Empty Arms: A Novel (9 page)

October 3, 1972

Dear James,

In case you’re worried that I’m mad at you for not writing, I’m not. But I really need to talk to you. I just found out that I’m pregnant. Nobody knows yet, not even my parents. I don’t know what to do and I’m scared. I’m not sure how long I can keep this a secret. Please call me as soon as you can.

Love,

Cate

Every afternoon I checked the mailbox, but like my elusive period, his letter never came. Waiting for him to write gave me new appreciation for the term “stir crazy.” I chewed my nails down to the quick, and Mom scolded me and made me paint them with a clear, bitter-tasting polish. I don’t know if it was my anxiety about my secret pregnancy or the surge of hormones I’d read about in the pregnancy book I’d sneaked a look at in the public library, but the bitterness tasted good and it spurred my habit.

As if waiting for James’s letter wasn’t torture enough, horrifying things were happening to my body. One morning, I stumbled into the bathroom to find a swollen red zit camped out in the middle of my forehead. It was the thick, meaty, unpoppable kind that no amount of concealer would cover up. I poked it with my index finger and flinched under the pain. I skipped school that day and locked myself in the bathroom, scrubbing my face with soap and hot water until my skin was crimson with irritation. I tried icing it, which helped a little, but it hardly mattered because two new pimples appeared along my hairline.

In a fit of insanity, I reached for a pair of scissors. Three even snips was all it took to create bangs, but my hair refused to deviate from the natural part down the center of my head. Rather than forming stylish bangs across my forehead, my hair parted and fell off to either side, hanging there like open curtains, showcasing the nasty family of zits. Horror turned to tears, which turned to hiccups, as I ran my fingers through the tragic mess. With three impatient snips I’d ruined my hair and could never show my face at school again.

Thankfully, a trip to the hairdresser fixed my bangs, but my problems only got worse. Flipping on the bathroom light each morning was like walking into a surprise party, except it wasn’t my birthday and instead of friends popping up from behind tables and couches and shouting, “Surprise!” it was varicose veins running up my legs, “Surprise!”, dark Amazonian-colored nipples, “Surprise!”, and purple claw marks across my stomach, “Surprise!”

November 1, 1972

Dear James,

I don’t understand why you haven’t called or written. I’m terrified and there’s no one I can talk to. I understand that things between us are over but I could really use a friend. Is friendship too much to ask for after everything we’ve been through? I’m carrying your baby, for crying out loud. Can’t you give me the decency of a response?

Cate

Desperate for answers, I stole the pregnancy book from the public library and lay in bed at night, after my parents had gone to sleep, reading about the life growing inside me. It said that at seventeen weeks the baby weighed about 5 ounces, which reminded me of a lab we did in science class with a balance scale and a set of metal weights. Things that weigh five ounces: a checkbook, a small bottle of glue, a deck of cards.
Right now, your baby is big enough to fit snuggly in the palm of your hand
. I stared at the small space from the tips of my fingers to the base of my palm, imagining a tiny baby nestled there, and the first feeling of love tugged at my heart.

A couple of nights later, while I was trying to get comfortable in bed, something fluttered inside me, as if a little butterfly had gotten loose in my stomach. I sat up with a gasp, startled by the sensation. It lasted only a split second, but it was undeniably there, like an introduction from the great beyond.

I slid my hands under the elastic waistband of my pajama bottoms and rested them on my bare stomach, hoping to feel it again. “Hello,” I whispered and waited. But it didn’t happen again. Not that day. Or the next. Or even the one after that. The little butterfly didn’t flap its wings again until Honors Chemistry the following Monday afternoon.

“Are you all right?” Angela asked when I gasped and jerked forward in my chair.

“Must be the smell of the Bunsen burners,” I lied.

It became a little game that we played. The little butterfly would wait until the most inopportune moment to flap its wings—like in the middle of my history presentation on early colonial failures or at the dinner table in the middle of Mother’s hell in a handbasket speech—and I would have to cover my jumpiness with a wild array of excuses: hiccups, I thought I saw a spider, I just remembered a scary story. I even faked a ghost sighting one night when I was driving Mom home from work and the little flutter caused me to swerve over the double yellow line. Our little game reminded me that I wasn’t alone. More than that, I felt like I had a built-in best friend, one who surprised me and made me laugh. And I liked to imagine that somewhere, deep within my stomach, the little butterfly was laughing too.

With every week that passed, the odds of hearing from James diminished while my baby, along with my appetite, grew. Slowly, the defined angle of my jaw rounded out and my butt got bigger. The elastic on my underwear stretched and frayed, gouging my skin and leaving purple impressions on my hips. Desperate for relief, I stole a pair from Mom’s dresser and washed them in my bathroom sink every night, so she wouldn’t notice them in the laundry.

Then it was the zipper on my school uniform, which whined to a stop halfway up its track, refusing to advance the last couple of inches to the top. I sucked in my stomach and held my breath; I tugged and pulled but it wouldn’t budge. Finally, I gave up, pinned my skirt closed and covered my growing belly with bulky sweaters.

The only nice surprise came one morning in late November, when I noticed that my peach-sized boobs had grown to the size of melons. Granted, they were small melons, honeydews not watermelons, but melons all the same. For once my chest looked as voluptuous as Angela’s. Of course, any appeal that had was offset by my body’s inability to properly digest food. Somewhere along the line my stomach had started pumping out acid by the cubic ton, which ignited angry flames that scorched my heart all day and all night.

By Thanksgiving my hunger was insatiable. My stomach grumbled so loudly in the middle of Mom’s grace, it made her lose her place and she had to start over. But no one said anything about my weight, so I stupidly believed they hadn’t noticed and kept on eating.

“Daddy, could you please pass the sweet potatoes?” I asked when he finished carving the turkey. Two scoops of the sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping looked small on my dish, so I took a third. Daddy dropped two slabs of turkey onto my plate and I drowned them in a pool of brown gravy. When Mom passed the stuffing, I piled my plate high. And when she passed me the basket of dinner rolls, I took three. My plate was so full you couldn’t even see a speck of the white china below.

I was so busy shoveling the food into my mouth that I didn’t notice Mom set down her silverware and gape at me. She cleared her throat, which finally got my attention.

“What?” I asked with my mouth full.

Daddy, who was sitting at the other end of the table, gripped his fork and knife and shot her a pleading look.

“Young lady, don’t you think that’s a ghastly amount of food to eat in one sitting?” Her words were as sharp as the carving knife.

I shrugged and continued chewing. “I’m hungry.”

She raised her eyebrows and pursed her lips. “I’ve noticed.” She cut into the slab of turkey on her plate.

“What’s
that
supposed to mean?” I asked, foolishly taking the bait.

With fork and knife in hand, she rested the base of her palms on the lace tablecloth and leaned in the tiniest bit. “It’s just … we’ve noticed that you’ve been putting on some weight.”

I turned to Daddy, but he kept his eyes fixed on his plate.

“Are you saying I’m fat?”

Her lips tightened, causing rage to swell in my stomach. Even though I knew there was truth to her words, the anger shot through my veins like battery acid. “Enjoy your dinner.” I jumped up from the table and stormed upstairs.

“It’s not very becoming on your slender frame,” she called after me.

I gripped my bedroom door, wanting nothing more than to slam it so hard the whole house would shake, but the last time I did that Mom took it off its hinges and I needed my door to remain on its hinges. So I shut it quietly and punched a pillow instead.

I continued suffering silently, waiting for James to find the decency to write to me, but eventually the shards of my broken heart turned cold, and the love I’d been carrying dissolved into pure hatred.

For decades it never made sense, but now it does.

December 25, 1972

Dear James,

I hope your Christmas is better than mine. My mom walked in while I was trying on some new clothes. She took one look at my stomach and she knew right away. She and Daddy are downstairs yelling and I’m hiding in my bedroom. I know I’m in big trouble and I’m scared. I have no idea what’s going to happen now. I wish I had someone to talk to. I never thought you’d turn your back on me like this, but apparently I was completely wrong about you.

Merry Christmas,

Cate

The letter trembles in my hand as I remember that morning. Every present I opened contained clothing that was a size ten, rather than my normal six. I held up a pair of mustard yellow corduroys that seemed ten times too big. Mom’s eyes met mine as I fingered the tag and her lips pursed in a smug you’re-too-fat-for-your-old-pants-but-I’m-not-saying-another-word-about-it expression. After our blowout at Thanksgiving, Daddy must’ve convinced her to back off because she hadn’t mentioned my weight since. Not that she needed to. The fact that she began serving salads with dinner, parking in the farthest spot in the mall’s half-empty parking lot, and buying me fat clothes said it all.

I turned my attention to Daddy, who was admiring a set of Ravenscroft crystal tumblers. He shot Mom an appreciative grin. As usual, he didn’t seem to notice the silent war waging between the two of us.

“Thanks for everything,” I said, climbing to my feet and giving them both a tight hug, determined not to let her get to me. “Now who’s ready for pancakes?”

Mom’s lips twisted into a frown, but I ignored her and headed to the kitchen. “Where’s the box of Bisquick?” I called from the pantry, pushing aside a box of cereal and looking behind a bag of pretzels.

She appeared beside me and put her hand on the pantry door. “I thought we’d have eggs this year.”

“Eggs? But we always make chocolate chip pancakes on Christmas morning.”

“This year I thought we’d try something a little … healthier.”

“But chocolate chip pancakes are a tradition.”

“Oh, Catharine, we started that tradition when you were four. I think it’s time to let it go.”

“I don’t want to let it go. I was looking forward to this.”

She turned away, shaking her head violently. “I don’t know how to help you.”

“What are you talking about?”

She turned back to me. “Catharine, look at yourself. You just keep getting bigger and bigger. You look ”—she put her hand over her mouth, and her eyes swelled with tears—“disgusting.”

My cheeks blazed with embarrassment. I knew I’d put on some weight, but
disgusting
?

“Come on, Caty bug,” Daddy said, sitting down at the kitchen table. “We’ll start a new tradition.”

I glared at Mom and plopped down at the kitchen table, waiting silently while she scrambled the eggs and toasted some rye bread. When she dropped a pat of butter in the frying pan, my mouth watered at the creamy sweet aroma, and visions of fluffy, gooey chocolate chip pancakes tormented me.

“So whaddya say kiddo, are we still on for ice skating this afternoon?” Daddy asked as Mom slid plates full of healthy breakfast food in front of us.

“Not today,” I said.

“But, Caty bug, we always go ice skating on Christmas Day.”

I shrugged. “Apparently our traditions don’t matter anymore.” As much as I loved spending Christmas afternoon ice skating with Daddy, I just wanted to crawl back into bed and hide my disgusting body from the world. I cleared my plate and excused myself from the table. Daddy watched me sadly and Mom seemed unmoved. I collected my fat clothes from the gift boxes in the living room and hauled them upstairs.

When I walked past the full-length mirror in my bedroom, my reflection caught my attention. My cheeks looked puffy and my arms were doughy. I dropped the new clothes on my bed and peeled off my pajamas, turning in the mirror and examining my body from every angle. I cupped my hands beneath my bulging belly, remembering Daddy warning me that a watermelon would grow inside me if I ate the black seeds. That’s exactly what it looked like.

I picked up the fat pants that Mom had given me. I stepped into them and hoisted them up to my waist. For the first time in months, the zipper made it all the way to the top and I could breathe without sucking in my stomach. As much as Mom’s words hurt, it was a relief to have a pair of pants that actually fit. I pulled on one of the new sweaters, and my pregnancy disappeared altogether. I turned from side to side, admiring how normal I looked. So normal that I thought I’d be able to keep my secret for at least another month.