But when she held her breath and turned to look quickly in the mirror, she knew she still couldn’t walk across the hall and browse through the racks. She still wasn’t Sophisticated.
She turned her back again and pulled her clothes off. When she lowered the straps of the body shaper, her breasts heaved out and down like the waves of the ocean and she could breathe a little easier. She loosened her body, roll upon roll, peeling the shaper down. But as she stepped out of one leg, her ankle caught and she tripped. Twisting sideways, trying to catch herself, she rotated and braced herself on the mirror.
And there she was.
Bent over, elastic halfway up one leg and bunched around the ankle of the other. Breasts folded together and wobbling, backdropped by a pockmarked swaying stomach which was framed by two creased thighs. Her arms, flabby wings holding her body up, flapped.
The Fat Girl shuddered and her body rolled in a huge tidal wave of weight. She felt it pour from her shoulders to her toes and suddenly her legs were too heavy to lift. She felt cemented to the floor, standing there, looking in the mirror, the body shaper crumpled and useless at her feet. Body shaper, she thought. Something to shape this into a body. This mountain. Not mountain. This slag-heap.
She turned slowly and dressed. She kicked the body shaper into the corner, then sent the box spinning after. Grabbing her miniatures, she left. She glanced over at the darkened petite shop, its windows filled with mannequins with no heads, but slender exquisite bodies, clothes clinging, curves and hollows so delicate and lovely. She thought for a moment of putting her hands around those tiny waists, just to see what the sharp bone of ribs felt like, the gentle swelling out of hips and breasts, instead of following formless curves that went forever out and out and out.
She passed the security guard. She saw him glance at her and look away.
On the way home, she began to panic. The seat of her car was thrust all the way back, yet still the steering wheel dug into her stomach. She felt enclosed and she cracked the window to let in some air. She stopped at the grocery store and roamed the health and diet aisles, looking for something new, something untried, a clinically proven miracle, but there were none. She put Slimfast in her basket, then took it out. She put Metabolife in her basket, then took it out. She began to gasp. There was nothing new, nothing here at all. As fast as she could, she stumbled over to the produce section and threw grapefruit in the basket, lettuce, more grapefruit, bananas, then already sliced and peeled carrot sticks and celery.
But she’d already tried it all. She knew the lettuce would grow limp and brown, the grapefruit would turn soft and eventually the whole dripping, moldy mess would have to be scooped out of her refrigerator, and she would chide herself for spending wasted money, hate herself for failing. Tears became trapped in the folds around her eyes. Abandoning her basket, she left the store.
At home, she stripped and her body rolled out over itself, skin against skin, and she felt the relief of freedom. She skipped her beer and sat on the couch, putting the two new boxes of miniatures on her coffee table.
She looked around at her miniature world, so small, so neat. In the dollhouses, the tiny families sat on sofas in front of televisions or radios or nothing at all. Some slept in beds while others cooked in tiny kitchens. The wrists of these little people, the ankles and necks, so thin and fragile, they could be snapped with a bend of the Fat Girl’s fingers. As she well knew, from many mishaps when her fingers were just too thick and clumsy for what she wanted to do.
Yet the dollhouse people were all so beautiful. Their delicacy was sharp and refined. Sophisticated.
The Fat Girl leaned forward and watched as her elbows sank into the soft padding of her thighs.
She looked in the kitchens of the dollhouses and she wondered what the tiny people were eating. If they ate lettuce and grapefruit. If they drank diet shakes and swallowed pills. Closing her eyes, she pictured herself newly thin, just as delicate, just as beautiful, in the dollhouse kitchens. But all she saw behind her eyelids was the dressing room mirror full of trembling flesh.
The miniature mantel clock chimed eleven. The sound reminded her that she hadn’t eaten. In answer, her stomach rumbled.
The Fat Girl started for her own kitchen, but then she stopped and looked back. The miniature people were there, living out lives so tiny and perfect, the men handsome, the children smart, the women with snug-waisted dresses and diamonds on their fingers. She wondered. She reached for something she hadn’t tried.
Opening one of the new boxes, she pulled out the new miniature china cabinet. She set it aside and found the little plates and cups and saucers, all individually wrapped in bubbles. One by one, she opened them, then placed each in her mouth. The sound was delicate between her teeth.
She moved to the dollhouses and began picking out the people, placing them limb by limb in her mouth. Arms and legs, heads and torsos. Each impossibly small, each too tiny to taste. She took them in and felt herself growing smaller.
She moved to her kitchen, picking out the tiniest of teacups and tasted rose petals and gold filigree, green leaves and silver scrolls. When the clock chimed eleven-thirty, she returned to the living room. Turning the clock around, she opened the back and looked in at the miniature workings. She carried the clock to the couch, sat down, and began to pick through and graze.
With each swallow, her body shrank. She could feel it happening. She chewed or swallowed whole until she couldn’t anymore, her eyes closed, in her mind the image of herself stepping up to the dollhouses, stepping in, taking the place of the families at the radio, or soaking her tiny body in the new clawfooted tub. She saw herself sleeping in the pink canopied bed, her body lost in the silk sheets and soft pillows. In the morning, she would get up, slip soundlessly to the ground, and go to work, where she would hand in her resignation. They would all stand amazed and applaud as she crossed the hall of the mall to the other store. To the world of Sophistication, the world where waists nipped in and breasts curved out, yet hung proudly high.
Her stomach felt tight. The way it was supposed to feel, her skin snug against sharp hipbones and ribs. Slowly, she leaned to the right and wrapped her arms around herself as she fell into the embrace of the couch. Her breath came easier as she entered this new world, her body floating and impossibly light, and she smiled and felt the lift and stretch of her sharp and prominent new cheekbones. Her world shrank into one tiny black hole. Lifting her arms over her head, her new body poised and taut on the edge, the Fat Girl dove in.
A
nd so you wade through the days, the river’s unpredictable flow always slipping within you. You hear its roar on a trip to the grocery store where a little boy an aisle over spends an entire half hour shrieking in a temper tantrum with no end. No and No and No and repeat and repeat and repeat, his octaves soaring higher and higher and laced with tears and screams and inhuman grunts and the blood begins to pound in your parallel veins. You try to distract yourself. You hum with the Muzak and you move impossibly fast, not even stopping your cart as you throw things in, cans and boxes flying and rolling like noodles caught in a colander.
Then you round a corner and there he is. You stare at the boy and his horrific mouth, his squeezed-shut eyes and angry skin, and as you listen to the jumble of sounds purged from his throat, you realize how badly you want to hurt him. You realize how good it would feel to bring both your fists, curved and knuckle-hard, against each of this boy’s cheekbones, how tremendous it would feel to rip him out of the cart, thrust him over your head, and then power him straight down to the concrete floor. And again. And again. Until the sound stops and nothing is left but the peaceful and predictable rhythm of grocery store music.
Imagine.
But he’s a
boy.
Your entire body shakes with your desire and the boy’s howls until you leave the store and burst into the cool air of a beautiful fall afternoon. You breathe deep and wonder. Is this the day it happens? Is this the day your mother rises from inside and forces you out of control? Every day scares you, every day you wonder, but there is something about the vividness of this day, this right-now desire, that makes you feel you’re in danger.
Your mother’s voice in your ear makes you want to do things that you really don’t want to do. Things that you know are wrong. Things that will allow her to swallow you, that will make her leap from your veins into the world again and you so need to keep her buried.
Throughout the day, the river inside you rises and by evening, you are fighting a rapids. The image of that boy spread flat on the concrete grows and you tell yourself, remind yourself over and over, he is an
innocent
, he is a
child
, that’s all he is. Yet you see your mother’s stick-straight arm, her shaking finger, as she points the way to the root cellar when she declares that you walk too loud, sigh too loud, think too loud. That boy in the grocery store was loud, louder than you were ever allowed to be. Louder than you ever dared to be. How is that fair? You feel the rage roll through your body, and you don’t know who it’s for anymore, the boy who shrieked, your mother who punished, or yourself for so wanting to grab a child and thrust him to the ground. Is that really what you wanted? Are you sure?
Your mother’s face, the day you punched her, once and only once, bobs in the rapids and is gone.
Grabbing your jacket, you go outside, walk quickly down the sidewalk, and hope the action, the movement and the cooling air, will calm you.
But you find yourself at a park. A playground, and since it’s growing dark, there are only a few people. You hear a laugh and you see another woman, another young boy, and she pushes him on a swing. Carefully, you move closer. You sit on a bench and watch.
The boy’s curls spark gold in the falling sunlight and his shrieks, while sharp, signal joy. The mother sings softly a nonsense song, with each forward and back motion, she sings, “Swing, swing, swing, swing,” the same up and down tune over and over again and it’s soothing and monotonous and wonderful.
Desire sweeps down your parallel veins like a log in the river and you are saturated with warmth. In your mind, you swing alongside and the mother touches you in the gentlest of pushes and sings for you too. You hear her voice and her melody and you find yourself wanting to cry. When the mother swoops the child out of the swing and carries him piggyback toward home, you imagine you feel the lift and the gasp, the settle of your pudgy legs around strong, yet soft shoulders. The boy waves at you as they pass by.
Their shadows recede and you lean forward and vomit onto the paved playground surface. You gag and you vomit until you are empty.
So which do you want then? The power, the control, the ability to make the world silent around you when you wish it, to make voices stop, behaviors stop, the smallest of lives stop, just because you say so? Or do you want to be blanketed with a love so deep, so soft and warm, you want only to drape it over your shoulders, wrap it around your knees, and bask?
What will stop your trembling?
As the cold of an Iowa autumn night settles on your skin, you wish for spring. For the warmth of spring, when the deep white snows melt and flow over the ground and join the river, bringing cool crystalline waters to the banks. Cool and clear and pure, winter’s ice blending into the heat of a new season.
James wished for spring. He wished for clarity. He imagined a life where the great river flowed, then slowed, then trickled, then stopped, sinking memory deep into the mud. He imagined stepping onto the riverbed, baked into firm and rosy brown clay in the warmth of spring sunshine, and standing there. Rage gone. Fear gone.
His mother. Gone.
Nothing left but to move into the day and spread his arms and breathe. Breathe it all in.
Imagine.
C
ooley was with James for three weeks when her father showed up. James was sitting in the control room, reading the paper and half-watching the monitor when a single man walked up the front steps. That was unusual. Most men came with families. If anyone came alone, it was women. For reasons James was never able to figure out, clocks drew more women than men. But this man walked up the steps slowly, looking around and over his shoulder. When he came in the front hallway, James saw Cooley look up from where she stood in front of the dwarf longcase, giving her her once-a-month wind. And Cooley stopped, her hands on the chains, forcing the clock to hold its breath.
James wasn’t sure which one he was thinking to save, Cooley or the dwarf longcase, but he was out of the room and down the stairs as fast as he could go. By the time he charged into the hallway, Cooley’s father had her by the arm and was dragging her toward the door. Cooley didn’t seem to be putting up much of a fight. She dug her heels in, but her mouth was tightly clamped shut and so were her eyes. She wasn’t yelling, wasn’t calling for James.
James yanked Cooley’s arm out of her father’s grasp. Putting himself between them, he yelled, “Leave her alone! She’s staying here now!”
Cooley’s father, like his daughter, didn’t put up much of a fight. James’ ears were registering more and more sounds, but not enough yet to put a whole sentence together. He heard, “…she…wife… never…home…now!” The “now” was the strongest spoken word, his voice raised, and he looked at James then. Only a fast glance, but enough for James to see the drawn-together eyebrows, the cheeks flushed red. Cooley’s father balled his hands into fists, but then he quickly stuck them in his pockets.
“Look,” James said. “Your wife hurt Cooley. You hurt Cooley too.” Her father looked up again, his mouth open, and shook his head vigorously. His breath was strong enough to strip the veneer off the clocks. “Even if you only stood by, you hurt her. She’s safe here.” James pulled Cooley forward. “She wants to stay here. If you or your wife make any attempt to see her, to get her to come back, I will take her right down to Social Services and report what was done. I had a doctor look at her, he’d report too. You’d be just as guilty as your wife.”