Big Fat Manifesto

by Susan Vaught

  No. More like exhausted. I don't think I've had a good night's sleep in the two weeks since Burke's big announcement about his surgery. I could so easily go face first on the layout table and start snoring. The smell of glue and developer makes my eyes—which still have glitter stuck all around the edges from the makeup chick practicing on me during rehearsal—water. At least I have on my own clothes and not Evillene's big-assed green hoopskirt. Even if it would suit my mood—the character and the skirt.

  Bet those bitches over at Hotchix would fall right over if I marched through the door swinging my galaxy-class hips in those hoops, belting out "No Bad News."

  Hmmm.

  Maybe I should. Maybe I will.

  But only after NoNo gets better medications and a little more therapy, and Freddie finishes figuring out what we can sue them for. Freddie wants to go to law school in addition to being a news anchor, so she likes to hang at Garwood University's law library when she's not working on the cable show, and they let her do it most of the time. Last time I went with her, I thought the desk chick was hot for her, which worries me a little bit. I mean, Freddie can take care of herself, but that desk chick has like fifteen tattoos and a studded dog collar. Not the woman I'd pick for Freddie's next big conquest.

  "Done," Heath says, and we swap places like a two-member ballet team to check each other's work. Fresh perspective.

  Four years of pulling the major load on any project will do that to people, I guess. Make them anticipate their partner's moves like they've been dancing for years. At deadline time, it always comes down to Heath and me, or me and Heath, or one of us, if the other's sick or out of town or something—which we try never to be, not on Wednesday nights.

  The thought of dancing with Heath makes me think about Burke, and thinking about Burke makes me want to cry. And I'm not friggin' crying, especially with friggin' green glitter still stuck to my Evillene eyes. Instead, I sing along to the retro. Three Dog Night, I think.

  Heath sings, "The window. The window. Throw her out the window." Then he starts another nursery rhyme, and it always ends with throwing whatever's in the rhyme out the window. Mary and her little lamb, Humpty Dumpty, Georgie Porgie—doesn't matter. They all go out the window. He told me once about the group who did the song. Trout Fishing in America. Only Heath would know a group named Trout Fishing in America.

  A few minutes later, I realize something's wrong and tear my attention from the drafting table, even though Heath's layout looks good.

  The problem is, he's stopped singing, and so have I. There's only the radio, playing some old Meat Loaf song now.

  I turn my head to find Heath looking at me. His hand's resting on the Fat Girl feature, and he's just looking at me.

  "What?" I open my palm and almost drop my X-Acto.

  He glances down at the piece, then back to me. "This is really good stuff, Jamie. You know that, right?"

  I clench the X-Acto in my fist like I'm planning to stab something or, worse yet, somebody. "Uh, thanks. Your spinach-diarrhea piece is a work of art, too."

  Heath frowns, and when Heath frowns, his whole face gets into the act. "I'm being serious. You've got real guts, putting this stuff out there. Putting yourself out there for people to take their shots."

  "I've gotta have that scholarship." I manage to lower the X-Acto, but my hand's shaking.

  Heath gives me a half-angry look, like that wasn't his point, but then his face relaxes and he nods. He goes back to looking at my part of the layout.

  I go back to proofing his section, but I can't concentrate. The radio's pissing me off so badly I want to hurl it against the concrete block wall. Stupid thing probably wouldn't break.

  "So he's really gonna do it?" Heath's voice flows underneath a Beatles song. "Burke, I mean. A couple of weeks ago when we talked on the phone, you were really upset, and then I heard he's not playing football. And there's this rumor—he might be having bariatric surgery?"

  "Yeah." I squeeze my eyes shut, then make myself open them. I wish the radio would die. I wish I had never heard the word bariatric. I wish Heath would shut up.

  "I feel like I should say something," he says, ruining all my wishes at once.

  My teeth don't come apart when I growl, "Like what?"

  Heath smacks his X-Acto and highlighter down on the drafting table. He braces himself with both arms and looks straight ahead, away from me. "You don't have to be such a bitch all the time, Jamie. I'm trying to be nice."

  "All right, all right." I make a point of putting my X-Acto down gently. "This is me not being a bitch. What do you think you should say about Burke's surgery?"

  Seconds pass.

  They feel like long, miserable days, but I'm not being a bitch, so I keep my mouth shut.

  "I don't know." Heath turns toward me a little. "I mean, I guess—I'm sorry. I know you've got to be worried about him. Like you need all that angst and freaking out on top of everything else we've got going this semester."

  My bottom lip trembles.

  I really hate Heath now, because he just said more than Freddie (I don't want to talk about it but you need to), NoNo (It's his decision), and my family (That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard) all put together.

  Heath made the tears come.

  All of a sudden I'm blubbering like when I was a freshman and got stung on the nose by a bee, and I really do want to faint or fall down or just... quit. Completely quit.

  Instead, I sit down on the linoleum tile floor and lean against the wall, with the drafting tables and the newspaper layout above my head like a big, woody, gluey print umbrella.

  Heath sits under the tables beside me, so close his leg touches mine. A few seconds later, he actually offers me a handkerchief. A real one. White. The damned thing's monogrammed with a curly HM in the corner.

  This makes me stop crying and roll my eyes.

  "It's my dad's," Heath says. Then he laughs. "It looks stupid, but it holds the snot. That's what matters, right?"

  "Are you really rich?" I blurt.

  Heath leans back and rests his head against the concrete block wall. His shoulder presses against mine as I actually use his stupid monogrammed hanky to wipe my eyes and nose.

  "No," he says. "Not anymore. But my parents haven't accepted that yet. My dad's company is downsizing and he's losing his job. Mom's gone through her trust fund. Our house is up for sale, but they're trying to keep it quiet."

  Oh great. And here I was, trying not to be a bitch. "I'm sorry."

  "I'm not." Heath launches into an explanation about dwelling size and SUVs and wasting energy that reminds me so much of NoNo I actually wonder if I should get the two of them better acquainted.

  Before I can even wrap my brain around that little plan, he asks, "Will you deal with the whole Burke's-bariatric-surgery thing in Fat Girl before some asshole writes in and asks about it?"

  Good point.

  Very good point.

  I use the hanky again. "Probably. Yeah. Definitely. I should."

  "You are so getting that scholarship, Jamie. I know it. I feel it."

  "Thanks."

  "You should have been editor-in-chief this year, just so you know." Heath's tone is matter-of-fact and relieved, like he's been waiting weeks to say this.

  "Yeah, well, that was never going to happen."

  "Dax didn't do it because you're fat or anything. She just likes guys better."

  "Duh."

  He laughs.

  And that makes me laugh again. Then cry a little more.

  I've definitely entered an alternate universe.

  We keep talking about college at first, then scholarships and the clock ticking down on the National Feature Award.

  Then we're chatting about other stuff.

  He plays soccer in a city league.

  I've never touched a soccer ball, but I've always wanted to.

  He thinks I sing better than the chick playing Dorothy in The Wiz. She played the lead in last spring's My Fair Lady and he didn't
like her then, either.

  I tell him how I wanted that role but couldn't have it because, of course, Dorothy isn't a Fat Girl. Fat Girls are always villains in plays. At least every play I've been in. Villains or mothers or grandmothers. Once I got to play Mother Nature, though. At least that costume was way past great.

  "Maybe I'll write a play for you," Heath says. "You can be Dorothy and do all the damned singing. How would that be?"

  I turn my head toward him a little and find myself looking into his blue eyes and tanned face, and a quirky smile I'm not sure I've ever seen before.

  It's nice.

  And I'm still in that alternate universe, but sliding slowly, slowly out of it.

  "If you write it, I'll sing it," I say, intending to sound loud and goofy, but my words come out quiet. "Swear."

  He keeps me pinned with those blue eyes. "Okay. One day, like twenty years from now when I finally have time to get it done, you're so gonna regret saying that."

  On the radio David Bowie sings, "Ground control to Major Tom."

  Heath reenters the atmosphere before I do. "Listen," he says in a more normal Heath voice, kind of flat and distant and who-cares. "I'll take the paper to the printer, okay? You get some sleep."

  "Are you serious?"

  "Yes." He holds out his hand for his hanky.

  I ball it up in my fist. "Uh, I'll wash it first, okay?"

  That quirky smile sneaks back for a second. "Fine. Good idea."

  He edges out from under the table and stands, and I follow him. My legs feel shaky, but they hold me up.

  I'm at the door of the cave, with Heath's monogrammed hanky still balled in my fist and my hand on the door frame when I ask—without even turning around—"Heath, do I stink?"

  Wliat the hell did you just do?

  Are you nuts?

  Of course you're nuts. Friggin' delirious.

  Now he'll have a ton of questions.

  But he doesn't.

  He just says, "Nope. Most of the time you smell like vanilla."

  And that's that.

  And I leave, before I can make an even bigger idiot out of myself.

  The Wire

  REGULAR FEATURE

  for publication Friday, August 31

  Fat Girl Answering, Part I

  JAMIE D. CARCATERRA

  Dear Fat Girl:

  I don't understand why you're doing this column. Do you just want to embarrass yourself?

  I'm doing this feature because of people like you, for people like you, and because I want to bleed enough on paper to win the National Feature Award. It all goes in my final portfolio. And of course I don't want to embarrass myself. I'm not embarrassed. Better look in the mirror on that one.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  Do you glory in being fat?

  Would you? Duh. No. I don't glory in being fat. I just am. Am fat. It's a fact of my life, and before all the "obesity epidemic" hoo-ha in the news, it was a fact I didn't have to think about every minute of every day.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  Is being fat an eating disorder?

  It can be, but compulsive overeating is not officially recognized in any diagnostic manual or by any insurance plan I know of. God forbid. If it got recognized by anybody other than people like Fat Girl, somebody might have to design and pay for treatments that really work.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  Do you think fat people get discriminated against?

  Absolutely. But I don't know where I stand on whether or not we should be discriminated against in some situations. We take up more space and cost more money. It's just a fact of life.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  Have you tried any of those diet plans I've seen on television?

  Probably all of them, if they didn't cost money. I don't have the bucks for glitzy systems. And people who need to lose five pounds—die, die, die. My left boob weighs more than you.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  What do you think about gastric bypass surgery?

  I'm so not going there right now. Lots of people die. Dying is not on Fat Girl's consideration list, for me or anyone else. Just shut up about gastric bypass surgery until I say otherwise.

  Dear Fat Girl:

  Obesity is a serious health problem for our

  whole nation. Are you trying to deny that?

  Obesity can be a serious health problem.

  However, there are a lot of conspiracy theories about the current news frenzy being driven by the diet industry. This would be the same diet industry that makes billions for doing nothing to help and usually making things worse. Apparently, the diet industry funded some, maybe a lot, of the studies "raising the alarm."

  Then there are the conspiracy theorists who say all the obesity-isn't-so-bad articles are funded by the billion-dollar food industry.

  Probably a little truth to both.

  Read the bloggers. Read the scientific articles. Make up your own mind.

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  "Again!" barks Mr. Dunstein, our director, starting everybody over on Act I. Everybody calls him dog names behind his back, because he looks so much like a nervous little lapdog, with his comb-over brown hair and giant eyes, and the way he twitches and hops around the auditorium, yapping at everyone.

  I'm sitting just offstage in a wobbly folding chair while the freshman idiot doing makeup practices on my eyes again. She's stuck them together twice already. I don't know how she's ever going to get her act together before opening night, but I swear she'd better not glitter-glue my lids shut that night.

  When I've had all I can take, I push the makeup girl aside and pull on Evillene's big hoopskirt. Dunstein wants me to wear it every rehearsal so I get used to the width and movement, and look natural and comfortably evil on opening night.

  Then I go sit on my throne, which is for now behind the last curtain, facing downstage.

  I so like sitting on my throne. Especially when it's not my turn to make an entrance. I listen to the action, and figure I've got ten minutes before anyone yanks on my chair, so I slip out my cell and dial Freddie to check on her. Another girl dumped her three days back, and she's been down.

  Freddie answers with, "Fashionista Services. If you can't spell muslin, you're so last year."

  "M-u-s-1-i-n." I shake my head. "I can spell crinoline, too. I'm on my throne. In my hoops."

  Freddie's snort makes me hold the cell away from my ear but I hear her say, "Get 'em, Evillene."

  Keeping my voice low so Dunstein won't catch me talking during practice, I murmur, "You feeling better today?"

  "Shit, yeah." I imagine Freddie waving her hand back and forth, all attitude. "I've had ice cream. I've run three miles to get rid of the ice cream. I even got NoNo to stand in Mickey D's while I fortified with a milkshake." She lets out a breath. "Now I need to run again, don't I? Damn."

  The lightness in her voice makes me suspicious. My stomach tightens. "You've already got another date, don't you?"

  Pause.

  Laugh.

  "Well, yeah. Nobody keeps me down for long, Jamie."

  I roll my eyes and wonder how much glitter that underclass fool stuck to my lids and cheeks. "Just promise me this one doesn't already have a girlfriend. Or a record."

  "She's clean, I swear. And she's only twenty. I met her at the bar last weekend. Thought she might be interested . . ."

  And Freddie's off, telling me all about this girl. Who sounds a lot like the last girl, but that's okay, because Freddie's happy again, and that's what counts. As for NoNo, if Freddie made her go to a fast-food joint, she's probably home showering, to wash off all the negative energy. My stomach loosens. All's right with the world again. At least for my friends.

  "Cue the witch!" Dunstein hollers, and I tell Freddie bye in a hurry.

  My throne lurches as I cram my phone back in the pocket of the skirt I've got on under the hoop costume. It lurches again, moves a few inches, and I arrange myself.

  Hey, sitting in a hoopskirt is not easy
.

  By the time the chair jerks again as the prop guys drag me toward center stage, I've got my witch-smirk firmly in place, my left hand held up beside my face, my whip raised in my right hand, and the hoops around my legs instead of over my head. Small triumphs.

  "Three, four, five," the prop guys are counting, pulling on six to keep everything smooth.

  Think evil. T/iinfc evil. Think evil.

  Breathe. Two, three. Breathe. Two, three.

  Keeping it even. Keeping it calm.

  The throne glides.

  Well, it rolls on wheels, but to the audience, it'll look like it's gliding.

  My music's starting, soft and low in the background.

  No Bad News. Think evil.

  I breathe more, deeper, getting ready to sing.

  The prop guys swing the throne around to face the audience.

  Only it doesn't stop where it's supposed to.

  The auditorium chairs spin by in a blur.

  My brain whirls with the throne.

  I drop the whip. Swear really loud, and fall against the flimsy wooden throne back. Something cracks. Hoops fly up and smack me in the nose. Fabric sticks in the glitter paint left by the underclass fool.

  "I swear I'm killing her," I shout over lots of other shouts as my throne creaks and groans, bashes one prop guy sideways, and almost flattens Dunstein before two more prop guys and half the cast get it under control.

  "No Bad News" blares from the orchestra pit—recorded, not live, like it'll be on opening night. We don't start rehearsing with the orchestra section of the band until next week.

  "Where's my whip?" I fight down the skirt and hoops and find myself face-to-face with Dunstein.

  He's purple. His jaw's working hard.

  "Whip?" I ask again, not worrying about Dunstein. He always looks like this a month before we open, when stuff goes wrong.

  And it always goes way wrong, until about a week before the curtain goes up.

  Somebody pops the whip handle into my outstretched hand.

  "Again!" Dunstein bellows.

  I tuck the whip between my knees and hold tight as the prop guys yank my wobbly throne backstage for another go.