13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (4 page)

“Really?” I turn to look at her—eyes nose lips chin so cutting and sharp, her bones in an elegant origami configuration on my bed. If she took the photo. Did my eyes. Helped me choose my clothes. She's really into art, so she probably knows all about angles. I feel a surge of something like hope.

She nods at the ceiling. “We wouldn't even have to use flash, I don't think.”

We.
My heart lifts. “We wouldn't?”

“What are you, an echo chamber?”

“Sorry. It's just I've really been stressing about this.”

She frowns. “Why?”

“I haven't really told him about me, exactly.”

She picks up the photos and starts flipping through them again. “What do you mean
about
you?”

“Well, like, my weight.”

She looks at me a long time with a raised eyebrow. She hands me back the photos and rests on her back. “I'm starving. I wish we had zucchini blossoms. I'd fry the hell out of them. They're my thing right now.”

“Oh,” I say.

“Or Chinese. I could really go for some Chinese.”

“When?” I ask her.

“When what?” she repeats.

“Should we take them? The pictures, I mean.”

“Whenever,” she says, yawning.

Now, I think. With my eyes like this. Except I really need to think about location. Wardrobe. “What about Saturday?”

“Saturday should work,” she says, her eyes fluttering closed.

“Like, around one?”

“One,” she repeats, closing her eyes definitively. I watch her until I realize she's sleeping. I do not want to be someone who watches her sleep. So I go into the living room and just sit there until I hear her rustle awake.

 • • • 

All evening, I avoid mirrors even though I'm dead curious. I smell like China, who boys burn pictures of, they're so mad at her for not loving them back. I'm full of Drink Me and with my eyes all smoky, I'm totally not hungry at all. I feel almost like I could be China, like I could fold all my limbs into a chair with grace, grow faint from the smell of mushrooms like she told me she did once—they had to call an ambulance and everything. I go to my room and play the CD I'm in the process of making for China until it's time to talk to The Cosmic Dancer, and then I tell him all about how I wore PVC to lit class. And I describe the outfit in every particular.

And he's like, “Man, I wish I could see that,” and, “Wow, Bettie, I'll bet every boy at your college is totally in love with you.”

“I don't know about that,” I say. And he's like, “I do. Every time I hear you describe yourself, I get hard. I seriously do.”

And even though we both know that this is anatomically impossible given his paralysis, I say that's so sweet of him.

He says he doesn't know if it's sweet, but it's true.

And then I tell him I have this friend, China, who's going to be taking my full-body pic on Saturday. Some people say we look like sisters, I tell him. Like we're doppelgängers or something. I tell him about the time she took me to Death and I tell him about the time she smacked a cigarette out of my mouth. And I tell him how today she dragged me into a bathroom stall and did my eyes all smoky like film stars from the thirties and forties. And he says, “Oh, Bettie, I wish I could see you.”

And I say, “I wish you could too.”

“I feel like we have this connection, you know? . . . Like, this deep, deep connection.”

And I agree. We do. And he tells me how I'm going to be his miracle. How the sight of me will make him walk again, will make him so hard he'll cream his pants, and I let him go on and on like this, describing how we fuck on the Ganges River, which he says is a holy place of transformation, with the whole of the Hindu pantheon of gods watching. And I look up at the dark ceiling above me and blow smoke rings at where I know Bettie is, tied up in her PVC. I remember my eyes are all smoky. I think of China in her room surrounded by the dragons she told me she painted on the walls, being watched by boys dripping rain like Zen fountains.

“Can't you just send me a picture now?” he asks me.

I'm just about to tell him that I'm tired right now, when the door to my room opens. “Elizabeth, who are you talking to in here?”

I stare at my mother's robed silhouette in the open doorway. “No one,” I say, hanging up.

“Not one of those guys from the Internet?”

I say nothing. Stare at her sex-rumpled Liz Taylor hair. Her large body robed in black silk and emanating Fendi, which she can't afford but buys anyway. There is a lot we can't afford that she buys anyway: abstract paintings, African masks that aren't even real masks.

“Who were you talking to just now?” she says.

“Rosemary,” I lie.

“Rosemary,” she repeats.

Even though she only met her once and very briefly when she picked me up from school, my mother likes China, who she calls by her proper name, Rosemary. Unlike Mel, who she thinks is a bad influence, and who she holds responsible for what she calls my “downward spiral.” Rosemary, on the other hand, has style.

She flicks on my bedroom light. I wince and cover my eyes, wonder when she'll go back to her boyfriend, who I know is waiting for her in the bedroom, but she just stands there. Folds her arms over her chest.

“How was school?”

“Fine,” I say, lowering my hand from my eyes.

“Did you
go
?”

“
Yes
.” She looks right at me and I look right back without flinching or blinking. Her boyfriend took pictures of me once. For the Internet guy I was seeing before this one. Black-and-whites.
Close-ups. In woodlots. In my bedroom. In parks. I never ended up sending those and I never look at them. Just go back, I tell my mother in my mind, but she stays standing there.

“This ‘school' is your last shot, Elizabeth. You know that, right?”

She's looking away now. It's fine that she took him back after the photos. I don't think she knows the whole story. Also she's lonely, I see how lonely. I see how she hasn't been with anyone since my father left when I was five. I see she's a fat, middle-aged woman with a heart condition, so how many men does she really have to choose from? Though I never told her, she knows I see, sort of. But I thought we had an unspoken agreement that in exchange for my seeing, my silence, she would not pry into my affairs.

“I know you've been depressed,” she says now to the print of Audrey Hepburn that she herself nailed to my wall and which I've since covered with zombie stickers. “I'm just worried. You're not helping yourself at all. Look at you. It's like you love being miserable.” Seeing me eye her huge stomach, she crosses her arms over her black silk robe.

I fold my arms and look down past my thighs at the bedspread beneath me. I never look at my body if I can help it. It's bigger, I can feel it, but I haven't stepped on the scale or looked in a full-length mirror in months.

“I don't love it,” I mutter.

“What was that?”

“I said I
don't
love it.”

“What the hell happened to your eyes?”

“It's just makeup.”

My mother stares at me a long time before flicking off my light.

“It looks like you got punched.”

 • • • 

Saturday arrives and she's late. But I don't let it worry me. I've already done most of the work—scouted various locations, laid out potential wardrobe choices on the bed. I figure she'll help me choose. Once she helps me choose and does my eyes it'll all work out. China will know what to do, I'm sure of it. She shows up at around seven, wearing a tank top and a Scottish kilt and a dog collar with spikes that match her spiked hair. She's got a roll of duct tape in her hand.

I'm very excited when I see the duct tape. She's taking this so seriously.

“You brought tape!”

She looks at the roll in her fist like she's surprised to see it there.

“Oh yeah. That's for me. I'm going to Death later and I have to tape my nipples 'cause this dress I'm going to wear tonight totally slides around when I dance. You know the way I dance.”

I do know the way she dances. It's crazy. She just closes her eyes and spins under the mirror ball, and people have to steer clear. “Oh, yeah, for sure,” I say, disappointed. “Tape is a great idea.”

“So are you ready?” And she holds up the camera like she's actually about to start clicking.

“Ready?” I repeat, and I'm thinking, What about my makeup? What about wardrobe choices? Location? Light? But all I say is, “Not yet. I haven't even really decided what I'm wearing.”

She looks at me dressed in my long black velvet skirt and black tee. Her look's like, I thought you were dressed.

“This? No, no.” And I point to my bed, upon which I have laid out all of these possible outfits complete with shoe options. “I wanted to see which you thought first,” I tell her.

She looks at them awhile. Most of them are other loose black tops and long black skirts.

“What I
thought
?”

“Which you liked. Best.”

She gives them a cursory glance, shrugs. “Whatever you think.”

She sits down on my bed lightly, like she should get up anytime. She begins to pick at the fringe on one of my mother's Pier 1 cushions that I took from the couch, hoping we'd be able to use it as a prop. I wish she'd look at me.

“If you want,” I say, “we could hang out a bit first—maybe get Chinese?” I watch her, still fingering the cushion fringe.

“I'd rather just get started. I brought this too,” she says and out of one of her army coat pockets, she pulls an eye shadow kit.

I'm overcome by this kindness. I'm about to say, Yes! Thank you, but she looks up at my eyes. “Wait, is that . . . Are you
still
wearing what I put on your eyes, like, a week ago?”

“No,” I say, even though it is. “This is just my stuff,” I tell her now. “I was just experimenting. Before you came.”

“Oh,” she says. “Well it looks good like that. You should just leave it. Unless you want me to touch it up?”

Now it feels like too much to ask.

“Oh, no, that's okay. I mean, if you think it looks good like this . . .”

She's staring at me, blinking. I realize she's waiting for me to get going. I go get changed without her help, without her consultation. It all feels like drowning.

“So where do you think I should stand?” I ask her when I come back.

“Wherever.”

“I was thinking here?” I say, gesturing toward the space between my bookcases and my CD towers, beneath my print of
The Scream
.

After she gives me a very slight nod of her head, I arrange myself in my chair and crane my neck as far forward as possible while letting my hair fall in front of my face.

“How do I look?” I say, without moving my lips.

“Like Cousin Itt in mourning. Might try moving your hair out of the way. Also, smiling.”

I can't tell her I don't want to broaden my cheek circumference. She wouldn't understand. Also, with the camera on me, my face stiffens. Feels paralyzed. I force my lips to curl on one side.

“How about now?”

She lowers the camera and looks at the pomegranate-scented tea light I've lit and placed on the nightstand.

“Think we're going to need more light.”

“What if I lean into it more?” I crane my neck forward toward the candle flame.

“Yeah, that won't work.”

“I thought you said your dad had a special camera. One that can see in the dark.”

“There are no cameras like that, Lizzie.” She flips a switch on the camera and then starts clicking again. This time a flash goes off. Blinding. I reel from it.

“I thought you said you wouldn't need flash,” I say.

But she keeps clicking and clicking. “What?”

“I said, ‘How do I look?'”

“Like I just murdered your gerbil. Relax a little.” She clicks some more. Clicks and clicks. Too fast. I want to tell her to slow down. Tell me how it looks. Give me a chance to change outfits, lighting, location. Angles. We need to try different angles.

My Wonder Woman phone rings and rings.

“That him?” she asks me, jutting her chin at the phone.

“Yeah,” I say out of the corner of my mouth.

“Answer if you want,” she says.

“It's fine,” I say. I don't really want her to hear us talk. Also, I'm afraid if she stops now she won't take any more.

“Answer,” she says. “I could use a break anyway.” She puts down the camera and picks up my pack of cigarettes.

When I pick my phone up and say hello, I'm aware of how my voice changes. I become the oversexed nymph who will wander the hinterlands of Calcutta with him. The one who is all sinew and braceleted bone. I hear the wistful notes, the breathy affectation I can't help. I turn away from her while I talk.

“Are you taking the pictures?” he says.

I look over at China. She's at my desk surfing the net, smoking.

“Yeah.”

“Oh, okay. I didn't mean to bother you. It's just I can't wait to see them. I'm honestly getting hard just thinking about it, I swear. I'm in the middle of creaming my pants right now.”

“That's nice,” I whisper into the receiver.

“What did you say? How come you're talking so softly?”

“No reason. I just said, ‘That's nice.'”

“You keep saying that! And I keep telling you it isn't nice. It really isn't.”

“I should go.”

“Wait! When will you send them to me?”

“Later today, probably. Like, tonight, I guess.”

I hang up and turn around to find China still sitting at my computer. She's found one of the pics Blake sent me in my drawer.

“This
is him?”