Dietland

by Sarai Walker

  “We simply don’t know,” the correspondent told Cheryl, “but chronologically, the kidnap of Wilson and Martinez was the first Jennifer-related event, although we didn’t know it at the time. They were kidnapped, and the rest of the Dirty Dozen were kidnapped, and they were all held somewhere for a month before being dropped from the plane into the desert. During that time, the other Jennifer attacks began.” On the screen, there was footage of the Harbor Freeway interchange and the brown canvas bags containing Simmons and Green, which at the time had seemed like the first Jennifer attack. I felt queasy as I recalled the slips of paper that’d been stuffed down the men’s throats—Jennifer’s calling card, the way she’d announced herself to the world.

  The correspondent explained that Luz’s mother, Soledad, had recently traveled to Mexico City to visit her sick aunt, so the FBI was working with the Mexican police to locate her for further questioning. “I should remind our viewers that Soledad Ayala served as an army medic in Afghanistan with distinction,” the correspondent said. “Nevertheless, according to my sources, she was investigated after Lamar Wilson and Chris Martinez, two of her daughter’s rapists, went missing and were later killed, but she had an alibi and the police have never considered her a suspect.”

  “So what are we supposed to think?” Cheryl asked the correspondent. “That Jennifer decided to avenge this woman’s daughter? And that Leeta Albridge helped out because she knew the family?”

  “That’s one theory,” said the correspondent.

  “Did Soledad help out too?”

  “Anything is possible,” said the correspondent.

  Sana stood up from her chair and sighed. “In other words, they have no idea what any of this means. You can just tell that Cheryl wants to scream, Who the hell is Jennifer? at the top of her lungs. Look at those bags under her eyes. She probably hasn’t slept for weeks.”

  Sana went to the cupboard and took a box of corn flakes from the shelf. “I assume I have to eat this crap since you’re not going to feed me?”

  I told her I was sorry, but the news had derailed my morning.

  “Are you okay, Sugar Plum?”

  I told her I didn’t know how to feel about Leeta being connected to Luz and Soledad, people we had seen in the news, characters in a national drama. I was thinking about Leeta and those days only months earlier when she followed me around the neighborhood. I wished she could go back in time and become that carefree young woman again, but that Leeta was gone, perhaps forever. I thought of the police officers with their guns drawn, searching for her.

  Cheryl Crane-Murphy went to a commercial break, so I joined Sana, pouring myself a bowl of corn flakes too. We still didn’t know anything about Leeta’s actions, but I feared she was destined for capture and prison. If she hadn’t done anything wrong, she wouldn’t have run away. The authorities called this consciousness of guilt.

  “I’ve never known an outlaw,” I said, packing my mouth with cereal, not even tasting it.

  “Me neither,” Sana said.

  The other women began trickling into the kitchen and Sana shared the news. I must have looked visibly shaken, because everyone tiptoed around me, grabbing cereal and yogurt, making toast, not engaging me in conversation. When the breakfast rush ended, Sana and I were alone in the kitchen again. She asked if she could make a suggestion.

  “Have you been out of Calliope House at all since you left the underground apartment?”

  “Just for the bomb threat.”

  “I think it’d be a good idea for you to go out. Maybe you could go back to your place in Brooklyn and pack some clothes?”

  I was wearing the beige shift and black leggings from the underground apartment. I had nothing else. “No, I don’t want to go back there.” I pictured myself opening the door to my old apartment, a lobster about to be dropped into a boiling pot of water. If I left the door closed, my unhappiness would remain sealed there, trapped inside.

  “Then go out and do something else. Fresh air will do you some good,” she said. “You should listen to me, okay? I’m a licensed social worker. I’m also very wise.”

  Perhaps Sana was right. Since moving upstairs into Calliope House, I had stayed within its womb, or in its bosom—Verena’s house always brought to mind female metaphors—but there was a whole world out there, lapping at the door. I couldn’t avoid it forever.

  I squeezed my feet into my tattered black flats and opened the front door of Calliope House. Outside there was fresh air and sunshine and people who stared at me. Outside hadn’t changed—but I had changed.

  On the side of a bus, a pair of breasts whizzed by.

  I might have needed fresh air, but I also needed clothes. On Sixth Avenue a taxi approached and I flagged it down. A handful of chain stores in Manhattan sold clothes for women of my size, and I directed the driver to the nearest one. Inside the boxy store, most of the fat women looked resigned, having been exiled to this outpost of the fashion world. I didn’t want to let their negative energy suck me in. I steered myself away from the long black dresses, the enveloping shrouds I’d always worn as a cloak of invisibility. I wouldn’t buy much. I had lost weight in the basement but had been eating nonstop since then; I wasn’t sure where I’d end up. Rubí was handy with a sewing machine, but she couldn’t work miracles.

  A saleswoman was walking around the store, a chunky woman with hair in a thin layer that barely covered her scalp. She wore yellow-framed glasses and a short avocado-colored dress that revealed her muscular brown legs, the backs of which were lined with stretch marks, as if fingernails had run down her flesh, leaving a trace. She hadn’t tried to hide the marks with tights. Her sandals were decorated with tiny beads. She was comfortable with herself, I could tell.

  “Can you help me?” I asked her. “I don’t know where to start.” Having sworn off long black shrouds, I was lost. Until Marlowe and Rubí, I had never had fat friends, no role models for how to dress. The only fat women I had ever known were at Baptist Weight Loss and Waist Watchers, but they were sad and none of them invested in clothes. They didn’t view their fatness as a permanent state, no matter how long they’d been fat. They were just passing through Fat Town on their way to Slim City. I knew how they thought. I had been one of them.

  The saleswoman, named Desiree, seemed eager to help. “What have you got at home to work with?”

  “Nothing. I’m a blank slate. Tabula rasa.”

  Desiree installed me in a dressing room and brought me outfits to try on. The first was a knee-length red-and-white dress, belted at the waist. I would never have noticed such an outfit on my own. I put it on and instantly thought of Janine. I had spent perhaps twenty minutes in Janine’s presence, yet after more than a decade, that brightly dressed outcast from Baptist Weight Loss was seared into my memory, a flame burned into celluloid.

  I invited Desiree into the dressing room and she stood next to me, both of us looking at my body in the mirror.

  “That dress is amazing,” she said.

  I wasn’t so sure. I saw my white legs, my bulbous knees, the slabs of my calves. I never put them on display. The only time they were exposed was when I wore my nightgown, and no one saw me in that. I could wear tights with the dresses, but they wouldn’t make much difference. The legs were still there, enormous and unavoidable. “I’ll think about it,” I told Desiree.

  Next she brought me a selection of trousers in different colors. There wasn’t an elastic band in sight. I had never worn fabric that didn’t stretch, and it felt different against my skin. It made me feel that my body had borders. I would have liked to pair the trousers with baggy sweaters that could be pulled down over my stomach, but Desiree brought me fitted blouses, a coral-colored one with wooden buttons and another in turquoise that came with a sash. They were the same bright colors that I had bought for Alicia, only now they were for Plum.

  Desiree left me alone and I looked at myself in the three-way mirror, dressed in the khaki trousers and coral blouse, observing my body from eve
ry angle. The only time I had ever dressed this way was in those few delirious days during and after the makeover. I tried to decide if I liked the clothes without thinking about what other people would see when they looked at me. Alicia wanted their approval, but Plum didn’t.

  There was a phantom woman in my mind that I was comparing myself to, and I had to force her from the dressing room. When she was gone, I looked at my body, the body that had kept me alive for nearly thirty years, without any serious health problems, the body that had taken me where I needed to go and protected me. I had never appreciated or loved the body that had done so much for me. I had thought of it as my enemy, as nothing more than a shell that enclosed my real self, but it wasn’t a shell. The body was me. This is your real life. You’re already living it. I removed the clothes and stood naked before the mirrors, turning this way and that. I was round and cute in a way I’d never seen before.

  I told Desiree I would take the red-and-white dress and the trousers and the blouses. On the racks I found a scratchy oatmeal skirt that I adored and I took that, too, along with three more knee-length dresses, one that was dark brown and printed with violet stars, another in emerald, and one that was white with colorful poppies sewn into the neckline and hem. I bought the basic necessities, too—tights and underwear, track bottoms and T-shirts to wear around the house. I also treated myself to a new satchel.

  Desiree rang up my purchases and I realized that I was buying more than I’d intended, given my ballooning body, but I decided it didn’t matter. Alicia had a wardrobe of fashionable clothes, and Plum deserved one too. Still, as I watched Desiree fold the colorful items, I worried that I might lose my courage once I left the store and not wear what I’d bought. After I paid I went to the dressing room and put on the red and white dress and red tights. I slipped the beige shift and black leggings that I had been wearing into the trash can.

  At first, when I walked outside with my shopping bags, it was like one of those naked-in-public nightmares. I felt exposed and visible, with nowhere to hide. People stared at me, but then they always stared. I realized it didn’t matter what I wore.

  On the side of a bus, a pair of breasts whizzed by.

  As I walked I steadied myself, raising my chin confidently, daring someone to say something. People had always insulted me by calling me fat, but they couldn’t hurt me that way, not anymore. I was fat, and if I no longer saw it as a bad thing, then the weapon they had used against me lost its power.

  I was wearing bright colors, refusing to apologize for my size. The dress made me feel defiant. For the first time, I didn’t mind taking up space.

  After all that walking and shopping, I was hungry. I stopped at a diner on Twenty-Third Street and ordered a Denver omelet with hash browns. When I was finished with that I wanted more, so I ordered a grilled cheese with extra fries. Two teen girls in the booth across from mine stole glances, whispering to each other and laughing. I knew they were laughing at me, at the way I barely fit into the booth, at my red and white dress and my pudgy fingers holding the sandwich. I’d been feeling exhilarated by my triumph with the clothes, but they were trying to ruin it. How dare they. My anger snapped like a rubber band pulled too tight. I wanted to reach over and rip off both their heads.

  “What the hell are you staring at?” I said loudly, my lips slick with oil. My vehemence surprised me. The words slipped out of my mouth, bypassing the filter that had always been there.

  The girls didn’t reply, but looked away. Other diners turned in my direction. A waiter came and stood between my booth and the girls’ booth. “We got a problem here?” he said in a dad voice.

  “No problem,” I said. “Bring me a slice of lemon meringue pie, please.”

  While I waited for the pie, I turned my body in the direction of the girls, fixing my gaze on them. I watched everything they did, sometimes chuckling to myself. For several minutes I kept my eyes on them. They did everything they could to avoid looking in my direction and they pretended they were unaffected, but unlike me, they didn’t know how to react while under constant surveillance. Finally, they fumbled with their wallets, gathered up their shopping bags and purses, and left the diner.

  My pie arrived and I savored it, my anger deflating. When the waiter brought the bill I opened my backpack to get my wallet and noticed a paper slipping out of an internal pocket. It was the check for $20,000. I had placed it in the pocket for safekeeping and forgotten about it.

  I took note of the Baptist name at the top of the check. I could have deposited it, but something stopped me. I was entitled to the money, having completed every task of the New Baptist Plan, but Verena had said that her plan would leave me completely transformed. She had guaranteed it. But after the ups and downs of the day, I couldn’t be sure—was I completely transformed?

  I wandered for a few blocks. Glancing at the window display of a boutique, I caught sight of myself in a window and at first I didn’t recognize the woman in the colorful dress as me.

  On the side of a bus, a pair of breasts whizzed by.

  I spotted a shoe store and decided to replace my black flats. I browsed the pumps and heels, the slip-ons and sneakers. There was nothing I wanted to try on, but then at the back of the store I noticed boots, furry ones and rubbery white ones with stiletto heels. Tucked into a corner was a pair of black combat boots. The salesman leaned lazily against the wall nearby; I told him I wanted to try the boots on.

  “Those are the men’s boots,” he said. Without moving, he pointed out the female equivalent, slim and black with a curvy silhouette and narrow heel. Those boots weren’t wide enough for my calves and I wasn’t interested in them anyway.

  “No thanks, I’ll take the men’s boots.”

  He reluctantly brought me different sizes, and I found the ideal fit. I laced up the boots, tying them in a knot rather than a bow.

  “So?” the salesman said.

  In front of the mirror, I stood at different angles, still not accustomed to the sight of my legs on display, but the combination of colorful tights and black combat boots was something I couldn’t resist. “This is exactly the look I want.”

  “It’s certainly a look.”

  I handed him my black flats and asked him to throw them in the garbage. Out on the sidewalk, I clomped with purpose, feeling almost gleeful. The boots changed the way I walked, demanding a more confident stride. Though I was unlikely to stomp anyone, I knew that I could.

  After several blocks, I found a bench, empty and beckoning, and sat down, grateful for the chance to set down my shopping bags. I stretched my legs out in front of me, still admiring my boots, and while doing so I considered dinner possibilities, thinking of perhaps stopping at the market on the way home. A bus stopped in front of me, idling at the red light like an impatient animal. I saw the breasts again, the ones that had been unavoidable all day. The breasts were on the side of the bus, part of an ad for V— S—, the lingerie chain. Marlowe had dedicated an entire chapter to V— S— in Fuckability Theory. She referred to it as Bonerville. In the ad, a model lay on her side in a sheer lilac-colored negligee, her breasts slipping out, each one as large as my head.

  The bus pulled away, taking the breasts with it. After the cars passed, I saw a young man in the middle of the street, heading in my direction. He was perhaps eighteen or nineteen and remarkably slim, wearing jeans and a black bowler hat. The hat is what first attracted my attention, but as he came closer I was able to make out what was printed on his lavender T-shirt: an illustration of a woman’s face—dark hair, black eyeliner.

  I knew that face.

  The boy saw me staring at his shirt. “You like?” he said, pinching the shirt where his nipples were.

  “But how . . . why is she on your shirt?”

  “They’re selling them in the East Village. Get yourself one.” He continued on down the sidewalk. “Later, sister,” he called over his shoulder.

  I watched him walk away in his lavender shirt, wondering how it could be that the girl
who used to stalk me at the café was now emblazoned on T-shirts like Che Guevara. In a few weeks, Leeta had become both a symbol of rebellion and a fashion statement. She was the face of a movement.

  Soon, there would be other faces.

  • • •

  Airman Tompkins

  During her deployments in Afghanistan, United States Air Force captain Missy Tompkins had eliminated more than two hundred enemy combatants. She returned home from active duty to live with her mother in Reno, but wouldn’t speak about her experiences in the war or the men she had killed. Missy kept her feelings about that to herself.

  The daughter who returned home from the war wasn’t the daughter that Mrs. Tompkins remembered. The new Missy was withdrawn. She rarely spoke, slept most of the day, and sat at the kitchen table at night, smoking roll-up cigarettes and drinking Jack Daniel’s. She didn’t bother with her appearance, her dark blond hair limp with oil, her skin blooming with blemishes she didn’t attempt to hide. Sometimes she made late-night phone calls in the parking lot of their apartment complex, sitting in the grass near the dumpsters so her mother wouldn’t hear what she was saying. Missy disappeared for days at a time without a word. Whenever Mrs. Tompkins tried to talk to her, Missy told her she wouldn’t understand.

  One day Missy went out to buy tobacco and never came back. For days, Mrs. Tompkins returned home from her shift at the Silver Dollar Steakhouse hoping to find her daughter sitting at the kitchen table, which for once would have been a welcome sight. After a week passed, Mrs. Tompkins considered calling the police, but Missy was a grown woman who could go where she pleased without having to report to her mother. Instead of calling the police, Mrs. Tompkins searched her daughter’s bedroom, where she found a note. Missy had left it inside the jewelry box she’d had since she was a little girl. She wrote that she loved her mother and her country, and then confessed that she’d flown the plane that had dropped the Dirty Dozen into the desert.