Angie M. Brashears
Becoming Blue
Copyright © 2015 by Angie M. Brashears
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
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Editing by Eagle F. at Aquila Editing
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Photography by My Boudoir
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Cover Model – Georgina Horne
Prologue
“I grew up with a single mother whose bed was never empty. Oh, on paper she was, and everywhere else it counted. She was single at the welfare office and again for the free lunch program coordinator. Solo in the free cheese line and always for the church basement long enough for me to get school clothes. Conveniently unattached around the holidays, when the free meals and Christmas presents were given out. Yep, that was her, single on a schedule. I learned the difference between fibs and the truth from the best of them, my mother, the elusive chameleon.”
I stop to take a breath, looking anywhere but into the calm, sweet eyes of this therapist. My fourth in six months. A return visit would mean the real work would have to begin, and I’m so not ready for that.
“Jessica?” Not my real name, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Hmmm?” My eyes focus on her chin and a stray curly hair that grows from it.
“How do you think your mother’s actions affected you? Continue please.”
I clear my throat and go for the truth, I’ll never have to see this woman again. “I was her partner in crime, momma’s little helper. A shadow that followed her around doing her bidding. I knew better than to mention boyfriends to any of the authorities in charge of food, presents, or money. ‘That would be the end of the gravy train,’ she often told me during the good times, when it was just us. Those didn’t last long, though. As I said, her bed was rarely empty. Whenever a new boyfriend came into the picture, I never knew what mother I’d come home to.”
She’s scribbling feverishly when I dare to look up. “Did that answer your question?” She nods, without looking up. Urging me on with her free hand.
“The boyfriends. They had a direct impact on her personality. It was like a switch was flipped as soon as she had found ‘the one.’ If he was a drinker, my mother became an alcoholic. If he believed women should be in the kitchen, she morphed into Alice from The Brady Bunch. Dating a biker? She’d become the best bitch seat filler anyone had ever seen. She was with one black guy and joined the Black Panthers. But the next year she found herself a trucker with a Confederate flag in the back of his cab, and ta-da, instant racist, if you can believe that. Yep, she’s a true chameleon.
“Did these men ever hurt you?”
“No, not those men. It was kind of fun having a new daddy every six months. And I was cute as a button back then. No, they all loved me appropriately, and that was something I desperately needed, love. I acted like and did all the things a cute stepdaughter would do, trying to stay in my mother’s good graces.”
“Which man did cross the line?”
My head jerks up as my mind goes over my last words. Did I say too much? Or was she just that good of a therapist? I grab a soothing beige couch pillow and clutch it to my middle.
“There was one, the last one, the daddy of them all.” My stomach hurts just thinking about him. “He was the preacher of our church. A real pillar of society,” I snort. “You have to remember, my mom was a looker, a real catch, even with all the baggage she carried-namely me-her bed was never empty.”
“How old were you when they got together?”
I go on, not wanting to hear her question. “They didn’t just get together. She had to go and marry him. He had a free house, lots of church donor money, he was the prize behind Door Number 2. The holy grail of hookups. Maybe she felt like she was getting older, needed some security. Whatever it was, she worked hard to mold herself into the greatest role of all time. A preacher’s wife.” I spit the last few words out of my mouth, coated with bile.
That’s enough. No more. I’ve gotten enough off my chest to last until next month. I make to stand as she asks again. “Your age when the preacher came on scene?”
“Ten.” And the tears come. “Ten fucking years old when she became more his wife than my mother. Suddenly, she didn’t need a shadow anymore, she needed only him. And would do, say, or let anything happen to keep him.”
“Did she know what was happening?”
“Did she know? Of course she did! She supplied the ruffled panties he liked!” Weeping silently-the way my mother taught me-I pull two Kleenexes from the offered box and blow my nose.
When my tears slow, she asks in a soothing tone, “What do you hope to achieve from our sessions, Jessica?” I almost correct the wrong name, but stop myself in time.
“Achieve? Not a damn thing. I just needed a friend to talk to before the impulsive urge to overeat or spend took me over completely. This is cheaper than both.” I shrug my shoulders at her confused gaze.
“I’m confused. Why pay a therapist when you’re obviously not looking to work on yourself? Why not just pick up the phone and…”
I hold my hand up. “Let me stop you right there, doc. I don’t have anyone I can call.” It’s the truth, why sugarcoat it?
“Not one person that will listen?” I know what she wants. I’m a therapist veteran. I could lie and say there’s one, but I need to get my money’s worth. All this shit that keeps me fat won’t leave me alone. Won’t stay buried under mounds of carbs. Maybe if I let a little light shine on it, I’ll get a month’s worth of peace.
“Not a one.” Now I look into her eyes. Let her read the truth. “I was lonely. Now, will you be my friend for an hour and listen, or do I need to go back to the phonebook and find one who will?” It’s a challenge. I’ve laid it out there. I won’t be back. She can take my money and stop with the fucking questions, or show me the door.
“Go ahead.” She shrugs and puts her pencil and pad down on the table next to her.
Looking her dead in the eye, I continue, “He didn’t start right away. He eased me and my mother into it. By the time his hands started crawling on my body, he’d been inspecting me for months.”
Her eyebrows arch over her glasses. “Inspecting you?”
“It was a little game he liked to play. First he only asked to see my armpits. You know, to see if I had hair coming in. I don’t know what my mom thought about it, she never said. Just left the room for inspection. There’d be weeks, months that went by where he conditioned us.” I think back on it, “No, where they conditioned me.” Nodding my head, I continue. “He’d yell up the stairs, ‘Inspection!’ and whatever my mom was doing, whether cooking or reading a book, she’d drop it, leave the room, and he’d wait for me at the bottom of the stairs.”
“That must have been scary for you.” Good observation, doc.
I nod. “In the beginning, I was so focused on being everything my mother and new daddy expected, I didn’t even have the sense to be scared. Just giggled my way down to him, dressed in the sacrificial white dress my mother had bought for me. ‘Here’s my little angel,’ he’d say.”
I stop for another sip of the complimentary water, feeling the therapist’s eyes on me, just me, not on some paper, making notes for the
future sessions that will never happen.
“If you could tell that little girl anything, what would it be?”
Hmmm, that’s a good one. None of the other therapists had asked that one before.
“I’d like to go back to that little girl and tell her not to go down those stairs. That worse things were waiting for her down there. Not to try to fix everything with donuts and candy. That doesn’t work either.” It’s quiet, cool, and dark here. I’m starting to feel safe again. Protected. “I’d tell her to find a friend and be a friend. Not a personal assistant. Because when shit hits the fan and it comes time to run, no one ever drops what they’re doing for a lowly assistant.”
As I leave the therapist’s office, no return appointment card needed, my step is lighter. I’m able to make eye contact with people on the street. Smile even. I feel stronger. More ready to adapt to whatever life decides to put in my path. I’m shedding the victim skin and reworking myself. This time it’s for me, not for the sake of my mother’s relationships. Maybe I’ll even try dieting again, lose weight, find the real me hidden under all this weight.
Desperate to be me—the best version of me—I’ll do what it takes to get back on track. No longer will I be the best helper, the witty co-worker, the wingman for my better-looking acquaintances. That was the old accommodating Sara. And I abso-friggin-lutely refuse to be a bridesmaid ever again without knowing what it feels like to be a bride! Period. Put a pin in that thought.
Now I only have to break it to Jessica, my only pseudo-friend since kindergarten, that I won’t be coming to do her laundry anymore, clean her apartment, walk her dogs, or stand by her at the altar in an overly ruffled, fuchsia, size 16 monstrosity making her size 6 frame look phenomenal. I don’t think she’ll be too crushed, since she hasn’t called or visited once. Not since I changed my surroundings and cut all ties with my old life. Well, maybe not all ties. She somehow managed to find me to get this wedding invitation to me. With a personal note:
You’re still coming, right? I have so much for you to do!
Wrong. Something had to change for me to finally be happy. But the only changes I’ve made so far are serial therapy sessions and further isolation. It’s hard to start fresh when you’re working with the same old material.
Chapter 1
This is my third first meeting at Weight Watchers in as many weeks. If I don’t get myself on track now, I might as well buy a hospital bed and an XXXL muumuu, become a shut-in, and pay someone to throw a loaf of bread and a dozen eggs in a day. Maybe a couple burgers, some ice cream, oh, and baby wipes. I’m serious!
Looking around, I can’t even figure out why some of these skinny minnies are even here. Pretty sure the skeleton in a dress next to me is anorexic. Newsflash! You have nothing left to lose! I might have a Snickers in the bottom of my bag that I could force-feed her. Does lint have any protein?
Besides the Blue-Haireds that belong to this women’s club establishment, complete with pastel cafeteria smocks and disapproving looks, glaring at all the rest of us like we might steal a plastic bouquet arrangement, there’s a gay couple canoodling in the back, which makes me jealy. I can’t even get a man to eat noodles with, let alone canoodle with me. Even the Rexie Queen held together by skin has a much skinnier friend, if that’s even possible.
Maybe I’m a sizeist. None of my acquaintances from my old life were bigger than me. Not one person I knew growing up could even swap clothes with me. ‘One size fits all’ is a myth!
I’m the only one sitting by myself, having my very own pity party—without the cake of course. No one to talk to, share my inner thoughts with. I look down at my iPhone; it’s dead, but no one here needs to know that, so I pretend to text. Really trying to sell it, I smile at the black screen.
Seeing my round face reflected back at me in the blank screen brings me down another peg. I thought I looked pretty good when I walked out of the apartment today. I’m fat, obese even, but my mom always called me ‘cherubic.’ Ugh. More like chubby in all the wrong places. Big fat boobs with the always-charming pink, silver dollar nipples, a bloated Buddha belly with arms and legs to match.
I’m a 27-year old loser, but not of pounds. Never been considered, kissed or picked first in a kickball game, that’s me. A Weight Watchers dropout, never making it past the first week, always looking to score those elusive five pounds that are promised to be dropped immediately. All my life all I’ve ever wanted to be was a normal weight. That’s it. Not a supermodel, an astronaut, or even a star. I’d just like to be able to look at one of those charts in a doctor’s office, slide my finger across the 5’5” column for a normal, average, American woman and see my weight is the same or slightly under the guideline. Not double, I’m not a wildebeest, for fuck’s sake. Not much to ask for. I’ve starved, exercised, drank a pool’s worth of water, never all at the same time mind you, but nothing ever removed the rolls around the middle. Those I can suck in. Well, when I’m not holding water, that is. There is no sucking in my fat ass. Hell, my trunk has so much junk in it, the lock is broken and being held together with frayed rope! And my thighs, ‘thundery’ would be one word—times two. That about sums up those ham hocks.
Lost in the mental berating of my temple, I’m startled away from my pity party by a pack of white-powdered donuts, the sleeve kind, my favorite, which fall out of the sky and land on the above mentioned thighs, smack dab in my lap.
“Important text?” I’m embarrassed to see an unknown face, peering over my shoulder, reflected back at me on the dark screen. I can see her eyes searching it, looking for the meaning of life I’ve been smiling at and contemplating for the last five minutes. My face heats at being found out.
“Uh, my phone uh...it just uh.” Why can’t I even make polite conversation?
“Died?” she fills in for me. “It’s okay. Didn’t mean to creep on you. Just looking for fresh recruits.” An Amazon of a woman bends her six foot frame into the plastic chair next to me. Bright green eyes, made up like she’s draggin’ on the side, twinkle at me. I’m at boob height when she’s folded herself in. Two torpedoes clothed in a tight, pink sweater. She could be a linebacker if she went on a diet and started exercising today. And there’s no way she got into those skinny jeans by herself, unless a crowbar, a pack of gum, and duct tape were involved.
Wait…did she say ‘recruit’?
“I’m Sasha Berlin.” I shake the hand that is extended, careful of the long black nails filed to points.
“I’m Sara, no H.” No H? What? Is she corresponding with me? Why would I say it like that? Mentally, I smack myself.
Looking down, not wanting to lose my first WW buddy, I spy the pack of donuts nestled between my thighs.
Nodding down at them, “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to bring Hostess into the room.”
I try to hand them back discreetly, palming them, always mindful of the watchful rheumy eyes of the blue-haired group that runs the place, but Sasha isn’t having it.
She takes them alright, and makes a big production of ripping them open with her teeth! Dropping two in the process. Plop! Right on top of those torpedoes! And commences with the crinkling of the cellophane like her life depends on it, before popping two of those powdered goodies between her scarlet lips. Powdered sugar is everywhere, coating her lips, dusting her sweater, raining down on her lap. “And I’m pretty sure it’s illegal to force luscious ladies, such as yourself, to listen to this ‘points’ bullshit!”
At least that’s what I think she said. There may have been something about ‘Scale Nazis’ too, couldn’t make that part out, but I sense the canoodling in the back has ceased. The gays recognize one of their own. Commence flamboyance!
I’m staring, along with all the other skinny rejects, as she chews loudly, and unbelievably, stuffs a third in, crammed into the mashed pile on her pink tongue. Her mouth is so full she can’t even chew with it closed. Everyone, including myself, gets a view of the train wreck.
She catches my eye—not h
ard, since my eyes haven’t left her face—and tears open a second pack of donuts. My eyes widen. She couldn’t, wouldn’t shove any more in there, would she? Her eyebrows wiggle as she snorts loudly. You know, the sound pigs make when someone’s uncurling their tail? Yep, that’s the one.
A tiny, unused, weak, and pitiful giggle escapes before I can stop it.
“What kind of laugh was that?” she says around a mouthful of sugar, spraying me with donut in the process as she throws back her own head and belly laughs.
How is she not choking? And do I remember the Heimlich? That does it. I’m laughing now too, wiping donut from my face, just as the Grand Poobah of the Blue-Haireds approaches, hands on her aproned hips, glaring at both of us. “Ahem.” Before she can even begin to berate us, Sasha’s up, towering over the little lady on her black, stiletto-heeled, Cat woman boots, white donuts rolling everywhere, grabbing my hand in a death grip, exclaiming for all to hear, “I’m here to save my sister in chub from the brainwashing! You won’t win this one! Come to the dark side!” And then we’re running.
Yes, full-on running. Me, who hasn’t run since someone stood counting my laps in high school. I think I hear a cheer from the gays in the back, but I can’t be sure. My left arm is busy trying not to drop my phone and simultaneously support my flopping boobs, since she’s got a death grip on my right one.
We hit the double doors right in the middle, fling them to the winds, and race—well, as ‘racy’ as two fat girls can be—to the parking lot beyond, laughing the whole way.
“C’mon Thelma! We’re busting out of here!”
“Okay Louise!” I giggle back.
Chapter 2
She hits the beeper on a sleek, black Mustang—top down, of course—and motions for me to get in. I do, simply because I’ve never dined and dashed, nor had a friend to kidnap me from anywhere. Plus, it feels good to do something spontaneous. I just hope she doesn’t turn out to be an escaped mental patient.
Becoming Blue (Chubby Chasers, Inc. #1) Page 1