myself. Four kilos and counting.

  MONDAY 22ND NOVEMBER

  5 ½ kilos down.

  Another sugarless coffee with Jake. He’s a medical scientist researching a cure for depression. Was attracted to it because his mother and brother suffered terribly from the disease. He calls it a disease because he says it’s more debilitating than almost any other sicknesses. Except for, maybe, cancer, leukaemia, motor neurone and such like. But I don’t say it.

  THURSDAY 4TH DECEMBER

  I wipe out chocolate bars and biscuits. I actually collect my supplies and toss them into a garbage bag. It’s bin night so I go outside and dump the lot into the black hole. Which leaves a huge void in my eating timetable. Back in my kitchen I find myself dreaming of the old days when I could eat an
ything. I shake myself and go for a couple of raw carrots. If you chew them thoroughly and then suck on the pulverised product, you get a serious sugar hit.

  Jake and I have coffee most Monday nights now. He’s frustrated because he’s stuck on a plateau. I try to be sympathetic but seriously, only five kg to go! Suck it up, Jake. If I had only 5 kilos to lose, I’d be dancing in the streets.

  Possibly naked.

  We don’t discuss my weight but often he’ll sigh and say something wistful about BBGs—Big Bottomed Girls. I’m getting this odd feeling he prefers me fat.

  The oddest thing is that whole swathes of time can now glide by without my wanting to eat anything. I used to eat, say, a raisin toast with butter and honey to tide me over until bedtime, no matter how large dinner had been. Then off to the 7-Eleven before bed to buy Maltesers or Fantales to eat with my television habit. Some nights I’d even go to bed thinking tonight was the night I’d stop binging, but then the panic would start. It was never about hunger. It was a raging need, like a siren in my brain, shrill, demanding what I could eat next.

  But now the urge is on the wane. Don’t want to make too much of it, but maybe I allow myself a glimmer of hope.

  MONDAY 8TH DECEMBER

  Another 2 kilos down. Nine kilos altogether; 41 to go. I’ve started jog-walking around Caulfield racecourse; just me on the outside track in grand isolation. Well, there is the odd groundsman (’onya luv, you can do it), but nobody else comes when there’s no race meeting. I strap weights onto my wrists and flail my arms like a demented windmill. I’m on a roll.

  Jake has asked me to a movie. I say I will if my mum can babysit.

  She can. I go.

  It’s a whole new experience without coke, popcorn and ice-cream. I’m restless, twitchy. Then I have a light-bulb moment. I realise movie eating is just another way of eating in the dark where no one can see me. With a couple of deep breaths, I find I can concentrate. The movie is good. That helps.

  WEDNESDAY 10TH DECEMBER

  Rafe comes over at dinner time. I ask him to stay; kids delighted. The three of them eat salad, then schnitzels with mashed potatoes. I’m into baked salmon and steamed broccoli.