Conversations With the Fat Girl (3 page)

I straighten my back and breathe deeply

?Yeah, well, about that. Since I'm going to be moving out, I figure I

should have full access to The Driveway I can't start moving my stuff

out if I'm parked all the way out on the street, now can I?? I realize

my arms are frozen in a game-show hostess manner and The Driveway is now

behind Door Number Two.

?You just pulled in,?Faye manages to say as she digs out the loose

saliva from the corners of her mouth and proceeds to investigate.

19 Conversations with the Fat Girl13

the house,?I say pointing to my destination one foot away from where I

am standing. Suddenly all the way seems exaggerated. "So take them in

and then move the car?Faye flicks the

salva from her fingers, then bends down to weed her bed of tulps, giving

me enough visual material to populate every nightmare I will ever have.

I think about it for one second. What is she going to do? I've already

been evicted and I know I can take her if it comes down

that.

I'm going to keep my car parked here,?I say

The wind blows my hair over my shoulder, and I imagine the slow-motion

shot of a girl victorious walking into her house. One foot falls in

front of the other, hips locking into place. Faye Mabb standing there,

throwing her fist to the sky, arms flapping like the bat she is, and

saying, 'That girl. Who can control that girl??My Fancy New Car will

stay there as a reminder to Faye of the dawning of a new age.

It's all fun and games until a few hours later when Faye's eon, Stan,

stops by and blocks my Fancy New Car in The Sacred Driveway I now have

to knock on Faye's door and beg Stan to move his car, promising never to

raise my voice to his harpy of a mother ever again.

I decide to put a call into Olivia on my cell phone as I get in my car

to leave for work. The battery is low, so this will be a short call. I

am already ten minutes late, and I'll hear about my tardiness throughout

my entire five-hour shift at the coffeehouse. My manager, Cole, will see

to that.

20

Thar She Blows

O

liviaMorten and I met when we were twelve years old. We found each other

in physical education class. Olivia and I

would stand against the chain-link fence and watch as the team captains

chose every other student, until it got down to the two ?fat girls.?At

that age, this just meant I was developing earlier than all the other

girls. Olivia, on the other hand, was officially overweight-even at the

age of twelve. As the agonizing minutes passed, we were eventually

chosen and promptly benched.

At first I hated Olivia. People began to lump us together as one single

Fat Entity-moving about the playground in an amoeba-like fashion,

glomming onto groups of people at will. Before Olivia came along, the

cliques of girls at my school tolerated me. I convinced myself I was on

the outside because I was a little chunkier than most. I never once took

into consideration that they just might not like me. With Olivia, I was

now part of a new club I didn't want to belong to. I imagined there was

this constant deliberation about the ?fat girls.?Olivia couldn't run,

but she could catch and throw. I could never catch and throw, but I

could run. Who was the better athlete? Who was more

21 Conversations with the Fat Girl15

agreeabIe? Who was more desperate? I never questioned whether these

scenarios were based on actual facts. Once you're labeled in school, no

amount of factual information can unstuck it from your psyche.

When it was just me, I was never under such a microscope. Before Olivia,

I would position myself just outside a group of popular girls, craning

to hear the latest gossip and noteworthy fashion tips. I laughed when

they laughed and sputtered nonsense when they spoke to me. But it

worked. It worked for me and my twelve-year-old fantasy of what

friendship was supposed to be. As the months passed, I found myself

forever on the outside of the group at the end of that picnic table,

craning my neck and never getting any closer. I wanted to be popular. I

wanted the life they led. The valentines. The designer clothes. The pack

of friends.

Olivia was cocky for a twelve-year-old. Hers was always the first hand

to go up after any question. I heard she beat up Reed Anderson in fifth

grade for calling her out in kickball. I found myself drawn to that. Day

after day, after spending my obligatory time at the end of the popular

table, I would walk up to Olivia with her tinfoil-wrapped soda. She was

consistently flippant and never once asked me to sit down. One day, I

motioned for her to scoot over, and she begrudgingly obliged. I tried

complimenting her lunch. I tried gossiping about the other girls.

Nothing. Then one day I cracked a joke about squirrels and our math

teacher and for the first time I made Olivia Morten laugh. I held this

position in her life for the next fifteen years.

By the time we reached our high school years, we had developed a rich

fantasy life. One of our favorites took place in an upscale, imaginary

bar in Old Town Pasadena. Olivia and I, both pounds lighter and under

the tutelage of a well-respected stylist, toast with our flutes of

bubbling champagne and scan

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the room. Mary Benicci, Gretchen Bliss, and Shannon Shimasaki enter the

imaginary establishment. Our hatred of Mary Benicci, Gretchen Bliss, and

Shannon Shimasaki bridged both the imaginary and real worlds. They were

on the high school swim team, had dates to every dance, shopped at the

mall, and had pictures mounted on their dressers of all the events they

attended with their endless ranks of smiling, tanned-faced friends.

The fantasy would inevitably turn to revenge. The threesome of

she-devils enter the bar to our raised flutes of champagne. We turn

around slowly The record screeches to a halt (it appears there is now a

circa-1970 record player in this establishment). The years have not been

kind to the threesome. Mary is ?intimately corresponding?with prison

inmates. Gretchen refuses to admit that her high school sweetheart has

been seen canoodling with an as-yet-unnamed man and Shannon has gained

approximately three hundred pounds, causing her friends to worry she's

?eating herself to death.?Our equally fit lovers- The John Sheridan, now

a veterinarian, and Ben Dunn, a movie star-join us. John and Ben chime

in as we point at Shannon Shimasaki's stomach, squealing, ?Looks like

you've found what we lost,?at the top of our lungs, gales of our

laughter filling the restaurant. We then ooh and ahh at Mary Benicci's

proclivity for prison inmates and shudder at the thought of turning a

straight man gay This all takes place as ?our men?both break down in

tears as they propose marriage in tandem on bended knee.

Back in our sweaty pimple-ridden real world, Olivia and I ordered up our

usuals at a local fast-food eatery and tried to forget a future both of

us knew would never happen.

By the time Olivia and I went off to college, she could be officially

classified as ?morbidly obese.? I was gaining ten to fif

23

teen pounds a year pretty steadily, but I had to go some to catch to

Olivia. We spent four years at University of California at

Berkeley hiding in the library and driving across the Golden Gate

Bridge late at night-she told me it made her feel weightless.

One night during our senior year, Olivia drove me to the

entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge. She parked the brand-new car her

parents gave her for getting whatever it was she did to have her parents

lavish gifts on her. We got out of the car and headed to the walkway of

the big orange bridge. It was a freezing night in San Francisco, but the

wind felt good and the city smelled wonderful. I looked down at the

water and saw the lights of the city twinkling back at me. Olivia was

leaning over the fence and down at the water below. A passing car of

young males with nothing better to do honked and yelled out, ?Thar she

blows.?Olivia straightened herself and turned to me. Her blond hair was

now dyed a more sunflower color with beautiful

highlights. Her skin had cleared up nicely, and she was dressed

in the height of plus-size fashion. But at that angle, on that

on that bridge, she was still just another fat girl. I was good at

giving advice and picking Olivia up after these kinds of comments, but I

could never follow these prescriptions myself. Had someone yelled that

at me, I would have been deciding whether to just go right over the side

of the bridge. While Olivia dressed to get attention, I made a promise

to myself to blend in to the background as much as possible.

My life is about never putting myself into that situation. I niever call

attention to myself. That is the code I live by I don't go into movie

theaters late. I don't buy tank tops. I don't sing along with the car

radio. I try never to walk in front of anyone. I constantly pull at my

clothes. I walk with my eyes to the ground. I constantly apologize for

myself. I don't like hugs. I don't look in

24

mirrors. I don't smile in pictures because of a possible doublechin

incident. It boils down to this: If I am invisible, no one can make fun

of me. Olivia didn't have the ability to become invisible. Her sheer

size made her the epitome of visible. But it was visibility at a

distance. You couldn't avoid looking at her and how big she had gotten.

But you also couldn't touch her or get close to her because of how big

she'd gotten. That night, I remember smiling at her and coming toward

her. I had my whole speech planned; I was even working on a joke about

how at least they were well read enough to make an obscure whaling

reference here in San Francisco. She tilted her head back so that I

could see her take a slow swallow I could see her breath in the cold

night air as she finally exhaled. Olivia was never one to talk about the

pain we shared or the shame e carried with us. I never said a word. The

next day, she made the calls to set up her gastric bypass surgery. ?Hey

Olivia, it's me,?I trail off on her answering machine, thinking that

maybe she'll pick up after hearing who it is. She does. ?Wait!?Olivia

picks up huffing and puffing.

?What are you doing??I squeal. ?I was bringing groceries in. What's

going on?? I can hear the crinkles of a bag in the background. I imagine

my best friend now. It's been five years since the surgery. After the

first round, going under the knife became second nature to Olivia. She

went in for two more plastic surgeries to ?correct? certain problems and

side effects of the surgery. Her goal: the elusive size 2. Her hair is

perfect. A blond messy shat that takes forty-five

25 Conversations with the Fat Girl 19

minutes to look like it's right out of the shower and windblown to

perfection. She has dark brown eyes that until recently went unnoticed

because they were hidden by bangs, excess flesh, or her habit of never

looking anyone in the eye. She is probably wearing full eye makeup and

just a swipe of pink lip gloss. I can see her pressed white peacoat and

camel shift dress now Olivia swore she would never wear black once she

started losing weight. I've never seen so much as a black barrette in

her perfect blond hair. But she's still my Olivia. The tinfoil-wrapped

colas are still her history, just as they are mine. Her life is now

eerily mirroring our high school fantasies. I just thought it would

involve me more. ?1 have to move in one week,?I say, turning down

Colorado Boulevard. ?Girl, you should have moved a long time ago.?I can

hear cans being put on tile counters and cabinets being open and closed.

The contents of those cans will be eaten one tablespoon at a time.

?Yeah, I know. I just feel a little guilty because this is happening

right now. With the wedding and everything,?I say. ?Oh, don't worry; it

won't affect me. Come on, now, that's crazy talk,? Olivia says. ?Right

... right. How's Adam??I stop at a red light and watch the minutes pass.

I'm sure Cole is doing the exact same thing right now. ?Fabulous. He's

in India for some Doctors Without Borders thing.?Olivia sighs. Olivia

met Dr. Adam Farrell when he was the featured speaker at a PR event she

put on for his hospital. It was almost a full year and half after she

graduated from Berkeley and nearly two years after the surgery that

changed her life forever. Dr. Farrell flew in from Washington, DC, and

when Olivia met him at the airport she knew then that he was the man she

would marry