13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

by Mona Awad

  “Sounds yummy,” I say. When I’m around Cassie, I start using words like yummy, even though such words feel misshapen on my lips. I ask her how you make it, knowing I’ll never make it, and she says, “Oh, easy peasy. First, you make devil’s food cake. Like, from a box? Then you take a fork and just stab the hot cake all over. Then you pour caramel sauce and a thingy of condensed milk into the stab holes so the cake soaks it all up? Then you put it in the fridge for, like, three hours. Oh! And once it’s chilled? You put whipped cream on top of that. So yummy.”

  “I’ll have to try it.” I’ll never try it. “I did try your slutty brownies,” I add.

  “You did?!”

  I didn’t, of course. But I tell her all about how I brought them to work and how everyone loved them and begged for the recipe. So I gave it to them. I really hope that’s okay with her.

  “Of course!”

  She applies the brown sugar exfoliant to my forearms, which will be followed by a yogurt moisture massage. The brown sugar chafes, the yogurt cools. It’s an exhilarating combination. I close my eyes.

  “So what have you been up to in the kitchen?” she asks me.

  I think about the boneless skinless chicken breast I pounded into a thin white strip with a tenderizer last night, adding a squeeze of lime when I took it out of the oven to make it tropical tasting.

  “Oh, just experimenting, mostly. Though I did make this bourbon bundt cake that turned out pretty good.”

  That wasn’t me but my sadist coworker Eve. I bake and give everything away, Eve tells everyone, like it’s a baking tip she’s offering, like how you should add salt to chocolate. Eve always comes to work bearing a tin of some thickly iced treat, her wrist tendons visibly straining under the weight of her confection. She’ll leave whatever she’s made in the back room for all the fat and middling women we work with to cut thick slices out of.

  “Oh, Eve, so delicious!”

  “Oh, good!” Eve beams. When Eve beams, the corners of her mouth turn downward, her eyes crinkle almost closed, and the hollow in her throat gets disconcertingly deeper.

  By the end of the shift, the tin’s more or less empty except for crumbs. And Eve’s over the sink, rinsing it with steaming hot water, smug. Often, she forgets to rinse the tin and I have to do it. Even though I’ve told her time and time again she can’t leave leftovers on the counter like that overnight. Because of ants.

  We’re on to the elbow-to-fingertip yogurt massage. When Cassie kneads my bony palm like it’s a ball of dough, grabbing hold of each long finger and pulling it gently between her plump ones, I never know where to look. She never knows where to look either. What we both end up doing is looking at the space just past our respective left ears.

  “A bourbon bundt,” Cassie repeats, calling me back. And I watch her try to picture it with the hungry eye of her mind. “Sounds yum. I’ll have to make it for my husband. He loves that Southern rustic stuff.”

  Cassie got married recently. I couldn’t believe it when she first told me. At first, I thought it might have to do with the fact that she’s part of a very small religious community, people who see each other with the eyes of Jesus first. Then I found out Cassie isn’t really part of this community anymore, at least not hard-core, and that the guy just happened to be a friend of her brother’s who thought she was cute. And the thing is he’s cute. At least according to the picture Cassie showed me once on her iPhone.

  She shows me another picture of him now.

  I take the phone and stare at the picture like it’s a pot of water I’m trying to boil, waiting for any latent sign of his freakdom to surface. A yellowish tinge to the skin, maybe? Some pervert shading under the eyes? A weird nose kink, but no. As far as I can see, he’s the stuff of the earth. Its handsome salt. I’m still looking when at last she takes the phone from my hands and says, “He’s pretty cute, huh?”

  “He is. How did—well, congratulations.”

  I ask if they’re still in their honeymoon period and she blushes.

  Yes, yes they are. It’s sort of wonderful.

  “That’s great,” I say. “Really, great.” It is.

  “It is,” she says. She’s very lucky. “How are things with your husband?”

  I look at her, eyes wide at her innocent question, and that’s when a video clip of two fat girls in ill-fitting bondage gear flogging one another on the floor of a fake-looking dungeon, the one I found in my husband’s recent web history last year, comes back to me in full graphic detail. I found others that night: fat girls dressed as French maids, Ukrainian lesbians, hopeful cheerleaders. Fat girls who always seem to be smirking or looking surprised that their clothes are too tight. Fat girls who, along with a few sites about trance music and conspiracy theories, had been worming their way into his web history for several months.

  I say things are great, and feel the corner of my mouth do one of those spastic quivers.

  “That’s so great,” she says. “How long have you guys been married again?”

  “Going on three years in July.”

  “Ooh, so big anniversary coming up.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We could do a shimmery color for that. Maybe something peach.”

  By then she’s painting Amuse Bouche on my fingernails and she’s all hunched over me, frowning in her effort to be precise. But she isn’t precise. She makes all these mistakes, which she has to keep fixing with a sharp little wooden stick she keeps dipping into acetone. It’s at this moment that I want to wrench my fingers back from her hot hands. For I cannot bear the weight of her any longer. Her warm, fat touch becomes the opposite of comfort, it becomes oppressive. I need to be free of her. Now.

  “We done?” I ask her. Underneath the table, I’m tapping my foot.

  “Just need to do the topcoat,” she smiles.

  When at last she’s administered the quick-drying serum from the eyedropper, she says, “Now just sit tight for a bit while it dries.”

  But I can’t bear to be at that table any longer. Once she’s moved her fleshy knees and taken the bowl away in which I soaked my hands, it’s as if I’m at a wake. As she dumps the salty water into the sink, she asks me, as always, if I’d like to keep the emery board. At first I thought this was a tender gesture, a thing between Cassie and me. I found out later that they all ask this question. Still, I always keep the emery board. In my bathroom, there’s a whole drawer full of these emery boards beneath the sink.

  Not too long ago, my husband opened the drawer and said, What the hell is this? And I said, Emery boards. Emery boards, huh, he said. Whatever. And he shut the drawer with a shrug.

  When at last we’re finished, Cassie slides my ring back on, carries my purse up to the register so as not to compromise my Amuse Bouched nails. She fishes for my wallet. Roots around through my endless packets of Have Your Dessert and Chew It Too! gum for my car keys. I’ve got every flavor in there from Apple Pie to Sweet Tropical.

  I say sorry it’s such a swamp in there. And she says don’t apologize, I should see her purse. She reminds me my nails are still quite tacky, so be careful. This is a slow-drying, formaldehyde-free topcoat. Sure, that top layer will feel dry-ish in about fifteen minutes, but those layers underneath will take a while. So don’t go banging them up against a wall or anything, hahaha.

  Hahaha, I agree. And I promise Cassie I’ll be careful, knowing already I won’t be.

  • • •

  After I leave Aria, I do try to drive carefully, only lightly gripping the steering wheel. Every time there’s a red light, I look down at my nails, the color of Barbie innards, winking in the light. Already there’s a slight dent on one nail, a slight wrinkling of the topcoat on a couple of others.

  By the time I get back to the shop, I’ll have more or less massacred them.

  • • •

  When I walk through the shop doors, I see Eve there
behind the cash desk, draped in her usual iridescent silks. Seeing me come in, she beams like she’s a drowning woman and I’m a buoy being tossed to her from a ship. My arrival means she can finally go out into the back alley and scarf her unripe peach, her tub of fat-free Greek yogurt sprinkled sparingly with some sort of seedling. If she’s really famished, she might peck at a handful of almonds, which she’ll count out first in her palm like pills. They come from a Costco container, onto which she has scrawled “Do Not Eat! Eve’s ” with a Sharpie. Unbeknownst to Eve, I steal from this container all the time.

  I smile at her as I come in, but I pretend I don’t see her look of hungry desperation and go straight to the back room. There, I take my time reapplying my cupcake lip gloss in the cracked mirror, even though it really needs no reapplication. But after seeing Cassie, I like to briefly inspect my own facial hollows and angles. It’s a relief to see they’re all still there. That I didn’t get fat by proxy. There’s a bundt cake on the counter, obviously Eve’s handiwork. Banana with some sort of obscure berry in it—maybe lingon or goose. Already it’s been more or less eaten. I picture all my middling colleagues coming in one by one to cut themselves a slice with our dull communal knife. Patricia, who’s been on the seventeen-day diet for the past five years. Mary, Sarah, and Lynne, all of whom are on some sort of point system. Madeline, who is attempting common sense to no avail. When I open the collective mini-fridge, I find their containers of wilted Organic Girl, their expired fat-free vinaigrettes, and, of course, Eve’s stalwart tub, atop which sits her white-fleshed peach, like a crown you want to topple.

  There’s some Soy Delicious! and a Fuji in there for me too, for later. For now, I grab a handful of Eve’s almonds. I chew them, my eyes on her half-eaten bundt. I can tell by the flourish of grooves on the cake’s surface that she used the tiered blossom mold today. She likes to use a fun mold. Funky, she’d say, though the word rings wrong in her mouth. I picture her in her prim kitchen, pulling it out of the oven with festive pot holders, gloating. The treadmill she walks on every day just down the dark hall. Also gloating. At first I try to be above it, but then I grab the blunt knife dripping in the sink.

  • • •

  I’ve just stuffed a thin slice in my mouth when the swinging doors creak open and there’s Eve. Still beaming, but her eyes say I’ve kept her waiting long enough. She’s taking matters into her own hands.

  “Amber’s covering the desk for me,” she says. “I’m famished.”

  I nod, trying not to show her that I’m chewing, but she’s seen, so I have to say, “Delicious.”

  Eve opens her silvery eyes wide, feigning innocence.

  “Your bundt.”

  “Oh, good!”

  “Sorry I’m late,” I say, swallowing. “Lunch took a while.”

  “No worries, kiddo,” she says, giving my shoulder a little squeeze. Then she leans in, sniffs. “Mm, you smell good enough to eat.” She looks at my banged-up nails. “Amuse Bouche?”

  “Hearts and Tarts,” I say, curling my fingers into my palms and hiding them from her view.

  She looks at me. “Sharp.”

  • • •

  With my mouth still full of Eve’s bundt, I take up her place at the cashier’s desk. Watch her pass by me as she makes her way toward the alley, clutching her lunch and a photography book of Paris to her sternum. She’ll thumb through the pictures while she eats her yogurt. Her lunch ritual.

  Behind the desk, I sit staring at our sideline merchandise, which Eve has arranged in complex, precarious towers by the cash register. Whimsical things you never thought you needed until you found yourself standing in line in front of them. Women clad in gym wear they never seem to change out of come in saying, How cute! How cute! Reminding me of the birdcalls I hear whenever I pass the aviary on my twice-daily walk.

  I look at Amber sitting beside me at the desk, eating a muffuletta from the deli next door, smirking at Facebook on her phone.

  I inspect my nails. Apart from a little more topcoat wrinkling, they’ve held together. I look at the jar of saltwater taffy Eve always keeps by the cash register, then at my watch.

  “Eve’s taking a while,” I say to Amber.

  She shrugs, keeps smirking at her screen, chewing. “Not like we’re busy or anything.”

  “Still.”

  I get up and wander over to a picture hanging just to the left of the back door, some sort of abstract landscape that looks vaguely vaginal. Through the glass in the door, I see Eve out there in the alley, sunning herself on a cracked plastic chair, Paris in Color splayed open on her iridescent lap to the photo of the Luxembourg gardens. The peach pit and yogurt tub sit ravished at her callused heels. She’s clutching a mug of green tea I know she takes unsweetened. Staring straight ahead, past the dumpsters, into some Zen space, I imagine. Perhaps an ocean. Rolling gray waves. A stony beach. Eve’s recently divorced. Lives with her dogs in an empty house on a hill with a view of the desert. Terrible to love the water as much as I do and live in a desert, she confided to me once. There’s the lake, I told her. Lake shmake, Eve said. What my soul needs is the sea. With my eyes on her now, I adjust the picture frame, scraping the wall with my nails a little as I do. Eve starts in her chair at the noise and snaps her head to look at me through the glass door. I smile at her and turn away.

  • • •

  At home, he’s in his office with the door closed. When I open it, I expect I don’t know what. But what I find is only lines of code and him innocently clicking.

  He turns to look at me. “Hey.”

  “Dinner?” I ask from the doorframe.

  “I got Barbacoa on the way home,” he says, holding up a large bit-into burrito. Waving it like a flag of peace. Two tiny wedges of squeezed lime sit on his desk beside a dripping Coke.

  “Figured you’d want to do your own thing,” he says. “You know. For your diet.”

  “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll just make myself a salad, then.”

  “Okay.”

  I turn to go, then stop.

  “What?” he says.

  “Would you like to at least eat with me?” I ask him. “When I’ve made it?”

  “Well, by then this’ll be cold so, you know, I should probably eat now. But I could sit with you, if you’d like.”

  I picture him sitting in front of me, hands clasped on the table. Him watching me chew, then swallow, then chew.

  “No, it’s okay, you’ve got work.” I close the door.

  I eat a bowl of lightly dressed spring mix while leafing through Nigella Bites, which I thought for sure would have a Better Than Sex Cake recipe. It doesn’t. So I watch the YouTube clip of her making a caramel croissant bread pudding after a late night out. A bit eccentric for supper, she confesses to the camera, stepping out of her heels, dropping her earrings onto the kitchen counter. Nonetheless, it’s what I need. Smilingly swirls sugar in the saucepan. High heat—don’t be timid. Now, you can swirl as the caramel heats up but NEVER stir. If you stir, you can make the sugar crystalize and what I want, what anyone wants, is a luscious, smooth—

  The door to his office opens. He comes out to throw away his Barbacoa bag, looking askance at me and Nigella.

  “I sent you a link to a new Nick Cave song earlier today. Did you listen to it?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You should check it out,” he says. He goes back to the office, shutting the door.

  Eggs, milk, and—why not?—cream. Stale croissants, which are not really good for anything except this. Where they are sublime. Ooh. I can feel the butter of the croissants on my fingers—that’s what’s going to make this so delicious. Fit for angels to eat on their clouds, though obviously they’d have to be very weight-bearing clouds, hahaha. Slips it into the oven. Here you go, my darling.

  I watch the clip again, while chewing five sticks of Have Your Dessert and Chew It Too! gum at the same
time. Apple Pie, Mint Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, and Orange Crème Pop all at once. Mmm, Nigella says, pulling the pan out of the oven. At this point, she’s changed into a black silk kimono patterned with dragons. Dessert for dinner, she murmurs, dishing herself a bowlful to take into the bedroom. Everyone’s dream.

  I watch it again and again, chewing until my eyes water and my vision gets blurry around the edges and a disconcerting throbbing begins above my left ear. I pick at my nails.

  • • •

  “You’re back soon,” Cassie says, taking my hands. The heat of them makes me feel slightly drunk on contact.

  “I’m such a klutz,” I say, shaking my head. And I tell her how, believe it or not, I did end up banging my nails against a wall, hahaha. She hahahas along with me but she’s regarding me curiously, so I add, “Also, I have an event tonight.”

  “Ooh, what’s the event?” Her blue eyes go very bright.

  “Dinner?” But this doesn’t seem like enough. “And a musical.”

  Her eyes say I’m going to have to tell her which musical.

  “Phantom?”

  “I love Phantom!” In fact, her husband took her to see it recently for her birthday. They made a whole night out of it—so fun oh my god. Well, she says, taking my hands more tightly in hers, we definitely have to get me into shape for that!

  She runs her fingers over my cuticles and nail beds, debating whether she should use a buffer. I resist the urge to close my eyes.

  “Tired?” she asks me.

  “A little. Having a hard time sleeping lately.”

  “Oh.” she looks up at me, the furrow deepening between her brows. “I’m sorry. Well, go ahead and close your eyes if you want to,” she smiles. “I won’t judge. Better here than at Phantom, right?”

  “Right.”

  She’s wearing a turquoise peasant blouse today that brings out her eyes, the peach in her skin. I see she’s gotten some sun since I saw her last. Her red curls are brushed up off her neck in one of those careless buns I can never pull off.