Both Sides
Yvonne Fein
WEDNESDAY 18TH AUGUST
BREAKFAST:
½ grapefruit
whole-wheat toast, vegemite, no butter
black coffee
LUNCH:
90g spring-water tuna
Lebanese cucumber
crispbread
SNACK:
apple
DINNER:
clear broth
200g steamed whiting
cup broccoli
BEDTIME:
mandarin
FRIDAY 20TH AUGUST
No time, no time. 15 for Sabbath dinner. Still lots to do.
SUNDAY 22TH AUGUST
Dinner a triumph—fortunately—because Rafe’s business partner, anorexic wife, and feral offspring were all part of the deal. Along with usual suspects: us four, (me, Rafe, and the kids behaving beautifully, serving food, stacking dishwasher) plus my parents, plus the outlaws. Mother-in-law kept saying, ‘Who’d’ve thought such young children could be so helpful, so polite?’ Like she’s never met them, these strange, enchanted beings. Incipient Alzheimer’s? I don’t ask if she remembers their names, more for Rafe’s sake. And it would’ve embarrassed Amy and Joseph too. Bite my tongue. Again.
MONDAY 23RD AUGUST
Mother-in-law calls to thank me for Friday night. I’m wary from the get-go.
‘Those profiteroles, darling, outstanding! I’d have asked you for some to take home, but must watch my figure.’ Giggles.
Bitch! She’s long and thin as Pinocchio’s nose.
‘Oh, and sweetie, the Aaronson wedding? Three weeks. You haven’t forgotten.’
No, you sociopath, it’s my deepest pleasure, going out in public at this size.
‘Tell you what,’ she says. ‘Lose four kilos before the wedding? We’ll go shopping for a new dress. Wouldn’t that be lovely.’
‘I have a dress, Hannah.’
‘But it’s a wedding, darling. You can’t go in one of your dowdy brown shmattes. Besides, shopping together is fun.’
Whatever my size, shopping with Hannah isn’t on my bucket list. Having done it once, I swore never again. Her narrow neck craned over the top of change-room doors. Sometimes just her nose. Did she think she’d be able to smell what was going on inside?
Occasionally when I enter a room, Rafe’s parents and Rafe himself, fall silent. I know they’ve been talking about me, my size an endless fascination. And Rafe’s no dauntless knight. No way he’s defending me.
TUESDAY 24TH AUGUST
Big fight with Rafe tonight. Rage and pain.
WEDNESDAY 25TH AUGUST
Doctor nonplussed. You should be at least 3 kilos down. Are you sticking to the programme? Walking every day? Yes, Doctor.
FRIDAY 27TH AUGUST
I’d love to ask some other outsized human: If you’re quick enough, have you ever caught them—partner, lover—mid-reaction, gorge rising, embarrassed to be seen in public with you?
There’s this little number my father taught me—a dumke, a tune, from the Russian steppes. Appropriated by the Jews, adding minor chords and a lyric to break your heart. And the melody, the harmony… I have this dream, belting it out with say, Streisand, to cool Greenwich Village audiences, or patrons of Bourbon Street bars or even to my own Yidn in the Lui Bar high above Melbourne streets—soaring into the stratosphere, fueled by Polish vodka. Instead I squander my voice on geriatrics. Well, not squander so much as exhaust, although part of me feels it’s a kindness...
SATURDAY 4TH SEPTEMBER
Periodically I have octo- and nonagenarian residents at various Jewish aged-care facilities rocking in the aisles with favorites from the old country. To a resident, they believe I’m the dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter they lost during the Holocaust.
Today it’s Tents of Jacob. The ancients there do love me. When I perform the old songs, they clap and sing along: MyYiddishe Mamme; Raisins and Almonds. And cry—for families lost, children estranged, stuck in this facility where no one sees them beyond the dreary present or remembers how once their quicksilver life-force made each day a salute to survival.
My parents also survived Hitler’s whirlwind of blood and tragedy. Actually, Hitler introduced them in one of his concentration camps. I realize early I wouldn’t exist if not for him. The idea jams my brain. Enough to make anybody eat. Only not everybody does. Why do I?
‘Darlink,’ says Ina, rolling towards me on her walker, ‘Sweetheart, Darlink, you look to me a bissl fatter, a bissl bigger today. Is everytink all right by you? Is your husbant, heavens forbid, lookin’ at udder women. Dis happens when you let yourself go.’
I swallow my rage (maybe if I didn’t, I mightn’t need to swallow so much food. Swallow that thought quickly, too), but driving home, I fantasize about grabbing someone’s walking stick, delivering a sharp thwack to the backs of Ina’s legs. A sort of kneecapping from behind.
LATER THAT NIGHT
This hurts to write. Rafe and I barely speaking. It’s our niece’s school ‘Presentation Ball.' Parents, close relatives invited. You mortgage the house to pay for a new outfit and tickets even if it’s not your kid. I tell Rafe I won’t be seen in public at this size. He says I must go or number-one niece will be scarred for life. I say, 'What about me?' He says, ‘What about you?’ and leaves. I leave, too. 7-Eleven has a special on Violet Crumbles.
SUNDAY 5TH SEPTEMBER
BREAKFAST:
½ cantaloupe
low-fat yoghurt
black coffee
LUNCH:
Other half fucking cantaloupe
2 crispbreads
black tea
SNACK:
tomato
6 green olives
black coffee
DINNER:
cup lettuce
cup steamed cauliflower
200g grilled salmon
SNACK:
crispbread
fennel tea
MONDAY 6TH SEPTEMBER
Doctor unamused by my profanity. Asks if I’m really eating as indicated by food diary. Cholesterol 8.3, blood pressure sky high. Madame, you are quite simply killing yourself. And your diary is a work of fiction.
TUESDAY 7TH SEPTEMBER
I’m seeing this fat specialist purely at Rafe’s behest. But if I said I’d stopped caring about the sight, the size of me, I’d be lying. Whenever there’s a wedding or bar mitzvah… God, I hate having to wear ballooning garments which only emphasize my shape. Hate seeing the slim beautiful people in designer rags I’d wear in a heartbeat—if I could.
Still, the kids aren’t fussed; maybe eight and ten-year-olds don’t see the world like adults. Mind you, they never knew the svelte, limber me. Rafe did. And can’t get past it. I never told him that shortly before we met I’d gone on this nasty-arse diet with a mean gym coach who sheared 50 kilos off me. Through courtship and year one of marriage I kept it off. Then, like a rubber band that’s been stretched too far, I snapped. Calorie intake increased, exercise slumped and there I was inflating again.
I decide to make next food diary entry a work of unmodified non-fiction.
WEDNESDAY 8TH SEPTEMBER
BREAKFAST:
3 country-style sausages
2 fried eggs, toast, butter
coffee, milk, 2 sugars
LUNCH:
Big Mac
fries with that
apple pie
Coke
SNACK:
Mars Bar
LATE AFTERNOON SNACK:
Snickers
DINNER:
½ chicken
potato salad
pavlova
BEFORE BED:
4 Tim Tams
tea, milk, no sugar
(Mustn’t overdo the sugar thing)
THURSDAY 9TH SEPTEMBER
Doctor’s eyes cross when he reads it. ‘Why do you keep coming?’
‘For my husband’s sake.’
‘But he must see you haven’t lost weight in months.’
‘We’re both in denial. He’s convinced if I do as you ask, our problems would be over.’
‘And you?’
‘I cling to the hope he won’t walk out on me if I stay like this.’
‘I can’t see you anymore,’ he says.
‘You’re firing me?’
‘You could try Gluttons Anonymous.’
‘Glu…Glu—–’
‘I won’t charge for this session.’
At home the babysitter’s looking after the children.
‘Where’s Rafe?’ I ask.
‘Gone.’
‘Gone where?’
‘Gone, gone. Three suitcases and golf clubs gone.’
I try to pay her but Rafe’s already done it. Typical. He’s hard to hate. But he hasn’t even left a note. I start to cry.
FRIDAY 10TH SEPTEMBER
Maybe I’ll change my status on Facebook to ‘abandoned’. No job; entirely dependent on Rafe; can’t even sing about it. Who’d download a song about a forsaken tub of lard? My mum nods sadly and says, ‘Nobody was fat in Auschwitz.' My dad blames me. ‘Who’d want a wife with a tuches the size of Tasmania?’
SATURDAY 11TH SEPTEMBER
Sometimes I wake at two or three a.m. thinking, God, did I really eat all that today? Google Gluttons Anonymous. No Australian chapter. I find Overeaters Anonymous (OA).
SUNDAY 12TH SEPTEMBER
Rafe comes over. Easy not to run into his arms because he’s hugging himself so tightly, like someone’s shot him in the stomach. The children dance around him, pulling at his hands until he’s forced to pick them up. His eyes water; he’s suffering.
‘Here’s $800. I’ll give you that every Sunday. Until we’ve settled with the lawyers this’ll do, won’t it?’ I nod. We’re both miserable. I want to ask if we can give it another go, but I don’t. He left. I’m not dragging him back.
SUNDAY 17TH OCTOBER
Five weeks of OA and haven’t lost a cracker. True, I haven’t stuck religiously to their diet but I’ve done some culling. No fizzy drinks, peanuts—well, that’s about it.
MONDAY 25TH OCTOBER
OA meets Monday nights when we proceed to our regular seats. I’ve landed next to the weirdest guy, Jake. Only vaguely chubby. Says he’s been coming for eighteen months, lost 68 kilos. I almost swoon. Wants to lose another ten and he’s out of here.
‘Why are you here?’ he asks that first night. I figure he’s an idiot and turn my back.
Next week, beside me again, he says dreamily, ‘I love big girls.'
MONDAY 1ST NOVEMBER
One kilo down!
Sugared coffee, peanuts, soft drinks out! Schnitzels, out! It’s broiled chicken or fish. At OA they say remove all crackly skin from chicken, but that’s a bridge too far. Must miss next Monday’s session. Clashes with parent-teacher night. Delete potato chips.
TUESDAY 9TH NOVEMBER
At school Rafe and I wait our turn in silence but his eyes search my face and body.
‘Have you lost weight?’
‘A tad, maybe.’
Enough to bring you back? I clamp my jaws shut, preventing the words from escaping. In the fifth-grade classroom we see a shower of gold stars by Joseph’s name on the chart. He’s always been that good. Amy’s third-grade teacher feels she should know her tables better. Apparently she’s started drawing pictures showing only me, Joseph and herself. No father figure, just a party of three. Rafe stands, uncomfortable. ‘I think we’ve covered all our bases.’ Leaves. He’s right. What more could I add? ‘My husband walked out because I ate too much? So I’ve joined OA?’ Shit. Just eat less, say nothing.
THURSDAY 11TH NOVEMBER
I have this fantasy: rising, huge and splendid—like Queen Latifa maybe—from the ocean and sing my heart out. Maybe my voice isn’t like hers, but decent enough to warrant an audience better than my customary fossilized folk waiting to flatline. If I could do that, sing till my heart wasn’t broken anymore, perhaps I’d stop eating my frustration, jettison my billowing stomach.
I think of those big, black, blues singers, never giving a flying fuck for appearances: Fats Waller, Fats Domino, Mamie Smith, Ma Rainey. Not Billie Holiday. Heroin-thin but still that huge power—exception proving the rule. Did the rest of you refuse to downsize, fearing to lose your matchless sound?
I remember reading Streisand opposed rhinoplasty, never knowing whether her impressive honker wasn’t the source of her extraordinary range and resonance. And Mama Cass? Scared to lose weight in case it caused her voice to dwindle to skinny nothingness? They say she choked on a ham sandwich. Not true. Heart attack, but the tabloids had more fun with the other... She was thirty-two. A Jewish girl, voice like an angel. Sometimes I think we could have been sisters. I’ve never sung thin. Thin-time with Rafe too filled with pleasing him. Was never paid a performing fee. Aged-care Board members reckon they’re doing me the favour: let the fat girl sing...
What if… I replaced McDonalds with home-made, leanest mince, no buns. Steamed vegetables. Am I really writing this?
MONDAY 15TH NOVEMBER
Jake asks me out for coffee after the meeting. Proud I no longer use sugar.
‘How’s the weight?’
‘None of your business.’ I hug the answer to myself. Four kilos down and counting.
MONDAY 22ND NOVEMBER
5½ kilos down.
Another sugarless coffee and Jake-night. He’s a medical scientist researching depression. Seems his brother suffered terribly from it. Calls it a disease, says it’s more debilitating than almost any other sicknesses. 'Except for, maybe, obesity,' I think. But I don’t say it.
THURSDAY 4TH DECEMBER
It’s bin night. I eliminate chocolates and biscuits, actually going outside and dumping the lot. Which leaves a huge void in my eating timetable. So a couple of raw carrots instead. Chew thoroughly, then suck on the pulverized product. You get a serious sugar hit.
Jake’s frustrated because he’s plateaued with only 5kg to go! Suck it up, Jake. If I had only five to lose, I’d be dancing in the streets.
Possibly naked.
We don’t discuss my weight but sometimes he’ll mutter something wistful about BBGs—Big Bottomed Girls. I’m getting this weird feeling he prefers me fat.
Strangest thing…swathes of time glide by without my wanting to eat anything. I’d eat, say, a raisin toast with honey to tide me over until bedtime, no matter how large dinner was. Then off to the 7-Eleven before bed to buy Maltesers to eat with my television habit. Sometimes I’d go to bed thinking tonight I’ll stop bingeing, but then the panic! Never about hunger. A raging need, a siren in my brain, shrill, demanding to know what I could eat next.
But the urge is waning. Maybe a glimmer of hope?
MONDAY 8TH DECEMBER
Another two kilos down. Nine altogether; 41 to go. I’ve started jogging around Caulfield racecourse with only the odd groundsman (’onya luv, you can do it), to see me on days when there’s no race meeting. I strap weights onto my wrists, flailing my arms. I’m on a roll.
Jake’s asked me to a movie. I say yes, if my mum can babysit.
She can. I go.
It’s a whole experience without coke, popcorn and ice-cream. Restless, twitchy. Then a light-bulb moment. Movie eating is just another way of eating unseen in the dark. Couple of deep breaths and I can concentrate. The movie’s good. That helps.
WEDNESDAY 10TH DECEMBER
Rafe comes over. I ask him to stay to dinner; kids delighted. They eat schnitzels, mashed potatoes. I’m into baked salmon, steamed broccoli.
‘You’re thinner,’ he remarks.
‘Really?’ as though unaware of each vanishing microgram. ‘Decided I had to keep healthy for the kids’ sake.’ Twist the knife. ‘They’ve only got me now.’ Again, looks like he’s been gut-shot. Thinks I should be losing weight to get him back.
MONDAY 24TH DECEMBER
The weight rolls off. My fellow over-eaters say that’s because I’ve so much to lose. Thanks for nothing. Now it’s jogging twice a week, twice to the gym, twice lapping the 50-metre pool. I feel invincible. On the racetrack, Streisand at my elbow belting out, ‘Don’t Rain on My Parade,’ giving me her power. In the water, it’s Mama Cass on pool’s edge telling me I can do it. I want to ask why she never could but I’m afraid of the answer.
Jake’s asked me to be his plus-1 at a New Year’s Eve Awards Night for work. I accept, then, panic! What in the name of all that’s holy will I wear?
THURSDAY 27TH DECEMBER
I go shopping. Terrified. First time buying clothes since my weight-loss. Hating having to face mirrors and slip-of-a-thing salesgirls with their thinly-veiled derision, saved especially for BBGs. But in the first shop the young woman smiles, disappearing out back. I feel like I’m at the fruiterer’s when he’s gone to get the choicest plums saved for special customers. She comes back out. I wince: lycra leggings and a body stocking to be pulled down past the hips.
‘They’ll show every bulge,’ I’m doubtful, angry.
‘Trust me,’ she says. ‘And then put this garment over them.'
I raise my eyes to my reflection and she flashes me a triumphant smile. A swathe of sheer fabric, bias-cut, drapes my body, falling just below my knees at enough distance from leggings and body stocking to render them dark shadows and still somehow give flattering form to my figure. Best are its colors—cubist blocks of burnt orange, black and umber.
Rafe’s agreed to babysit. He’s had a couple of invitations to parties I’m guessing he feels reluctant to attend alone. He doesn’t ask where I’m going. I think he thinks it’s some girls’ night out.
MONDAY 31ST DECEMBER
‘What are you doing?’ Rafe asks that night.
‘Diet. Exercise.’
‘Why couldn’t you do it when we were together?’
‘I needed space and you’re not so good at giving it.’
‘What does that mean?’
Doorbell. I usher Jake inside. Rafe’s eyes bulge. Jake looks cool (or maybe hot) in white shirt and faded jeans.
‘Won’t keep her out late,’ he says, as though Rafe’s my father. And we’re out the door.
Jake’s colleagues are polite and sociable. I’m not self-conscious because I know I don’t look fat in what I’m wearing. He whispers in my ear that I look stunning. Couldn’t I stop at this weight? I ask if he could stop with 4 kilos to go, and he looks at me as though I’m a madwoman. Says, ‘It’s different for me.’
I roll my eyes, nibble at my flounder, fantasize about dessert. Why couldn’t I stop where I was? Why wasn’t it enough? No answer, but I’m not ready to risk falling off the food truck just yet. Not for anyone.
MONDAY 16TH JANUARY
Another 2 kilos bite the dust. 13 altogether. Jake has 2 kilos left. After coffee he hands me an envelope.
‘Don’t open it till you’re home alone.’
So, I’m home alone and rip it open.
Size matters. Or not. Whatever—your beauty is an ache all over my body. I think I’ve loved you from our first encounter. I thought, why is she here? I thought you were perfect. I thought, don’t change. But you’re stubborn and I watched as you began to shrink, becoming less morose. I watched from a distance I had to bridge. It’s not too late for you to stop where you are. Your face glows as though the moon has shifted from the sky to dwell within you. Your limbs are straight and flawless. Don’t change. See yourself through my eyes. I want you by me. I want you as you are.
Pretty good for a scientist. It makes me laugh with joy, cry with frustration. Rafe likes me thin; Jake likes me fat and I admit I’m on the thin faction’s side but not because I want to woo Rafe back anymore.
SUNDAY 22ND JANUARY
Tents of Jacob again, mood buoyant. I wear the new outfit, feeling glamorous, sylphlike. Instead of old Yiddish favorites, I decide on American hits, past and present. Yiddish songs have regret, grief, death woven too tightly into their melodies. Singing them’s a train-ride to hell. Yet, masochistic as it sounds, there’s also something seductive, irresistible, about the memories they evoke before everything devolved into the nightmare.
So I dive into those American melodies, whirling, holding my cordless microphone like an ice-cream. I sweat, feeling endorphins release. But my audience isn’t with me. They want to be reminded of home before the cataclysm. It makes me want to weep when I especially don’t want to weep. So I revert to the Yiddish favorites. It isn’t about what I like. It’s about giving them what they need. Which sounds awfully close to most relationships in my life.
Before I can leave, Ina corners me with her walker again. If I try to push past her, she’ll fall. No escape.
‘Darlink. Sweetheart,’ she says. ‘What are you doink? You’re wastink away to nuttink.’
‘I’ve lost some weight,’ I concede.
‘Aaaaaand,’ she continued. ‘Your voice isn’t de same from a skinny body. You’ve lost your—how do you say? Your… ?’
She expects me to assist in my own denunciation. Which of course I do. ‘Spirit?’ I ask.
She nods. ‘Without kilos there can be no spirit. Trust me, I know.’
LATER THAT NIGHT.
My mother-in-law doesn’t eat, therefore she is.
Part of her is always in Auschwitz, perhaps keeping herself blade-thin as some sort of grim penance. Now, in the midst of this Australian plenty, over-indulging in food would be a mark of deep disrespect to those who died of starvation. Once, in a moment of gin-fueled confidence, she told me about the line-ups. ‘Naked and shivering you stood before the camp officers. If your breasts drooped or you had scabs, or just didn’t stand up straight enough? Off to the gas chambers.’
After that, I often wondered whether she was always so immaculately groomed, so erect in her posture and just, just the right side of anorexia to avoid being on the wrong side of an eternal line-up.
MONDAY 23RD JANUARY
Jake’s reached his goal weight. The group celebrates with raw, julienned vegetables, apples and mineral water. My mind screams caaaaaaaake. This week I’ve lost nothing. I know that can happen but inside I howl. I’ve even taken to pulling the skin off roast chicken. As we leave, the group leader says, ‘be grateful you haven’t gained.’ Grateful to whom, to what? I want to snarl. Jake whisks me to the coffeeshop before I embarrass myself.
‘You haven’t mentioned my letter,’ he says.
‘What would you like me to say?’
‘This isn’t about me, it’s about you,’ he says.
‘It actually is about you—how you see me, what you want of me, how you think I should behave.’
‘I want you to be a part of my life. Why is that such a terrible thing?’
‘Because you’re the obverse side of the Rafe coin. He likes me just so, you like me just so, the only difference being in your definitions of “just so”. I don’t want to be vast for you or slight for him.’
‘I need to sleep on that,’ he says, actually rising and leaving. It’s too much. I go home to bed, eat some carrots and watch the slender, lovely people on repeats of The Good Wife.
WEDNESDAY 25TH JANUARY
I think I’ve scared Jake off. Refuse to eat my way out of this one. Apple. That’ll fix it.
THURSDAY 26TH JANUARY
Somehow another 3 kilos disappear. I do a dance around the kitchen.
‘Mummy,’ asks Amy, ‘are you shrinking?’
‘Maybe I am.’
‘Will you shrink down to nothing and vanish?’ I hug her, reassure her, but she doesn’t look convinced.
I take out my phone. Email from Rafe.
Forgive me for emailing but I didn’t think I could say this looking into your eyes. From the day I left I wanted to return, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to be an enabler.
But something happened, and maybe it happened because of the stand I took. You started behaving responsibly. Every time we met the kilos were dropping off you. I knew you were too proud to tell me but you wanted me to notice. I’m excited to think we’re turning back the clock to when we met. I know you’re doing this out of your love for me, but trust me when I say you’ll be better off yourself for it too. I won’t come back just yet. I don’t want to spoil things. If I returned now and you went slip-sliding down, or rather up, to your old weight, I’d never forgive myself.
If you can’t respond to this, don’t worry. It’s a lot to absorb. I’m always here. I do love you, Rachael. You can beat this thing, if not for your sake then for mine.
SATURDAY 28TH JANUARY
I don’t want to detonate the bomb ticking inside me but I’m kept awake by his words, tossing my sheets into knots. I replay the whole self-serving screed until my brain blurs—a slurry of outrage and resentment. I crawl out of bed, put on an old tracksuit and creep out of the house, not wanting to wake the kids. Heading for Coles I know exactly what I’ll buy: cream-and-jam-filled sponge topped with pink icing and rainbow sprinkles. Children’s party food.
Arriving home I take a fork and a litre of milk to bed, eating it in one mighty session while watching reruns of Bones. Now I want to vomit. I don’t want all this junk inside myself. I imagine sticking fingers down my throat; that would be a truly disgusting first. But why the hell not?
SUNDAY 29TH JANUARY
Excellent! Spectacular! In one night I’ve achieved a weight-gain of 2 kilos. Undone a month’s worth of clawing back poundage in a single binge. No respite from this endless war.
THAT AFTERNOON
Once more into the breach. For my sins—The Tents of Jacob. I bring my guitar, channelling Karen Carpenter, even though she only played electric bass. Like Mama Cass, she died at thirty-two, her heart giving out, too. For both it was food: too much and not enough.
I ignore requests, play some moody Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot. Sometimes only the Canadians will do. Don’t know why, but my audience doesn’t object, settling into an unusual state of tranquillity. When it’s time to leave, Ina approaches. I tense.
‘That Cohen fellow,’ she says. ‘He knew a thing or two.’
I must have shown my surprise at her mellow cadences, because she said, ‘You think because I come from a little Polish village, I can’t know about such things? Or that one of Hitler’s children—(I shuddered. Never heard them call themselves that before)—could have no time or taste for the poetry of such a man?’
Who was this stranger? Why wasn’t she haranguing me about my weight in an accent so thick only survivor offspring could understand it? Where was that accent? She smiled slyly.
‘It’s a carapace,’ she said, and I nearly fell over.
‘To be conspicuous was to invite death so we learned to hide, to mask ourselves. A number—not enough, but a number—did it for the whole six years. And when it was over, it had become habit. We didn’t know how to come out from behind it.’
We were both silent.
‘For almost as long as I’ve known you, Rachael, you’ve done the same. Stayed hidden in your increasing-decreasing body. But I don’t understand why you’d think it’s necessary—to hide inside our place, our pain, not yours. You weren’t there. It’s not your fault. It’s time for you to come out. And this time to stay out.’
MONDAY, 30TH JANUARY
Rafe,
Touched to learn you wanted to return as soon as you’d left. But when you walked out I quickly understood I’d been an embarrassment you preferred not to be seen with. For awhile, I ate myself into a nightly stupor because thinking about that reality was too painful. Something I do know now, that I didn’t before, was that you fell in love with my exterior and when it changed, you fell out of love. If one day I got sick, and ugly with it, would you walk out on me then, too?
WEDNESDAY 8TH FEBRUARY
Strange sense of peace now. Every so often Rafe texts. I ignore him. Soon I’ll have to respond because he’ll want to see the kids, but right now his urgent chirpings make me tired. Jake hasn’t communicated.
FRIDAY 10TH FEBRUARY
Back to my pre-sponge-cake weight. Approx. another 25 kilos to go. No Jake to keep me company. I often think of Mama Cass, still finding her beautiful, but she’d be beautiful whatever her girth.
Would I?
Sometimes I wonder how important this much-vaunted thinness is. Who’s to say I’ll even achieve it this time? Whether I’ll have the strength to go the distance? Right now, I’ve a stitch in my gut that moves to my head, then speeds back to my gut. Still suffering from withdrawal. A packet of Smarties (300g) would bring relief, especially if I ate them singly in front of the TV. What an unglamorous, embarrassing addiction sugar is. They talk about heroin chic, never Kit-Kat chic. Maybe because heroin would never make you fat.
At OA they say one [cake, lolly, chocolate] is one too many and a thousand not enough. Undoubtedly true but not helpful. They tell you, ‘Confront cravings with a glass of water, eyes closed, imagining healthy food.’ Seriously? If that was all it bloody took nobody’d ever be fat and OA would be out of business faster than you could say large-pizza-with-the-lot.
I have to deal with this constant struggle: no sugar, no salt, no fat, no starch. In the supermarket, kitchen, bedroom—the world—I say it like a mantra so I won’t buy contraband. But it’s not working tonight. The urge is grabbing me by the hair, whirling me around like a bath towel caught in a spin cycle.
I should ring my sponsor. That’s what he’s for. But I’ve never contacted him. He’s a bit unprepossessing, folds of skin sliding over where the fat used to blubber. He can’t afford plastic surgery so he’s doomed to walk through life like an old elephant whose hide droops to his feet in great, grey furrows.
Ina says it’s time for me to come—and stay—out. She means come out from behind my wall of fat. Probably the kindest thing she’s ever said. But for all her ghastly experiences, she doesn’t understand the junkie mentality. Food for my—the second—generation has so many layers. A gargantuan bloody layer cake.
Others say it’s not over till the fat lady sings. Well, I’ve been singing for awhile and you’d think it was time—past time—for it to be over, this need to gobble, gluttonise and fress every forbidden, edible substance.
At OA they say it’s never over. Just because you lose it all doesn’t mean you can’t put it all on again. In only a few months you can go from sixty kilos back to a hundred. And I know just how easy that is. Lots of people do it—often. Which makes me think if I’d survived the Six Year Reich, yet was never to know if or when its latent scourge would become manifest again, wouldn’t I vault after Primo Levi into that Italianate stairwell? Wouldn’t I plunge?
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Yvonne Fein holds a BA (Hons) in Literature, an MA in History and a Diploma of Creative Writing. She’s had three novels and one collection of short stories published by traditional publishers; written for screen and theatre, and edited two literary journals. Her story, Weintraub’s Disorder, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by the editors of Flying South while her novel April Fool (Hodder) was nominated in the Ned Kelly Awards for best first crime novel. She also edited Abraham Biderman’s award-winning Holocaust memoir, The World of My Past.
http://www.yvonnefein.com.au/ |
