Big Summer(11)

I didn’t say any of that. I didn’t answer, or let myself look back. I kept walking. For a few blocks, I thought that she’d try to catch up with me, to tell me that she was sorry, to say that I was her best friend, that she hadn’t meant what she’d said. I kept my ears pricked for the sound of high heels on the sidewalk. But Drue never came.

I was a few blocks from home when I felt my phone start to buzz in my pocket. I ignored it, feeling sick, imagining the video of me shouting at that guy making its way from text message to text message, from Facebook post to tweet. My face got hot, and the sugar and alcohol lurched in my belly. I felt like my blood was on fire, my body burning with shame and anger, and something else, something different, something it took me almost the entire thirty-minute walk to recognize as pride, maybe even a kind of righteousness. I’d stood up for myself, for once, for better or worse.

I crept into my parents’ apartment. Instead of going to the kitchen, I went to my bedroom without turning on the lights, moving unerringly through the darkness. When I arrived, I turned on the light and looked at the room, trying to see it like I was looking at it for the first time.

My craft table, the one I’d trash-picked from the curb, carried upstairs with my father’s help, and stripped and sanded and painted a creamy ivory, stood against one wall. A cobalt-blue pottery vase filled with bright-orange gerbera daisies sat on its center; a wooden chair that I’d painted, with a cushion I’d sewn using a scrap of hot-pink and orange Marimekko print fabric, was pulled up beneath it. I took in the vase, the flowers, the seagrass rug spread over the hardwood floor, the polished brass lamp glowing in the corner, imagining a stranger looking it over and wondering which girl was lucky enough to inhabit such a pretty spot. I’d always hoped that someday I would meet a man who would appreciate that skill; a man who would praise me, telling me how creative I was, what a good eye I had, how comfortable and colorful and cozy I’d made our home, how I made everything beautiful.

I took off my Spanx, wriggling myself out of the punishing spandex and dropping the shaper in the trash. My underwire bra was the next thing to go. I put on a camisole top, cotton granny panties, and my comfiest pajama bottoms. In the bathroom, I pulled my hair back in a scrunchie, and scrubbed the makeup off my face. Back in my bedroom, I sat myself down in front of my laptop and typed the words “body acceptance” into the search engine.

A hundred different links came cascading across my screen: articles. Blogs. Twitter feeds with handles like @YourFatFriend and @fatnutritionist and @PlusSizeFeminist. Health at Every Size websites. Body positive Instagram accounts. Outfit-of-the-day Snapchats that featured girls with their wobbly thighs and belly rolls on display. All the parts I’d tried to hide, out there in the open. Big girls, some my size, some smaller, some larger, in bathing suits and lingerie, in yoga poses, on cruise ships and beaches and in Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue.

My finger hovered over the keyboard as my heart thumped in my chest. I thought, This is a door. You can close it and stay here, outside, by yourself, or you can walk through it and join them.

I shut my eyes and stilled my hands. If you had asked me that morning who I was, I might have talked about being a college student, an aspiring artist, a daughter or a friend; a lover of romance novels and needle felting, French bulldogs and Lynda Barry comics. But if I’d been honest, I would have said, I’m a dieter. I woke up in the morning planning what I’d eat and how much I’d exercise to burn it off; I went to bed at night feeling guilty about having done too much of the first and too little of the second and promising that the next day would be different. Right then, at my desk, I decided that I was done with it. I was going to eat to nourish myself, I was going to exercise to feel strong and healthy, I was going to let go of the idea of ever being thin, once and for all, and live my life in the body that I had. And I was going to drop a hundred and seventeen useless pounds right that minute, by vowing to never see Drue Lathrop Cavanaugh ever again.



* * *




Things had not been easy in my early days as a Baby Fat.

Lying in bed the morning after my night at the bar, I remembered a line from one of the Health at Every Size websites I’d read the night before. Ask your body what it wants. Except how was my body supposed to know? It had been so long since I’d eaten something just because it was what I’d wanted.

“Okay,” I said to myself. I could hear my parents in the kitchen, keeping their voices low. I could smell the coffee that my dad would drink with cream and my mom would take black, and the Ezekiel bread in the toaster. I felt extremely foolish, until I thought about my dad. Sometimes, at night, when we were watching TV, he would speak to his belly as if it were a pet, giving it a little pat and asking, “A little popcorn? Another beer?” That helped. “Okay, body. What do I want for breakfast?”

For a long moment, there was nothing. I could feel myself start to panic, and I took deep, slow breaths until a thought emerged: banana bread. I wanted a slice of warm banana bread, studded with walnuts and chocolate chips, and a big glass of milk on the side. Right on the heels of that idea came the words “absolutely not.” Banana bread was made with eggs and butter and chocolate chips and walnuts, full-fat yogurt, processed white flour, and a cup and a half of white sugar. Banana bread was dessert. I hadn’t let myself eat banana bread in years… and if I started eating it, I wasn’t sure that I’d be able to stop.