13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

by Mona Awad

  He takes the picture of Beth off the Gazelle, scratches the tape off the corners, and holds it up to the blinking purple lights. As he gazes at it, swaying a little from the beers and pot, his fingers itch to do something with it—set fire to it, put it in a frame. He’s about to tear it up when he hears sex sounds, forced, violent, and oddly familiar, from down the hall.

  He finds her sitting at the desk with his laptop open before her. Her back is to him, her bony shoulder blades pointed at him like arrows of accusation, the moans of all of his uncleared history boomeranging through the small, thin-walled room. It looks to him like the one he watched the other night about the two fat maids, specifically the scene in which they demonstrate their versatility to their employers. Only he doesn’t remember it being this loud. In the window’s reflection, he can see her hand covering her mouth, her expression frozen in horror and disgust and fascination.

  “Beth,” he calls like a question, but it’s no good. He can see she is far too transfixed by the fat girls, by the spectacle of flesh which she Gazelled countless miles to shed, by the ecstasy which she is now too hungry and tired and angry to summon. And he knows that she must see him there in the window’s reflection, standing in the dark doorway, softly calling her name.

  The von Furstenberg and I

  Despite my better judgment, I’m in the fitting room wrestling with the von Furstenberg again. I’ve thrown it over my head and I’m attempting to wedge my arms through the armholes even though it’s got my shoulders and rib cage in a vise grip. The fabric’s stretched tight over my face so I can’t see and it’s blocking my air supply but I’m doing my best to breathe through twill. This is the moment of deepest despair. This is the moment she always chooses to knock on the door.

  I can hear the slow-approaching clicks of her heels. Three light raps on the door with her opal-encrusted knuckles. I brace myself for the sound of her voice, all of my nerve endings like cats ready to pounce. When she speaks, I hear her disdain, bright as a bell.

  “How are we doing in here?”

  We. She means me and the von Furstenberg. The von Furstenberg and I. She saw me out of the corner of her exquisitely lined eye going to the back of the store to retrieve it between the frigid Eileen Fishers and the smug Max Azrias and she disapproves. She knows the von Furstenberg is a separate entity, that it and I will never be one.

  “Fine,” I say. I remain absolutely still, try not to sound breathless. Like all is well. Just a regular shopping trip.

  “Oh good,” she says. “You let me know if you need anything.” But in her voice I hear: Give it up, fat girl.

  She knows I’ve been coveting the von Furstenberg ever since I first stood on the other side of her shop window, watching her slip it over a white, nippleless mannequin, looping some ropes of fake pearls around its headless neck. I didn’t know it was a von Furstenberg then. I only knew it was precisely the sort of dress I dreamed of wearing when I used to eat muffins in the dark and watch Audrey Hepburn movies. Before I knew brands, I’d make lists of the perfect dresses—and when I saw this dress it was like someone, perhaps even God, had found the list and spun it into existence. Cobalt, formfitting, with a V in the front and one in the back. Cute little bows all down the butt crack, like your ass is a present. The sort of dress I’d wish to wear to attend the funeral of my former self, to scatter the ashes of who I was over a cliff’s edge.

  “Can I try this on?” I asked her.

  Her eyes opened a little wider. Small glimmers of incredulity like slicks of oil.

  “What? The von Furstenberg?”

  “Yes.”

  She looked from the von Furstenberg to me, then back to the von Furstenberg, sizing both of us up. We two? Never we two.

  Sighing, she led me to a fitting room, rearranging items as she went—insect hair clips, Baggallinis, peacock scarves—so it wasn’t a totally wasted trip.

  The whole time I was in there being asphyxiated by the von Furstenberg, I felt the fact of her clicking on the other side of the door, waiting for me to admit defeat, to come to my senses. Come on.

  • • •

  Today, though, I’m determined to prove her wrong. Today, I won’t come out of the fitting room, let her snatch the mangled von Furstenberg from me, ask me, How did we do? as if she did not know how we did. As if she didn’t already have the steamer turned on and ready to smooth out the creases of my failed struggle, a task she always undertakes with overdone tenderness. Then after I’ve left the store, through the shop window, I’ll watch her pointedly press a damp rag all over the von Furstenberg, presumably to get rid of the slashes of Secret I leave behind. But those stains are always there when I come back. That’s how I know it’s all for show. Like, Look what you do, fat girl. Can’t you take no for an answer? The von Furstenberg doesn’t want you.

  Well maybe I don’t want the von Furstenberg. Has she ever thought of that? That maybe I despise it? That maybe I’m trapped in this dance with the von Furstenberg against my will?

  Knock knock.

  “Still all right in there?”

  “Great,” I say, and I’m tugging so hard on the back zipper, my tongue is lolling out of my mouth like I’m dead in a cartoon. But I feel it going up. Higher than it ever has before. And it’s not a mirage, it fits. It’s on. It’s miraculous. And even though I’m panting, my hair in disarray from the struggle, I see we look immortal.

  • • •

  I’m just thinking how I’ll wear it out of the store. Picturing how I’ll pull back the curtain in the von Furstenberg, turn my zippered, von Furstenberged back to her and say, all casual, over my shoulder, Cut the tag, please? Maybe I’ll even ask for a bag for my old dress—would she mind terribly putting my old dress in a bag? Mm? And that’s when I see the jagged rip down the side seam. Maybe I couldn’t hear the ripping over the sound of my own grunts. That happened once before, with the flesh-colored Tara Jarmon. It was impossibly tight when I bought it and then I was out one day walking, insisting, and it suddenly wasn’t. It suddenly felt easy breezy, beautifully loose. I didn’t understand. Until I caught a glimpse of myself in the reflective glass of an office building and saw the slashes on either hip.

  Knock knock.

  “We sure we’re still doing okay in there?” Her voice says, A rat who insists on hitting its head again and again against the maze wall gets taken out of the maze. It gets escorted out, politely but firmly, by mall security.

  “Yeah,” I say, my hands fiddling with the zipper in a panic. But they’re so slippery from all the exertion, I have to wipe them on the von Furstenberg just to get a grip. And the zipper still won’t go down. I Gazelle. Five miles every morning with a photo of me in a no-name shroud taped to the little window that counts you down. Five miles, only to be told by the von Furstenberg in no uncertain terms that it counts for nothing.

  “Do you need another size?” she asks. By “another” she of course means larger, which we both know isn’t in stock.

  I asked her once for a larger size and she said, Let me check. And then I loved her. Very briefly I loved her. Loved her hands clasped over her tweed-clad crotch. Loved the thin curl of her lips, a smirking red line. Loved all the bones in her ostrich throat, the arrowheads of her décolletage, her ash blond hair gathered in a glittery comb shaped like a praying mantis. Then, as she picked up the receiver, presumably to place the order, she said in a low voice, That will be five hundred dollars, please.

  And I said, What?!

  And she said, Well. Obviously you’ll have to pay for it in advance. Or you could order it online on our website?

  And I said, But I don’t even know if it’ll f—

  And that’s when I saw it, the smile on her face. The flicker of triumph. Like, Ha! You know and I know even the next size up wouldn’t fit you, fat girl.

  “I’m fine,” I tell her now through my teeth, tugging with all my might.

 
• • •

  I don’t know how long I’ve been sitting here, half in and half out of the von Furstenberg, the pull tab of the zipper in the damp cave of my fist. My old dress, the one I thought I’d never have to wear again, lies like a jilted lover in the corner. I hear her clicking not too far off, rearranging the perfectly arranged merchandise—sequined hair clips shaped like butterflies, purses shaped like swans, perfumes that smell like very specific desserts and rains. I could just put my old dress over it. Go to the cash register. Explain. Offer to pay for the von Furstenberg. But the truth, as she well knows, is that even if it did fit, I cannot afford the von Furstenberg.

  • • •

  I have this terrible image of her coming in here with the jaws of life tucked under her arm. Ash blond tendrils escaping from her chignon as she attempts to wrench me out of the von Furstenberg. How the give of my flesh will be abhorrent to her hands, but not half as abhorrent as her bone white hands will be to my flesh. Other customers will look on as they pass by the open door like I’m a car crash in the opposite lane.

  Or.

  Or maybe I could learn to live like this.

  As I sit here, I can already feel myself oozing out of the von Furstenberg. Oozing from the V in front and the V in the back, the volume of my ass threatening to crack the little bows along the fault line. And I begin to think maybe this is it. Maybe this is the only way out. Maybe, if I wait long enough, if I’m patient, I’ll just ooze out. First the fat, then maybe we’ll find a way to coax out the organs. Some organs I won’t even need, like my appendix. Of course, even if we leave some things like my appendix behind, it’ll be a slow process. Slow in terms of biological time, but not if you think say, geologically, like, in ages.

  I’m patient.

  Caribbean Therapy

  It’s my guilty pleasure, seeing Cammie over at Aria Lifestyle Salon during lunch hour for the Caribbean Hand Treatment. The salon’s out of my way, south of the city center, and I can’t really afford the treatment on my temp salary. Also, I don’t know why but after Cammie’s done with me, the skin around my nails peels and bleeds for days. Then there’s the shoddy polish job that I further destroy, sometimes within minutes of walking out of there. Still. Every week, like clockwork, I’m compelled to call behind a closed door, like I’m calling for a sex worker.

  “Hi,” I whisper. I try to make the whisper easy breezy. “I’d like to make an appointment with Cammie.”

  “Cassie,” the receptionist corrects.

  “Cassie, right. I’d like to make an appointment with Cassie.”

  “What service?” Is there accusation in her voice? I can’t tell.

  When I tell the receptionist it’s for the Caribbean Hand Treatment, there’s silence, then a lot of typing. Too much typing. Heat creeps up the back of my neck. I grow nervous when she puts me on hold, when I’m forced to listen to the sound of Zen-like chimes encouraging patience. I am not patient. I begin to chew on my nails, which still bear traces of Bastille My Heart, from my last tryst with Cassie.

  When at last she comes back on the line, she tells me there’s a time issue. The thing is I like to schedule the Caribbean during lunch hour. I request noon in a tone that implies I have the full and important schedule of an executive and I’m squeezing it in between meetings, like it’s my moment of Zen on a busy day in the financial or some such district. I’m told this is a busy time for Cassie. I’m reminded that Hattie, the other esthetician, is usually pretty open at this hour. Do I want Hattie? I remember Hattie, a pointy-faced young woman with bangs like Frankenstein’s creature who looks like she’s composed entirely of tendons, whose chest, under her smock, is almost completely concave. I tell them, No, I don’t want Hattie, I want Cammie—Cassie, right.

  Hunger yawns in me as I enter the salon on the appointed day. I am on nothing but oats and anger consumed over the sink at six a.m. But this is good, I think. I will not have lunch today. I will have Cammie. Cassie. Where is she? Panic seizes me, briefly, by the throat when I do not see her among the billowy-bloused, asymmetrically haired spa workers. Then I remember it’s early. I am seventeen minutes early by my watch.

  I tell myself I’m early not because I’m eager to see her but in order to enjoy the spa’s many amenities. I sit in the waiting area and contemplate the crystalized ginger in its bowl. The toasted almonds and dried apricots in their respective glass jars. I watch other female clients partake of it all with tiny wooden tongs. Many of these women are in mid-treatment, some with their heads covered in tinfoil, from which tufts of colorless hair sprout. They leaf through magazines like Shape and Prevention, sipping complimentary licorice root–sweetened tea from handleless, dirt-colored cups. I flip through Self without really seeing, and feel as if I’m drowning—What if Cassie has forgotten me? What if she couldn’t make it in today?—until I hear my name called like a question and I look up and there she is. Spilling out of a zebra-print maxi dress. Grinning crookedly at me between red corkscrew curls. My eye runs worriedly over her frame for any signs of weight loss. Seeing there are none, I breathe out. That Cassie is even fatter than I remember sates me in ways I cannot explain.

  “Hi!” she says. “Elizabeth?”

  “Liz.”

  “Liz, right. Follow me. They’ve got us all set up!”

  I follow her broad back as she waddles over to the nail station.

  “So what are we doing today?” she asks me. “Chocoholic? The Crème Brûlée?”

  “The Caribbean.”

  “Ooh. That’s my favorite.”

  At the station, the implements of the treatment lie at the ready: the edible ingredients in receptacles made to resemble cleaved coconut shells; the pointy silver instruments that she will employ clumsily, causing the aforementioned peeling and bleeding of my cuticle area; the stone bowl of hot salt water in which she will soak my hands—long and thin like Bela Lugosi’s—one by one; Cassie herself, her bra straps digging into her shoulder flesh. An Olga? Freya, maybe? One of those brands with a Nordic-sounding name, which thank God I don’t have to wear anymore. I can tell just by looking that Cassie bought hers too small.

  “So is there an occasion we’re getting ready for or . . . ?” Cassie asks me, leaving the question hanging.

  Cassie likes there to be an occasion. There never is, but I pick one out of the air anyway.

  “Museum opening,” I say.

  “Museum opening! That’s exciting.”

  She seats herself across from me, making the stool underneath her creak. Nothing between us now but the narrow little station table. Underneath it, our kneecaps touch. And then comes the moment I pay the sixty-odd dollars for, the moment when she reaches across the table and slips my wedding ring off and takes my hands.

  As usual, I apologize for how cold they are.

  “Actually, it feels sort of nice.” Cassie says. She always says something like that. A friend told me once that a stripper will tell every man she gives a lap dance to that he smells really good and what cologne is he wearing anyway? And she won’t just say it. She’ll breathe him in like his rank skin fumes are mountain air, like her lungs, let alone her little bunny slope nose, can’t get enough.

  “It’s always so hot in here,” Cassie says, blowing a lock of red hair off her face as if to prove it. Cassie’s hands always feel warm and swollen, like they’ve been injected with some sort of hot gel. With her fingers, she traces my cracked nail beds, my peeling cuticles, the red, rough skin.

  As usual, my hands make Cassie frown. But it’s a tender frown, her sincere concern causing a small furrow to appear between her fawn-colored brows. She is concerned, rightly, that despite many Caribbean Therapy sessions, my hands are still in hideous shape. Am I not using that cuticle oil she gave me a sample of last time? I am not, but I don’t tell her this. I pretend like I’m confused. Like I don’t know what’s going on either.

  “Could it be the winter, may
be?” I offer. “It was pretty dry.”

  She says it could be—it was a dry one. She brings my hands closer to her face. But it’s more that they look picked at, she says. Dry and cracked like I’ve been running them under hard, hot water all day.

  “Huh,” I say. “Weird.”

  “Well, don’t worry,” she smiles. “We’ll get you into shape.”

  “Thanks,” I say, and she squeezes my hands a little, running her thumb pads over my index knuckles, causing me to sort of sink into my seat.

  We’re still holding hands over the table. And it’s always awkward, that moment when she lets go, lowers one wrist into the coconut shell of too-hot salt water.

  “Temperature okay?”

  “Great.”

  “So,” she says, “Amuse Bouche? Hearts and Tarts?”

  I pretend to weigh the options but honestly, these are Cassie’s colors. I can’t stand either of them. On my hands, so humorless, they look laughably pink. But I know Cassie hates the blood and earth tones to which I’m naturally partial.

  “How about Amuse Bouche? We’ll do Hearts and Tarts next time.”

  “I do love that one,” she says.

  “Me too.”

  She picks up a bottle of hot pink polish and shakes it, causing her copious, freckled cleavage to ripple. I try not to look since looking lights little parts of me on fire. Instead, I keep my gaze focused on how her upper arm flesh bleeds out of her cap sleeves. Not attractive, I tell myself, even though her flesh is young and firm. It won’t always be firm, though. It’ll grow old, I tell myself, just like Cassie. Whenever I’m hungry, which is often, I picture Cassie old. Her bloated body beneath a hospital bedsheet.

  • • •

  While she starts buffing and filing, we talk about what we’ve both been baking recently, even though I’ve baked nothing recently. But Cassie has always been baking something. Usually some white trash cake with a whorish-sounding name. Today, she tells me about one she made recently called Better Than Sex. “So yummy,” she says.