Dietland (14 page)

An image in my mind: Eulayla Baptist holding up her fat jeans.
Burst!

“What's the name of the thin woman who lives inside you, imprisoned under all those layers of fat?”

“She's not a separate person; she's me. Or who I'll be eventually.”

“All right, but let's give her a name.”

I wanted to scoff, but then I remembered that when I was a teenager on the Baptist Plan I had thought of my thin self as Alicia.

Alicia is me but not me.

“I guess we can call her Alicia,” I said. “That's my real name.”

“Your real name for the real you.” Verena turned to a fresh page of her notepad. “What will Alicia be able to do that Plum can't?”

I immediately thought of the “When I'm Thin . . .™” booklet from my first day as a Baptist member. Ever since meeting Verena and reading her book, these flashes from my past kept coming back. They didn't belong here in my present life. I wished they would go away.

Verena pushed me to answer, so I told her that Alicia would be able to walk down the street and no one would look at her in a bad way or say something mean.

“What do people say to Plum?”

I liked this, thinking of Plum as a separate person, one who would soon be consigned to the past. “They say,
Go on a diet.
They make oink and moo sounds. A few weeks ago I crossed the street in front of a car and the guy shouted out the window, ‘I'm glad I didn't hit
you,
girl!' Everyone turned to look. People laughed.”

“And what do you say to people who make these rude comments?”

“Nothing. I just pretend like I didn't hear it or that it didn't bother me.” If I ignore it, then it isn't real.

“In an ideal world, what would happen?”

“I'd like to see them get what's coming to them.”

“Such as?”

“Pain and suffering.
Death.
”

“That's honest. Do people often make rude comments?” I told her that I tried to avoid situations where that was likely to happen, but I still had to go out. Every morning before I left my apartment I felt dread.

“What kind of places do you avoid? Be specific.”

“Parties, clubs, bars, beaches, amusement parks, airplanes.” I told her that I hadn't been on a plane in four years. One time a man asked to be moved because he said I spilled into his seat. I couldn't always buckle the seat belt around me and it was embarrassing if I had to ask for an extension. The flight attendants weren't always nice about it. Once the plane was delayed from taking off because they couldn't find an extension for me and I feared I'd have to disembark in shame. The flight attendant at the back of the plane became so exasperated that she spoke over the loudspeaker to the flight attendants at the front. “Can't you find a seat belt extension for the lady in twenty-eight-B?” Passengers looked in my direction. For more than twenty minutes, the stares and murmurs persisted, until an extender was found on another plane. People complained they'd miss their connecting flights. I offered to get up and leave, but they said I couldn't. My luggage had already been checked. That was the last time I had flown.

“My mother has to come to New York if she wants to see me.”

“What about your father?”

“He can't afford to visit New York. I haven't seen him in five years.”

“Will Alicia be able to visit her father?”

“Alicia will be able to go anywhere.” I felt a momentary, inexplicable flare of resentment toward my future thin self. “Do you understand now why I want the surgery? Don't you see?”

“Of course I see,” she said, writing something on her pad. I wished she would leave. I had already decided to have the surgery. There was no need to excavate these depths of humiliation.

“What else can Alicia do that you can't?”

“Everything!” I said, snapping at her. “She won't be alone all the time, she won't spend all of her time in this apartment, she'll dress in pretty clothes, she'll travel, she'll have a job that she likes, she'll host dinner parties.” This last comment must have sounded silly, but I had always wanted to host dinner parties, with candles stuck into empty wine bottles, the orange and red wax dripping down the glass like stalactites.

“What else?” Verena was digging for more, scraping out the cavity until she hit the nerve.

“Alicia will be loved,” I said, at last.

I hadn't wanted to say it, but she'd pushed me. She knew what she was digging for and I had said it and now it floated in the room between us like a big black cloud of shame. It was so thick, I couldn't see through it.

“Isn't Plum loved?” she asked. I told her that my parents loved me, but I wanted more than that.

“Let's talk about men,” Verena said. “Or are you interested in women? Or both?”

“Men,” I said. “And what about them?”

“Do you want to be in a relationship with a man?”

“One day.”

“When you're Alicia?”

“Yes.”

“Do you hope to marry?”

“One day.”

“What about babies?”

“One day.”

“When
one day
finally arrives, it'll be an exciting time for you.”

I looked at her pale, delicate face and felt scorn. She thought she could judge me, but she couldn't last five minutes living in my skin. I remained silent. Sulky.

“I want you to consider something, hon. What if it's not possible for you to ever become thin? What if there is no
one day?
What if this is your
real life
right now? What if you're already living it?”

“I'm not.”

“But what if you are? What if this is your real life and you're fat and that's that?”

“Then I wouldn't want to live anymore.” As soon as the words escaped my mouth, I knew I shouldn't have said them. “I'm not suicidal.”

“I didn't say you were,” she said, and then after a few seconds she asked if I took any prescription medication. She was looking for evidence. I told her that I took thirty milligrams of Y—— every night and had done so since college.

“That's a powerful drug. Who prescribes it for you?”

“Just my regular doctor.”

“A general practitioner?”

I nodded and Verena frowned. She wanted to know why I had started taking Y——and I told her it was because of depression, obviously, but she asked if there was a “precipitating event.” I told her I didn't want to relive the drama, that it was too long ago. I gave her the short version. “There was a boy in college. It was just silly.”

“It couldn't have been silly if it caused you such pain. What did he do?”

“He rejected me,” I said. She wanted to know why. I bent over and played with the strap on my sandals, looking at the floorboards. “He liked me but he was afraid to get involved with me.”

“Why was he afraid? You don't seem scary to me.”

“I think he thought his friends would laugh at him.”

“He sounds like an asshole.”

“I had a breakdown over it.” I thought about the library window and the librarian and the days afterward when I couldn't stop crying. I didn't tell Verena any of these things.

“Why not just find another boy, one who wasn't an asshole?”

“There were no other boys for me.”

“There are plenty of boys.”

“Maybe for someone like you, but not for me. There wasn't the possibility of another boy.”

“Ah.” Verena sat back in the chair. She asked if I still cared about him.

“His name is Tristan,” I said. “And, no, I don't care about him anymore.”

“Then why have you continued taking Y——?”

“I don't want those feelings to come back again.”

She wanted to know what my love life had been like since Tristan, but I told her I hadn't had one.

“What if you were to get a boyfriend now?”

“I don't want a boyfriend now.”

Verena wanted to know if Alicia would take Y——. She sometimes asked such obvious questions. “Alicia won't need Y——,” I said.

I was hoping that Verena was ready to leave. I had never admitted such things to anyone. I wouldn't be able to look at her the next time I saw her.

Instead of leaving, she asked for a glass of water. I was a bad hostess, unused to guests. Once her throat was wetted, she started with the questions again, only this time she had my psych evaluation form in her hand. Finally, I thought. She wanted to know why I'd decided on the surgery. I remembered the day I called the doctor, and what had prompted me to call him, but I wasn't willing to share that, so I spoke more generally. I told her that I'd tried everything else, but nothing worked.

“The surgery can change me,” I said.

“You'll be malnourished. There could be other major side effects too. You could even die.”

“I could die from being fat.”

“If you eat healthy food and exercise, then it doesn't really matter what size you are.”

“I've heard all of this from my mother. I know you're against the surgery, but I'm going to have it regardless of what you say. I'm not going to let you take away my dream.” She had already taken away my Baptist dream as a teenager and now all these years later she was trying to take away my dream of the surgery. “If you don't sign my form, I'll just have someone else sign it. I don't need your twenty thousand dollars, either, even though you promised it to me.”

“You'll have it,” she said. “I'm not a dasher of dreams, Plum. Your dream, as it were, is to look different. To be
smaller.
”

“I want to look normal.”

“You live on the hope of becoming Alicia, don't you? Without the possibility of this transformation, you'd rather die than live, you said.”

“I didn't mean that.”

“You didn't hesitate when I asked you.”

“It just came out.”

“But where did it come from?”

She left the question dangling and stood up from her chair. She walked to the front window, then back again, considering something intently.

“It's time to discuss the first task of the New Baptist Plan.”

“I thought today
was
the first task?”

“I was getting to know you today. Now that I know you better, I want you to consider reducing your dosage of Y——and then quitting it all together. You said Alicia wouldn't take Y——.”

“I'm not Alicia yet.”

“
One day I'll do this, one day I'll do that.
That's what I've heard from you all day. Let's start bringing the future and the present together, just a little bit. Alicia wouldn't take Y—— and so neither should Plum.”

“I don't know if I'm ready for this.”

“If you don't think you're ready to become Alicia, then maybe you shouldn't have the surgery. The weight will come off quickly. You need to be prepared.”

She had a point. I had thought of giving up Y—— many times, but whenever I had missed a dose, I'd wake up in the morning feeling as if someone had poured molasses into my head, gumming up all the gears and switches. I explained this phenomenon to Verena.

“That's why you never quit medication like Y—— cold turkey. You can cut your thirty-milligram tablets in half and we'll try the half dose for a month. If things go well, after that you can quit completely. Think it over,” she said, gathering up her things. She handed me a card with her contact information, a red card to match the red-walled house.

“Aren't you going to sign my form?”

“There's plenty of time for that,” she said. “Today is only the first day of the New Baptist Plan. There are plenty more days to come.”

 

• • •

WHEN VERENA LEFT
, my head throbbed. It was as if she'd been inside my brain, picking through it as if it were a chicken carcass. I lay down on my bed, wrapping the scarlet dress around my neck like a scarf.

I hadn't expected Verena to suggest that I give up Y——. I didn't know what I had expected the New Baptist Plan to be. It had seemed like a joke, but now I knew she was serious. She wasn't going to give me $20,000 for doing nothing. Until our conversation, I hadn't thought of Y—— as a thread that connected me to Tristan and that difficult time in my past, but that's what it was. Verena wanted me to sever it.

Tristan and I had never been anything more than friends, but we were close; at the age of twenty-one I had never experienced closeness with a boy. When our senior year of college started, we began to spend so much time together that to others we quickly became “the two of you.” Wherever one of us went, the other was soon to follow.

I thought we were building up to something during those autumn months. For the first time I thought I understood what love was. I had always thought of myself as outside of things; when others spoke of dates and relationships and sex, I knew it didn't apply to me. I hadn't realized the extent of my exclusion until Tristan came along and made me feel included. I was one of them, finally. In the campus bookstore with a friend, I'd point to a funny card with hearts on it and joke that I could buy that for Tristan. As the autumn festival approached, I thought I'd have someone to go with. Tristan was possibility more than anything else; he opened up a world to me that had always been closed. When I saw couples holding hands or kissing, I didn't feel resentful anymore. Tristan hadn't kissed me, but we were moving in that direction. The anticipation of him wanting me brought joy that I'd never known. Every day when I awoke, I thought I didn't deserve to be so happy, that no one did.

I couldn't have sex with Tristan—I was firm in my mind about that. He could never see me naked, and so there was a line between us, and what was beyond that line was out of my reach. What I wanted was for him to want me, for him to touch me. He held my hand sometimes. Once I fell asleep next to him on the sofa, my cheek resting against his white T-shirt, and he put his arm around me. I wanted more than that—I wanted for him to kiss me. I wanted his want.