Mum quickly disguised the look of horror on her face.
‘Don’t worry,’ she reassured me. ‘Once you move, those clothes will give a bit. And roller derby is the best workout. You’ll tone up in no time.’
We drove to the skate rink in the Mustang. People always looked at us when we drove that car and I fantasised about sitting in a nice, normal station wagon with a normal middle-aged mother who deemed hot pants inappropriate for day wear and tattoos only for those who’d experienced life in the big house.
‘Are you nervous?’ Mum asked.
‘Um, yes,’ I said. ‘I think you’ve forgotten that I can’t even skate.’
‘Oh rubbish,’ Mum said. ‘Your problem, Winter, is that you lack confidence. You’ve always been this way, just like your dad. Skating is easy. You’ll see.’
Confidence is not a quality lacking in my mother. Back in primary school, when she thought I wasn’t listening, I heard her talking to one of the other mothers about how easy it is to rock a job interview.
‘You just put on some boots and a mini skirt and it’s yours,’ she’d said.
I was in awe. Can boots really do that for you? I wondered. It’s true that ever since Spencer and I came along Mum has never actually had a job, but I believed her anyway and so did the other woman.
Mum’s roller derby team is called The Salty Dolls. They aren’t actually very good and hardly ever win, but they wear sassy fishnet tights and baby pink tutus and lots of black eyeliner. Mum says they’re totes channelling Courtney Love from the 90s, which I didn’t really get until I googled her and discovered that she was in fact a grunge style icon and extremely cool person when my mum was a teenager. These days she’s a bit of a mess, which Mum reckons is a tragedy. ‘Life’s hard for sensitive, creative people,’ Mum likes to say wistfully.
To even begin roller derby training you have to be able to skate at least one lap of the rink without falling over or holding onto the sides. That’s what Mum and I were here to do today. I’m not quite sure why she thought I was capable of that. I wasn’t going to transform into the roller derby hipster daughter of her dreams just because I was wearing too small shorts that had begun to cut off the circulation in my thighs.
But I tried. I really did.
‘Come on, Winter!’ Mum yelled encouragingly. ‘You can do it!’
Mum’s friend Lizzy, whose arms were covered in vintage pin-up girl tattoos almost identical to the ones my mum proudly sported, was going to be heading the teen team and you could tell she wasn’t impressed by my lack of skating prowess. With her jet black rockabilly hair and bright red lips, Lizzy was eyeing me sceptically as I held onto the railing, desperate for support, imagining my real self leaving my body behind like an unimportant shell. There I was floating away, leaves on a stream. Free and unburdened, watching in pity that poor booty-shorted, size sixteen teenage girl, standing clumsily and exposed.
But as much as I tried to disassociate, I knew I was going to have to let go of the railing at some point.
One, two, three …
Next thing I knew I was gliding across the rink, booty shorts and all. Wow, I thought to myself. Maybe it’s easier than I imagined it would be.
I picked up speed. Mum yelled, ‘Whooo! You’re killing it out there.’
I was getting a little puffed as I turned to wave at Mum and Lizzy, cocky and in awe of my unexpected innate ability to skate. Was skating going to be my thing after all?
And that’s when I fell. Flat on my face. There was blood. Everywhere.
‘Shit.’ Mum came running over. ‘Winter, are you all right?’
My head was spinning, though the blood oozing from my nose was warm and surprisingly comforting.
Lizzy wrapped an icepack in a towel and told me to hold it against my nose.
‘That was one shit-hot fall,’ she said, seemingly impressed.
I looked at the curvy, bikini-clad bombshell tattooed on Mum’s arm and wondered how it was possible for a daughter to turn out the complete opposite of her mother.
‘You’ll be right. It doesn’t look like anything’s broken,’ Lizzy said.
‘And we would know,’ Mum said. ‘Players break their noses all the time.’
‘Then why would you want to do it?’ I asked.
‘Because it’s totally bad ass,’ Lizzy said in her best teen speak. ‘Roller derby rocks.’
‘I think I just want to go home.’ I looked at Mum. ‘I feel kind of dizzy.’
‘Sorry,’ Mum said to Lizzy.
‘Don’t sweat it,’ Lizzy said. ‘And Winter, if you ever want to come back, you’re always welcome here.’
Mum was pretty quiet on the way home. Poor Mum. I knew I’d let her down.
‘You know, we’ll have to practise a bit more before you try out again,’ Mum said just before we arrived home. ‘I guess I forgot that knowing how to skate doesn’t come automatically.’
I wanted to scream at her. I wanted to say, ‘Look at me! I almost broke my nose and there was blood everywhere. I’m fat and I’m uncoordinated! I don’t want to be a roller derby girl. I AM NOT YOU!’
But I just mumbled, ‘Okay,’ and kept looking out the window of the Mustang.
Chapter 5: Never Been Kissed
After the trauma that was roller derby, I planned to spend the entire weekend locked away in my bedroom sewing. My idea was to use the pictures I’d taken of the blue lace dress to draft a pattern and make a dress that actually fitted me, for Liam’s party next weekend. I decided to use a midnight navy lace in the hope that it would make me look a bit skinnier. I wasn’t going to lose ten kilos in a week so I had no choice but to fake it. There was something about being invited to Liam’s party that made me feel pressured. Maybe I would finally meet a boy.
The sad truth is I’m sixteen years old and I’ve never been kissed.
Not unless you count the time on Year 6 camp when I kissed Mirko Palovich during a game of truth and dare. There we were, me and these two girls I haven’t seen since primary school, Liana and Maggie, asking each other stupid questions like, ‘Would you rather kiss Freddy Saunders or stick your head in the toilet?’ or ‘I dare you to go next door and sing “You Belong with Me” into your hairbrush’. You know, that kind of thing? Maggie in particular had become hard-core boy-crazy all of a sudden and loved recounting the extended pashing sessions she indulged in with this Year 7 boy called Edward. This meant that most of her truths and dares were about boys and sex, things that were still such a mystery to me. I just couldn’t imagine kissing a boy. Ever. Or, more like, I didn’t think a boy would ever want to kiss me.
‘Winter,’ Maggie said with a grin on her face. ‘I dare you to kiss Mirko Palovich!’
‘Get out of town,’ I said. ‘There’s no way!’
Mirko Palovich was a boy unfortunate in both looks and personality. Dumpy and orange-haired, he took pleasure in flicking the bra straps of those who’d self-consciously developed breasts, all the while rating the looks of girls at school out of ten. Sure, there’d been teacher intervention over the years, but no amount of discipline or discussion could stop Mirko Palovich and his demeaning and humiliating treatment of his fellow classmates. Especially the girls.
I should have stuck to my guns and refused, but I don’t know, I had something to prove about how fearless I was so I succumbed to Maggie’s dare. The very idea of it got us laughing so hard we almost fell off the bed. Even I thought it was funny.
Until the time came to do something about it.
First off, we had to sneak over to the boys’ cabin. This wasn’t hard. The teachers were hanging out drinking wine or watching TV or whatever it is teachers do to unwind at the end of the day on a school camp they most probably don’t want to be at. Of course, it was pretty much impossible to enter the boys’ area without them making a lot of noise so I knew I had to be quick. I entered the dorm and saw Mirko right away. He was wearing yellow hamburger print flannelette pyjamas and his orange hair was sticking up all over the pl
ace. I held my breath, ran up to Mirko and kissed him right on the lips. It all happened so quickly it’s a bit of a blur. But I know for a fact there was laughter and whooping like you wouldn’t believe.
I ran from the cabin at a speed that would have made Mum proud. The girls couldn’t stop laughing. I was shaking.
‘You should have seen his face!’ Liana laughed hysterically. ‘He couldn’t believe his luck, I bet.’
Can I describe the taste of Mirko’s mouth? His toothpaste, the bumfluff on his chin? The spots that had started to erupt thanks to the beginnings of a puberty that would no doubt be cruel and unforgiving? I invented these details later on, repulsed and disturbingly fascinated at the same time. But honestly? It was over so quickly I can’t even count it as a first kiss. It was just a blip, so fleeting I could almost pretend it never happened at all.
If only.
Mirko went around telling everyone he was kissed by a ‘short, fat dog’. ‘She’s really into me, man,’ he’d say. ‘But I’m way out of her league.’ No doubt Mirko imagined that he would grow into a serial modelliser, sleeping only with the tall, thin and beautiful. When I think about the whole sorry incident I derive some comfort from the knowledge that Mirko will always lack the charisma and bank balance to ever make modellising a real possibility. But as repulsed as I was by Mirko, I was devastated by his rejection of me. Not only did I feel like a total idiot, humiliated and ashamed; Mirko’s reaction simply reinforced what I already feared.
That nobody would want me. Ever. Not even a deadbeat like Mirko.
Boys don’t like fat girls.
I knew I really needed to get over the whole Mirko Palovich humiliation. I mean, it was almost five years ago. But sometimes when you’re feeling like a fat loser (thanks, roller derby) these memories come back to haunt a person. Which is another reason why I love sewing and making clothes. You need to concentrate on the task at hand. You can’t sew a decent straight seam let alone a fiddly zipper if your mind is all over the place. So when Mum and I got home from roller derby, I was looking forward to working on my pattern while listening to Dad’s old Joy Division CDs.
Which is exactly what I did until Dad came home.
I’d just figured out how to draft the bodice when I heard the yelling.
‘Don’t touch me,’ I heard Mum scream. ‘You stink.’
‘It’s Friday night,’ Dad slurred. ‘So I had a few drinks after work. Sue me.’
It was the same old yelling that often happened when Mum and Dad were together. It’s been like that ever since I can remember. Nowadays I try to ignore it, but back when I was little and didn’t know better I was determined to fix my parents, make them happy. I’d listen to their arguments so carefully that I’d been known to jot down notes in my Smiggle exercise book.
Mum says Dad works too much.
Dad says someone has to pay for all of this.
Mum says it’s not about the money, it’s about being a family.
Dad says why would I want to be here when all you do is yell and nag.
Once I’d got enough details I’d act all mediator-like, saying such things as, ‘Dad, you need to cut back your hours at work’ and ‘Mum, you need to tell Dad that you love him so that he wants to be here with us’.
Talk about having no clue. The truth is, no one listens to kids. Not really. Even adults who try really hard to treat kids like equals always end up doing whatever they want in the end.
Even so, it didn’t matter that my interventions had no impact whatsoever, I never gave up. Until one day I miscalculated. I was probably about ten by then and Mum and Dad were having a particularly angry fight. I heard glasses smashing and plates being broken. I should have known better, but we’d been learning about mindfulness at school and I was planning to tell Mum to take three deep breaths before she decided to throw something. I couldn’t have timed it worse if I tried. I’d just entered the room, brazen and filled with ideas of resolution, when a plate whizzed past my father, hitting me right above my left eye.
There was blood and everything and my parents totally freaked out. Mum was crying hysterically, furious and ashamed and saying, ‘Sorry, sorry, sorry.’
Dad got all high and mighty and took me out for a gelato, telling Mum that she needed to calm down and think long and hard about what she’d just done. ‘Something’s got to change, Sienna,’ he demanded. ‘We’ve got children.’
Dad and I drove in silence. My head throbbed and I was feeling very sorry for myself. Dad, I could sense, was still agitated; he hadn’t yet calmed down from the fight. We went to a little gelato shop we’d been visiting ever since I was old enough to eat ice-cream. It was a kind of safe place, I guess.
‘Bella, what happened to your face?’ the ice-cream lady asked, concerned.
‘Bike accident.’ Dad lied so easily, it might as well have been the truth.
Dad let me order a double size, chocolate-dipped waffle cone and the lady threw in a couple of extra wafers to make me feel better after my ‘accident’. I was never usually allowed more than a single cone, and I actually felt pretty sick afterwards. I even remember what flavours I had: chocolate, lemon and watermelon. I don’t remember why Spencer wasn’t there. Maybe he was at a sleepover or something. I felt pretty special that day, having Dad all to myself, even if it was because my mum accidentally hit me in the head with a plate.
That afternoon, eating ice-cream with my dad, just the two of us, I thought about how great it would be if my parents got divorced. It made so much sense. Why had I even tried to make them love each other when it was pretty obvious it was never going to happen? I had images of Dad and I having ice-cream every Sunday afternoon. On Wednesdays he’d pick me up after school and we’d go to the library and I would help him with the grocery shopping and I’d even learn how to cook. Dad would have to cut back at work, of course, so he’d have time to take care of me properly. It would be so great. Spencer would live with Mum, which made perfect sense and would make both of them very happy. There would be no more fighting and maybe Dad would find a girlfriend and Mum would find a boyfriend and they’d both remarry and I’d be a bridesmaid at both their weddings and I’d end up with barren step-parents who couldn’t have children of their own and would therefore be more than happy to adopt me.
I proposed this idea to Mum and Dad that night over dinner. Mum started crying and saying how sorry she was and that she and Dad loved each other very much and that I was never going to be the product of a broken home. Dad said that I didn’t have to worry, that grown-ups fought sometimes but that didn’t mean they didn’t care about each other. The usual stuff that parents say to try to make their kids feel better. Only it didn’t work. I didn’t feel better. If Mum and Dad weren’t willing to get a divorce that meant that nothing was going to change. This was my life and there was nothing I could do about it.
I turned my music up as loud as it would go, but I still heard the door slam and Mum yell, ‘Good riddance!’
This wouldn’t be the first time that Dad went and stayed in a hotel to ‘cool off’. There was a place just around the corner that had 24-hour check-in and cable TV. I followed him there once after a big fight and I begged him to let me stay.
‘I can keep you company,’ I begged. ‘We can watch a movie.’
But Dad refused. Instead he rang Mum, furious, and asked her to come and pick me up.
Like I said before, I know better now. I just stayed in my room and kept on sewing and listening to Joy Division on my laptop, pretending the argument wasn’t happening. Besides, it had nothing to do with me.
Mum yelled, ‘I’m going for a run!’
I waited until I heard the door slam, then I went straight to the freezer and found Dad’s stash of chocolate cookie dough ice-cream. I didn’t bother to put it in a bowl. I just grabbed a spoon and ate the entire tub right there at the kitchen counter. Each mouthful felt like heaven. Cold and sweet and gooey. When I finished I took the empty tub across the street and threw it in the neighbou
r’s bin.
Binge Eating 101: carefully dispose of the evidence.
Chapter 6: Curves: The New Skin and Bone
I’d been regretting the ice-cream binge all week but by the time Liam’s party came around I was feeling pretty good. It was one of those nights. You know, when autumn is in full swing but the evenings are still kind of mild. Mum and Dad had gone out on one of their post-massive-fight Saturday night dates and my lace dress had worked out just the way I’d hoped. I put on my favourite tomato-red lipstick and squeezed my gut into a pair of Spanx, which I know are not the most comfortable of garments, but they do make you wonder. Where does all the fat actually go?
‘Whoa,’ George said when I opened the door. ‘You look hot!’
‘Oh, I’m a bit fat,’ I mumbled, looking at the ground.
‘Sometimes you really talk shit,’ Melody said. ‘You are so not fat. I don’t know why you always think you are.’
‘Yeah,’ George agreed. ‘Don’t you know curves are the new skin and bone?’
‘You should put that on a T-shirt,’ I said.
We went inside and Melody and George sat on Mum’s new designer couch.
‘New couch?’ Melody asked.
‘Yeah. I think Mum got it from Freedom, or maybe it was Ikea,’ I lied.
‘Comfy.’ George lay back against the cushions. He was making me nervous. If anything got spilt on it Mum would seriously have a heart attack and die. The way George was lounging about, you could tell he had no idea that he was sitting on thousands of dollars worth of upholstery.
‘Want a drink?’
‘Stuff it,’ Melody said. ‘Why not?’
Mum always makes sure we have a bottle of Snow Queen vodka in the freezer. It’s her favourite brand. She loves to tell people it’s from Kazakhstan; just the right blend of exotic, edgy and authentic. Mum always drinks it straight so I followed suit and served it straight up.
‘Good lord.’ George coughed. ‘This is strong.’
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