I'm Glad My Mom Died(27)

Mom is grateful-happy.

This is my favorite way to see her, because I am directly the source of it. I’ve seen Mom be grateful-happy when I book roles and when I side with her when she’s in the middle of an argument with anyone else in the house. Mom is grateful-happy when she feels seen, valued, and nurtured.

“What can I do to stop the boobies from coming?” I repeat, leaning further into my question now that I know it satisfies Mommy so much.

Mom looks down, the way she does when she’s about to tell me a secret, like the time she told me Grandma has false teeth or the time she said she finds Dad boring. I know something juicy is coming. Something special, something just the two of us will know. Something that will cement and validate our wonderful best friendship, the way only secrets can.

“Well, sweetheart, if you really want to know how to stay small, there’s this secret thing you can do… it’s called calorie restriction.”



* * *



I take to calorie restriction quickly and I’m quite good at it. I’m desperate to impress Mom. She’s a great teacher because she’s been calorie restricting for so long, she tells me.

“Once when I was falling asleep as a child, I heard my mom and dad talking in the other room. They said my brother could eat anything and his metabolism would work it right off, but that anything I ate turned to fat. Those words got to me, Net, they really did. I’ve been restricting ever since.”

Now that I think about it, it does make sense to me that Mom’s been restricting. She only has hot tea every morning for breakfast, nothing in it, and a plate of steamed vegetables every night for dinner, nothing on them. I rarely see her eat lunch, and if she does, it’s a salad with no dressing or half of a chocolate chip Chewy Granola Bar. I’m in good hands.

I start shrinking by the week as Mom and I team up to count our calories every night and plan our meals for the next day. We’re keeping me on a one-thousand-calorie diet, but I have the smart idea that if I only eat half my food, I’ll only be receiving half the calories, which means that I will be shrinking twice as fast. I proudly show my half-eaten portions to Mom after every meal. She beams. Each Sunday, she weighs me and measures my thighs with a measuring tape. After a few weeks of our routine, she provides me with a stack of diet books that I finish quickly. I learn the value of eating water-dense fruits and vegetables like jicama and watermelon. I learn how helpful cayenne and chili peppers are for increasing your metabolism. I learn that coffee is an appetite suppressant, so I start drinking decaf—black—alongside Mom. Drinking coffee in any form is technically against the church’s rules.

“Well it’s decaf so I’m sure God would make an exception,” Mom says, and I nod like I agree, even though I’m pretty sure the God I’ve learned about doesn’t make exceptions.

The thinner I get, the stricter I get with what I’ll ingest, because it seems like my body is trying to hold on to whatever I eat.

I notice that most foods add a little body weight to me, four-tenths of a pound or so. I know this because I weigh myself five times a day. Five is my lucky number, so this amount of daily weighins seems appropriate. I also want to make sure that I’m staying on top of every single shift in my body so that I can make proper adjustments and be on track for my weekly weighing session with Mom.

My favorite foods are sugar-free Popsicles, applesauce, and unsweetened iced tea, because these are the foods that don’t seem to add weight to me. Popsicles and applesauce add nothing, and iced tea is peed right out. These are stress-free foods for me. Safe foods. Comfort foods. Whoever said mac ’n’ cheese and fried chicken were comfort foods was out of their mind. These are the real comfort foods.

Mommy and I continue our mission, and I am thrilled. Every day feels to me like the montage of the twins in The Parent Trap, where Mom and I give each other Eskimo kisses and do silly hand jives in between our weekly weighins and daily calorie counts. (I watched the film after Mom suggested my screenplay Henry Road was a rip-off. She was right.) Calorie restriction has brought me and Mom closer than we already were, which is really saying something because we were already so close. Calorie restriction is wonderful!

We’re about six months into our calorie-restricting plan and you can really see the difference. I’m down three sizes and am now wearing a kids’ size 7 slim. The Holy Spirit tells me to touch the word “slim” on my clothing tags five times every day because that ritual, along with my restriction, will keep me small. Thanks, Holy Spirit!

Overall, things are going well. But today is an exception.

Today I am anxious, because I’m sitting in the waiting room at my doctor’s office waiting to be called back. And waiting to be called back means waiting to be weighed. And I’m terrified of being weighed on a scale that isn’t my own. What if the numbers are off? What if I weigh more on this one?

Mom seems to sense that I’m nervous, so she holds my hand while we wait. And wait. And wait. Until finally… “McCurdy, Jennette,” the doctor’s assistant calls out. My heart starts pounding so intensely, I’m sure everyone in the room can hear it. My face feels hot. Time blurs while I walk through the waiting room door and into the hallway. Mom starts taking off my corduroy Children’s Place jacket, knowing it adds extra weight. We’re in this together. The nurse tells me I can leave my shoes on, but Mom tells me to take them off. Always looking out! I kick off my shoes and step on the scale. Mom and I lock eyes.