Pumpkin Pie

by Jean Ure

  She then said that she was going to escort Miss Dobson to her car.

  “When I get back we’ll just run the first few scenes of Sob Story.”

  The minute the door closed, everyone came flocking round me. It was terrible. They were all so nice!

  “She didn’t have to say that,” said Mark. “That was a rotten thing to say.”

  “It was really mean!” said Connie.

  “Even if it’s true,” agreed Twinkle. “She still shouldn’t have said it.”

  “What d’you mean?” Saffy rounded on her. “Even if it’s true?’

  “Well—” Twinkle fluffed and huffed and looked a bit embarrassed.

  “Jenny isn’t fat,” said Saffy.

  “No, she’s not,” said Portia. Portia is thin as a piece of string. I’m sure she did think I was fat, really; she was just trying to make me feel better.

  Gareth said that the whole conversation was becoming fattist. He said there were loads of fat actresses.

  “And actors,” said Ben.

  “Yes, but it’s worse for women,” said Twinkle.

  Saffy said, “Why?”

  “It just is.”

  “It is!” Zoë did a little skinny twirl. “It’s far worse. It’s so unfair!”

  “You could always do voice-overs,” said Robert.

  “Or radio,” said Twinkle. “It wouldn’t matter what you looked like on radio.”

  “Of course, you know why she said it?” said Zoë.

  I said, “W-why?” Thinking that Zoë, in her mean way, would say something horrid such as, “Because it’s the truth, Elephant!” But she didn’t. She said, “‘Cos she was feeling ratty!” Zoë twirled, triumphantly. “‘Cos she used to be somebody and now she isn’t and nobody’s heard of her!”

  Everyone nodded and went “Yeah! Right!” They were all on my side, even the Terrible Two, and I suppose that did help a little bit, but it couldn’t stop me feeling utterly downcast and dejected. I thought, this is what happens when I try to have confidence. I wished so much that I had never spoken to Miss Dobson!

  I went back afterwards for tea with Saffy. I told her that I wished I’d never gone and introduced myself.

  “You mustn’t let it get to you,” urged Saffy.

  “But she said I was fat!”

  “She didn’t, actually,” said Saffy.

  “She said excess baggage! It means the same thing. It means I’m fat.”

  “Jen, you’re not!” said Saffy.

  “I’m not thin,” I said.

  “So what?” said Saffy. “Who says you have to be thin to be an actress?”

  I challenged her. I said, “Tell me one that isn’t! A young one.”

  She couldn’t, of course. Because I just bet there aren’t any! I defy anyone to make a Top Ten of Fat Actresses Under the Age of Thirty.

  “Well, anyway,” said Saffy, “she had some nerve! She’s not exactly a skeleton.”

  “She’s not under thirty,” I said.

  “No, more like fifty,” said Saffy.

  She was still thinner than I was.

  Mum called round at seven o’clock to fetch me. She said, “We’re all going up the road to have a pizza. How was Miss Dobson? Did you talk to her?”

  I said, “Mm,” hoping Mum wouldn’t want to pursue the subject. But naturally she did.

  “Is she still living in Clonmore Gardens? Did she remember meeting you? What was she like? What did you talk about?”

  I heaved a sigh. I said, “She doesn’t live there any more and she didn’t really remember but we didn’t have time to talk very much, and I’m not sure that I feel like a pizza.”

  “Oh? That’s unlike you,” said Mum. “Well, you don’t have to have a pizza! You can have whatever you want. You can have pasta, you can—”

  “Not sure I feel like anything,” I said.

  But by the time we’d collected Petal and Pip and walked up the road to Giorgio’s, I’d changed my mind. I not only had a pizza, one of Dad’s specials, I also had garlic bread with cheese on top and a big helping of tiramisu. Food can be a real comfort when you’re feeling low.

  Unfortunately, lovely though it is at the time, food isn’t what you would call a permanent source of comfort. It doesn’t really last very long. It’s all right while you’re actually eating it and thinking to yourself, “Yum yum!” and not caring about the rest of the world and what you might look like; but then after a bit it starts to go down, and you go down as well. Sometimes you are in such despair that you have to go and eat even more food to bring yourself back up again, which was why I went and raided the fridge the minute we got back home. But that didn’t help, because I just went straight up to my bedroom and burst into tears.

  I forced myself to look in the mirror, the full-length one on the inside of my wardrobe door, and I just HATED what I saw. This great fat… pumpkin. All round and bloated. How could I ever think of being an actress? How could I ever take my clothes off in front of a camera? How could I dance? Who was going to pay money to go and watch a great fat thing flolloping about? Ugh! I wouldn’t!

  As a rule when I am down I do my best to bounce back up, and usually I succeed. Maybe it is one of the advantages of being plump: you can bounce in a way that thin people can’t. Well, that is my theory.

  This time it took me the whole of Sunday before I managed to bounce. I ate eggs, mushrooms-and-tomatoes and cereal and toast-and-marmalade for breakfast, a big helping of lasagne and an even bigger helping of chocolate pudding for lunch, buttered crumpets and lemon meringue pie for tea and pistachio ice cream for supper, after which I felt a bit better. I decided that I would just show that Deirdre Dobson!

  I told Saffy at break on Monday, and Saffy said it was good that I was thinking positively. She said Deirdre Dobson deserved to be shown.

  “Stinky old bag!”

  I said she wasn’t an old bag yet, but I thought she probably would be in a few years’ time.

  “Yes, and by then,” said Saffy, “you’ll be a big star! You’ll be on the way up, and she’ll be on the way down!”

  I immediately had a mental picture of a ladder, with me – slim as a pin, and dressed to kill – zooming up to the top, and Deirdre Dobson – all saggy and baggy and fat – on the great slide to the bottom. I was heading for the bright lights: she was going to the trash heap. We would pass each other and I would smile, ever so graciously, and wave.

  “I shan’t gloat,” I said to Saffy, “because that would be demeaning.”

  “But you could remind her,” said Saffy. “You know, just casually. You could say, Who’s the fat one now, then?”

  We giggled.

  “She might even beg to be in one of your movies,” said Saffy. “Would you let her?”

  “I might,” I said, “if she humbled herself.”

  “You could say, Oh, yes, there is a part here for an old fat bag… that’s how it would appear in the cast list,” said Saffy. “Old Fat Bag!”

  We had a lot of fun, inventing parts that Deirdre Dobson could play in my movies. Old Fat Bag, Toothless Hag, Wizened Granny, Fat Woman in Bikini. I felt good. I felt strong. I would show her!

  I ate a plate of chips and a doughnut at lunchtime to keep up the good feelings, and a packet of crisps during afternoon break. Dad had left ravioli and Black Forest gateau – one of my favourites! – for dinner, and I ate quite a lot of that because Petal only wanted salad and Pip won’t eat ravioli on account of the sauce being red, so he just had a tin of sardines, which he disgustingly ate straight out of the tin, then went rushing off to do his homework.

  Round about nine o’clock I had a bit of a sinking feeling and nibbled some biscuits, but by the time I went to bed I was feeling really miserable. I do try very hard not to be oversensitive, like there’s this girl at school, Winona Pye (I know she can’t help her name) who just starts crying at the least little thing. I find that quite annoying. But it is horrid to be told that you are fat! Especially in front of all your classmates. It is r
eally hurtful. I don’t care how much people go on about not being ashamed of your body, and saying how we can’t all look like fashion models, and that in any case why should we want to? They can go on all they like, it’s still horrid! ‘Cos the truth is that nobody, practically, I shouldn’t think, actually enjoys being fat.

  That was the night I made my big decision: from now on I was going to stop behaving like the human equivalent of a dustbin. I was going to slim!

  ALL THIS HAPPENED at the end of term. I made up my mind that when we went back after the break I would be slim as a pin. Well, perhaps not quite that slim. If I starved for an entire month I didn’t think, probably, that I could get to be that slim. Maybe as slim as a darning needle. But at least a size smaller than I was now! All my clothes would be loose, so that I would have to buy a whole load of new ones. That was OK. I would ask Dad if I could take my savings money out of the building society, and Dad, in his Daddish way, would say, “Oh, you don’t want to do that! You can go into Marshall’s and use the store card.”

  I wouldn’t ask Mum because Mum was harder than Dad. She was more likely to say that I didn’t need new clothes, I’d just had new clothes. Which was true! We’d gone into Marshall’s just before Christmas. Only then I’d been plump and now I was going to be thin. Now I could enjoy the experience! I would choose all the tightest, brightest, funkiest clothes that I could find. I would wear crop tops! I would wear skirts that showed my knickers! I would wear everything that I’d never been able to wear before.

  Well, that was the theory. Unfortunately, when you have spent twelve years of your life as a human dustbin, it is not very easy to break the habit. Being holiday time just made it worse! I didn’t even have Saffy to help me, because she was away for two weeks visiting her gran. I went out a few times with a girl from our class at school called Ro Sullivan, who lives just a couple of streets away, but we are not all that close and it wasn’t like being with Saffy. I couldn’t tell Ro about my struggles!

  Mostly I just stayed home and practised voice exercises and dreamt about how it would be when I was thin. Petal was out every day, screaming round town with her friends, and Pip spent most of the time at his computer club or round at his friend Daniel’s, which meant that I was on my own with Dad. A fatal combination! For a would-be thin person, that is. Dad’s day is punctuated at regular intervals by what he calls “snackypoos”. Like every two hours he would cheerily sing out, “Pumpkin! Time for snackypoos!”

  At first I tried to resist.

  “I’m not hungry!” I would nobly cry (while in fact being starving, having done my best not to eat any breakfast).

  Alternatively, “I’m too busy!” “I’m working!” “I haven’t got time!”

  But Dad is not someone who will take no for an answer. Not where food is concerned. He’d knock on my bedroom door and when I opened it he’d be there, beaming, with a plate of macaroons that he’d just made, or a wodge of gorgeous sticky chocolate cake. I can’t resist chocolate cake! Even more, I can’t resist it when I know he’s done it specially for me.

  “Done it specially for you! Special treatie. Don’t let me down!”

  Before I knew it, we’d be cosily perched on the bed together, eating yummy chocolate cake. Two hours later it would be lunchtime. Then another snackypoo. Then teatime at about half-past three, then dinner at five, before Dad left for work. Maybe even supper if I was still awake when he came back. We were fellow foodies! It was Us against Them. (Mum and Petal and Pip.) How could I disappoint him? If I went over to the other side, it would leave Dad on his own! How many times had he said to me “It’s me and you, Pumpkin! Got to keep the flag flying.”

  Not that I can blame it all on Dad. I mean, he was just as used to me being a human waste disposal unit as I was. He wasn’t to know that I’d become sickened by the sight of my own body. I did sort of try, in a half-hearted way, to tell him. One evening when Petal was out smooching with her latest boyfriend and Pip was round at Daniel’s, and Dad and me were tucking into spaghetti bolognese together, I was overcome by this sudden burst of willpower and pushed my plate away from me. Dad was immediately concerned.

  “What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?”

  He knew it wasn’t his cooking. So it had to be me! I muttered that I was getting fat. Dad said, “Fat? Rubbish! Well-covered.”

  I said, “But I don’t want to be well-covered!”

  “Now, Pumpkin, don’t be like that,” said Dad. “You’ll have me worried. We don’t want any of that anorexic nonsense!”

  I said, “It’s not nonsense. This stuff is fattening.”

  “It’s good for you,” said Dad.

  “It’s not good to be fat,” I said.

  “You are not fat,” said Dad. “You’re my little plump Pumpkin and just the way you ought to be. You take after your dad, there’s nothing you can do about it. Now eat your spaghetti and don’t upset me!”

  I didn’t have to buy any new clothes. I didn’t even have to take in any waistbands. I still couldn’t roll them over, like Petal. I didn’t dare step on the scales. By the time I went back to drama classes I was even plumper than I’d been before. I looked at all those cool thin people that first Friday of the new term and I hated myself worse than ever. I hated myself so much that I almost couldn’t bear to change into my leotard and tights ready for our work-out session. I didn’t want to be seen! I had a spare tyre, I wobbled when I walked. I felt like running away and hiding!

  I really thought that I would have to tell Saffy I was going to give up. I would tell her that I wasn’t going to come to classes any more. I would say that I was bored or that I wanted to do something else. Something such as… cooking. At cookery classes there would surely be other fatties; I wouldn’t feel so grotesque.

  Saturday morning I did this really cowardly thing: I rang Saffy and said that I wouldn’t be going to class that afternoon as I wasn’t feeling well. Saffy wailed at me.

  “Jennee! You can’t miss class!”

  I wasn’t brave enough to tell her that I wasn’t ever going back to classes ever again. I just mumbled that I felt sick.

  “I’d only throw up over everyone.”

  Saffy giggled and said that that was all right. “Just so long as you don’t do it over me!”

  She did her best to make me change my mind, but I wouldn’t. I couldn’t face it! Instead, I spent the day comfort eating. I had lots of snackypoos up in my room, where no one could see me. Dad has to work on a Saturday, so I snacked by myself. It wasn’t as much fun, because snacking by yourself makes you feel really guilty, but I just had this great need. Every half hour or so I’d make these little furtive dashes downstairs to raid the fridge and go galloping back up with a chunk of pizza or a cream slice hidden under my sweater.

  Mum was out, showing someone round a house, and Pip was shut away in his room. He always seemed to be shut in his room these days. I tried asking him once, what he did in there. I said, “I suppose you’re playing with your computer?” He gave me this look of anguished scorn and said, “I don’t play, I work.” I said, “What, all the time?” “I have to!” said Pip. It really wasn’t natural; not for a ten year old. But what could I do? I had far too much on my mind to worry about Pip and his sad way of life.

  Then there was Petal, running all about the place like a mad woman with her moby clamped to her ear, screaming at people.

  “Don’t tell me! Just don’t tell me! I don’t want to know!” Followed almost immediately by, “What, what? Tell me!”

  I put it down to boyfriend trouble. Everything with Petal comes back to boyfriends. No big deal. She’ll get over it.

  While I’m furtively helping myself to some lemon meringue pie from the fridge, Petal suddenly appears in the doorway, pale and distraught, looking like the mask of tragedy (as opposed to the mask of comedy) and I almost say “What’s wrong?” but in the end I don’t because I have enough problems of my own without frazzling my brain over hers. In any case, what problems can yo
u possibly have when you’re as thin and as pretty as she is? It’s sheer self-indulgence. I’m the one with problems!

  We pass each other several times as Petal distractedly rushes to and fro and I creep in and out of the kitchen on my secret missions, but we never exchange any words. Petal never asks me why I keep racing up and down the stairs, and in and out the kitchen. I never ask her why she looks like the end of the world is about to come upon us. And neither of us spares a thought for our little genius brother, behind his bedroom door. We are all locked into our separate lives.

  When Mum got back at lunchtime she was expecting to take me to drama classes, as usual. I couldn’t very well tell her that I was feeling sick or she’d have started fussing – well, no, actually she wouldn’t, Mum is not the sort of person to fuss. But she might have made me eat something really boring when we went up to Giorgio’s for a meal later on. Something like a boiled egg, for instance. Or just a plate of soup and nothing else. I didn’t want that! So I just said that I didn’t think I could be bothered with drama any more, and Mum said that was a pity as I’d seemed to be enjoying it, but she didn’t press me. She didn’t even point out that she and Dad had paid for a term’s classes and would have wasted their money.

  But I think she was quite pleased that she didn’t have to fetch and carry because she said, “Well, if you’re sure… I might as well pop back to the office for a couple of hours. I’ve got some stuff I need to clear up. Will you be all right here by yourself?”

  I told her that I would, and she went off quite happily, leaving Pip in his bedroom and me in mine and Petal still clamped to her moby. Whatever Petal’s (purely imaginary) problems were she obviously got the better of them because when I crept downstairs for my next bout of comfort eating I found her all dressed up and about to leave the house. I heard her cooing, in syrupy tones, into her moby, that she was “on her wayeee!” She would never speak like that to any of her girlfriends so I guessed she was off to make it up with her latest gorgeous guy and do whatever it was they did together. Smooch and slurp round the shopping centre, guzzle each other’s lips in the back row of the cinema. Disgusting, really. But nowhere near as disgusting as me, with all my flab and my wobbly thighs. I thought self-pityingly that I was probably just jealous, because what boy would ever want to smooch and slurp with a great fat pumpkin?