“And what? Carrying the baby in my thighs?” Alice laughed as she considered using one of the confiscated knives locked in her desk to cut out Evie’s tongue.
“You better watch it. You can’t carry it all that well, you know. You got more gut than butt. Doesn’t work for you. Be careful and keep an eye on your handsome husband.”
Alice crossed her arms over her breasts. She swelled, her stomach lurched into a Mount Vesuvius and bubbled over, spilling down to make an apron of flesh.
Alice’s mom had taught her many things, but not how to be an outright bitch. Still, by thirty-five, Alice had learned her methods.
“I doubt I’ll see Ken. You should write him a note and put it in his box. You got paper?”
“Just give him my message when he comes. Not like he’s rushing to give me what’s mine.”
“Write what you need him to know.” Alice handed her a notebook and pen from the table under the bulletin board, squared her shoulders, and walked back to her office.
Alice never trusted where she stood with anyone. Black folk assumed she was mixed—they had sharper eyes than any white person for the telltale signs. Then they gave off signals that they considered themselves deeper than her, or they presumed Alice thought she was better than them.
Liberal whites were too damn eager to show how much they loved her right from the get-go, scarcely able to control their eagerness to adopt her as their very best new friend. “Black lives matter!!” “Oh, do you want me to call you African American? Black? Half? What are you, anyway?” Said with a smile, because they admired all cultures! Which, of course, allowed them license to pry at will.
“What are you?”
Color shaded most every interaction in her life. Both her cultures could irritate her, especially their similarities. Jews, like her mother; Southern-backgrounded black folk, like her father—both sides always ready with opinions, blunt, bold, not giving a damn what they said. If a thought came into their brains, they shouted it out.
Sometimes she thought it would be worth a million dollars to live her life with people who kept their goddamn opinions to themselves.
She reached into her bottom desk drawer and got out the family-sized bag of M&M’s she regularly stashed under a pile of unused files and stuffed them into her mouth by the handfuls. Overly sweet chocolate pasted her tongue, while the gritty bits of shell wedged like shrapnel between her teeth. Machinelike, she scooped out the candy, shoved in the pieces, masticated, and began again, hardly waiting to swallow as her full hand stood ready like an eager soldier, prepared to send the next wave of reinforcements to their deaths.
CHAPTER 3
* * *
ALICE
Experience had taught Alice that M&M’s lodged first in her belly and then attached themselves to her thighs. She needed to shove her fingers down her throat and expel them before they rooted, but moments after eating the last piece of candy, the phone rang, kids piled in, and her office opened to a revolving door of complaining staff:
“My budget doesn’t account for the holiday crepe paper that I buy every year.”
“My check was wrong.”
“Everyone gets more of everything than you give me!”
They crowded around her, clutching for help and off-loading their frustrations.
“I’ll put in for an increase for the supply line,” she promised, and then sent the athletic assistant out for a burger and fries.
“I’ll call Central Office, but they won’t be able to issue an immediate check.” She smiled and offered the child care teacher a handful of Cheetos from the box behind her.
Eating her way through anxiety—her childhood habit—returned more each year. As a girl, she pushed away name-calling by either side of the racial aisle—acting all “sticks and stones” as her parents instructed, and then stuffing down the fury.
During Alice’s childhood, her mother got hurt and teary whenever Alice yelled, “You’ll never understand my life!” Inevitably, the discussion turned to how hard Bebe continually tried to know her struggle, followed by a one-sided conversation about the Holocaust, as it had touched distant relatives, or in which civil rights demonstrations family members of theirs had marched.
Fearful of upsetting her mother any further, something that always ended badly, Alice had used her allowance to buy potato chips. Playing in the Mission Hill Little League, competing on the after-school swim team, and taking dance lessons with Miss Margie kept her muscled, but now, where she’d always been a powerfully built girl—thin for occasional stretches, sometimes chunky, but always athletic—Alice had worked her way up to postpregnancy, full-fledged fat. Six years postpregnancy.
And, of course, there was Clancy’s condemnation of her increasing dress size. His disapproval led to secret lunches and dinners with S.J., aka Sharon Jane. S.J. had been her best friend since thirteen, sneaking everything from wine coolers, to forbidden concerts, to McDonald’s binges, to throwing up the Big Macs they had just inhaled. They never stuck their fingers down their throats more than once or twice a month. They weren’t crazy girls. Now Alice monitored her purging with the same sense of responsibility as she did her menstrual cycle.
She picked up the phone after chasing the last whining employee from her office, needing the connection you got only from best friends. “I gave in again, S.J.”
“What happened?”
“Evie, that bitch, Ken’s ex, called me fat.”
“So you ate.”
“So I ate. And I wanted to get rid of it, but the teeming hordes took over my office. And then, just when I thought it was safe, Keely came in.”
Sharon Jane already knew the child was Alice’s favorite kid from the after-school program. The opinionated eight-year-old exuded energy. When Sharon Jane first met her, she saw the girl’s love for Alice in seconds. The child worshipped everything from Alice’s wild waves to the sharply modern jewelry she wore.
“Uh-huh. How long?”
“Since eating?”
“Since last time throwing up.” Sharon Jane shuffled papers loud enough for Alice to hear. Her sign of I’m at work; time to hang up. Who could argue with a school nurse?
“Couple of weeks. But yesterday was a truly awful eating day.” She ticked the list off on her fingers. “First, my regular breakfast at home.”
“With Clancy and Libby?”
“Uh-huh.”
“So, peanut butter on whole wheat.” Best friends remembered each other’s dietary habits.
“Right. But then, when no one was looking, I had a midmorning bagel. With cream cheese. And then, as though he has a secret camera on my office, Clancy called, asking ‘How are you doing?’ using that tone I know all too well. I’m sure he’s all worried about how I’ll look at the awards dinner. I never should have told him I was dieting. And the dinner, by the way, is only two weeks away, so I damn well better purge. Anyway, that led to mac and cheese, to pie, to M&M’s, to burgers—I can’t even . . .”
“What time was the last of it?” Sharon Jane was no doubt thinking the same supposed facts as Alice:
Food travels down the esophagus at a rate of approximately one to two inches per second—the entire process takes about five to six seconds. In the stomach, food tends to hang around for a little longer; this depends on a variety of factors, including the amount of food you have consumed, how much fat it contains, and the acidity of the stomach. However, all food should leave the stomach within two to four hours.
There was still time to get it out. “I better run. My mom’s home with Libby.”
• • •
Fifteen minutes later, Alice opened her apartment door, ready to rush through with a frantic “I need the bathroom!” but she was stopped by the sight of her girl cradled in her grandfather’s well-muscled arms like a doll held by a friendly giant. Libby’s soft curls appeared transparently bouncy measured against her grandfather’s deep-brown skin.
“Momma!” Libby used her hands as leverage to bounce from her gran
dfather’s lap to throw herself at Alice.
“Sweetness.” Alice leaned over and buried her face in the scent of her girl’s day: playground sweat, Grandma’s molasses whole wheat cookies, and Grandpa’s lime cologne. Plus, something else recognizable, but not everyday familiar.
“Macon’s here?” A trace of her brother’s clean-laundry smell lingered in Libby’s hair.
Maternal love and the requirement to purge roiled.
“He met us at the park.” Her mother’s smile reflected the joy she derived with every breath Macon took. “He’s using the facilities.”
Damn apartment had only one bathroom.
“I’m home, and I want the bathroom!” Alice yelled down the hall. “You better not be using it as a library.”
“Don’t yell at him,” her mother said. “People get all tied up from that sort of thing.”
“By ‘tied up,’ you mean constipated, Bebe?” Her father shook his head. “ ‘Facilities.’ ‘Tied up.’ Stop being the queen of protection, sweetheart; our delicate ears will survive the proper terms. Macon’s intestines can handle Alice.”
Bebe turned her attention to Libby. “People shouldn’t be shouting, honey.”
Alice rolled her eyes and shouted at the bathroom door again. “I mean it! Put down the magazine!” No more stocking the bathroom with all those juicy weeklies and monthlies. It only encouraged folks to stay.
“Can you see through walls?” Her mother stacked up dirty bowls and cups littering the coffee table. “Leave him be.”
Alice placed Libby on her mother’s lap before her mother could stand up. “Snuggle,” she demanded. She went into the kitchen area, aggravated by the open layout, which allowed no privacy from her always-watching family, and grabbed a sleeve of saltines from the cabinet.
“Eat something nutritious, honey. White flour will kill you—”
“I don’t want Mommy to be killed!” Libby’s alarm stopped Bebe short.
“Of course not, baby girl. I didn’t mean that. Let me explain hyperbole.”
With her mother’s attention monopolized briefly by trying to untraumatize Libby, Alice shoved in as many crackers as her mouth could hold, following them with a glass of lukewarm water. In Bebe’s world, if processed flour was trayf—poison—hurting a child was pure evil. Her mother would love nothing more than wrapping her family in down, flannel, and vitamins. Macon’s kitchen shelves, lined with dried lentil and bulgur, must have brought Mom to ecstasy.
Alice believed that her mother loved her children the same, but she also believed that Bebe loved Macon with less disappointment. Her brother had lived up to his name from the start. Her parents had searched for strong names, though Bebe was the adamant one; Alice’s father would have been happy with any name his wife found euphonious. Proving how African American he was wasn’t something that Zeke Thompson felt the need to establish.
Meanwhile, Bebe combined her strangling love with a determination to provide her children with rock-solid foundations, including their names. Macon honored Macon Bolling Allen, the first African American man licensed to practice law in the United States, and Alice bore the name of Alice Allison Dunnigan, a civil rights activist and the first black journalist to accompany a president, Harry Truman, on a campaign trip.
Their middle names held what Bebe considered to be the best of their Jewish heritage: Regina, for the first female rabbi, Regina Jonas, a German woman, who was murdered in the Holocaust; Ossie, for a Jewish basketball player from the 1940s, Ossie Schectman of the New York Knicks—though most thought it was for actor Ossie Davis.
“Heavy hangs the head holding these names,” her brother teased their mother, and yet, look at him: working his way up the ladder of Boston’s legal community. Bebe probably had a secret Macon Ossie Townsend for Presidentfund. (Despite her joy at Barack Obama’s election in 2008, Bebe was a bit miffed that he had taken away Macon’s shot at being the first African American president of the United States.)
The solid sound of Macon’s footsteps sent Alice racing for the bath room. After locking the door, she ran the water full force, letting it crash into the porcelain. She fell to her knees, feeling the familiar cushioning of the thick, gray bathmat that blended with the stone floor.
Soggy saltines came up colored with M&M’s and mixed with French fries and hamburger. Partially digested ketchup-tinged bread resembled bloodied tissue.
Well-being overtook Alice—the welcome calm that followed her induced storms. Valium of her own making. She promised herself she wouldn’t end up like this again. At least not for two weeks. Or a month.
After washing her face and gathering her long hair into a ponytail, Alice sprayed an orange cloud of air freshener. She dabbed lavender on her wrists and temples and rinsed her mouth with Listerine.
Again, she vowed this to be her last time.
Sponging the countertop and swiping around the toilet brought the bathroom back to pristine. Clancy would stand for no less. They had bought the condo when she was pregnant—leaving his loft in East Boston, where they lived together for a short time before marrying—sharing the space with an overwhelming amount of film equipment. Tripods, video cameras—from the smallest to his Red Epic, lighting equipment, and microphones—the list unwound forever. Filmmakers traveled heavy.
The loft’s cement floors would have shredded baby knees. Here, at the converted brewery, glossy oak caressed their feet. Granite tiles in the kitchen and bathroom warmed the floors with heated coils. Located at the seam where the Mission Hill and Jamaica Plain neighborhoods met, Alice’s residence was simultaneously spitting distance from her childhood home and a million psychic miles away from the society of her upbringing.
“To what do I owe the pleasure of the entire family visiting?” she asked as she entered the living room. “Did Mom sound a call to order?” Bebe picked up Libby from school three times a week; her work offered flexibility. After years using her hard-won MSW—writing papers and studying while Zeke, Alice, and Macon slept—working for the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families, she now had a private practice. Of course, as Zeke mentioned almost weekly, her clients were more pro bono than profitable, smiling as he, once again, deemed her born to be a social worker.
“I needed a Libby fix.” Alice’s father stood, stretching until he appeared taller than his six foot four. “And now I could use a gallon of Bengay.”
“I keep telling you that you better exercise some.” Bebe shook her head in exasperation. “If playing with a five-year-old puts your back out, shame on you. Maybe you should leave that desk and get a little exercise.” Alice’s mother put her arms out. “Come on, baby. Give Grandma some sugar before we go.”
Macon and Alice raised their eyebrows and grinned. Alice raised her hand to her mouth to hide her rising laugh. Depending on their moods, they smiled or squirmed when Bebe peppered her speech with Southern expressions or Zeke called them tatelah or used some other Yiddish word. But when Zeke adopted the Yiddish Zayde as his grandpa name, they had to admit, despite themselves, that they cherished his doing so.
“You’re not staying for dinner?” Alice asked.
“We didn’t want to impose. Macon’s taking us out tonight.”
“Macon.” Alice bowed her head and genuflected. “Most holy Thompson light.”
“Don’t say that in front of Libby,” Bebe said. “You know we have no favorites.”
Libby wiggled from her grandmother and ran to Alice. “What did you say wrong?”
“Mommy’s naughty, honey.” Macon made a scary face. “So bad!”
“Stop that.” Bebe glared and shook a finger at her son.
“Everyone’s just teasing, Libs.” Macon pointed back at his mother. “Except Grandma. She has no sense of humor.”
“Don’t say that. You’ll confuse the child. And I’m terrifically funny, mister.”
“You’re turning her into a little therapist, Mom,” Alice said. “It’s settled. We’ll all have dinner here. I’ll call Clancy to pi
ck something up.”
“He’ll be exhausted; don’t make him stop on the way home.”
“He works in a studio, not a coal mine. Stopping won’t kill him.”
“It’s no problem for me to run down the street.” Zeke threw Alice a conciliatory smile. “He’s fighting rush hour. Now, what should we have? What do you think, Libala?”
Once together, her parents merged into a new culture. They should have coined a name for Afro-American-Yiddish lingo, an equivalent of Spanglish. Perhaps Bliddish.
“How about Indian food?” Bebe said. “Clancy loves it.”
“And you thought I was the favorite?” Macon asked Alice. “Your husband knocked me off that pedestal the day he knocked you up.”
When Zeke laughed, Bebe punched him in the arm, which resembled a tern pecking at a lion. “Don’t encourage them.” He ruffled Bebe’s thick white hair, cut in her signature straight-angled bob.
Her parents appeared opposite in every possible way physically: short to tall, fine-boned to sturdy, light to dark. Alice loved the sight of them, always in love. She wanted Clancy and her to be like that in thirty years. She wished her marriage could be like theirs now.
“How about something healthier?” Alice shifted. “I got a reminder today that I need more salad and less rice.”
“You are a beautiful woman, baby,” Bebe said. “Why are you starting on that again?”
“Ken’s ex-wife, she came in and told me that— Libby, go find your drawings from last week to show Uncle Macon.” Alice waited for Libby to leave the room and then continued.
“Evie said I . . . bulked up.”
“She’s a bitch, that one. Always was.”
“Mom, how would you know?”
“I heard the stories from your work. Listen to me: you’re brilliant. Gorgeous and curvy. You’re a strong black woman. Don’t pay attention to her bull.”
“Mom, I passed curvy long ago. I’m now officially fat.”
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