Getting Waisted (2 page)

1

My Parents Did
I
t
O
n
c
e

The first diet
Mother’s milk

Cost
A lifelong carb-loving appetite

Weight lost
None

Weight gained
Zygote to zaftig at warp speed

I was born in Glasgow,
Scotland. I weighed six and a half pounds. One hour later I weighed sixty-two pounds. Alright, maybe this is a slight exaggeration, but only about the time. My fat cells did start expanding at warp speed from the minute I exited the womb, and latched on to my mother’s breast. I’ve been on a slippery slope ever since. There were no twisted demons on the inside eating away at me; it was just me, on the outside, eating. I have no idea what was in that breast milk. I am pretty sure it was loaded with wiener schnitzel, potato dumplings, and heavy cream. My addiction was born on the same day I was, and it didn’t take long for my family to begin grabbing my thighs, pinching my cheeks, and exclaiming what an adorable little porker I was.

My mother missed her much older children; they had become separated during the war in their escape from Hitler and his merry marauding men. My mother, Queen Elizabeth (that’s what I called her because her name was Elizabeth and she really believed she was royalty), had been married before but he wasn’t worthy, so she was a single, bridge-playing, mother of two teenagers when the Nazis demanded she leave Austria. “It’s not personal, you are Jewish. If you stay, we will find you, then we’ll torture you and kill you or you could try to leave when we’re not looking and take your chances.”

She took her chances. She was a champion bridge player and competed with big shots, diplomats, movers and shakers. One of them, an ambassador, offered her a visa to Nicaragua; another said he could get her one to Scotland. Scotland was closer, so she took her son and daughter,
my
future half brother and sister, to an uncle and aunt in Belgium where they would be safe while she set up their new home across the Channel. It was a bad plan. The war escalated, borders were sealed, and my mother couldn’t get back to her children. The only letters that were sent were by way of the Red Cross and I think my uncle and aunt didn’t know what to say, so they said nothing. As a result, my mother thought her kids were okay. No news is good news. She didn’t know my brother had been grabbed by the Nazis and taken to Auschwitz; she wouldn’t know for three years. Miraculously, he survived.

My mother was, by training and talent, a much-in-demand couturier back in Vienna, but these were tough times and no one anywhere in Europe was having ball gowns made, so she took several demeaning jobs before getting one as a maid for really rich people who lived in a huge house. That was another bad plan—the real Queen Elizabeth would have had less “attitude.” My mother liked the house, not the job. When the war ended she knew she needed to get permanent status in Great Britain so she could get her children back
and
stop cleaning toilets.

At a small local restaurant run by other displaced Europeans that served up schnitzel and anything with pork and potatoes, my mother met Greta, another vivacious Austrian and soon-to-be lifelong best friend. I always thought she was my mother’s real sister, the way they squabbled and read each other’s minds. They quickly became a Euro version of Lucy and Ethel, and almost instantly hit upon their big plan: finding husbands. A nice Scottish woman who worked at the post office warned them, “All the good men are either dead or taken. It’s only the old, broken, and illiterate ones that are still hanging about and no one wants them.” Elizabeth and Greta smiled. They weren’t fussy; it was British passports they were after.

They restricted their hunt down to dances and teas thrown by the hospitals or universities, which narrowed the prospects down to the crippled and the well-read. Greta scored on their first night out. She met Josef, a handsome Polish go-getter who had suffered a leg injury early in the war but had fought on the right side and managed to gain legal status. For them it was love. My mother continued to strike out but, on her fifth foray, the bells went off, the chimes chimed.

She saw him at a dance. He wasn’t dancing. He was standing alone but he was, at least, standing. My Austro-Hungarian mother was a pistol, larger than life, vivacious and ferociously independent and my father-to-be was a musty, fifty-two-year-old virgin. My mother spotted the awkward Englishman standing next to the bar, examining one bottle after another, mumbling their identities, alcohol content, and whatever else it said, even in the fine print. He worked his way through the entire collection: “Drambuie 1867, I wouldn’t mind a wee dram of that I’ll tell you; Glenfiddich, single malt whiskey, oh yes, very nice, very nice indeed; Crème de Menthe, not bloody likely, I’d rather have a gurgle of Old Spice.” When he was finished cataloging the liquor collection he switched his gaze and began reading whatever signage he could fixate on: “Pull in case of emergency.
Hmm
. . . I suppose that would mean in the event of a fire, or possibly an air raid. Not bloody likely, there’d be a stampede.” Dick (his real name, honest) was perfect. My mother swooped in and scooped him right into her net. He never stood a chance. He went to the slaughter quickly and quietly. They were married ten days after they met.

It was his first and only time
.
She knocked back an entire bottle of Schnapps then handed him a bottle of iron pills and the sawdust flew. I guess she slept with him because Hallmark thank-you cards hadn’t been invented yet.

“How could I be pregnant . . . from . . . from . . . that dry piece of old meat?”

Usually people are excited about having a baby. Not my mother. She was forty-four and was irritated by the very idea. I was a mistake. My father was the
real
mistake, but I existed as a constant reminder and I was not ever going to be something or someone who could be swept under the rug. She told me she had thought about throwing herself down the stairs but she somehow knew she’d just break her legs and still be pregnant with me. She didn’t say it to be cruel, just as a statement of fact. I’m just guessing, but I don’t think I was a love child.

My parents only did it once. My mother told me this often and every time she did, she’d shudder at the memory. “He was dry as dust.” She was as layered as savory strudel and my very vivid imagination embarked on many a scenario, some involving thrusting tweed and upended dirndls, and worse. I am scarred by the notion: Dick lying on his back, glasses askew, the scent of mildew floating above him, with my mother straddling him in high black boots, her blonde helmet intact, a haze of Evening in Paris mingled with Aqua Net, her eyes squeezed closed. There was no way she was going to keep them open, but there was a smile on her face as she thought of that British passport to security.

Having achieved her goal, my mother showed my father the door before I was one month old and he returned quite happily to his prior life as a quiet, well-read boarder in a house that rented rooms to lonely gentlemen. My mother was determined to regain her position as dressmaker to the well-heeled, moving both her business and our home into a ludicrously large house in a prestigious neighborhood she could not afford but had to have, immediately immersing herself in swathing the ample bosoms of rich clients in beaded laces and linens.

My only constant companion was Sheila, our gruff housekeeper. I think she was about forty. She had little patience for my constant questions, but as we went on countless expeditions through every room of the hundred-year-old house—from the locked attic, through the large formal rooms, and down to the coal cellar in the
basement—she relished in terrifying both of us with her constant
narrative of the ghosts and axe-murderers who she believed once
inhabited my new home. It was on those forays that my future dread of entering any empty house was born. From then on, all my arrivals were announced by me making a racket of some kind, as a warning
to any ghosts or living intruders that they had better get out fast
because I was armed and dangerous.

When my half sister and brother were finally reunited with
my mother and came to live with us, I was almost incoherent with excitement. Somehow I was convinced they were going to become my playmates. So when I was first introduced to Gerda and Peter I was shocked that they were not children, but grownups.

Gerda was twenty-three and beautiful, and wanted nothing more than to move forward and erase all memories of the terrible war and what it had cost her. She threw herself into conquering all the eligible men in Glasgow and before long she was inundated with suitors.

My twenty-two-year-old Auschwitz survivor half brother was another story. He looked like a skinny hyena but still handsome, even though he had a disease in his lungs and needed to sleep a lot so he could get better. He wasn’t really up for playing Daddy to me, but I anointed him with the job anyway, following him around like a lovesick puppy, sitting outside his room, waiting for him to wake up. When he would finally have breakfast, even if it was lunchtime, I would eat a second breakfast right next to him. Sheila would huff and puff about all the extra dishes she had to wash, but then she’d make sure Peter got fresh cream for the hot scones she would always make him. I had to sneak some when she wasn’t looking. My mother kept telling me to leave him alone, explaining what a nightmare it was for him over there in that hell of a place, and that now what he needed was peace and quiet. She added, “You can’t know how awful it was for him.” I was quick to respond, “How could I not know, seeing as
everyone
tells me all the time?”

Peter had so many things he wanted to do and places he wanted to explore, but I glommed onto him like a mollusk he couldn’t shake so he finally gave in and began taking me along. He craved being outside in big open spaces and all he wanted me to do was be quiet, which was nearly impossible as I had so many questions: Why was he so thin? What are Nazis? Why didn’t he like being inside? Did he have nightmares when he slept during the daytime? I followed him around every golf course in Scotland, chattering away because I was so excited to have someone to talk to. I chattered his ear off as we hiked around hills and dales. Mostly, I sat on a hill waiting and picking heather while Peter hiked. He took me to Loch Ness and pointed out a big, dark shape that he said was a monster that lived in the lake to protect all of Scotland from Nazis and other bad people. I was in love.