Fat Chance (2 page)

As always, I am grateful that Chubby Central isn't the actual name of the store, and I tease myself with the hope that somehow, other people walking through the mall could be unaware of what the specialty was in that store, that perhaps they might be too busy to notice the bright emblem on my shopping bag. I admit I tease myself also, with the pretense that I am slim and sleek and fragile, that is, until I walk in front of a store with mirrored windows that make me want to drown myself in a shameful vat of chocolate syrup.

I round the corner quickly, to escape the sight of my round, lumpy profile, and hit the button on my key fob to unlock my car. Dropping my bags in the backseat, I ease myself gingerly into the driver's seat. For some reason, I always feel the need to creep into my car, gently. It’s like I have mentally increased my own weight so that when I sit in my car it’s as if I can feel it groaning under me. I have never admitted that to anyone because I know it’s completely ridiculous, but I can't seem to stop the thought from haunting me. I've often wondered if that’s the same sort of thing that causes things like anorexia, that sense of seeing yourself in a completely wrong way and knowing it, but being totally unable to do anything to change it.

Rolling over, I listen as my cell phone buzzes against the nightstand beside my bed. I rub my eyes irritably and shove my hair back from my face with a groan. Swiping the back of my hand against my mouth, I make a face and try to remember what day it is. Saturday.

Picking up the phone, I try to clear the fog from my head as I read the time on the display. Seven in the morning! Prepared to let loose a string of unkind words, I answer the call and growl an unhappy hello.

"Well, hello, yourself." Janet chirps. The cloud of irritability passes instantly; Janet is like a mother to me, and after everything she's done for me, it’s simply impossible to be angry with her. Growing up in the foster system, I lived in a string of different homes through my preteen and teen years; Janet is really the only constant presence that I had in my early adult life.

The variety of homes I lived in wasn't all bad though, I suppose. One woman taught me about puberty, consoling me as I cried in fear of the blood in my panties. Another taught me to shave my legs and under my arms, shocked that no one had taught me before. Yet another taught me to apply makeup, coaching me as I learned what colors worked on my face and developed my own style.

I lived in mostly good homes growing up; ones filled with people who genuinely loved children and did their best to help me deal with what I'd been through in my early years. Because of the people I lived with and their heartfelt efforts to make a difference in my life, I've shared in family holiday celebrations, I've been given birthday gifts, and I’ve gone on family vacations. I’ve had good experiences, mostly, even in foster homes. Especially with Janet.

"Hey, Jan," I mutter, sitting up on the edge of the bed. Looking down at myself, I sigh; glad that I am the only one who can see me. My shirt has completely twisted around me in my sleep and is now wedged under my breasts, twisted around the unsightly roll of my waist. I look like a smashed bag of gigantic marshmallows.

"I woke you? Oh honey, are you still sleeping your Saturdays away?" Janet says, laughing, remembering when I was a teenager and she’d have to force me out of bed just to feed me lunch at two in the afternoon. She always used to joke that I'd sleep my life away if not for her. Remembering too, I laugh back.

"You know it. Good thing you called or I'd have wasted the entire day," I mock. Making a face and poking at my lumpy belly, I ask, "What's up?" My always present inner voice answers,
your weight, of course.

Janet is the sixth, and the last, of the foster mothers, the only one that I've kept close contact with. I haven't seen her in person in a while, though, not since going to her husband's funeral. She’d been so glad to see me there, along with the other grown children she still held close to her heart. Chelsea and Renee really are Janet's daughters; beautiful identical twins, the result of a string of fertility treatments. Hungry for a little sister, they had taken me in as soon I was moved into their house, instantly, as if I were born into their family. I love them like my own sisters, and talk to one or the other of them almost daily.

I could do without Rick though, and I am pretty sure that if I never see him again, it'll be too soon. Janet and her husband took him in not long after I arrived in their home; he was a drug addicted trouble-maker with a mean streak and a nasty personality. I still can't figure out why Janet keeps in contact with him, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s because he’s was like me in that he has no one else. Maybe she feels obligated to try to save him, the way she did with me.

"I called to ask you to come home in a few weeks," Janet says. "I want to have sort of a family reunion, you know?"

Suddenly, everything in me goes into a minor panic. A family reunion!? I manage to keep from seeing everyone too often by living several towns away, sacrificing my time with Janet and my surrogate sisters in order to better avoid Rick. The jerk bought the house next door to Janet's. I used to go home a lot, until he started making it a point to show up almost every time I did. Eventually, I just quit, and now I only really see Janet when she comes to me.

Rick started out fine with me at first, but now he’s become one of the cruelest people I've ever met, critical about the size of my breasts, my legs, my arms, the roundness of my face. For years, he hasn't liked anything at all about me, from the way I speak, to the way I dress. He has often called me vile names and he targets me with verbal attacks when he can catch me alone. I still can’t believe how quickly he changed, back then, from a brother figure to an outright enemy.

"I think I can swing it, Janet, but I'm not making promises," I say, already trying to think of a way to get out of going. I always make time to see Janet when she comes to town, and I invite her to visit me often. It’s the same between Chelsea, Renee and me; we invite each other over, we have old-fashioned slumber parties with movies and giggles and lots of noise. It isn't that I don't want to see them, but I know myself well enough to recognize how low my confidence is lately, and how unhealthy it would be to spend any time hanging around with Rick.

"I'm still not stupid, Cassaundra," Janet chides. "You're a big girl now-"

Believe me, I've noticed,
my inner voice chips in
.

"-and Rick has grown up a bit since you last saw him," she’s saying. "You know, he really saw Jim as a father figure, and losing him hit Rick pretty hard. You should come; everyone deserves a second chance, Cass. Besides, you can't spend your life avoiding difficulty, can you?"

Knowing better than to answer that, I heave a sigh. I know I’m going to have to go, that’s all there is to it. I know she'll never let me out of it. This, of course, means that I need new clothes. I need a girdle. I need a body transplant, or a charitable doctor who could help me vacuum all the unsightly fat from my body. He could donate it to a third world country; according to Rick, I have enough meat on my rear to fatten up an entire orphanage.

"I know what you're thinking," Janet says quietly, somehow listening to my thoughts as she has always done. "But it would sure mean a lot to me if you would come. I know the girls would love to have you in the house again; they always miss you when they come home without you. Your room's still here, you know."

"Okay. Okay, I'll come, Mama," I answer, hearing her breath hitch at the endearment. It always trips her emotions when I slip like that. She talks for a few more minutes, trying to sound like she isn't choked up as she gives me the basic details of the reunion, and then says she has to go. I end the call and can’t help smiling to myself, remembering the way she and her husband accepted me without hesitation as their own, right from the beginning.

For the first year that I’d lived in her house, she'd only been Janet, and her husband had just been Jim. I had held myself back from them as much as possible; for me, they were just another family that I was sent to live with. They were nice enough but they could never be anything special to me, because I had grown used to temporary families; by then I spent every day just waiting to be told that I was moving again, transferred to yet another foster home. I refused to create any sort of emotional bond to anyone, believing as I did that they would disappear from me just as my biological family had.

Eventually, Janet became the only one in my collection of foster mothers who was able to reach through my barrier of self-protection. She just sat me down one day and flat out acknowledged my fear of abandonment, challenging me to open up and give someone a chance to be close to me.

Jim took me to dinner that night too, just like a father-daughter date, and he spoke with me also, informing me over steak and baked potatoes that they had petitioned to keep me with them, and that even though it was really too late for a formal adoption, the state had agreed to stop moving me, to finally allow me to have some stability. He told me, in his strong and quiet way, that I'd found a home.

They knew, though, that they could never really be mother and father, because I had already had and lost both a mother and a father. Janet and Jim had never even tried to replace my original family, only to give me a new one. After that dinner date with Jim, they had slowly become "mama" and "pop" to me, secretly, just as they were "mama" and "pop" to their daughters. I had kept it to myself for the longest time, my sense of having been taken in and accepted. At that time, my new sense of them as my family was like a precious secret that I kept guarded in my heart.

Too soon, it was time for me to branch out on my own and make my way in the world. I remember Janet crying on the front porch when I moved out of her house, only eighteen years old but determined to make my own way. I remember hugging her tight to me, clutching my suitcase in one hand, and I'd had my first verbal slip.

"I'll be ok, mama," I'd whispered into her hair, filling with regret for the slip, misunderstanding as she'd stiffened against me.

"What? Did you say mama to me?" she'd asked me, her eyes shimmering and her lower lip trembling.

Frozen, I'd just stood there in shock, terrified of what she would say to me. Never had I expected her to really accept me as a genuine daughter, never had I allowed myself to hope that she would. But she had, wholeheartedly and without hesitation. She'd grinned and burst into fresh tears, pulling me back into her arms.

"You don't forget your mother," she'd whispered fiercely. "Not ever, but don't you forget your mama either. You'll always have a place, right here, with me."

It would be perfect, this deep-seated sense of belonging that she gave me, if not for the fact that these people I love, who have reached out to me, had also reached out to Rick. The jerk.

Well, I’m just going to have to suck it up; I guess I’m going home.

Having to get up and get ready for work is one of my least favorite parts of the day. I have a decent sense of fashion, and I know how to dress well, but no matter how well it starts out, there is always a part of the process where I'm pretty vicious with myself.

While I chose my favorite dress to wear, I analyzed the simple wrap style and how it fit me. I second-guessed the shade of pink even though it matched my coloring perfectly. Pairing the dress with a violet scarf headband that had long parts, which hung down over one shoulder, I couldn't help wondering if it made my face look too round, or if the set of purple bangles I wore on one wrist made my hands look too fat. I wore boots in the same shade as my headband; they had a short chunky heel and they rode up my calves to just below the knees. Even these made me doubt myself, though I have no idea why.

I work in a call center; it's one of the things in my life that I'm sort of emotionally mixed about. I like my job and I work with nice people, but I'm always wondering; if I were thinner, would I have a better job? Would I have more pay, or even a better position? Even though I'm one of the neatest, cleanest, most responsible people that I know, I seem to be passed up pretty often for the proverbial hot blonde with big jugs and an airhead voice.

Anyway, for now, I don’t mind feeing like my body keeps me on the bottom; working where I am gives me lots of time to myself, since I don't have to work very long hours. Also, I'm only two desks down from Jackson, this guy that I've crushed on for a good long while now. He's been working two desks down for pretty much the entire time I've worked here.