Authors: Susan Vaught
Big Fat Manifesto (5 page)
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.
REGULAR FEATURE
for publication Friday, August 31
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.
"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.
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 from 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.
