Once More with Feeling

by Méira Cook

  “Well, what about you, Chop?” Kat says, and I come out of my daze.

  “Breasts,” I say.

  “Huh, good one!” Kat says. “You’ll grow them, don’t worry.” She puts out her hand and, just like that, takes a fistful of whatever she finds on my chest (mostly hoodie). Straight away my nipples puff up, and I imagine two pouty little doll’s mouths pursing up their lips for a kiss. A terrible red blush laps over me, my whole body tidal with shame.

  “Hmm, nope, I feel a definite lift-off,” Kat says, and I am so damn relieved that she’s decided to pretend that a bright red girl is not wriggling in mortification in front of her that I find the courage to ask what I’ve wanted to know ever since the first time I saw her jiggling across my dad’s gym in a lululemon fuchsia and turquoise crossover.

  “When did yours, um, begin to grow?”

  “God, are you kidding me? These aren’t real. Here, feel.”

  Kat takes my hand and presses it against her right breast and I feel her warm skin under my hand, but behind that skin something is firm and inflated like a ball some kid has pumped up with too much air. Kat is looking at me in this encouraging way she has, as if to say, Go ahead girl, be my guest, but I can’t decide what to do with my hand. My mom is a great one for etiquette, like setting your knife and fork together after you’ve eaten and not leaving them lying about like bloody great oars, Dee, and saying, “Pleased to meet you” instead of “Hi” or, as is my preference, nothing at all. But she has never instructed me on boob etiquette and I’m stymied. Luckily, Ask Kimmy knocks on the change room door with a kind of how’s-it-going-in-there-ladies? knock, and we jump apart like we’ve been oh-so busted.

  “Do you need a hand?” asks Ask Kimmy.

  “Yes,” says Kat. “I need someone to feel if my tits are on straight.” Then she throws me a Gossard Dream Angel Bra to stuff in my mouth so I don’t snort through my nose and embarrass us both. We hear Ask Kimmy flouncing off, her high heels clicking away, and Kat makes the international sign for I-swear-that-girl-has-a-carrot-up-her-ass.

  “Yeah, no, I got them for my birthday from Mr. Special K, hottest DJ in the city.”

  That’s what Kat called him when they were together. And now she sees no reason to change his name when she can change her tone, is what she says. Anyway, he is a total asshole scuzzball dickwad Super-Jerk, a revved up, steroid-puffed version of my dad who is just an ordinary jerk, no adjectives required.

  Kat calls my dad Mr. Big Guy because that’s the name of his gym and, take it from her, an accurate description of his physique. I turn away before she can wink, and suddenly wonder what she’ll call him after she’s dumped him.

  Mr. Big Guy, I guess.

  The problem with change rooms is that wherever you look, there you are. I’m not in the mood to look at myself (I never am), but today especially. I’m not even talking about how shiny my forehead is or how un-shiny my hair looks. What I really want to know is how a girl can be so pooched out practically everywhere except where it counts (breasts). I am all stomach and thighs and butt, yet my boobs are like tiny little footnotes to a thought that hasn’t been thought.

  Whenever I complain about my body, Courtney says, “I hear you, cutie-pie,” and Sami says, “Yeah, totally.” But Courtney and Sami are somewhere else, jumping off a dock in their teeny-tiny string bikinis and shrieking as they hit the water so that the hot boy counsellor will jump in and save them.

  What my dad would say if he could talk, which he can technically but reserves the right not to, would be: “You’re fat, Dee — and lazy and greedy. But mostly fat.” I try to twist around to avoid his words, but the change room mirror is playing catch and keeps throwing me these devastating glimpses of myself (overlapping thighs, little pad of flesh below my chin, second trimester stomach).

  I notice that half my hair has already slipped out of the French braid I attempted this morning, probably because my hair is so fine but also because I am the clumsiest kid my mom has ever come across, bar none.

  “I mean, it took you a year to learn to tie your own shoes, Dee,” she still laments as if someone out there owes her a year.

  If time is continuous and matter can’t be destroyed and sound waves go on forever, which is something you pick up in AP Science, then somewhere there is a fat-fingered kid still crouching beside a kitchen chair, trying to tie knots and double loops and then actual bows around its leg.

  “Nearly, Dee,” my mom would say in her better moments of which there were hardly any because she is the worst bow-tying instructor in the world. Bar none.

  “Okay,” says Kat, grabbing my chin and waiting until I raise my eyes. “What’s the problem, Lamb Chop?”

  I shrug, and pudgy girl in the mirror shrugs too. Kat cinches her waist with her hands and taps her foot, which is the international sign for, I’m waiting, Chop, so I mumble something about being so fucking pale.

  “I wish I had your skin,” I tell her.

  “Are you kidding me?” she totally shrieks. “God, Dee, look at yourself! You and your adorable white body!” She yanks me up and pulls my hoodie over my head so that I’m just standing there in my tank top and jeans. “You are so goddamn cute, Dee, I can’t even believe it. Hey, girl, that’s what I’m going to call you from now on: Adorable Dora!”

  I wince because nobody’s allowed to use that name. But the thing is, Kat is talking to the girl in the mirror and that girl is listening. That girl is loving what she’s hearing; that girl is lapping it up. I watch her preen: Adorable, am I? I watch her poke out her tits and ass: Maybe? I watch her toss her hair as if she’s finally made an important decision. As if she’s come down firmly on the side of beauty.

  “Any luck, ladies?” It’s Ask Kimmy again, only with a different voice. Kat yanks open the door to see what’s happened to our old friend. The woman standing there doesn’t blink even though Kat is naked except for the upside down isosceles of her tiny bikini bottom, and the gold thong she’s twirling around one finger like she’s some sort of glitzy underwear cowgirl.

  “Would you like to try a smaller size?” asks the woman, not blinking. She is old, older than Kimmy, anyway. I’m already beginning to miss Kimmy, the way I miss everyone I don’t really know, except for Kat. I miss Kat all the time, even when we’re hanging out.

  “Where’s Kimmy?” asks Kat, although she really means, Who are you?

  “I’m Farida, if you need anything.”

  “Yeah, who are you if I don’t need anything?” yells Kat, but the woman has already walked away.

  “What a bitch,” Kat says. But she isn’t a bitch; she’s just old. Older than Kimmy, older even than Kat. She’s seen it all, is what it is. There’s nothing that two girls in a change room can get up to that will impress her. It kills the buzz, I won’t lie.

  After that we decide to leave, and Kat says not to worry, she’ll pick up a sexy bra later in the week, in time for Saturday night. But when I ask her what’s happening on Saturday night, she won’t tell me and the girl in the mirror looks sort of hurt but she holds it together and makes a duck mouth with her fingers which is the international sign for Blah Blah Blah.

  Then Kat uses the Gossard Dream Angel Bra to wipe away the purple chalk of her name on the door — Okay! — and we hustle out of there. Past Farida (ringing up a purchase), past the mannequin angels (watching), past the leopard-print and tiger-striped underwear sets (in case a girl suddenly wants to dress up as an animal), past the feather-trimmed negligees and the high-heeled slippers. Past the beautiful girls lost in their advertisements for beauty.

  But I’m not really into Kat’s crazy antics anymore, because suddenly I notice that everything’s changing: the Emporium of Everlasting Desire is starting to fade away. The mannequins droop their wings and the music crackles into static. All at once the walls are just walls rather than the glowing pink lining of an expensive jewelry box. The creepy boys hangi
ng around outside, listening to the gangsta rap that’s pouring out of the next-door HMV, shove each other and whistle at us.

  Kat stops for a moment to make the international sign for Eat dick, dude, which she has not invented but has certainly perfected. She pretends to push a penis into her mouth then pops her tongue in her cheek. In and out, in and out, hand steady, cheek popped. But Kat is a conceptual artist of the obscene; she knows she can do better. She goggles her eyes because her mouth is stuffed full, then she begins to moan. Aah, aaah-ahh!

  All of a sudden she is choking because of this enormous, this thing in her mouth. Ah, aagh! Ooh, ooOOH! Her eyes roll back in her head and her whole body convulses. But before her final orgasmic death shudder, she makes one last valiant effort, managing to raise her right hand to her forehead, thumb and forefinger frozen in the international sign for Loser. The thing about Kat is that she has remarkable coordination.

  The boys wolf whistle and catcall. One of them drops his pants and is about to shine his moon when Kat grabs my hand and we run, giggling and pulling one another, up the down escalator, bumping into shoppers and making babies cry.

  “Show me,” I say. And Kat pulls out her swag, the Seamless Beautyform with transparent straps that she stashed in her purse when we fled. Then she digs into her purse again and pulls out the smallest triangle of Valentine-red lace that I’ve ever seen. It’s suspended on a complicated system of satin ropes and pulleys, and it’s for me.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you like it?” Kat asks before I have time to react. “Hey, isn’t that your boyfriend?” She points to this random dude passing by, his head swaying to his music. He’s not my boyfriend (obviously), and I don’t think Kat’s ever seen him before but naturally, because it’s my flipping lucky day, he turns out to be this kid from school, Daniel someone, who is a total stoner but also, apparently, something of a gentleman because he yanks out his earbuds as if to say, Can I help you, miss?

  “Hey, what’s your name?” Kat yells. “Hey you, do you like Dee’s new panties?” Daniel doesn’t say but his face turns the same colour as the Valentine-red thong, which Kat is now waving about in front of him as if she is a tiny matador.

  “Fuck Kat, quit it!” I yell, grabbing the thong. I turn around to shrug at Daniel — Sorry, dude, nothing to do with me! — but he is so out of there. He’s like Invisible Man, one minute there, the next who knows where?

  “Nice one, Kat,” I say because lame sarcasm is my thing, always has been.

  “Je suis désolée,” she yells over her shoulder. “Désolée, désolée, désolée!”

  She’s not, though. Not sorry, not sorrowful, not desolate. Instead she’s off and running, and as I trundle after her the crazy chemical happiness of being with Kat that’s been flashing through me all afternoon burns itself out. The change room has changed nothing, I realize, least of all me. I am suddenly so low that I could howl like a dog. I want to fall down and press my cheek to the grimy, spilled-juice and chewing-gummy mall floor where people have been treading all day long. I want to climb to the top of this terrible place — this Mall of Desolation — and throw my adorable white body into the ornamental water feature outside Starbucks. Instead, I stuff the thong into my pocket and follow Kat, who is bumping into ugly people on purpose, then shrieking “Je suis désolée, monsieur! Zut alors, mademoiselle! Je suis profondément désolée!”

  French is Kat’s third language, she likes to say. She uses it mainly for sex and dramatic irony.

  We’re back on the mezzanine, on our way to get caffeinated, which would kill my mother who’d rather I did heroin with a shared needle than drink an occasional moccachino. I swear. Kat is walking backward and I’m supposed to tell her when she’s about to hit someone, but she never listens and we’re getting serious side eye from all the people she’s lurching into.

  The stores are already getting in their fall fashions because it’s July, duh. There’s something depressing about looking at ribbed sweaters in summer, as if the Mall of Desolation is always one season ahead of you. It’s my mom’s birthday this month, which is a total rip-off because I hate her, and besides I’m broke. Anyway, what could I get her? I mean, let’s say I was a salesgirl and she was a customer and I said, “I’m Dee if you need anything, ma’am — just let me know.” She’d say: “Another kind of daughter, please. A different size, a better attitude.”

  When I was little and still loved her, I’d make a big fat fuss of her birthday. The whole macaroni art and potato print thing, and once I saved all my pocket money and bought her a jewelry box with a ballerina crouched inside. The ballerina stood up when the lid opened, and turned round and round to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw,” which my mom found a total riot.

  But now? I guess I could always get her a kilo of organic, free-range tomatoes. Or a couple of fair-trade, antibiotic-free chocolate bars. Or a gift certificate for a state-of-the-art colonic irrigation. There you go, Mom. Knock yourself out.

  I start to worry about not having any money, like, ever, and having to rely on handouts from wealthy junk food addicts for an occasional plate of curly fries, and how I’ll translate this whole not having money thing into a birthday gift for my mom. Then I remember that my dad will probably shove a wad of cash into my hand and say, “Buy something for the woman who gave you life, Dor.”

  “Watch out, Kat,” I yell, because she’s still doing her backward walking and this time she’s about to whack into an ancient dude with a walker. Then, of course, she does and she’s all, “Oh my goodness!” and “Heavens to Betsy!” and “Pardon my clumsiness, ma’am.” The old man has his aluminum walker jammed against the mall railing and I’m trying to reverse him out, but he’s clutching a paper bag and muttering about thieves, and Kat is like a drunk driver with three priors: she’s already left the scene of the crime.

  “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” I mutter, but what I’m thinking is, Damn, damn, damn, because Kat’s my ride home. Up aways I can see her crazy-shine hair rippling through the stream of shoppers, bobbing against this one or that one as the current takes her. The old man is fumbling at his chest, which is so not my thing — heart attacks, I mean — but it turns out he’s only searching for his spectacles. Naturally, they’re on top of his head but he finally locates them — gotcha! — and settles them on his nose. They are the biggest damn spectacles I’ve ever seen: cartoonish goggles with thick black frames and fingerprint smudges matting the lenses. Good idea, Mr. Squarepants, I think. Right on.

  He takes a long look at me as if to say, Who do you think you are?

  I take a long look at him and remember my plan to die before I turn forty.

  “Well, young lady. And what’s the big hurry?” he asks. “No, don’t tell me. You were on your way to perform open heart surgery. That I can forgive. Or perhaps you were rushing off to give an address to the Supreme Court? The United Nations? The Nobel Prize Committee?” He goes on and on: “Maybe the Miss World pageant called to say they’ve seen your photo and don’t bother turning up for the swimsuit competition? Why such a rush? Whatever it is, it can wait, believe me. Have you ever heard the expression —”

  “Whoa,” I say. “‘Don’t bother turning up for the swimsuit competition’? Really?”

  The old man looks smug. “Swimsuit is tough. You’re a pretty girl, if you don’t mind me saying, but you don’t look up to Swimsuit.”

  “You don’t look up to, to… God what are you wearing?”

  “Ha, you’ve never seen a smoking jacket, young lady?”

  I have now, and it hasn’t made me any wiser or happier or less inclined to push the old guy over the mezzanine. The jacket is sharp: red and velvety with a flashy green handkerchief spilling out of the breast pocket and a Shriners button on the lapel. He’s wearing his jacket over tracksuit bottoms, finished off with neon sneakers, their treads so thick he looks like he’s in a monster truck rally. The laces are untied, but the sneakers are as c
risp and as new as the old guy is worn and blurry. He is so not what Courtney would call “old person cute,” which is a version of cuteness that has nothing to do with hot guys. By the way there is a stain over his crotch, which I point out to him, mean girl and reject from the Miss World swimsuit competition that I am.

  “This little thing?” he gestures. “It’s just urine, young lady. You try peeing through a Zimmer frame.”

  If Courtney was here she’d pretend to throw up into her Michael Kors purse (this new thing she does), but Courtney is probably sitting round a campfire, singing the dirty version of some Kumbaya-type number and running her fingers up the inside of that hot counsellor’s thigh (this new thing she’s planning to do).

  If Kat was here she’d text me wwwwwww, which is Japanese for LMAO, but Kat is far below us, at ground level. I can see her platinum head ducking and weaving although not, obviously, in the interest of avoiding mall crawlers and window shoppers and little kids who drift across her path. The problem with Kat is that she’s so beautiful nobody believes how evil she can be.

  “It wasn’t even me who bumped into you,” I say. “It was my friend.”

  He makes an elaborate 360-degree turn, cocking his head this way and that. He even puts his hand up to visor his eyes so that he can pretend to look into the distance for this invisible pal of mine, but all he says is: “Some friend!”