by Susan Vaught
It's dusk now, and the lights of Garwood, spread out below Burke's house, start to flicker and twinkle. The lamp over the table gives off a soft yellow glow, and his kitchen widescreen is set on the NFL Network. Of course. He taps a button on his remote and mutes the sound as Freddie gestures toward the nachos.
"Last meal?" she asks, sounding way harsh, even for her. The little knots of anger bouncing in my belly turn colder and start to quiver.
I stare at Burke's handsome face, at his sad eyes and big frown.
Is something wrong with him?
NoNo says, "Fred, you're being mean." Then, "We shouldn't even be here. This is between Jamie and Burke."
Freddie cuts NoNo an evil glance. "It's all of us, okay? All of us. Nobody gets out of this in one piece, I'm betting."
"Freddie," Burke starts, but I stop him by putting my hand on his and looking him straight in the face. When he starts to hang his head, I pinch his fingers tight in mine.
"What's going on?" I ask, intending to sound forceful, but my words come out like a mouse-whisper.
Burke fidgets, but doesn't take his hand out of mine. "I've been wanting to tell you, honest. I just couldn't figure out. . . didn't know . . . I can't—"
He hangs his head again, and I give him another pinch to bring him back to me.
This time, when he meets my gaze, he seems so sad I want to kiss him. But behind the sad, there's this weird sort of excitement, kind of like a fever.
I'm not sure I've ever been so scared in my whole life. And I don't like scared. I hate scared.
"I don't know how to tell you, Jamie," he murmurs.
"Oh, for shit's sake, Burke," Freddie snaps, "try words. Words usually work."
"Stop," NoNo instructs Freddie, a little louder this time, and, surprisingly, Freddie does stop. She fiddles with her dress and her falling-down updo, flops back in her chair, and spends her energy glaring at NoNo instead of hollering at Burke.
So I'm waiting now, to hear the worst.
He's cheated on me.
He's in love with some other girl.
He got some girl pregnant.
He has some disease.
Oh, God. He gave me some disease?
With each passing second, I want to kiss him more, or kill him faster. I can't decide.
He closes his eyes. Opens them. Opens his mouth, and says, "I've decided to have the surgery. I've been doing the counseling part, and I went in this afternoon for the start of the pre-op workup. Surgery date's in about a month." For a while, probably a long time, I don't move or say anything at all, because I can't.
Of all the things shooting through my head, this so wasn't on the list.
Inside my stomach and brain, something like a riot breaks out. I feel like I can hear my own heart beating, screaming, shouting, and his and Freddie's and NoNo's and somewhere upstairs Burke's mother's heart, too.
Thumping.
Just blood in my ears, thumping away. My throat's so dry I want to drink a lake, or maybe a river, or even a beer, except I hate beer.
"You ..." I finally manage as my hand slides away from his. "You can't."
Burke hangs his head one more time, and I let him.
"Oh he can, too," Freddie says. "And his parents and skinny-ass sisters are all behind it. He won't listen to me or NoNo or anybody."
The surgery, my brain echoes.
I know what he means.
And I just can't believe it.
Burke's about to have weight-loss surgery. He's going to get banded or stapled or tied or ballooned or whatever it is. He's going to let doctors cut him open and risk his life and give away his senior year of football to... to what?
Shop at the male version of Hotchix?
"I'm academically out of football," he says to the tops of his knees, as if hearing part of my thoughts. "Besides, this is more important."
When he does look up, that fever has taken over his features, making him almost unrecognizable to me. "Jamie, I don't want to be fat anymore. When I graduate, I don't want to be a big black elephant just lumbering across the stage. I want—I want to look buff I want to look good."
"You're a god now," I say, trying to figure out who I'm talking to, who this alien being is, that's taken over Burke's body, my boyfriend's body, and plans to change it in ways I can't even begin to imagine or understand.
"I'm a god to you. But not to myself."
"To me—isn't that enough?" I turn my chair to face him straight on. "Burke, does my opinion count for anything?"
"Okay, yeah, we shouldn't be here," Freddie says to NoNo as they both stand up. "We'll, um, be in the car, Jamie. As long as it takes."
I barely notice them leaving, except for NoNo dropping her chomped frappuccino straw on the tile floor of Burke's kitchen. The slobbery piece of red recycled plastic seems to bounce in slow motion, and I wonder if I lost my sanity five minutes ago, and how I'll ever get it back.
Burke's talking before the front doors even close, but I'm not hearing all of it. Just pieces. "... nothing to do with you, with us, I swear, I just didn't know how to tell you. How to convince you it's what's best for me." He cups my cheek, then runs his fingers from my cheek to my chin while I can't move and wish I could cry and tell him to stop or slap him or something. Anything.
"You'll be my goddess, no matter what, Jamie. You know that, right?" He leans forward and kisses me, but my lips don't move.
This backs him off.
He shakes his head and sighs. "I knew you'd be like this. All mad."
"Mad?" My own voice sounds like it's coming from Mars. "That's what you think I'm feeling?"
A breath. Two breaths. He doesn't interrupt me. Smart boy.
"I'm mad you lied." Still on Mars, but getting closer. "I'm mad you decided all this without talking to me. Yeah, I'm mad. But Burke, I'm—I'm scared. That's what I really am."
"No fear, baby. I'm Burke Westin." He opens his arms. "Nothing's going to happen to me."
"You're black," I say.
He lowers his arms, surprised. Then he glances down at himself and back up at me. "You just noticing that, Jamie? Because—"
I finally do smack him, hard, right on his muscled shoulder. The pop jars me back to earth, and the pain in my fingers gives my voice new power.
"Black people die from this surgery, Burke."
"White people die from it, too." He rubs his arm where I hit him, but smiles at me in that way that always melts me.
Not tonight. I'm melting in a different way already. I'm dissolving.
"I know white people die from it!" I pop his arm again. "One in two hundred, and that's only counting patients who die on the table or right after they get the surgery. You know those surgery centers manipulate statistics. Lots more people die in the first year after bariatric surgery. One in twenty. Maybe more!"
Burke starts to say something, but I cut him off. "And you're black, so you're three times more likely to die from it—and the doctors don't even know why." This time I don't hit him. I grab his arm and squeeze, then just hold tight, feeling the warmth of his skin against my cold, shaking fingers. "Don't do this. Don't."
Burke peels my fingers off his arm, then holds both of my hands in his. His big, strong hands that cover mine so completely. "I've thought about all that, I swear. And read about it."
"You? Read something other than Sports Illustrated and ESPN Magazine? Be real." I laugh, but only because I'm fighting so hard not to cry.
"Hey, my American lit grade is aced." He fakes being wounded by my words. "I'm young. I'm obese and borderline diabetic, but otherwise, I'm pretty strong and healthy. I don't smoke. I know how to exercise. My mom's a nurse. My dad's CEO of a self-help company—and my sisters are friggin' drill sergeants in training. Hell, you'll be a drill sergeant. I've got a lot going for me, Jamie. A lot that says I won't die." He grins. "Black or not."
He leans forward, and we go belly to belly, chest to chest, with only the chair arms between us as we kiss.
Slow. Not d
eep. Just soft. I love his lips.
I love the feel of him against me. His size. His strength. The way he makes me feel little and dainty and protected, yet still big and powerful, all at the same time.
Damn him.
Does he think kissing me will shut me up?
When he pulls back, his dark, dark eyes are misty and wide as he gazes into mine. "I'm gonna need you, Jamie. Say you'll be there. Say you'll still love me even though I'm doing this."
Damn him.
"I hate you," I say out loud, then take it back, and finally do cry, and he scoots forward in his chair to hold me.
He lets me get snot all over his shoulder, and tears, then lets me curse him a few times before I promise I'll still love him even if he does this stupid, stupid thing. I promise I'll be there, too, provided his sisters don't rake out my eyes or put some sort of unbreakable sister-curse on me.
Then Burke says, "I know you're gonna write about this in Fat Girl. I want you to. It might help people, maybe even help you get that scholarship. You deserve it."
A little more snot. A few more tears.
"Promise you won't run out on me, Jamie." Burke's voice drops low, thick with need and hope and fear and that weird, scary fever.
I really wish his nachos would fall into a hole and die before they make me vomit.
"I won't run out on you," I whisper. "I promise."
The Wire
REGULAR FEATURE
for publication Friday, August 24
Fat Girl Fuming, Part II
The Hotchix Revelations
JAMIE D. CARCATERRA
I've got lots of reasons to fume. If I listed them, you might fume, too, or freak out. But first, I need to congratulate Freddie for her school cable-news piece on Hotchix. Another congrats to NoNo Nostenfast, for surviving contact with animal flesh and doubling the circulation of Green Revolution with her outraged account of the life-shattering experience.
Hotchix, well, their corporate offices have yet to respond. Big surprise.
Which brings me to the psycho clothing industry in general.
Hey, fashion freaks! Answer me one question. What the hell size am I? Go ahead. Measure me. Enlighten me.
Can't do it, can you? Because there are no standard clothing sizes in this country. Even NoNo the stick-bug wears a 2 in some clothes, a 4 in others, and still larger yet, a 6 in some brands (provided they have no animal parts or child labor involved). Part of this is just normal variation in styles and fabrics. But part of it is much more sinister. A plot. Seriously.
A nationwide marketing plot called "vanity sizing."
Even though most everyone in the United States is getting bigger, sizes are getting smaller. Cheesy retailers figured out that when women feel good about themselves, they buy more. So, the simple solution is to inch down the size on the label, even though the garment really isn't any smaller, and voila. Women feel better about themselves even though their bodies haven't changed at all, and they buy more clothes.
Some retailers are even coming out with "double zero" and "subzero" sizes. How can somebody be a minus size, for God's sake? Are we that desperate to believe we're thin? Thanks to this kind of crap, I have no idea what size I really am, except that for sure I can't wedge my curves into anything at Hotchix—even though I'm a hot chick.
Here's what I do know:
• Most grown women in the United States, and most older teenage girls, wear size 12 or larger, however you want to measure it.
• The standards for what little standard-size clothing there is for women in this country were developed in the 1940s. Yeah. Over sixty years ago.
• Designers stopped using standard sizes because we so pathetically need to feel thinner. Clothes come in straight sizes, extended straight sizes, plus sizes, and now superplus. Never mind the whole women's, misses, junior, etc., categories. The difference? Who knows? Fat Girl doesn't. Most skinny girls don't know either.
• It goes something like this. "Straight sizes" (not a comment on sexual orientation) are designed using models supposedly "normal" in weight and height, but the industry had to stop calling them normal when they realized over 40 percent of women in this country wore sizes larger than those.
• Plus sizes tend to be less form fitting, especially up top and in the hips.
Now, we could argue for years over where "plus" begins. According to those my-clothes-are-for-skinny-people designers, probably anything over size 6. According to many other designers, it's size 12. According to most sane humans, it's 16 to 18 and above.
All of this adds up to some very important truths.
Guys, give it up. You can't buy clothes for your girlfriends. Sizes won't help you, and you'll invariably buy the wrong thing and piss her off. Sound familiar?
Girls, get real. Do you really know what size you wear? Even more important, do you really know why it matters so much that somebody would create subzero sizes?
Fashion industry people, stop the insanity.
United States of America, wake up!
And Fat Girl. . .
Well, Fat Girl, in all her fatness, may have fewer body-image issues than people who wear "normal" sizes.
CHAPTER
FOUR
In the windowless brown cinderblock cave that is our domain, Heath Montel leans over the drafting table next to me and doesn't say a word as I snip and arrange my post-Hotchix Fat Girl feature into its assigned spot. We've got three desk lamps blazing over the layout, but half the ancient fluorescent bulbs in the high ceiling fixtures above us are burned out. Useless. And we can't get maintenance to change them, and we don't have a ladder high enough to do it ourselves. It's hot, too. Hot enough that some of the old articles taped to the walls are peeling off or sagging.
When I glance at Heath, his blue eyes seem sharp, awake, and focused as he edges in sports headlines and a breaking piece about a health department investigation of an E. coli outbreak traced back to spinach our cafeteria actually served. I squint to see if the spinach was cooked or raw, not that it really matters, but my brain's been sticking on stupid things since I found out about Burke's surgery.
I feel weird.
I don't feel like me.
I don't feel like Fat Girl, either.
I'm not sure what—or who—I feel like, and I don't want to figure it out. It just makes me mad. Everything's making me mad. Even the music Heath's playing makes me want to scream. Retro rock. Usually my favorite. Tonight it sounds like clatter and bang and makes my hurting head hurt worse. I'd turn it off, but I'd screw up Heath's rhythm and mind-set, and we're too close to deadline for that. If we don't get the rag finished and driven down to the printers by tomorrow morning, it won't come out on Friday.
Ms. Dax would just love that. About one less letter grade's worth, I'd bet.
"Screw her," I mutter.
Heath doesn't so much as twitch when I talk to myself. His blond hair hangs forward over his forehead, and his tan seems smooth in the harsh desk lights. He's not on a Garwood team like Burke, but he looks like he's into sports. Maybe he plays something outside of school.
I've never asked.
God, I'm such a bitch.
When Heath and I talk, it's always newspaper, newspaper, newspaper. But damn it, he seems so... so... calm. Even when we're down to deadline. I hate him for being calm. I hate him for being tan. I hate everything. Except maybe Burke and NoNo and Freddie. And sometimes my family.
"We should get a grant like drama did for the cable station," Heath says as he moves and measures another headline, then makes a note about something that needs to be reset in a different type size. "Quark and some iMacs—join the modern age like the rest of the world, so Principal Edmonds quits asking if this should be the paper's last year."
I mumble in response. It's what he expects. We've talked about this a dozen times and always blow it off, because we're both retro with music and the newspaper. We like handling the layout. We like using the old-fashioned typesetter, seeing the layout in
real size, and moving the news around like puzzle pieces.
When we do it with our hands, it feels more like ours. Heath and I aren't technoheads. We usually do our story drafts in pen or pencil, then type them up. I don't even own a laptop. Neither does he.
Okay, so we're freaks in that respect.
The rest of the newspaper staff thinks so, but they hardly ever bother coming in here.
"Screw them, too," I mumble, finally fitting "Fat Girl Answering, Part I" around the ad for the local florist. "Underclass fools, totally not dedicated to the process. And Edmonds—he could give us more funding, but sports stuff's all he cares about."
Now Heath grunts.
It's what I expect.
We're in sync.
We're under deadline.
But Heath is way weirder than me, because he starts singing some freak-ass nursery rhyme to himself over the retro radio. The radio with the busted antenna. It's probably forty years old, that radio. Heath won't replace it, either.
Why? It works.
Idiot.
At least I have a cell phone, when I'm not grounded from it. Heath doesn't even have that. He says it's because he doesn't want to be that connected. Maybe it's a money thing, even though his family is supposed to be rich. That I could really understand, given the way my family struggles with the budget. My mom calls it being "overextended." I've heard people say that about the Montels, too. That they're overextended.
I guess being rich—or looking rich—isn't so easy.
I wipe my forehead. It's hot, and I'm still tired from play practice.
Do I stink?
God, don't go there.
I've been thinking about stinking lots more since the whole Hotchix dressing-room nightmare, and I really don't want to stink up the room and gag out Heath. Not that he smells like roses himself. If he lifts his arm again, I might have to faint on general principle. Except Fat Girls never faint. Fainting is for delicate skinny girls.
Am I feeling delicate?