The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  If we order an Italian salad I don’t have to eat any of the cheese. Well maybe one small block, which already looks like the cellulite it will become on my thighs, before it even reaches my mouth. I can pour raw vinegar, certainly not a drop of oil, all over the lettuce to give it some taste. No salt of course because salt makes you retain water.

  What I’d really love to have but would never order, is the Fettucine Salmone, which is made with cream and smoked salmon. And I’d have garlic focaccia on the side, with lots of butter. Right. In my dreams.

  And Mathew, well, he’ll have a pizza with pineapple and anchovies and wash it down with a couple of beers. And he’ll eat all the cheese off the salad without even appreciating it and it will take all the control I possess to not grab a slice of pizza off his plate and shove it in my mouth or take a generous swig of his beer.

  I have to admit, with shame, that I eat his pizza crusts.

  He doesn’t eat them because he only likes the soft filling in the centre. So when he’s finished, I pick up the crusts and scrape off any kind of topping that might remain and I eat them – the hard, rough crusts made of burnt flour and water.

  I have to stop myself from eyeing the slice he’s eating and it takes remarkable control to not grab the crust as soon as he’s finished. I wait, sort of, and then I take it as slowly as I can force myself to.

  No wonder I’m not fun. I’m a bit busy, wouldn’t you say, trying to keep a grip?

  Sometimes I wonder about the symbolism of eating Mathew’s crusts. Why don’t I order my own pizza and just eat the crusts if that’s what I really want?

  I ask myself this and think back to the issue of fun. If I were really truly genuinely happy, would I still worry about being fat or is part of the definition of being happy not being a worrier? Oh, who knows. I’m confused again. This thinking runs me ragged.

  I find myself repeating things. I say things like “just think now, just think now,” and then I try to remember what it is I am trying to think about. Usually I’m trying to count my fat grams and balance them against my calories and I find myself mumbling worriedly to myself and then I hear myself say, “just think now,” and then I have to stop my calculations and start all over again. Difficult to have fun under such conditions.

  So back to to my point. I could only be happy if it means eating whatever I want and looking like Thin Lisa. And, I’ll never be happy eating whatever I want because I know I’ll just end up like Fat Janet.

  Yes, the truth, my friends, is that I was born to be more like Fat Janet than Thin Lisa; therein lies the reality of my genetics. Am I thin now? People say so. But do I feel thin? Only when I don’t eat. Then I feel light. Or lightheaded. Or both.

  Anyway, I guess I’ll just carry on for a while, like this, because I have no idea what else to do and anyway, I’m too tired to try anything different right now.

  And you know, if Mathew’s crusts are the worst of my crimes, I can live with that.

  Vanessa, the alien supermodel

  I DECIDE TO GO SHOPPING. I have to. I need to buy some new clothes. I haven’t been shopping in a long time, because I hate buying clothes. Clothes are a necessary evil, nothing more. There is certainly nothing fun about shopping. Some girls like shopping together, which is totally out of the question for me. I can’t think of anything worse. It’s bad enough that I have myself for company.

  I take care of my clothing needs like I take care of my teeth; a checkup every six months, get the cavities filled, try not to see what’s happening, and get the heck out as soon as possible. And, if I can, take drugs along the way – happy gas is inordinately helpful, but sadly not practical when dashing around a mall.

  Of the two, clothes versus dentist, I prefer the dental appointment. It’s much quicker and there are usually fewer problems. Well, there is one thing; the dentist repeatedly warns me I’m going to suffer from prematurely receding gums, which I can never fix because I over-brush. They say dentists are very savvy at spotting the damage due to throwing up: receding gum, eroded enamel and the like. I just hope he just thinks I am over zealous and not dysfunctional in any regard. Of course, he has never said anything.

  I read somewhere the other day that you must never brush your teeth after throwing up because brushing makes the acid eat into your enamel more. So what then? What are you supposed to do? Hang around with foul breath? Brushing is also the sanctification, the exit sign, the sigh of relief that says life will get back to normal.

  Anyway, I rarely suffer at the dentist. But shopping, well I certainly do suffer then, even though I do my best to prepare myself for the agony.

  I begin by reminding myself I am not a thin person. This way I won’t be horribly surprised when I face reality. And I tell myself that I always try my hardest to eat as little as I can, and I try to take comfort from the fact that I always do my best in this way.

  Your best isn’t good enough, my brain shouts back at me. I suggest you make your best better. If that’s the best you can do, then you are one big fat loser.

  I wish it would stop yelling at me. I try not to listen. You don’t eat much at all, I tell myself again. You are disciplined and in control and most importantly, you’ve come to terms with who you are.

  You have accepted defeat, my brain shouts. It’s angry with me. You have given up. Have you no shame?

  Sigh. I go to the mall and for the first few minutes I don’t feel too bad about the whole thing. I have two apples for breakfast, but I am longing for a carb, of course. But that would just derail me in unspeakable ways and I know the day holds enough trauma without my giving it any help.

  I am fine, I say, and, three stores (and their changing rooms) later, I nearly believe it.

  The first sign of trouble comes in broken English.

  “Hullo….Velly nice to see you again.”

  Ah, no, I think. Anybody but her. But of course it is her. Vanessa, a stunning Vietnamese girl, freakishly tall, six foot in bare feet, about as wide as a string bean with long, straight, super-glossy black hair.

  “You are shopping also?” she asks me.

  Yes, I am. I give up the fight for a half decent day.

  Vanessa is in a pair of faded super-thin skin-tight jeans.

  “These,” the jeans say, in no quiet voice either, “are the best, most perfect, longest legs in the world.”

  Vanessa is also wearing a leather bra with tassels. A trashy combination on ninety-nine percent of the population but she looks like a Chanel supermodel, or an alien.

  “How … are … you?” she enunciates carefully. Vanessa’s English is practically non-existent. She’d come across recently on the arm of a British art director who had found her during a stint with Coca-Cola in the East.

  The art director is part of Mathew’s chosen gang although Mathew disapproves of his fondness for cocaine and has told him so. Mathew drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney but drugs are a no-no.

  I had wondered if Vanessa shared her boyfriend’s tastes. We had gone to their housewarming party and I’d admired Vanessa’s beauty, the candles in her garden, the understated rice paper screens that screamed stylish perfection.

  I’d heard that Vanessa is taking English lessons but it is still hard to understand what she is saying. We manage to converse a bit despite the language gap and my distress at having to be eye to eye with the body that should have been mine.

  I escape to the changing room where I stand very still, wait and listen to her leave.

  I undress, which is the second sign of trouble. Before Vanessa’s appearance, the changing rooms had been kinder to me.

  I do not feel good now. I am changed, I am swollen, my confidence has vanished and so has the body I fleetingly imagined I had.

  My cellulite is back in all its lumpy glory, my stomach sags like a pouch of old stretched leather, and my backside protrudes like a soft bag of droopy flesh. The saddle-bags on my thighs are like the indicators of an old-fashioned car, those little arms that swing out, except that
my indicators are huge. There is nothing little about them.

  My thighs are unspeakable – pale, porridgy, and heavy. My knees seem lost in jowls of fatty, wrinkled flesh. My calves are simply thick, heavy, and stout and I have no ankles to speak of.

  I stand still and look at myself. I shut my eyes and go over in my mind what I have eaten over the last few months – no, years – and I begin to feel a bit better. I picture myself just a few weeks back: I had on my swimsuit and I looked good. Too good. The kind of good that is impossible to maintain. And, from what is facing me in the mirror now, may never have existed all.

  I would rather have lived with the vision, even if it were false, of just that one time of swimsuit acceptability.

  I remember, as I stand here, how I had finally pleased my father. So hard to please, impossible really, but I had achieved the highest accolade. He had leaned over and taken my upper arm in his hand and he said, “Such a thin little arm.”

  Yes, I do have thin arms. My pleasure in his comment was blighted only by the fact that he would never be able to say, “Such a thin little leg” with the same degree of pride because even the bare bones of my leg are too big to ever be thin.

  I stand in the changing room and replay my father’s comment to myself. I caress the sharpness of my collarbones, the bony gauntness of my neck and I think to myself that yes, there are the inescapable Vanessas of this world but I, too, have areas of perfection – bones and thin arms. And, at the very least, no one can say I don’t try. There will always be those areas of my body over which I have no control but I will never admit defeat. Never.

  And the memory of my father feeling my arm is infinitely preferable to the one of my mother crying in a changing room with me when I was twelve. She sat defeated, surrounded by endless pairs of discarded jeans that I couldn’t pull over my thighs.

  Now I wonder why she had made me try on so many in the same size. Why didn’t she just get me a bigger size? I have seen, and studied, pictures of myself as a kid, and I wasn’t even fat; just a bit big, quite normal really. There was no reason for her to fall silent after she had stopped weeping, to walk dejectedly to the car with me trailing behind, for her to shrug so painfully, so expressively, to my father when we got home, purse her lips in that way and shake her head.

  “Ah,” my father had said, “well, I’ll take us all out for a nice supper tonight. And then tomorrow, we will all start again. We will diet together. How’s that?”

  I open my eyes. I look at my arms and my collarbone and I get dressed again. I leave the store feeling a bit lumpy but generally fine.

  I keep bumping into Vanessa after that. It seems that the stores follow a natural progression around the mall and that we are destined to keep pace. While my arms become full with bags and boxes, hers remain empty. I guess she is looking for an accessory for her body, or maybe she is just hanging out, having fun, while I am looking for a tent. Lots of tents, and I find more than a few.

  I must have bought a dozen black, ankle-length skirts. Another dozen thigh-length Tshirts.

  It is so much easier in a way, not having any choice. I know how best to hide and cover and I never stray from my formula. I can’t imagine buying a thing just because I like it. I guess it might be like eating something I like, instead of ramming tons of diet-worthy, “correct” food into my mouth. And in the same way, I don’t clothes shop for fun. I shop to conceal.

  About three hours later I spot Vanessa. She is sitting at a coffee shop by herself, paging through a magazine, and taking a break. I wish I could stop too, but I can’t, I have to finish. I have to complete the list. I have a lot to get done before the stores close, so I trudge on past her.

  The difference between you and me, I think, is that you stop when you’re tired and you rest. You feed your body and you take a break. I carry on, and do what I set out to do. I neither deviate nor indulge.

  What is a playground for her, is an endurance test for me. And she will always be thinner, so she wins, hands down.

  A fat day and new friends

  BRIT HALL, ONE OF THE new girls, arrives for her first day.

  “I eat a lot,” she announces. “I really like my food, one of my greatest pleasures in life is eating.”

  Whoa, I think, oversharing. I also want to say yes, I can tell you are fond of eating, and while I feel ashamed of my cruel cognition, that doesn’t stop me from having the thought.

  I introduce Meg to Brit and they disappear into Meg’s office to discuss the film listings.

  About an hour later a rather lost-looking young girl wanders in and gazes around silently. Maxing out at five feet tall, she is a size zero in tight, faded jeans and she has a tie-dyed canvas bag cross-slung from shoulder to hip. She wears an East Indian white blouse with silver sequins and blue embroidered stitching and she has beaded leather sandals on her pretty little feet. She has a diamond nose stud, very short hair, immense baby blue eyes, a pale, slightly freckled complexion, and a small upturned nose.

  “Yes?” I ask her.

  “I am Indira, Kenneth’s new assistant,” she announces with a large smile. She looks about fourteen.

  Oh, Kenneth, I think. I lead her over to his office and he greets her with delight.

  A couple of months later she, Brit, Meg and I are all friends, although I use that term loosely.

  “Have a cracker,” Brit offers Meg.

  “Oh no, I shouldn’t. I went to the preview and they had these adorable little sandwiches of avocado and ricotta and although I knew I shouldn’t, I just about ate them all.”

  “I know what you mean,” I say. There are things one would never buy for oneself or keep at home, and then, you go out and there they all are, and they become irresistible.

  “You know, you and Meg are so thin and all you do is worry about food,” Brit says. “Now, take me, I eat whatever I want, meanwhile, I’m the one who should lose weight or at least be watching what I eat. But really, I just couldn’t be bothered, food’s too nice.”

  She eats another cracker. There goes another three grams of fat. I do the math for her in my head.

  Meg and I are in tune with each other. We don’t invade each other’s way of doing things or make comments. We understand how it works. I don’t know what to say to Brit, and neither, apparently, does Meg.

  What I am really thinking is that Meg is most likely filled with horror at having been called thin in the same breath as me and I agree, it is just plain wrong. Meg is the real, thin deal while I only have a few thin areas and am rather rounded.

  So I am embarrassed and want to apologize to Meg and tell her, “No really, don’t worry, you’re the thin one. It was wrong of her to say that and include me. You don’t need to worry; she shouldn’t have grouped us together like that.”

  Meg leaves the room, clearly unable to handle the conversation. I can see by the expression on her face she is sorry she has been party to the food talk for as long as she has.

  But I can’t leave because Brit and I share an office. Against my better judgment, I feel the need to object to what she said, or at least explain my habits and thereby force a semblance of normality in regards to my food concerns.

  “I have bad skin,” I tell her. “I am prone to serious acne, and if I eat anything even vaguely acidic then my skin breaks out badly. That’s why I am so careful with what I eat.”

  “Really?” Brit says, and that seems to be that. She doesn’t seem to realize the immensity of the can of worms she has opened, while my equilibrium has been entirely destroyed by her casual comments.

  The thing is, I am having a really bad fat day; my stomach, waist, thighs, and ankles are bulging balloons filled with lakes of retaining water and there I am, sloshing around unhappily within the confines of my skin. I feel like I am wading through the world, while there, by my side, is my ever-faithful friend, my hunger.

  And now, Brit has made this off-the-cuff remark and used the thin word, which dooms me forever. I am now cursed to be fat, hungry, and waterlogg
ed forever.

  Indira steps into the silence of the room.

  “I can tell you why you get acne,” she says cheerfully. “It’s got nothing to do with food.”

  I groan inwardly. She’d heard us. I had hoped to shut the conversation down. I look up at her. She is brimming with excitement and her immense blue eyes sparkle. Everything about Indira sparkles; she is a tiny, elfin shimmer of crystal-beaded radiance.

  “It’s a message from your body,” she announces. “I’ve got a book that explains everything. It’s by a wonderful man, Dr. Narayan-Singh. It’s very important that you listen to whatever your body tries to tell you.”

  To my surprise Meg immediately emerges from her office, looking interested. I guess she’s been listening too.

  “You mean that book?” she asks. “Have you got a copy of that book? Where did you get it? It’s very rare.”

  Brit looks up. “What are you both talking about?”

  “Messages from the Body,” they say in harmony.

  “I’ll go and get it,” Indira says and she rushes off to her cubicle outside Kenneth’s office.

  Brit and I look at each other and shrug.

  “Let’s all get some tea,” Indira calls. “This is going to be fun. All our ailments will be explained, even your so-called bad skin,” she shouts in my direction, “although I think you’ve got a beautiful complexion.”

  I sigh. Why, I wonder silently, am I the only one who wants to work? All this bloody talking, bonding, sharing, it’s all so tiring.

  I get up to make a cup of green tea and join the discussion.

  Messages from the body

  “SO YOU SEE,” INDIRA SAYS with excitement to our gathered circle on the floor of Brit’s and my working space, “it’s all about what your body is trying to tell you.” Just then Kenneth walks in.

  “Are you all having a séance or something?” he asks.