The Appetites of Girls

by Pamela Moses

  I wore my new red-fringed skirt everywhere and ordered others in olive green, deep purple, and gold. I wore them with my buckled boots, loving the way my heels pounded against the cement campus walkways, ignoring Mother’s old warnings that mid-length skirts with tall boots accentuate the fleshiness above one’s knees. I ignored, too, my suitemates’ surprised expressions as I emerged from my room each morning with my leather jacket on my shoulders, stiff as any military aviator’s. “Where are you jetting to today, Captain?” Setsu joked once when I’d added mirrored shades to my ensemble. This sent Ruth into an epileptic fit of giggles before she apologized: “Sorry, Fran. Sorry! But do you think this is your most becoming look? It’s just quite a statement,” as if she were only being helpful, as if this made up for her laughing—an annoying reflex Ruth had developed since the pact we’d all made early sophomore year, the little “truths” she now felt safe, even obligated, to share in the name of lasting friendship.

  “Did I ask your opinion, Ruth?” It didn’t take much to shut her up. Anyway, what difference did it make if the jacket added bulk? What did it matter if the hat dulled the blue of my eyes, cast shadows on my nose and mouth, the features everyone agreed were my finest? I had priorities of greater consequence.

  By later in the spring, Setsu and Opal seemed even more preoccupied with maintaining their baby appetites, dominated by self-denial. Or maybe it was just that I observed them through a sharper lens. And Ruth, who, I knew, enjoyed food as much as I, still only envied them. I had given up on any of them joining BREMUSA until the morning Ruth and I crossed the campus together en route to early classes. As we entered Metcalf, a junior from my chemistry course held a door for a stalk-limbed, strawberry blonde but allowed it to close on Ruth. “You’re a pig! A damn PIG!” I yelled after him. But Ruth flushed fire-red as if she, she were to blame. I stopped her, my hand on her arm. “Don’t you feel embarrassed! Not for one minute! He’s the one who should be ashamed, don’t you know that?”

  The skin around Ruth’s eyes broke out in pink blotches as if she might cry. She glanced over my shoulder; it was clear I was adding to her discomfort. But if I could just make her see that she was suffering unnecessarily, that if she could only have my vision, BREMUSA’s vision, she could be free from self-reproach. “Your size has nothing to do with your worth. Nothing whatsoever!” I said. “Come with me to my BREMUSA meeting tonight, will you?” I did not notice my fingers gripping her arm, sinking into the pillow of her flesh until she flinched. “Will you?”

  She dabbed her eyes with the cuff of her sweater sleeve and smiled. “Yes. Okay, okay,” she said. But when I came to her room that night, she began to make excuses: a long essay for her Irish authors course, a persistent throbbing headache. She would not join out of conviction, but reluctantly, and perhaps only because she’d grown tired of my arguments. But the reasons were inconsequential. Once she was a part of BREMUSA, she would gain confidence and strength; she would be released from the bondage of self-criticism and loathing. This was what mattered.

  Gradually BREMUSA began to make its presence felt on campus; its reputation grew. One of our members, an art student, sculpted a nude, life-sized woman of plaster, with legs generously proportioned, stomach protuberant, arms rounded. Barbie Is a Lie. This Is Reality we etched into the statue’s pedestal. In the hours just before morning, we hoisted her on our shoulders and set her before the entry to the Sharpe Refectory. Two days later, a short article on our prank appeared in the Brown Daily Herald. A series of response letters ensued, some supportive but most critical.

  Though we were not identifiable as individuals to most students on campus, BREMUSA’s mere name made an impression. Sometimes a boy would whisper a “hello,” jostling past me in a crowded corridor, or wink, handing me a brightly colored folded invitation to some weekend party. If he presumed to graze my hand or leaned too close, I would flick the invitation with a fingernail. “I might have a BREMUSA meeting that night,” I would say, watching as his face fell, knowing he’d addressed me only because no dainty, miniskirted girl was nearby.

  After such encounters, I would track down Ruth. We would stand on the steps of Faunce House, overlooking the Green, and, leaning against the railing, watch the women and men watching each other. We saw how even the girls in torn tights and baggy skirts—to prove their impatience with the conventionalities of fashion—still tossed their loose hair over their shoulders when males turned. Recently, Benny Alpert, from down the hall—whose room we called whenever my Apple Macintosh jammed up—had begun to leave regular phone messages for Ruth, wanting to chat or stop in for a visit. “Have you noticed,” I asked, “you and I are the only BREMUSA members to receive even minor attentions from men? And do you know why?”

  “Yes.” She nodded and crossed her arms, tucking her hands into the crooks of her elbows. She knew. Though we were not thin, we were not as large as several girls on campus, not as obviously heavy as most other BREMUSA supporters.

  So BREMUSA was making an impression on Ruth. She was beginning to understand. “It’s offensive, isn’t it? So shallow. How many pounds do we have to gain before we are completely shunned as well?” And when I asked if she saw that the problem was ubiquitous, that everywhere—I gestured with my lighter toward the swarm of activity below—women were straightening, tightening, thrusting for men—men who measured them only by their physical proportions, Ruth agreed.

  I began to notice other small changes in Ruth, but ones I believed were significant. She was more vocal now during BREMUSA meetings, clapping with the rest of us when an insightful point was made, offering anecdotes of the ways she, too, had been slighted or judged for her plumpness, not only by males but by members of her own sex. And it had been days, as far as I could tell, since she had attempted to skip a meal. But then, one evening she didn’t appear, and I returned to our suite to discover Setsu in Ruth’s room, both of them stretched on Ruth’s floor, humming to some sappy song playing on Ruth’s daffodil-yellow radio, a yearbook and a few photos of Setsu’s friends spread on the carpet before them.

  “We’ve been making some plans.” Ruth glanced at Setsu, sucking her cheeks, unable to stop from smiling. They both smelled of minty gum. Ruth held one of the photos in her hand. I made out the blond-brown curls of a young man standing near a large sports arena. “Setsu’s introduced me to someone.” Ruth gave the photo a small wave.

  God! Didn’t she have any convictions! Any perseverance! “What about our priorities, Ruth? You missed our meeting just to talk about men!”

  The tip of Ruth’s tongue shot from between her teeth like a nervous turtle poking out from its shell. She licked her lips, made a small popping sound with her gum, then turned the photo so that only its back was to me.

  Setsu flicked a strand of hair over her shoulder. “Must everything be an argument with you, Francesca? I’m trying to do Ruth a favor.” Some weeks before, at the Science Library, Setsu had met Brian Nicholls, a senior from Ontario, Canada. “Very polite. A little shy. He works most evenings scanning books in and out of the system to supplement his tuition. He just seemed so sweet,” she said, smiling at Ruth. “I thought Brian might help her get her mind off past disappointments. You know, wipe away the bad with good.”

  I propped a booted foot on the rung of Ruth’s desk chair. Was this her excuse? I asked. Had she even thought about the example she was setting for other BREMUSA supporters? “Besides”—I kicked the metal tip of my boot against the chair’s silver rung then turned to Setsu—“you think a man can wipe away the bad with good? That’s the last thing Ruth needs.”

  “Maybe you should let her decide.” Setsu, on her hands and knees, her tiny underfed kitten bottom in the air, began to gather the scattered photos and fit them into a neat stack.

  But Ruth was not listening, her jaws working more vigorously on her gum. “Oh, Fran, I almost forgot to tell you! Brian has a roommate—Sanjeev. His father is from India, so he has this beautiful complexion, beautiful dark, dark hair. His family
spent some time in London, and he has this faint British accent.”

  “Very sexy,” Setsu added. She and Ruth laughed.

  “So, anyway, I showed him a picture of you, and he said you were lovely. He said you had warm eyes, and—what was it?—fetching lips.”

  Something snagged in my throat, but I coughed it away. I could tell from the pleased expression on Ruth’s face, from the way she watched me expectantly, that she believed this—my inclusion in the matchmaking—would dissolve our tension.

  “What’s that supposed to mean? And ‘fetching’? Who even uses that word?” I plucked a cigarette from a pack in my jeans pocket and lit it, exhaling in a stream between my teeth. In recent weeks, Ruth had begun to try a drag or two when I’d offered, but the smoke seemed to irritate her now, and she rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. But I made no offer to move to the window or extinguish the remaining stub. “Besides, Ruth, why are you showing my picture to strange men?”

  “He’s not strange. Setsu knows him, and I’ve met him twice.” She shook her head and twisted the small silver ball earring in her left ear, a habit she had when she was feeling defensive. She went on to say that Brian and Sanjeev had suggested a double date. An afternoon at Moon Beach, since we were enjoying unusually warm weather for spring.

  “Ha! You’re kidding.” I snapped my tongue to the roof of my mouth.

  Ruth only stared blankly, her eyes round and bovine. “What do you mean?”

  “How perfect. God, how typical. What better way to see girls half-naked—”

  “I’m sure they didn’t intend . . . I don’t think—”

  “No, Ruth, you didn’t think at all, did you? Haven’t you been treated badly enough by men lately? You want more?” I gave Ruth’s chair a second kick, and as I did so, I heard a soft snuffling. Ruth was blowing her nose into a tissue.

  “What’s wrong with you?” Setsu was sitting up now, straight as a pillar. “How could you possibly be so insensitive?”

  After her procedure, those first days back at Brown, Ruth’s face had been puffed and swollen from tears, and those early nights I’d heard her, crying in bed, almost without ceasing, like some small, abandoned animal. But even now there were times I woke before morning to coughing from her room and knew she was not sick but covering sadder sounds. Maybe Setsu was right: I had gone too far. And so I found myself apologizing, pulling more tissues from the package on her desk, stroking her hand, and somehow, somehow, agreeing to spend the second Saturday of May at the beach with Brian and his roommate, Sanjeev.

  • • •

  A week before our date, I found Ruth in her room holding a floral-printed bikini with hot pink straps. “My cousin gave this to me last year,” she said. “She bought it on sale from some fancy swimwear catalog, but it was the wrong size. I don’t even know if it fits me. I’ve never had the nerve to wear it.”

  “I’m sure it’s fine.” I tossed a red sweatshirt aside to stretch on Ruth’s bed as she, stepping behind her opened closet door for privacy, wriggled out of her clothes and into the suit, arranging her breasts until they rested like plump cupcakes in their wrappers. She winced, her scrunched-up nose against her round cheeks reminding me of a rabbit as she studied her reflection in the mirror adhered to the closet door. In the overhead light, her skin shone almost blue-white. It dimpled at her stomach and below her bottom. But the pattern of the suit drew attention to the even proportion of her chest and hips. Perhaps this was what she wanted to hear, but I refused to flatter her.

  Ruth chewed her bottom lip and wrapped an arm around her middle, where her flesh was softest. “Maybe I should stick with a one-piece.”

  I rolled onto my elbow, loudly, impatiently clearing my throat. “I hope you’re not doing this for Brian.”

  Ruth shrugged and examined the tag still attached to the back of the suit.

  “If he’s going to judge you for the way you look in a bathing suit, I don’t know what you’re doing with him in the first place.”

  “Are you getting a new suit?”

  “Heh! What do you think?”

  Ruth nodded, giving a rueful downward glance at her waist.

  “Have enough confidence not to change yourself for a man. Right, Ruth?” I said, reciting one of BREMUSA’s mantras.

  “Right.” Ruth made another blushing nod of agreement, then reached for the sweatpants and striped T-shirt she’d been wearing when I entered. “You always think sensibly, Fran.”

  True to my word, I did not buy a new swimsuit for our beach date. Each morning, along my bleary-eyed stroll to the coffee shop in town for my cup of dark roast with cream, I passed University Sports, a store that sold athletic gear and swimwear. In the window, a maple-colored mannequin (chicer than any they had displayed before), her arms akimbo, posed in a sleek black bathing suit with a plunging neckline. At the base of the vee, a small gold buckle sparkled under the store’s track lighting. I could almost feel the slipperiness of the material, could almost see in the store’s front glass how the suit might flatter me. One morning, as Setsu and I walked together, she must have seen me turning to glance at the suit.

  “That would look great on you,” she said, reaching to press my arm. She meant this as a compliment, I knew, but I felt annoyed at having been caught, annoyed at her pausing on the sidewalk at the shop’s entrance, as if expecting me to follow her inside.

  • • •

  The second Saturday of May was, according to the morning announcer on my bedside radio clock, perfect weather—a cloudless eighty-one degrees with the softest possible breeze. I had overslept, having stayed up late the night before on a two-hour call with Sharon, gossiping about our old New York schoolmates. With no time to shower, I quickly combed fingers through my hair, fastening it with the rubber band I’d tossed on my night table before bed, then rummaged through my closet shelves until I found my tangled pile of old bathing suits. I plucked a smoke-gray one with a broad stripe of red across the middle. When I had bought it two summers before, in a pricey boutique on Ninetieth and Madison Avenue where Mother sometimes shopped, the saleslady had complimented me, claiming it enhanced my figure. At the time I had agreed with her. Something about the cut and pattern seemed to narrow my waist, diminish the bulging around my hips. But now I was not so sure. The area below my navel protruded more than I had remembered, my thighs appeared thicker. But I shook off the thought, fishing in my straw beach bag for my dark sunglasses, which Jessica Adler, who’d had the locker next to mine in high school, once said lent me a mysterious, sophisticated air.

  Ruth had left a note to say she was taking an early walk but would meet me in the parking lot behind Brian and Sanjeev’s dorm, where Brian kept his car. I spotted her from a distance, standing beside a slightly battered Jeep Cherokee, bouncing her canvas bag against her knees. “Hi!” she yelled when she saw me, her voice ringing across the quiet lot. Her hair was swept up and pinned into a careful twist, a style she reserved for special occasions. As I drew close, I saw she had dusted her cheeks with an iridescent blush. Her lips sparkled with the same silver-pink gloss that Setsu sometimes wore. Her face looked more defined, an effect of the makeup. She wore a white cotton sundress, but through the dress’s straps, I could make out the hot-pink ties of the bikini she had modeled for me and, obviously, despite her initial reservations, decided to keep. I adjusted my shades on my nose, irritated by the thought that she had risen hours earlier to primp and preen.

  “Great day, huh?” Ruth arched her neck and gazed at the sky. She set her bag on her left shoulder, then readjusted it to her right. “Doesn’t it feel like summer?”

  My mouth was full with the warm coffee and buttered bagel I’d stopped to buy at Peaberry’s, so I didn’t answer. But she seemed not to notice, too absorbed with checking her reflection in the car’s windows and watching the door of Brian and Sanjeev’s dormitory, waiting for them to emerge.

  Brian was tall with thin, slightly knobby-kneed legs, like the men who played tennis at Father’s club but p
aler. He had full blondish brows and rimless glasses. His wavy hair was parted neatly to one side. He kissed Ruth politely on both cheeks, making her blush, and opened the front passenger door for her. He then shook my hand and leaned to open the rear door, but I reached the handle first.

  “It’s okay. I’ve got it.” I stepped up onto the seat, heaving my straw bag before me and somehow colliding with Sanjeev, who was sliding in through the opposite door. He laughed loudly, but I only cursed under my breath, dabbing with my beach towel at my cut-off jean shorts, which had been splattered with coffee. So I didn’t lift my head to really glance at Sanjeev until we had been several minutes on the road, by which point Ruth and Brian were deep in discussion about some Bergman film that had been shown in one of the auditoriums on campus and that they had both seen. Ruth and Setsu had mentioned that Sanjeev was dark-haired and tall but had said little more about his appearance, and for some reason, I had assumed he was only mildly attractive. But with his tan skin, his sculpted nose and cheeks, his large, even teeth, he resembled a television actor or someone whose picture you might find in a magazine for men’s apparel. I yanked at my suit, which had twisted beneath my T-shirt. I could feel the nubby material, worn in spots from the previous summer, and could not help thinking for a moment of the black suit in the window of University Sports. From behind my tinted glasses, I peered sideways at Sanjeev once more, wondering what photo of me Ruth had shown him. I guessed it was the one I had used for the Brown student directory, a small square I’d cut from a picture taken during a family vacation to Bermuda, my skin browned, my hair slightly lightened from the sun, a shot revealing nothing below my shoulders. Yes, I was quite sure that was it, quite sure he would not have expressed interest otherwise. I needed no more than a fleeting look to determine his type: he liked his girls toy-sized. Certainly I was not what he had bargained for. Ha! I hoped he was miserably disappointed. I tore off a large chunk of bagel and silently congratulated myself for not having bought the new suit.