Dietland (31 page)

With Marlowe and the other women busy with their projects, I began to crave one of my own, something beyond cooking and eating, writing in my journal, and obsessing about Jennifer. Marlowe was so engrossed in her work that she didn't respond when I tried to start a conversation, so I washed the dishes and prepared to go out for the afternoon.

I forced myself to go out for a while each day. When I did, I often had run-ins with people who stared at me in a way I didn't like or who were somehow rude. I'd perfected the evil eye, and my favorite response:
What the hell are you staring at?,
which I sometimes upgraded to
What the fuck are you staring at?.
I had begun to look forward to these encounters. The people I confronted seemed shocked that I responded and didn't give me a fight. Sometimes I wondered if a fight was what I wanted. After years of not fighting back, I was coiled like a snake.

I took a few freshly baked ladyfingers from the kitchen and ate them as I headed to the bus stop, the front of my dress speckled with powdered sugar. “Look at that big lady,” said a little girl as she walked by, holding the hand of her mother or nanny. The woman blushed and was about to say something, but I spoke first.

“Yeah, look at me,” I said, popping the last ladyfinger into my mouth and brushing the crumbs from my hands. “Aren't I fabulous?”

I rode the bus to Midtown, then got off and walked for a few blocks. Through the forest of buildings, I looked up and saw part of the Austen Tower's chrome trunk. Kitty was up at the top and Julia was down in the depths.

Back at street level, another familiar sight: a poster of the lilac negligee woman, whose breasts I'd seen sailing around town on the sides of buses. Outside one of the flagship branches of V— S—, the poster was more than two stories high, the woman's breasts tire-size. If I'd had Jennifer's powers, I would have demanded the posters be taken down. They were everywhere, like leaflets dropped on a population during a war. Propaganda.

When the hordes of pedestrians thinned out, I could see myself reflected in the plate-glass window of the store, superimposed over the lilac negligee woman's knees. I was wearing my knee-length brown and violet dress, with violet tights, the black boots on my feet. I smiled at my reflection, which then disappeared behind a group of people streaming by. No matter how big the crowd became, the woman on the poster loomed large, her breasts conquering Manhattan. I'd first seen her the day I saw Leeta on the T-shirt: two women, two different messages. I could never be like the negligee woman—I no longer wanted to—but I wondered if I could be like Leeta.

A Baptist isn't afraid to become an outlaw.

I headed to the drugstore to buy supplies and gather my courage. Then I breezed into V— S—, doing my best to appear nonchalant. The sizes at Bonerville didn't reach the outer limits, so the sight of me entering the store raised some eyebrows.
One of these things is not like the others!
A bouncy-haired salesgirl bodychecked me at the entrance. “Can I help you with something?” she said.

“I'm shopping for a normal-size person. I hope you don't mind that I've come in here.”

“Not at all. I'm here to help,” she said, expertly deflecting all sarcasm.

I was left alone to roam the store, the walls lined with life-size posters of the Swedes and Brazilians who modeled the lingerie. As I pretended to browse, I discreetly slipped things into my satchel, using my bulky body as a shield. That part was unexpectedly easy. The difficult part was removing the security tags. I needed to be in the dressing room to do that, but I had no reason to go in there. Even the robes weren't likely to fit me, the unfuckable female.

Though I'd said I was shopping for someone else, I spotted a display of scarves, necklaces, and other size-free items in the middle of the store that I could pretend were for me. I selected a few accessories that would go with my dress and asked the salesgirl if I could try them on in the dressing room, to see how they looked. She wasn't suspicious of me; people rarely were.

In the dressing room, I used the scissors I'd bought at the drugstore to cut the saucer-shaped security tags off the underwear. The scissors weren't quite sharp enough and I gnawed at the fabric and ruined the items, which wasn't something the average thief would have done, but then I had no intention of wearing the underwear. I didn't know what I was going to do with it, but stealing it felt good.

I was prepared for the alarm to sound as I walked out the door or for the bored security guard to tackle me, but nothing happened. This was one of the most reckless things I'd ever done, and though I wasn't likely to see my face printed on T-shirts anytime soon, it gave me a thrill.

At home, I dumped the lilac negligee and the rest of the contraband in my closet.
calliope was born in this room / january 1973.

“What are you going to do with all that underwear?” Sana asked when she came upstairs to visit me in my room, looking at the tangled, frayed, colorful heap on the closet floor. I confessed to her that I'd stolen it. She clearly disapproved, but didn't berate me.

“I'm saving it for a special occasion,” I said.

“Waiting for Mr. Right?”

“I already met Mr. Right, didn't I tell you? I encountered him in the subway station. He punched me in the face.”

For the rest of the week, I settled into a routine. In the morning I was up at the sound of the music and made breakfast for everyone. After the women cleared out of the kitchen, I'd spend a few hours baking, still in my nightgown, listening to the radio for any news of Leeta. While I stuffed myself with cupcakes and popovers and whatever else I'd made, I'd call my mother. She wanted to talk about Verena's book and was full of questions about my new life and where I was living, relieved that I was away from Brooklyn and surrounded by new friends. When I finished baking and eating, I'd put the rest of the baked goods onto platters and trays for the other women and then I'd shower, dress in my new clothes (which were becoming snug), and visit a branch of V— S—.

On the fourth day, when I went down the stairs, ready to go out, I paused in the red-walled entryway to make sure I had put my scissors in my satchel. Then there was the shattering of glass followed by screeching tires. I feared that a bomb was finally blowing up the Bessie Cantor Foundation next door and I was experiencing the blast in slow motion. I stood frozen in place until I felt certain that a fireball wasn't about to rip through the walls.

I walked into the living room and bent over to pick up what turned out to be a brick with a piece of paper rubber-banded around it. One side of the paper, in block lettering, read:
DIE BITCH
. On the other side:
EULAYLA 4-EVER
.

“What's going on?” Verena said, coming into the living room and taking the brick from me. She read the messages and frowned, seeming resigned rather than surprised. “This happens sometimes,” she said. “Former Baptists. So many of them hate me.” She handed me the brick and asked me to unwrap the rubber band and save the piece of paper.

“If they'd added a T, it could have said
DIET BITCH
,” I said. “That would have been far more clever.”

Verena didn't laugh. She collected the broom and dustpan and began to sweep up the broken glass. I unwrapped the paper and flattened it on the coffee table. I figured I'd leave the brick out back, but when Verena wasn't looking, I slipped it into my satchel, enjoying the heft of it.

I headed out of the house, a bit shaken but determined to carry on with my plan for the day. I was working my way through the many V— S— stores in the city, returning home with the frilly stolen goods. This afternoon, I decided to venture farther afield to a shopping mall in Queens. I visited the bathroom in the food court first—it seemed sensible to pee now, in case I was arrested—but I wasn't arrested, and as I left the mall, lingerie hidden in my satchel, the phone in my purse vibrated. The number looked familiar, but I couldn't immediately place it.

“Ms. Kettle? This is Deborah from Dr. Shearer's office. We haven't heard from you in months. Your surgery is approaching—can we expect to see you at your appointment?”

I stopped between a set of double doors. Other shoppers bumped into me from both directions, but I didn't move.

“Hello, Ms. Kettle?” I turned off my phone. The call was an unwelcome interruption to an otherwise perfect trip to the mall, a hand reaching out from my past, trying to knock me over.

 

• • •

I SHOULD HAVE TOLD THE DOCTOR'S SECRETARY
that I no longer wanted surgery, but instead I'd said nothing. For a good part of the next day, I tried to write through the confusion in my notebook. Killing the thin woman inside me, the perfect woman, my shadow self—but how could I know if she was truly gone?

I decided to get out of the house, to go to a café and write, like old times. I visited Sana downstairs and asked if she wanted to join me. “I'll need a caffeine break soon,” she said, sitting on the edge of her desk. She wore jeans and a billowy sleeveless top in midnight blue, her hair in the usual ponytail. She'd be free in half an hour, so I went ahead of her. Since I had nearly filled up my notebook, I brought my laptop along as well.

At Night & Day Café, I settled at a table near the window and ordered a lemonade and a mocha brownie. I reviewed the pages I'd written in my notebook during the previous weeks, Leeta's messy blue ballpoint giving way to my careful black printing. I was glad I'd brought my laptop—it was time to impose some kind of order on my writing. Maybe, like some of the other women at Calliope House, I would write a book one day. When I was working for Kitty, spending all those days in front of my laptop at Carmen's café, I'd wanted to write articles and essays, but maybe now I could write something longer. I had something more to say, despite the confusion I currently felt.

The Dear Kitty mailbox was positioned at the bottom of my screen. I'd never bothered to delete it, so I clicked it, intending to drag it to the trash can. Somehow it popped open, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I held my right hand in front of my eyes, as if a flash of light had blinded me. When I dared to look, I saw that fifteen new messages had trickled in before it was severed from the Austen mothership months ago. They'd languished in my inbox, their cries ignored. For fun, I opened one of them:
Dear Kitty, My boyfriend says I have a fupa. How can I—

I was interrupted by a familiar voice. “Hey, lady!” Sana was coming in my direction, in time to rescue me. Her shout elicited stares from all corners of the café, but she wasn't afraid to call attention to herself, knowing that people were going to stare at her burned face anyway. I pushed my laptop aside. I'd already finished the brownie and sucked up the last of my lemonade, so Sana went to the counter for more, returning a few minutes later with Cokes and a plate of soft macaroons crisscrossed with chocolate stripes.

“What's Sugar Plum been up to today?” she said, popping open her Coke, her silver bangles sliding down her arms. “More underwear?”

“Not today.”

“Good. One of these days I'm going to have to bail you out of jail. You know that, don't you?”

“They'll never catch me. I'm as quick as a cat.”

She smiled but said, “Seriously, do I need to worry about you? As your friend and as a social worker, I'm required by law to ask.”

“I like doing it,” I said, shrugging. She backed off. I didn't tell her about the other things I'd done recently, such as swearing at the yoga mat–carrying woman in the supermarket who'd scoffed loudly upon seeing the contents of my shopping basket, and hiding a brick in my satchel.

“I'd like to ask you about something,” I said, “if you're willing to play social worker for a moment?” I told her that the doctor's office had called and that I hadn't canceled the surgery. “I'm wondering how I can be sure that Alicia, the thin woman inside me, is truly gone. What if she comes back to life?”

“Do you mean like a zombie? To kill a zombie you have to shoot it in the head.”

I played along. “That won't work. She lived
inside
me, remember? If I shoot her, I'll have to shoot myself.” In a serious tone, I tried to explain that I was worried my new life could be a novelty, one that might lose its appeal. This seemed impossible while sitting at the café with Sana, but I couldn't predict the future.

“It's a lifelong process and it's never going to be easy, Plum,” Sana said, “but there comes a moment when you realize you've changed in some irrevocable way and you'll never go back to the way you were before. Think of it as crossing over to a new place.”

I liked the idea of crossing over. “But how will I know for sure that it's happened?”

“If you're not sure, then it hasn't happened yet. You're still in flux.”

In flux—that's how I felt. She had helped me understand what I was feeling, as I knew she would.

She noticed my laptop and I explained that I was going to type up what I'd written in my notebook, but I didn't mention the possibility of writing a book. That idea was too new to be shared. She told me about her day raising funds for her clinic. She planned to run the New York clinic for a few years, then return to Iran to open one there. I hated the prospect of her leaving.

Sana talked about the teen girls she was going to help at the clinic. Much of what she was saying about the girls sounded familiar to me.

“I feel a kinship with girls, don't you?” she said.

I hadn't thought about my job like that. I'd seen my girls as a burden. Sometimes I had resented them, perhaps because I had been in a state of suspended adolescence myself.