by Susan Vaught
Freddie picks me up from play practice around 8:00 PM, and it takes me most of the drive home to scrub glitter off my eyes. Thank God for cleansing cream and Freddie's stash of junk cloths (kept mostly for me), or every bit of that itchy makeup would have been wiped on my expensive Diana's blue two-piece dress.
NoNo's belted in the front seat holding some Ecology Justice Democracy Nonviolence fliers."I'm hand coloring the Green Party logo," she explains as we pull into my driveway. She taps the upper left-hand corner of the stack of papers. "Printers wash out all the vividness."
"What-ev-er," snipes Freddie. She parks behind our car—we only have one, a Ford even older than the antique Freddie inherited from her sister—and shuts off the engine with a slam-and-jerk. A buzzer beeps, so she slams off the headlights and we get out of the car.
Lights from my house spill across our tiny front yard, and I smell fresh cornbread and something rich and buttery and meaty. Brunswick stew. My stomach rumbles. I could eat my weight in cornbread and stew, and I will eat in front of Freddie and NoNo at my own house—just not very much, even though they're my best friends. I'll have a bowl, maybe. No seconds. Even though I worked my ass off at practice.
"I'm for dinner." Freddie sniffs the fragrant air. "Apps can wait long enough for us to grab chow, right?"
"Your mother is such a good cook." NoNo clutches her flyers against her dye-free T-shirt and hemp jeans as I unlock the front door. "Do you have any lettuce?"
"Yeah." I knew she wouldn't touch the stew (meat) or the cornbread (buttermilk, eggs, grease on the skillet). "And three cans of vegetarian beans, just for you."
We let ourselves in and weave through the stacks of junk my mom keeps in the front room, "just in case we need something." She never throws anything away, which comes in handy sometimes, but mostly gets on my nerves. Freddie and NoNo never mention the mess in my house.
I'm not sure if that's good or bad.
At least my room's fairly clean, and we make Mom keep her stacks out of the hallway.
Mom greets us in the kitchen with a big hello and hugs.
"Dinner's on the stove." She's wearing her gray hair pulled back in a bun, and when she gives me a squeeze, she smells like fresh soap and powder. As she lets me go, she glances at NoNo. "I'm so sorry I made something with meat. We'll get your beans from the cabinet. I—um. Yes. Sorry, sorry. We do have some lettuce, and there might be some raisins in the fridge."
NoNo grins at Mom. For some reason, NoNo always smiles at my mother even though she rarely smiles at anyone else. The two of them head to the far cabinet, with Mom babysitting the fliers while NoNo gets her food.
"Your mom's a saint," Freddie whispers when only I can hear her. I roll my eyes and stop looking at Mom, because she has on blue sweats like my dad, with lots of stains and holes. Home clothes. No way would I put mine on until my company leaves, even though my bra and underwear dig trenches in my shoulders and legs.
I wish my parents wouldn't wear their old sweats in front of my friends, but that's a lost cause. I know I'm as big as they are, but I do my best to look clean and put together. It's sort of a fat person imperative—or maybe just a Fat Girl imperative. Never look sloppy because everybody expects fat people to be slobs. I completely refuse to be a stereotype.
But my parents...
It's our house, Jamie, they've told me when I've asked. We're going to be comfortable in our own home.
Mom's a secretary at a car plant where they have to wear uniforms that barely come in her size. Dad works for a freight company delivering packages, but at least his uniform fits. They're tired and sore when they get home, and I know what they think about home clothes at home, so I don't bother saying anything.
Mom's stacks of junk terminate on either side of the kitchen table, and Freddie and I steer around them to get to the bowls and the stew. A small television flickers on one cabinet. Dad stays glued to some game show, but he nods and waves. Dad's eating out of a mixing bowl, and he has three pieces of cornbread stacked on a plate beside it. Mom doesn't have a bowl. She never serves herself until everyone else is finished.
Freddie and I dip stew out of one of the two pots bubbling on the stove and snag the last pieces of cornbread dumped from Mom's cast-iron skillet. Another skillet finishes and the timer goes off before we get spoons and napkins. Mom slips past us to rescue the cornbread. NoNo's beans ding in the microwave, and she's found enough lettuce for a small salad with raisins and no dressing.
"Yuck." Freddie's voice cuts beneath the game show hollering, echoing my exact thoughts. "Who eats plain lettuce with raisins?"
Behind us, the television volume goes up, and Dad says, "Yes!"
"Has anybody ever told you plants have feelings, too?"
Freddie asks as we cart our spoils out of the kitchen, down the hall to my room, and close the door behind us—which still doesn't totally tamp out the game show. "They react with all kinds of plant endorphin stuff when you slice them or tear them or whatever."
"That isn't a scientific fact." NoNo balances her bowl of beans and plate of lettuce and her spoon without dropping her stack of fliers as she plops her bony butt on my ugly brown carpet. "It's still being studied."
From the kitchen, the game show bing-bing-bings.
Freddie settles on the floor across from NoNo and puts her bowl on the old squished shag carpet, too. Her cornbread's mashed up in the liquid, the way she always wants it. "Well, if they ever prove plants feel pain, are you going to starve yourself to death?"
"Of course not. I'll consume nuts and fruits collected after they fall from trees." NoNo looks at Freddie like she's stupid, which compared to NoNo, she is. So am I. Everyone is.
"Oh, God." Freddie gestures for me to help, but I ignore her eyeball crossing and think about going back to the kitchen and smashing the loud television.
Instead, we listen to background noise from an appliance commercial.
I hand Freddie the half-finished application packets for Vanderbilt and the University of Ohio that I've been keeping on my desk so she wouldn't lose them. "Do you think that would make a good essay topic? Plant-pain research starving vegans to death?"
Freddie and NoNo blink at me without speaking. NoNo crunches on her lettuce and raisins. Freddie gulps a mouthful of stew.
I eat my cornbread in a hurry, grab a few sheets of paper and a pen and settle myself on the floor where I can prop my tired back against the desk. "Seriously. I keep coming up empty on my Northwestern essay ideas."
"Aren't you going to do something from Fat Girl?" Freddie shrugs. "What about that column on pornography? It's great."
After a bite of warm, rich stew, I say, "That's going in my portfolio. All of Fat Girl is. I've got to write something fresh, something new."
The stew swirls inside my mouth, all the way down to my belly. So good. I eat it in quick spoonfuls, loving the meaty taste, wondering how NoNo survives without animal products or by-products. Outside my door, the game show revs to life again with clapping and yelling and bells ringing, and lots of bouncy music.
NoNo gobbles another leaf of lettuce, then fishes her crayons out of a box she keeps under my bed. She'll use crayons because all art supplies for children have had to be toxin free since 1990, so long as they aren't imported from China, which doesn't have those safety regulations. "But you could still do a Fat Girl piece, just one you aren't using in the paper."
"I don't know. It doesn't show much range." I suck in more stew.
NoNo gives me a stern look, if that's possible with crew-cut red hair and a mouthful of beans, raisins, and dry lettuce. She swallows hard. "It shows dedication to a cause. That's important, you know."
She has a point. And she has a 33 on her ACT and straight As, and she'll probably have acceptances to every college she's considering. Why would I argue with her?
My stew's gone in a minute or two, but so is Freddie's.
NoNo will be eating her dinner all night. She takes a while with food.
Screaming fro
m the game show, a moment of silence, then a loud, bellowing used-car ad. I know it's probably killing Dad's hearing. He'll be deaf by the time he's sixty.
"I think you should write something about Burke and his gastric bypass." Freddie doesn't look up, and I see her muscles get tense in case I start yelling like those used-car sales guys. I sort of have every time she's brought up the subject.
I've talked to Burke about his surgery, but that's a little like talking to a zealot about religion. It bothers me, that wild sparkle in his eyes, when he talks about being "normal" soon, but what can I say to him? It would be nice to magically be normal. I can't deny that.
"The stuff with Burke, it's private," I grumble, trying not to think about Heath and his warning that I need to put my feelings about Burke's surgery in The Wire before people start writing in to ask about it.
"Nothing's gonna be private for long," Freddie shoots back. Her olive cheeks tinge red, and for once, her black hair isn't hanging frizz free around her face. It looks a little messy, like she's picked at it. "He'll be out for weeks, and when he comes back, he'll be shrinking like crazy."
My jaw clenches, and I have to force myself to stop gritting my teeth. Whenever the subject comes up, I just want to cry. "It's private for now, okay?"
Freddie gets a stern expression that's much worse than NoNo's. "He goes under the knife in a little over two weeks, Jamie. You can't pretend it's not happening."
"I can until they roll him away. He could always change his mind."
We all go quiet.
The television in the kitchen doesn't. Somebody won big money.
Freddie, NoNo, and I all have the same look on our faces about Burke changing his mind on the gastric bypass.
The look says, Yeah, like that's going to happen.
No matter what we want, no matter how we feel, short of divine intervention, Burke is having that surgery. I glance down at my belly-spread and the way my thighs look bigger than NoNo's whole body, at the awful brown "landlord carpet," and finally at the blank essay paper. All proof that God has never been too fond of answering my prayers.
Freddie shifts tactics faster than I can work up a good feeling-sorry-for-myself attitude. "Are you going to the hospital even though Anastasia and Drizella will be there?"
"Damn straight." I can't help grinning at Freddie's Cinderella's wicked stepsisters' nicknames for Burke's older siblings. Their names are really Mona (oldest) and Marlene (meanest—as in, she really could drink blood and take over the vampire world with no guilt at all), M & M for short.
"Good." Freddie scratches something on her Vanderbilt application. "We'll be there too. Early."
Which draws a horrified look from NoNo, who views hospitals as vile pestilence-spreading ecohazards—but she knows better than to argue with Freddie and me about something this important.
After a few seconds of trembling disgust, NoNo closes her eyes, opens them, and looks at me. "When's opening night for The Wiz?"
"October sixth," I say, then fish around for something witty and Evilleneish to keep it light. Find zero. Nothing. My brain is flashing almost three weeks after Burke, but I shake it off. Burke isn't going to die on September 18. He'll come out of the operating room just fine, except his stomach will be stapled into two parts, with the food-getting part about the size of my thumb.
He'll feel full after two tablespoons of food, especially at first.
I've done my reading.
The thought of a thumb-sized stomach, two tablespoons, completely freaks me out. I like to eat. Especially if something tastes good. I like to eat until I can't eat anymore, if something's perfect, like Mom's stew.
My hand goes to my belly, until I realize Freddie and NoNo are both staring at me. I jerk my hand off my stomach and stuff my fist into the brown carpet. "I don't want to talk about Burke's surgery." All of a sudden, my stew isn't sitting well inside. My arms and legs and chest tighten, and it gets hard to breathe. "Tonight, I just want to finish these damned applications, okay?"
Freddie gives me another shrug and scrubs her palms against her jeans before going back to her Vanderbilt application. NoNo lowers her head and colors Green Party logos on her fliers.
Through the end of one game show and the start of another, I stare at my blank paper and reswallow the stew that's burning up my throat. My chest pulls and squeezes whenever I try to breathe.
The only thing I can think about is Burke and Burke dying and Burke not being in the world anymore. Even if he survives, our world will change so much. Our world together, I mean. We won't be going out for pizza anymore after he has that surgery, or sharing a milkshake and fries, or anything much to do with food at all. He probably won't even eat popcorn at the movies, and he definitely won't be scarfing down his absolute favorite: four plain chocolate bars, snapped in half, two bites per half. That box of chocolate bars I keep in my closet just to take candy to him—it'll have to go.
Two tablespoons.
Tighter chest. Blank paper. What am I going to put on the blank paper? I have to put something there.
We can always go to movies with no popcorn, or find other stuff to do. Get a grip. He said you were his goddess. He asked you not to leave him.
But I'm scared.
Burke's scared, too, at least somewhere in those glittery-zealot eyes, or he wouldn't have been worried I'd leave him.
Me leave him?
Stop it. Not thinking about it. Applications only, at least for tonight.
On my blank pages, I write TWO TABLESPOONS.
Then THUMB.
And glance at my thumb. And at my big fat belly.
Thumb.
The sounds of a weight-loss commercial drifts down the hallway. One of those advertising the newest fabulous miraculous, lose-fifty-pounds-in-one-week pill. The kind with the writing at the bottom in two-point mi-crotype that flashes by so fast you'll blink and miss it. If you freeze-frame and whip out a magnifying glass, it'll say something like:
These claims have not been evaluated by the United States Food and Drug Administration. Do you think they would touch us with a ten-foot research beaker? This product does not treat, cure, or prevent any diseases or medical conditions. Taking this pill does not guarantee you'll lose weight, but we know you'll spend the bucks anyway because you're desperate. Individual weight loss will vary with how much you diet and exercise, because any fool knows pills don't make you lose weight. Our spokespeople are probably paid actors but we call them compensated voluntary endorsers to confuse the hell out of you. Testimonials are total bullshit and for informational purposes only and we don't even endorse, research, or verify them (Bob's uncle wrote them all anyway). If anybody does manage to get results from this bit of pressed sugar and herbs—other than indigestion and high blood glucose—they aren't typical. Don't crush or snort this product. Don't stick this product in your ear. Don't heat this product and spill it on any part of your body. If you do, you're a dillweed and we're not liable. The guys in white coats talking to you are not medical doctors. Duh. We can't believe how many stupid asshats will actually buy this RIDICULOUS trash.
I laugh and look up.
Freddie and NoNo are gazing at me, seeming relieved.
Freddie nods to the notes I'm making on the paper that used to be blank. Fast notes. A satirical diet ad, only the sad part is, the real commercials are so much worse if you really read and listen.
I whip a clean page over my notes, write the title in big letters, and hold it up for their review.
I LOST 500 POUNDS OVERNIGHT WITH HOODWINKIA!
Freddie's grin gets huge. "Go, Fat Girl."
And I take my pen, and I go.
The Wire
REGULAR FEATURE
for publication Friday, September 7
Fat Girl Freaking
Fat Boy Chronicles I
JAMIE D. CARCATERRA
My freak-out cauldron is approaching rapid boil.
I've been gigantic since I was born, and the biggest health crisis I've ever ha
d was the first day of my freshman year, when I got stung in the nose by a bee. Nothing like a Fat Girl with a big red swollen nose, wailing and blubbering all over study hall. Took me a while to live that one down—but I did, because I'm not just any fat girl. I'm the Fat Girl. Remember?
My boyfriend Burke, who has given me permission to dub him Fat Boy, must feel like he has a lot to live down. He's tired of assumptions, stereotypes, snarky comments, and attitude thrown in his general direction. He's tired of the things people say.
Mostly, he's tired of being Fat Boy.
Yeah, that's right. Fat Boy has had enough. He's so sick of it that he's going to risk his life to change his outsides.
What do you think of that?
Fat Boy's giving up football.
Fat Boy's giving up a chunk of his senior year, and some of his counts-for-college grades.
Fat Boy's going under the knife, and all Fat Girl can do is watch and pray and make sure all of you, every one of you in this whole school, get this one crucial point: Obesity surgery is not an easy way out of being fat.
Don't even think it. Don't even imagine it.
You have no idea what Fat Boy is about to go through to look more "normal," to feel more "normal." Never fear. I'm going to tell you. I'm going to report as Fat Boy works harder than most Marine recruits, hurts worse than most people in horrible car wrecks, and risks so, so much.
By this time next year, because he's choosing surgery, Fat Boy has a one in twenty shot of being Dead Boy.
Dead and buried from surgical complications.
But he's had enough, and he'd rather be dead than fat.
So, here's the thing. I have to support him, because he's mine, and he needs me to be there.
If he makes it through this and comes to graduation all buff and healthy, every damned one of you better stand up and cheer like crazy monkeys, because Fat Girl can find out where every last one of you lives. If you don't cheer, I'll know, and I'll find you.
