The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  There are other little things on offer like small pastries and sausage rolls, which thankfully are not a threat since I haven’t touched meat in over ten years.

  There is canned asparagus which is good for being low-calorie but I don’t really want to eat it because it’s high in sodium and canned foods make my skin break out, or so say the Jesus dieters.

  Of course there is cheese and mini pizzas and stuff like that but I don’t give them a second glance. I am incredibly hungry which is my biggest mistake but I didn’t want to load up my stomach on pre-party food, just in case there is something I do want.

  So I eat most of the raw mushrooms and the carrots and I eat the cherry tomatoes and the celery sticks until I am really full. I add another 70 calories/3 grams of fat. I am also beginning to feel nauseous, have painful stomach gas and bloating. I am glad I have worn a big shirt that hangs loosely over my trousers. I move away from the food shortly before the opening act is about to begin and go outside. I am glad my shirt is sleeveless because my arms are really thin and I console myself by telling myself no one will see how fat my stomach is or know how I feel.

  I sit impatiently through the opening act and wonder what the main course of food is going to be.

  Where, you might wonder, is Mathew throughout all this? He is where he always is, bonding with his clients and buddies at the bar, not an area for wives or girlfriends.

  Which is also why I hang around the snacks table. What else am I going to do? The wives and girlfriends are an exercise in boredom if you ask me. I have nothing in common with any of them. But I can’t just sit there, like a wallflower, not saying anything, not talking to anyone.

  So I pick at the food. It is something to do.

  As soon as the supporting act finishes, someone inside the box announces that dinner is ready. There is a long queue and all I can see is roast beef, horseradish, potatoes wallowing in butter and oil, and Greek salad smothered in dressing.

  I get Mathew’s supper for him like I always do, and then I sit next to him while he eats. My plate boasts a meager feast; I have half a slice of twelve-grain health bread, which is probably about 120 calories but I round it up to 200 just to be safe. The fat grams nearly make me panic; a whole slice has about 2 grams but I add 5 to my calculations, again, to err on the side of safety. I am so freaked out at the thought of all the mounting numbers that I lose count and have to start all over again. Never mind the fact that fat grams aside, twelve-grain health bread is a total trigger binge food in my world but desperate times call for desperate measures and nothing else is a viable edible option.

  I am also staring at two tiny spinach pastries. 150 calories should cover them and I nearly can’t bear to think how much fat. My heart starts to beat hard in my chest and I want to put them back or foist them on Mathew but I am so hungry I can’t. These tiny demons carry at least a whopping 5 grams per pastry. I also have some asparagus (50 cals max, no fat to speak of) since there just isn’t much else.

  The woman next to us talks long and loud about the amazingness of motherhood; she hadn’t planned on getting pregnant, it just happened and now she loves her honeymoon baby, can’t imagine life without him, he makes her whole.

  She starts telling me that I must have a baby. She and her husband are trying for another one but it doesn’t seem to be happening and they’re going to have to go in-vitro. The only chance I get to spend some time with Mathew, and this woman won’t shut up.

  She is horribly suburban: her trousers are too short, she is wearing scuffed beige leather court shoes, and her hair is in a ’70s Farrah Fawcett-like featherdo.

  She eats a huge plate of roast beef and potatoes and a large white bread roll. I also notice she is drinking beer. More precious calories. I contemplate having something nice to drink, a Southern Comfort or something sweet and tangy. But 75 calories for the liquor, add another 100 for the ginger ale, zero fat to speak of but never forget alcohol makes you lose control and eat everything on the planet, so forget about it. I do a bad gangster imitation, “fuh-get-about-it” to try and lighten my mood, which is sinking by the second. Because by now I am already on about 540 calories/21.5 grams of fat, add to that the 350 calories/7 grams of fat I had during the day, which puts me at 890, round it off to 900 calories/28.5 grams of fat. See how quickly those fat grams pile up? I try to tell myself that it isn’t too bad considering I am in a place of such terrible temptation but I don’t want to be relieved or complacent yet.

  After all, the night is still young, dessert has yet to come and there is an immense possibility I’ll lose it entirely then.

  So I sit and watch everybody else eat. And I wish I were safely at home in bed, far away from all this food.

  And I am still hungry. My stomach is an empty drum, crying out to be filled.

  I am wondering if the Stones themselves are ever going to play when next thing Mick struts onstage as only he can and I am mesmerized.

  Looking at Mick Jagger’s taut belly, his flat midriff, his washboard abs, his profound skinniness makes me feel like a glutton, a disgusting slob, a slave to food.

  I watch him and vow to never eat again. More than that, food will become unimportant, incidental, and I will only eat when someone reminds me, like it has really slipped my mind.

  Alas, how easily is my willpower snapped like a fragile twig and broken. The concert ends and I am waiting for Mathew to finish a large snifter of brandy.

  And with this wait comes my Waterloo. It’s delivered on a silver platter and I am felled: tiny, beautiful little petits fours, which are among my favourite things in the whole world. They are little pieces of perfection with wedding-cake icing that is exquisitely lickable.

  I eat three of them. Then I eat a fourth. I think back to Mick strutting around, pulling up his shirt and the only thing I can think is how disgusting I am, awash in ugly, bloated fat cells. My body is not my temple. It is a rubber wet suit filled with lard.

  And that was the concert.

  Waist not, want not

  THE DAY AFTER THE STONES concert, I manage to be fairly good and even on the Monday I am okay. Work is stressful though, and by mid-morning, my neck has gone into spasms. I am standing in the middle of the floor doing stretching exercises, trying to avoid a killer headache, when Brit walks into the little office area we share.

  “Pardon me,” I say. “I realize this must look a little odd.”

  I swing my arms in a circular motion, then I start swinging from the waist in an attempt to loosen up my lower back which, by now, joins the pain of the upper.

  “Oh don’t mind me,” she says and puts her bag down on the desk and pulls off her coat. “I’m forever getting up and doing waist exercises in the middle of the living room. My friends are used to it.”

  I immediately stop and stare at her. Waist exercises?

  Two things cross my mind. The first is that it is a strange thing for a person to do when they profess to be as happy and at ease in their body as she does, and secondly, I have to set the record straight. I am not doing waist exercises.

  “Oh no,” I say. “It’s just that my neck and back are aching terribly. I’m trying to loosen them up.” But I can see she isn’t really listening.

  “That’s dreadful,” she says but she is clearly preoccupied. She gives a huge sigh and pats her belly. “I am terribly bloated today and have no idea why.”

  I give up trying to talk to her but I am angry that she thinks that I should be doing waist exercises.

  “Listen,” she says suddenly. “Do you still have that book?”

  I stop swinging my arms around and look at her. “The Messages book?” I ask.

  She nods and looks miserable.

  I go back to my desk and pull it out. I hadn’t taken it home to join the rest of my collection because somehow its presence in my bottom drawer reassured me. “What do you want me to look up?” I ask.

  “Bloating,” she says.

  I turn to the page and laugh. “Oh you’ll like this one. �
�Creature from the Black Lagoon’ it’s called. Wait, that’s for abdominal distention; here’s another one for water retention. Which one do you want?”

  “Water retention,” she says instantly.

  “‘Holding on,’” I read.

  They are not letting go of something or someone out of resistance to the past for fear if they let go, something awful will happen.

  They feel like they are carrying a heavy load, but they are afraid to ask for fear of alienating and losing what support they do have.

  “‘Water is retained and stored because of grief’,” I say, then I look up. “Why am I reading this to you?” I ask. I hand the book over to her. “Here, you read it.”

  She bends over it, bites her lip and concentrates. “Fascinating,” she murmurs.

  I laugh. “I thought you thought it was a load crap.” I can’t resist teasing her.

  “I have decided to explore other areas of life,” she says. “I am opening my mind to other avenues of thinking.” She stares at me wide-eyed, assumes a mock-serious tone, and chants; “I am looking to the universe for help and healing. I wish to become at one with the stars.” She stretches her arms out behind her, giggles somewhat hysterically and nearly falls backwards in her chair. Meg walks past with a scowl and doesn’t say a word to either of us.

  Brit raises her eyebrows at me and I shrug. I have no idea what Meg’s problems are today. She has been a real bitch for a couple of weeks now and I am tired of her and happier to be around Brit who straightens up her chair and returns her attention to the book.

  As the day draws to a close, we all head over to the boardroom for yet another dreadful bonding drinks party but at least this time Brit can stay for a while. She usually has to rush off to her second job. She works in a trendy video store in the west end. She has told me she believes she is on the same road as Quentin Tarantino; all she needs to do is watch two hundred movies and write a script and she’ll have it made.

  Meg makes straight for the food and starts cramming in chips, mini-pizzas, and peanuts. She drinks two beers in quick succession. I eat a chip and a soda cracker, sip my mineral water and wonder why I have bothered to come. Mathew was right; the failing company has tried to expand too quickly, our magazine is struggling to keep afloat, and the gung-ho good-looking young Greek publisher seems to be heading for a fall. In spite of which he’d commissioned an artist to do an opulent, deep sea version of the Sistine Chapel on the boardroom ceiling. I am gazing up at bottle-nosed dolphins that frolic in aqua splendour and wrinkling my nose at the strong, new carpet odour when Meg comes up to me.

  “Have one of these,” she tells me, and hands me a small round fried thing. Her nails are bitten to the quick, her skin is blotchy and she is nervy as all hell.

  She looks up. “The dolphins look a bit sad if you ask me,” she says. Her eyelids are red-rimmed, painful looking. She has dark shadows and puffy bags under her eyes.

  I take a tiny nibble so as not to offend her and say, “Delicious.” Then I look around and wonder where I can dispose of the thing. There are no plates, and I wonder if I can squash it into an empty beer can but that will look a bit odd if someone sees me. But I am sure as hell not going to eat it. So I hold it awkwardly.

  Brit joins us and also looks up at the ceiling. “I wonder why he didn’t do a Greek thing,” she says. “Like have gods and goddesses all over the place. It would make more sense, him being Greek and all that.”

  “Dolphins protect and guide,” Meg says. “That’s what we need right now, dolphins. I can tell you, the company is in deep trouble.”

  We look around at the newly renovated boardroom, the ceiling mural on the domed roof, the new furnishings, and the high, arched windows that give a spectacular view of the city.

  “In which case Pablo really should have gone for gods and goddesses, they have more power than dolphins,” Brit insists. Her eyes are wide with intensity. “Or maybe not, who knows. Hey, now’s a good time for me to tell you both some things that have been going on in my life. Come on, let’s grab some chairs. I don’t think Pablo would be into us plonking ourselves down on his brand new carpeting.”

  She drags Meg and me off to some free chairs and sits us down. “I have been doing some interesting reading,” she says, popping a grape into her mouth. Brit and Meg have napkins loaded with food and Meg has a fresh beer. I discreetly put the tiny pastry into a plant and hope it is the organic thing to do.

  We are ready, picnic and all, and it feels quite nice to be sitting and chatting with them. I realize I even feel happy.

  The goddess Isis

  BRIT PULLS HER SKIRT DOWN over her knees. “A friend of mine introduced me to this website called “Goddess Gift” and they have this quiz you can order, and you fill it out and it tells you which goddess you are. You should both do it.

  “You have to answer all these questions,” she explains, “and it costs like $20, but it’s worth it because once you know which goddess you are, you find out all sorts of things about yourself and it makes life easier because you know your strengths and weaknesses. Although there are no weaknesses really; only different aspects of ourselves.”

  I wonder if Brit is bi-polar. She swings from agitated and depressed to chirpy and cheerful in no time at all.

  She shifts around in her chair and gets comfortable while I watch the Miss World Contenders vie for Pablo’s attention. He looks as if he’s died and gone to heaven and appears none too concerned by the enormity of his company’s financial straits. Or maybe he is just momentarily distracted by the spread of nubile beauty before him.

  “Anyway,” Brit continues, “I did the quiz and I am the goddess Isis and I am very glad I am because Isis is wonderful. But oh, first,” she interrupts herself, “I must tell you about the goddess of Chocolate; she really existed. Ixcacao was her name and she was Mayan and responsible for bringing comfort to the human sacrifices when they were doing their walks of death. The story goes that the Sun needed human blood to quench his thirst, and if his thirst wasn’t quenched, then he’d come to a stop and if that happened, he would burn the entire earth down to ash. So it was an honour to be a sacrifice because you helped save the planet and you were treated like a god for a year.”

  “And then,” Meg laughs and licks salt off her fingers, “on your way up the pyre, along comes Mama Cocoa the Mayan goddess, to give you a Mars Bar and there you go. All better.”

  “Which logically means,” I add, “that our last human desire is for chocolate. So then, it’s not just the last wish of the eating disordered population but of the whole of mankind.”

  Both Meg and Brit look at me and I think perhaps I have gone too far. “Or not,” I stammer.

  “No, no,” they both chorus, and say they’d take a chocolate bar over sex any day, as a last wish.

  “Good old-fashioned Mars bar for me,” Brit says, while Meg wants any kind of dark chocolate, preferably with almonds. I say I’ll take any kind of white chocolate and they both object insisting that isn’t real chocolate.

  “Real chocolate must have cocoa beans,” Brit says, “But anyway, back to the real point of my story. I am the goddess Isis. Now,” she says, and I hope this explanation isn’t going to be too longwinded, “Isis was the Egyptian goddess of rebirth and is still one of the greatest icons of empowered femininity ever. Isis was a very down-to-earth goddess, which is another thing I like about her. Unlike a lot of gods, she cared about humans and spent a lot of time with them, teaching them practical things like how to mill corn and bake bread. She also taught women how to domesticate men so they would be easier to live with.”

  “I’d love to hear that one,” Meg says dryly, eating small phyllo pastries in rapid succession.

  “Yes. And she taught people how to read, and she was also worshipped as the goddess of medicine and wisdom,” Brit continues as though Meg hasn’t spoken.

  “Now, most importantly,” she says, leaning forward, “Isis is the personification of the ultimate woman. She was the mode
l for future generations of female icons, and she defeated Ra, the God of the Sun, to become the most powerful goddess of them all. She was much better than Ra because she cared about people while Ra didn’t, not a bit.”

  Brit is wearing long false eyelashes with diamanté tips that flash when she blinks. I am entranced. She has also painted a small beauty spot on her cheek and her lipstick is glossy orange sorbet. I realize that Brit’s grooming is made up of many aspects and I wonder if she enjoys being a girly girl or if she is just Chris’s painted doll?

  She continues. “So Isis, according to ‘Goddess Gift,’ was known as the ‘Mother of Life’ and ‘Crone of Death’ because she married her brother Osiris. But then her other brother Set killed Osiris for the throne. Then Isis went to find her husband’s body so she could bury him properly. She eventually found him and brought him home where she hid him in the swamps of the Nile delta.”

  “Very incestuous,” Meg comments.

  “Different time, didn’t mean the same as it does today,” Brit says, dismissing the objection. “And anyway, they were gods, so it didn’t count.”

  She continues with the story. “But Set found Osiris and he murdered him again and he hacked his body into fourteen pieces and threw them in different directions. So then Isis and her seven scorpions, who went everywhere with her to protect her, searched for Osiris and every time they found a piece, Isis put it together to re-form his body. But she could only recover thirteen pieces because a crab had swallowed the penis so Isis made one from gold and wax and then she brought her husband back to life, which she could do because she was a goddess. Then they had a child and he became the Sun God.”