by Liz Astrof
But like any junkie, I could avoid the siren song of junk food for only so long. Soon I was once again making my way on my Hanukkah bike to 7-Eleven, my pockets full of change I’d lifted from the tennis ball can on my dad’s dresser, always making sure to leave a layer of quarters on top so he wouldn’t become suspicious. I’d learned to appreciate the bike—it served as a sort of equalizer for the copious amount of snacks I was consuming. Also, riding a bike was easier than walking, especially since I found a way to coast downhill both ways.
Whatever I couldn’t eat before I got home I’d save for later, although since my dad and Cathy had taken the dust ruffle off my bed in an effort to keep me honest, I could no longer keep food in my room.
But Camp Sha(m)e had honed my inner savvy, and I’d taken to hiding my stash along the side of the house behind the garbage cans. As long as I moved it before garbage day, I was golden as a classic Twinkie.
One morning on my way to school, I went to grab a piece of candy for the four-minute walk. I remember pondering if it was a Starburst Fruit Chew or Twix kind of morning. Maybe both? Both.
I reached behind the garbage can and unrolled the brown paper bag—only to find that one Twinkie was missing from a package of two.
I knew this wasn’t the work of an animal, because an animal would have eaten all of it and torn the bag to pieces. It wasn’t my parents either, because if it were, I’d be standing there dead. It couldn’t have been my brother, because Jeff would have finked on me immediately.
So, who stole my Twinkie?
I circled back to Jeff. Maybe he was working on how he would “out” me—he was super smart and did shit like that. Maybe he was advancing the assault on our thorny relationship up to extortion levels. I was wondering what I might be forced to pay, what indentured servitude he could exact from me. I figured he’d turn me in via one of his award-winning essays and was imagining a story being published in the school paper about what a fucking pig I was when, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed my neighbor Rubin standing frozen in his driveway.
We locked eyes, and, in that moment, I knew he was the culprit. He had that telltale look of shame—the same one I had when my hand was caught in the cookie jar. He scurried away, busted and embarrassed. We both were.
The whole neighborhood knew Rubin’s story—the saga of the world’s most miserable couple (my parents now being divorced). While I’d been at fat camp, Rubin’s “hateful” wife Anna (his word) had put him on a diet because he was “a fat piece of shit” (her words), and she didn’t want him to have a heart attack and leave her with their “asshole kids” (their words). My family and I often saw Rubin’s brown Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera sitting in fast-food parking lots, Rubin hunched over the wheel, stuffing his face. Poor bastard, my dad would say.
Now here he was. Stealing candy from a baby. Well, a thirteen-year-old.
And all I could think was, That poor bastard.
I figured now that I had caught this poor bastard and even shook my head a little in a public-shaming way and gave him a wide-eyed look that said, “How could you?,” he would keep his hands to himself. Quite the contrary—the very next day I unrolled my brown bag to see the addition of not one but two more Twinkies and a pack of Twizzlers. All thanks to my neighbor/food-thief/partner in crime. He had taketh away, but he had also giveth.
I bought more candy and snacks that day than usual, and that night I left the top of the bag unrolled. An invitation.
And it began. Without a word ever spoken, Rubin and I would go back and forth. He would eat, he would add. I would eat, I would add.
We started to mix things up to surprise each other. A Whatchamacallit bar here, a Hostess Blueberry Pie there. I found out he was a “sweet” guy and not “sour” when he passed on the roll of tart Spree Wafers. He learned I didn’t like spicy when I left the Chili Lime chips untouched.
This went on for months. Was it sexual? No. Sensual? Absolutely. And secret—so long as we didn’t get sloppy, like leaving the bag in plain sight or trying to stuff something that clearly didn’t fit into it, we were safe.
Until just before my Bat Mitzvah.
The big event was at the end of the month. Cathy had spent an entire year planning the black-tie affair, which was to be held at our temple two towns away in Massapequa. The ballroom at Temple Judea, intended for High Holiday overflow and bingo, was being transformed into an ethereal garden. Ficus trees with twinkly lights, custom pastel linens, matching china, and white satin-backed chairs were being brought in. Cathy and my dad had eloped on a tiny boat in Aruba seven years earlier, so this was going to be the wedding she never had. She was even wearing a white gown. Cathy was not fucking around.
I was wearing a pink, custom-made, signature Little Royalty dress that Cathy had picked out at the local fancy dress store on Long Island’s North Shore, and on the day in question, Cathy and I were headed to my final fitting at Little Royalty. The plan was to pick my dad up at his real estate office in Mineola and go to the fitting, after which we would all have lunch at the Delta Diner on Old Country Road where, as a reward for keeping my weight off since fat camp, I was going to be allowed to order whatever I wanted for lunch.
I was pretty sure I was going to have the cheeseburger deluxe with French fries and onion rings. The fries at the Delta Diner were something between steak fries and shoestring and soaked up a lot of grease, so they were almost uniformly crispy on the tips. The burgers were giant and juicy, and the onion rings were good, if not a little too batter-crusted. If an onion ring can be too batter-crusted.
Cathy drove us in her lipstick-red Cadillac Eldorado, her Gucci tote on the seat between us. The car had been a gift from my dad to replace the beat-up Pontiac Grand Am she’d driven when she was his assistant. He was doing well and clearly wanted her to look the part of Long Island trophy wife. Also, if she was going to have to shuttle my brother and me around, she may as well ride in style.
She was wearing wearing one of her many designer tennis warm-up suits. This one was raspberry with splashes of turquoise on the shoulders. It was loose on her like everything else and I wondered if she EVER had to lie down to zip up a pair of pants.Cathy’s blond hair was blown out with perfect wings that clung to the sides of her map-of-Ireland face as we headed to her Jewish stepdaughter’s fitting for the biggest Bat Mitzvah/wedding reception this side of What the Fuck. The car smelled like spearmint gum masking cigarette smoke because although Cathy and my dad had quit smoking together a few years before—they sat at the kitchen table and stubbed out their last Vantage menthols together—I’d gotten word from a friend who saw her on Sunrise Highway that Cathy was still sneaking butts. I so totally had her number.
My dad was waiting outside his office for us and climbed into the backseat for the short drive over to Nassau County’s “It” destination for children’s formal wear. I debated with myself whether to have cheesecake or a sundae for dessert.
Little Royalty was floor to ceiling in 1984’s hottest taffeta and satin—from the walls to the curtains to the giant poufy dresses hanging everywhere like frilly pastel wasp nests. “Always Something There to Remind Me” pumped through the speakers. A song that would always and forever remind me of taffeta. And one of the most humiliating days of my life.
It was a weekday, so the store was empty except for a mother and daughter at the register. The daughter was my age, a little chubby with greasy hair, and I was surprised she didn’t appear to be in trouble for looking that way. To keep the peace and in spite of the unseasonably warm weather, to look presentable, I had dressed up in my fancy blue corduroy pants with a heavy gold sweater that didn’t go at all, but fit.
Sensing the one-up(wo)man-ship potential, Cathy got the girl’s mom to chatting. Her daughter Shari’s Bat Mitzvah was in two weeks, her mom said. Her theme was disco, and she was giving out Lucite monogrammed microphones. To her credit, Cathy didn’t burst the woman’s bush-league bubble by revealing the high-end visors with battery-free blinking lights she�
��d be sending my/her guests home with. She was nothing if not polite, but I could sense her pride swelling.
Beaming at her daughter, Shari’s mom said she’d been studying very hard and was ready to read in Hebrew. I happened to be pretty fucked, Torah-wise. I hadn’t studied at all and had just planned on making up the words once I got up on stage. The only person who would know would be my great uncle Sy, who was mercifully in the hospital and with any luck wouldn’t make a miraculous recovery in time to come to the affair.
Shari’s mom paid for her shit and they left. As Cathy went to settle my dad in the “dad’s section” of the store with the chairs and magazines, I watched Shari and her mom walk to their car, happily chatting. Her hand on her daughter’s back, the mother wrapped her arm around Shari’s waist and gently pulled her closer. Instinctively, I held my breath, waiting for the explosion. For Shari to pull away. But Shari, to my surprise, leaned into her mother’s squeeze, clearly comfortable with the affection.
I wondered what that was like. I put my own hand on my waist, gently, and leaned into it to feel what that might feel like. To not be afraid of your mother. To be loved by her, unconditionally. To feel like a part of her: your skin, your hair, your smell. To begin where your mother ended. For that to be a good thing. I wondered what it was like to not question your mother’s love because it was constant and unwavering. And for that to be a good thing.
I turned from the window to look at my maternal figure, politely oohing and ahhing at the children’s dress selection. The week before my first Mother’s Day after Cathy moved in (the Mother’s Day Kidnapping, as I thought of it), we’d made cards in my first-grade class, and I told Mrs. Breen that I needed yellow construction paper for my mommy’s hair.
“Doesn’t your mom have black hair?” Sandy Noonan asked.
“And didn’t she get caught stealing lunch meat at ShopRite?” asked Dana Cook.
“Different mommy,” I told them, cutting the yellow paper into a neat crescent shape. I’d gotten a new one. I loved Beautiful Kind Clean Cathy that much. And she loved me, too.
The love affair didn’t last, though. Cathy tried, I know she did. She took me to doctors’ appointments and haircuts and slathered aloe on me after I burned myself to a crisp in the sun. She stayed up with me for an entire year when I was having nightmares about fire and helped throw together a book report when I realized at nine o’clock one night that it was due the next day. She left her job and stayed home to take care of Jeff and me. Best of all, when I couldn’t fit into Sassoon jeans like my friends, she cut the label from hers and sewed it on the back pocket of my Huskies.
But we didn’t have the kind of bond you could spot across a parking lot. I hated her for it. But more, I hated myself for it. There had to be something wrong with me. I wasn’t good enough. Try as I might—and try as Cathy might—I was my mother’s daughter. I was just like her.
I watched Shari and her mom drive away, my forehead pressed against the glass door, before going over to Cathy and my dad, who were talking with Sheila, the owner of the store. Sheila was a classically pushy woman in her late fifties, her arms and neck dripping with chunky gold jewelry, her hair sprayed into a brown helmet. She told my parents that they were going to be thrilled with the way the dress came out before disappearing into the back. I decided I’d order my burger medium rare—more juice for the French fries to soak up.
Sheila returned carrying a giant plastic bag containing my dress, two seamstresses at her heels. Berta was old, short, and disheveled, wearing a housecoat and apron filled with sewing tools—Bat Mitzvah season had clearly kicked her ass. Alina was younger and taller, and reeked of perfume. Something with . . . citrus and woodsy notes. Both women spoke with heavy Russian accents.
Cathy ceremoniously lifted the dress out of the plastic like a frilly C-section. All flowing pink chiffon, a much larger version of the sample we’d seen on the rack months before. My father nodded and found the one armchair in the store to sit in. I looked at the dress and thought I’d maybe prefer a bacon grilled cheese for lunch; Delta Diner had great bread—it had a heavy, challah-like consistency. When I think about it, it may have been actual challah. They also used real butter when frying their grilled cheese.
I followed the seamstresses to a tiny, carpeted dressing room in the back of the store next to a bathroom. A cheap, narrow, full-length mirror was propped against the far wall and a tiny window was held open by a broken-off broom handle. Clearly, Sheila was a front-of-store proprietress.
Alina closed the curtain, which didn’t go all the way across the opening—more of a suggestion than an actual barrier from the outside—and told me to take my clothes off, while Berta removed the dress from its hanger.
I stood in my training bra, worn-out unicorn underwear with a faded rainbow waistband, and mismatched tube socks. I was cold. I wanted this over with.
Berta firmly put her hands inside the bottom of the dress, swiftly gathered it around her arms like a pro and moved toward me, reached up, and put the dress over my head. Instantly blinded by pink material and searching for openings, I swam toward the light parts. I found the neck first, then the arms. They all seemed . . . small. Frantic, my mind escaped to the idea of going rogue and getting a tuna melt at the diner.
I held my breath, as if that would make my head smaller and my arms thinner while simultaneously pushing through each hole. My head was the only thing that made it to the other side, though not without tearing out a chunk of my hair on the collar button.
Berta frowned. She dove to the bottom of the dress and started pulling down. Alina also frowned and stepped back to assess the situation. In defiance, I forced my arms through the holes and, though they technically made it through, the sleeves were cutting off my circulation.
Alina said something in Russian to Berta in a cautioning, defeated tone. Berta spat something back at her, also in Russian, something that took no translator to understand meant “We must make it work.” Dropping to the floor beside Berta, Alina grabbed half the skirts and began tugging hard to move the dress past my gut.
That was when I heard a rip. Followed by a collective gasp. And I decided on the grilled cheese.
It was getting hot in the tiny room, like we were running out of air. Berta had broken a sweat. Alina’s makeup was starting to cake near her ears and she was so close to my face that her perfume was making my nose itch, which I couldn’t scratch because my arms were trapped at my sides. Alina rose to her feet and started circling me like a shark would its prey. She poked the roll of back fat right above the band of my underwear. I flinched.
“How does it look?” Cathy chirped from outside the dressing room.
The Russians and I exchanged terrified looks. I checked my reflection in the mirror. I was a giant pile of tumorous chiffon from my neck to right under my training bra, my stomach even bigger under the pressure of the dress, which had flattened out my chest.
“Liz . . .??” Cathy called again, in her polite “company” voice. “Let’s see—come on out.”
I heard the fabric of Cathy’s warm-up suit swishing toward us and, before I could do anything to stop her, she had pulled the curtain open to see me stuck in my custom-made pink gown.
She gasped. Which made me gasp. Which hurt, because the dress was constricting my lungs.
“Eet doesn’t feet,” Alina said, throwing her hands up in my direction.
Cathy took it all in, in complete disbelief, then aggressively grabbed the dress and pulled at it as if we were too stupid to have not tried that without her.
Berta snorted. “Eet won’t move,” she replied. In response to Cathy’s ensuing glare, Berta reached into her apron and pulled out a comically giant pair of scissors—what the fuck was she planning on doing with those?
She wedged the scissors between my arm and the dress fabric. I felt the cold metal against my skin, the point of the scissors poking under my arm, as she started cutting.
That was when Cathy lost her shit.
&nbs
p; “It’s less than two weeks before the affair and you’re hacking the dress apart!” Cathy literally screamed. “What is she supposed to wear?!? Are we supposed to cancel the whole fucking Bat Mitzvah?!? We’ll lose our deposit. Your father will have to eat the cost of the ficus trees!”
A fresh layer of sweat covered my body as Cathy turned her eyes to me, two disgusted klieg lights boring holes into my conscience. Any charitable feeling I’d been entertaining about Cathy went into deep freeze when those icy eyes met mine. I’d ruined her big day. I was going to be the naked, bad-Torah-reading fatso at what was supposed to be her dream wedding reception.
“We’ll talk about this when we get home,” she said, before storming out of the dressing room.
I looked at the two sweaty Russians. “I don’t know how this happened,” I said, giving my lie a test-run on two people who barely spoke English. “I’ve been good . . .”
Of course, I hadn’t been good. I did know how this happened, and Rubin’s and my secret was being cut out of this taffeta nightmare along with my fat-assed self.
I could hear my dad bellowing in the fancy front room. “What do you mean, they’re cutting her out of the dress?!”
“They are cutting. Her. Out. Of the dress. Les, it doesn’t fit.”
“Jesus Christ almighty, how could she have ballooned since diet camp?! She doesn’t look any bigger!”
Just like your mother, I thought into the mirror, which captured the scene of Berta and those giant scissors, cutting me to freedom. I prayed she would hit an artery and end it all for me right then and there.
She finished cutting and mercifully pulled the remains of the dress off of me, now with ease. The women left the room so that I could get dressed. I turned and looked into the mirror one more time and, while I kept eye contact with myself, with my thumb and forefinger I pinched my love handle as hard as I possibly could. It hurt. I wanted it to. I deserved it. I hated myself as much as they did. When I let go, two pink crescents formed on my skin where my nails had dug in.