Inside Madeleine

by Paula Bomer

  At lunchtime she came home to eat. Most kids ate cafeteria meals of microwaved meat and vegetables, a small carton of milk, and a piece of cake in the perfect-sized squares of the styrofoam trays. Other children ate sandwiches packed in brown bags with a chips and a Twinkie. But Maddy raced the two blocks home, and her mother’s back would face her again, as she stirred pots of chicken soup with dumplings and fried potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce. Maddy ate sausages cooked in the pan and split down the middle slathered with a mustard that brought tears to her eyes. She ate stews with meat and potatoes and carrots. Everything she ate she washed down with large glasses of milk, pushing down chunks of barely chewed food, food she swallowed so quickly her throat was often scratched. Then she ran back to school, her stomach as tight as a basketball, her belly pushing against the snap of her jeans. She ran the two blocks back so as not to miss the next class, the food hard and painful in her stomach.

  After school she had a snack. Her mother’s face would be in the paper, her feet up on a chair as she sat in the living room. Maddy would throw her books on the kitchen table and open the refrigerator and then open the cupboards. There was peanut butter on crackers and boxes of moist raisins. There were bags of pretzels and cheese wrapped in individual plastic slices. She ate fruit-flavored yogurts and candy bars and homemade cookies left in a tin. She ate slices of luncheon meats rolled up in a tube shape, her fingers holding on to the greasy meat, sliding it down the root of her tongue, swallowing it whole. She ate until she couldn’t eat anymore and her stomach felt as tight as it did after lunch, stretched and hurting, and she’d lie down in the living room or on her bed, the blood flowing away from her mind, flowing straight to her stomach, leaving her sleepy and digesting.

  She grew. She grew three and a half inches between the age of ten and eleven. Her shoe size went up two sizes. Her clothes bound her body uncomfortably. Her mother began standing behind her on the scale, watching the needle shake up and up as she continued to gain weight. Her mother took her shopping and bought her loose sweaters and shirts with matching elastic waist pants and new white underwear from the women’s section of Goldblatt’s department store. She wasn’t allowed to wear prints, because they would draw attention to her girth. The matching outfits were in solid colors only, no whites or bright yellows, rather colors her mother thought were slimming, such as dark purple and dark blue. She bought a new winter coat and new fluffy, red mittens. She weighed well over two hundred pounds by the end of the sixth grade.

  Her schoolmates called her Fatty, Fat Girl, Fatso, Jiggle Butt, Jelly Butt, Big Ass, Big Titties, Piggy, Cow, Lard Ass. They called her Maddy the Fatty, Moo Moo Maddy.

  For dinner her mother cooked whole stuffed chickens and baked potatoes and steamed broccoli with hollandaise sauce. Maddy ate beef Wellington and pork chops and baked fruit pies for dessert. There was cheese fondue and meatloaf and homemade pizzas with onions and sausage. They rarely went out to eat. Her mother’s back, sturdy and industrious, preferred to stand guard at the counter in the kitchen. After dinner Maddy snacked while she watched TV. She ate donuts and bags of red licorice. She ate oatmeal cookie sandwiches that were filled with icing. Her stomach ached, stuffed hard, packed down with a shovel.

  Her father stopped looking at her. He looked at the air next to her instead when he addressed her. Her mother cooked. Her sister Amanda was a teenager and didn’t notice anything. Maddy ate and ate and ate. Her breasts grew but so did the rest of her body so they almost didn’t seem like breasts, just an extension of the layers of fat and flesh that surrounded her. She grew hips that hid in the lumps of fat that accumulated above and below them. She grew pubic hair, strangely dark and prickly, under her arms and between her legs. Folds of peach-colored flesh hid the brown patches of fur. But they were there, dark and alarming, underneath all the layers.

  Her hands grew big and round, dimpling in the palms. They perspired a thin wetness while pulling meat off of a chicken leg and grabbing handfuls of peanuts. Sweat came out of the pores in her chin and the many hidden folds of her flesh. Her armpits and inner thighs began smelling musty like a dirty drain in a bathtub. They stunk like brown hay, like a sink full of dirty pots. Her crotch smelled of lukewarm shrimp, salty and damp. The skin where her breasts met was covered with a film of mildewy sweat; her cleavage grew red and splotchy from the heat and damp and the rubbing against itself.

  She bathed at night, filling the tub only halfway, sinking her huge body down and watching the water rise to the edges of the bath. She scrubbed herself with a washcloth, a bar of Ivory soap, rubbing herself until she turned pink and raw. She scrubbed her armpits and her breasts and feet and neck. She washed behind her ears and behind her knees. She rubbed the bar of soap between the lips of her crotch, sliding it down to the groove of her asshole. She rubbed it back and forth until her arms ached from reaching around her body and her crotch burned. And as soon as she stood up, the milky water now cool, dripping off her, she began to sweat again. As she vigorously rubbed a bath towel against her back and around her neck, her skin became damp again, her own fluids free to cover her body once more. By the time she lay down to sleep, she could smell herself strongly, smell a musty animal smell emanating from the secret parts of her ever expanding body.

  Her schoolmates called her Stinky and Funky and Sweaty and PU and You Smell Like Shit. They plugged their noses with their hands when she maneuvered herself into her school desk. They called her Maddy the Fatty you smell like hell. They called her FatShitStink. She used prescription creme deodorant that came in a jar and a medicated body powder. Her mother washed her clothes separately from the rest of the family’s with a scented detergent made for tough grease stains.

  Her mother took her to a doctor. A specialist. A tall gray-haired man with a red, veiny face and bad breath. They drove two hours south of South Bend to see him. She undressed and put on a pale, flowered robe. He weighed her. He made her raise her arms. He made her try and touch her toes. He looked inside her mouth with a tongue depressor. He asked her why she ate so much. He felt her breasts and underneath her arms and asked her to breathe while he listened to her heart. She lay back on an examining table, and he prodded and asked and prodded some more. He gave her mother a strict diet for Maddy to follow and a prescription medicine to reduce appetite. He asked her if she would like them to put a ball in her stomach. He said this sternly, his eyes hooded by dark drooping lids. He said, with a clammy hand on her bare shoulder, that it would be a serious operation. For six months the ball would remain inside of her, he said, sewn up into her gut so that she would fill up easily and not eat much at all. They drove home and looking at the road ahead, her mother cried. The operation would be expensive.

  Every morning and every night she stepped on the scale and her mother stood behind her and watched the needle dance. Every morning and every night she took two red prescription capsules that left her head jittery and hollow. She ate dry toast for breakfast and drank a diet chocolate shake that came in a can. She came home for lunch and was given a bowl of fruit. She drank glasses and glasses of water with squeezed lemon. Endless ice cubes rattled against her teeth. She ate specially prepared chicken for dinner, grilled with herbs and served with white rice. She had a pink book with the words My Little Food Book on it where her mother wrote down everything she ate and how many calories it contained. Her mother bought her exercise clothes and new sneakers. Sweat suits and rubber sweat clothes. Maddy jumped rope in the kitchen while her mother cooked, counting the turns of the rope out loud, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five. She ran around their neighborhood block five times with her mother every night. The neighbors looked out of their windows at first. Small, featureless faces peering sideways out windows. Parents and children walking from their cars to their front doors, stopping momentarily, necks turning to watch the woman pull her daughter down the block. Sweat poured out of Maddy faster than before, more watery than ever, staining her bright athletic clothes with dark, damp patches.

&n
bsp; At night she dreamt of the breakfast of her past, she dreamt the hot sweet odor of pancakes and bowls of sticky cereal. She dreamt dishes of delicious food were in front of her and her hands were larger than ever; so thick were her fingers that they could not hold onto a spoon or a fork. As she tried to grasp them, the utensils would fall out of her useless swollen hands, clanging to the floor. She dreamt of thick stews and double hamburgers. Sometimes in her dreams she could eat and she would. In these dreams she ate and ate and ate, and when she woke, her stomach burned with acidic juices cruelly aroused for no real purpose.

  She menstruated deep, brown blood that flowed for ten days straight. Soon after that her mother drove her to see the special doctor again. He weighed her, wrapped up in the same flowered robe. He made her touch her toes and reach for the ceiling, and he poked his clammy finger under her arms and in the small of her back. He looked at the inside of her mouth. He asked her how she felt, his brow wrinkled, his malodorous breath in her face. She told him fine.

  But she felt like a deflated balloon, a neglected doll, a stuffed animal attacked by a dog. She felt small and see-through, less protected, less herself. She had been MaddyFatty, StinkyCow, Pigface. She had been Jiggly Jelly Butt. She had been round and soft, her eyes hidden behind folds, the shape of her chin and nose lost behind flesh.

  But now all of her came out in sharp relief. She looked at herself in the mirror in the doctor’s office, wrapped up in the flowered robe. Her breasts had become their own shapes, separate from the rest of her body, large tuberous things, protruding outward from her newly slimmer waist. Her hips flared out like fans, swinging side to side as she walked. Her eyes came out, big and visible to the world, wet and round and white. Her nose became thin and angled and her chin pointed outward, a lonely exposed bone. She had lost sixty pounds and lost her names, her flesh pillows, her body as she knew it. Her mother beamed as she stared at the road in front of her on the drive home, her eyes shining glossy and her mouth curled with joy. No ball would be surgically implanted in her daughter’s stomach. No more expensive doctor visits. Maddy would just stick to her routine. Everything would be fine.

  2

  When Madeleine turned twelve she was five nine and a hundred and seventy pounds. That September she started the seventh grade and she felt nervous, fat, and ashamed. She worried about the clothes she wore to the extent that she didn’t sleep well at night and her breath came short and fast in the mornings, or sometimes all day, depending on what she was wearing. Lunch time was the hardest because she no longer could run home, the junior high was too far away, so she had to eat at the cafeteria. After a few humiliating days of eating alone, she sat at a table with a handful of girls that looked around at each other with irritated and vulnerable eyes. It was a table that soon disappeared altogether, the girls sitting together only so as not to be alone, and as quickly as possible, they migrated to real, defined groups—the preps, the jocks or the nerds. Madeleine knew some of the preppie kids from her elementary school but her view of them changed drastically in the first few weeks of seventh grade (she had once thought them important) and eventually they fell from her vision altogether, becoming vague, uninteresting phantoms that roamed the school in Izod shirts and cableknit sweaters. Instead, she found herself mysteriously drawn to the freaks, and without realizing it, she began following them around, especially a small, wiry girl named Jennifer.

  The freaks, of which Jennifer was a kind of queen, were generally from the south side of South Bend, and the boys had long, stringy hair and wore heavy metal T-shirts; their shoulders were slumped and they didn’t look people in the eye. The girls dressed in tight, revealing clothing bought at discount stores, wore too much make-up and had bleached, feathered hair with dark roots showing. Both the girls and the boys had the reputation of being violent and mean and were rumored to carry knives with them. And although they were not thought of as stupid, they were known to get bad grades, because they didn’t care, because they smoked pot, because they were troubled. Maybe it was from fear, or curiosity or a kind of respect, maybe it was some knowledge they seemed to have, but Madeleine was drawn to their lunch table and their ways, her voice became twanged and filled with “ain’ts” and her look became less respectable. Mostly, she wanted to be Jennifer.

  Jennifer was perfect. She was thin and petite, her eyes were hard and she always was impeccably dressed. Her sweaters outlined her smallish, well defined breasts perfectly and her pants were tight and new looking, without a pantyline to mar the boyish curve of her bottom. Her piercing laugh was distinctly cruel and always directed at someone. But otherwise she spoke deep and low; and other kids would have to lean toward her to hear her, which they did nervously. She often slapped people on the arm or shoulder, biting her thin bottom lip as she did, and it hurt, stung for minutes, but it was just play and no one could get angry about it.

  Madeleine simply became Jennifer’s shadow. She did this discreetly, unknowingly on anyone’s part at first, especially her own. When Jennifer laughed, she laughed. When Jennifer kicked gravel, Madeleine did. She smoked Marlboro Lights because Jennifer did. Jennifer lined her dark eyes heavily with a Maybelline eyeliner and her cheeks sparkled with blush that came out of a pink plastic case. Madeleine began darkening her eyelids with the same brand of eyeliner and stroked her robust cheeks with the same sparkly powder. She wore the same boots as Jennifer; brown with thick red laces. And Madeleine began swearing frequently with a violent enthusiasm, her sentences littered with fucks and shits, as if it were a part of her she had kept hidden all her childhood and finally set free. When Jennifer craned her neck around to look at something, Madeleine’s plump neck carefully followed in the same direction, a peripheral eye ever on her friend, in case she were to change the course of her gaze.

  She called Jennifer every day after school. When they spoke, Jennifer spoke of all the boys she knew, who was going out with whom, which girls did what with which boys, and Madeleine listened hungrily, curled up in the back of her parent’s closet so nobody could hear her, the phone held tensely on her lap, surrounded by her mother’s shoes.

  Yeah, Marion is a slut. Last year she fucked half of the senior class at the high school. She thinks no one remembers because they’ve all graduated. But a slut’s a slut, said Jennifer.

  Yeah, and I can’t believe she fucked that guy in his car, said Maddy.

  What do mean you can’t believe it?

  I just can’t believe it. How gross. Where were they?

  I just said for the millionth time, they were in his car.

  I mean, where was the car. Were they parked?

  No, dumbshit, they were driving around while they fucked. What’s your problem? Of course they were parked. You can’t fuck someone when you’re driving around. You’re such a virgin.

  Fuck you, I am not.

  Yes you are. A fat virgin.

  Fuck you.

  Fuck you, Jennifer mimicked.

  I am not a virgin.

  Okay then. Who have you fucked?

  I fucked Tim Spencer last year, lied Madeleine.

  The previous year, while playing five minutes in the closet, Tim, a nervous, skinny boy with protruding front teeth that obviously bothered him, had groped at her breasts and put a twitching hand between her legs on the outside of her jeans.

  No way. Tim Spencer couldn’t fuck no one if he tried. No way in hell. That nerd doesn’t have a dick.

  Fuck you. You’re a bitch.

  I gotta go.

  Okay, I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Bye.

  After they talked, Madeleine would sit in the closet for a while, her heart beating fast, her lips moist, her mouth full of saliva. She’d stay there until her mother would come to the closet door, yelling, asking her what on earth she was doing, and Madeleine caring little about her mother’s frustration, stumbled out and into her own room and planned out what she would wear the next day. She fingered her clothes, spreading pants and sweaters out on the bed; she’d look at an out
fit and change her mind, deciding on another sweater. Meanwhile, images of Marion fucking someone in a car raced through her head. And as she lay in bed, curled up in a big, cozy ball, with a warm hand between her thighs, she thought of Jennifer; of the way Jennifer held her body tight and erect, with her shoulders slumped slightly and self-consciously, of the way Jennifer walked down the halls, her bowed, short legs gliding quickly, her feet hitting the shiny, hard tiles and clicking solidly.

  Now at lunch time, Madeleine without question joined Jennifer at a table in the back of the cafeteria. It was known as the freak table. The table differed from the other tables in that it never lined up in quite the same direction as the rest, rather it pointed in a strange angle, and the lunch trays were extraordinary in their sloppiness. Food was left uneaten and graying, feet were propped up on the table despite this being against the rules. Bags of pot and switchblades and dirty magazines were passed from one dirty fingernailed hand to another. Everyone who sat there owned a blue jean jacket, preferably an old beat up one, and all of the boys wore their blue jean jackets year round—even in the worst months of winter. After they finished poking at their lunch, the crowd gathered around by a side entrance of the school and smoked joints and cigarettes. Conversation and eye contact were spare—lots of gravel was kicked. Madeleine never spoke at all, but by the time she entered her next class, she felt powerful and dangerous. She was aware of her growing reputation.

  Madeleine’s parents began noticing the change in her, which her father tried to ignore and her mother occasionally yelled and cried over. Madeleine became unrecognizable to her family, her hair burnt and twisted from the curling iron, her face orange with cheap make-up, leaving a trail of Coty musk perfume behind her as she awkwardly roamed the malls, fast food restaurants and skating rinks of South Bend, two steps behind Jennifer wherever they were. They shopped together at the discount stores, buying the same outfits in different shades—Jennifer’s in purple, Madeleine’s in pink. They took Polaroids of each other and had people photograph them together when they were at the mall, leaning against each other in their matching outfits, their arms folded against their chests, one foot crossed arrogantly over the other.