Dietland (19 page)

When I left the room, I felt like I'd just stepped off a roller coaster, winded and dizzy. I limped up the stairs, grasping the wooden rail. In the mirror I saw that my face was swollen and red, as if I'd been slapped around. I went to a drugstore to buy some ibuprofen. Marlowe trailed after me, but I didn't speak to her. “Are you all right?” she said when we were outside the drugstore and I was trying to remove the childproof cap from the bottle of painkillers with my teeth. She took the bottle from me and opened it. “I feel weird, like something is missing,” I said, washing down the pills with Diet Coke (
FREE FOOD
).

“No cushioning,” said Marlowe. “You're like an animal without her fur.”

Next Marlowe took me to a department store, leading me to the plus-size area that was euphemistically labeled the “women's section,” and Marlowe said, “Aren't we all women?” We were there to buy new bras and underpants. Marlowe read aloud from her book as we browsed the bikini briefs, boy shorts, and thongs, all of which were referred to as
panties,
as I had called my underwear when I was a little girl. Marlowe picked out a selection for me. When I tried on the bras in the dressing room, they actually gave me cleavage, like a busty wench in a pirate movie.

The salesgirl said I needed to buy Thinz. “No offense. Even lingerie models have to suck it in.” Thinz were the latest must-have item, like a girdle except they were sleek and almost invisible. Thinz were sold for the bottom to compress the hips, stomach, and thighs; for the top, there was a squeezy camisole. Putting on Thinz felt like crawling into a caterpillar's skin. Marlowe paid for the lot of it.

I left the department store wearing control-top tights and Thinz under my clothes. On my feet were the pair of impossibly high heels Marlowe had purchased on the way out. The heels thrust my bust forward and my butt up. Marlowe read from her book as we navigated the crowds in Herald Square.
“Page ninety-seven: The fuckable woman puts her secondary sex characteristics on display, like a baboon with a throbbing red ass.”

I hadn't worn heels since my college graduation and felt like a kid who'd raided her mother's closet. I hobbled down the street and held onto Marlowe for support. “I can't breathe,” I said, and complained that I couldn't bend or sit either, thanks to Thinz. I was a sausage in casing. All of my rolls and layers were squeezed in, but where had they gone?

Marlowe said, “A fuckable woman doesn't take up space. Fuckable women are controlled.”

I said, “Control-top pantyhose.”

“Fat women are not controlled. They are defiant, so they are unfuckable.”

Once again I wondered about the logic of this makeover. How would telling me I'm unfuckable change my mind about the surgery?

Marlowe and I stopped at a coffeehouse for a break. I took the shoes off and instantly felt the symptoms of withdrawal, the zaps in my feet, the little pulses of heat. I stood next to the table and drank my iced coffee (183), since I couldn't sit down. “What is the point of Thinz?” I asked, hoping that my liver and kidneys and everything else that was in there hadn't become dislodged. “If you appear more fuckable because of Thinz, and then someone wants to . . .
fuck
you,” I whispered, “then you go home and undress and everything just flops out. Won't that lead to shock and disappointment? Maybe even despair?”

Marlowe licked the whipped cream off her fruit drink. “Haven't you learned anything from your boss, Kitty? Being a woman means being a faker.” Outside, a pigeon limped on the sidewalk, a torn piece of donut lodged in its beak.

The makeover continued for days. Marlowe took me to a dermatologist, who injected my forehead with a toxin and suggested a range of treatments to erase my blemishes and newly emerging fine lines. Marlowe said this was important, since the fuckable female body is factory fresh and new, as if the shrink-wrap has just been removed. The doctor said I was no longer allowed to go out in the sun. I had my makeup done by an expert named Kevyn. At his suggestion, Marlowe bought me a selection of high-end cosmetics that cost more than a thousand dollars. I thought of Julia and Leeta in the Beauty Closet, but they were no longer a team, as Julia had informed me.

At a hair salon on Fifth Avenue I refused a drastic change, so my short black bob was trimmed and buffed and I was sent on my way to the manicurist. I splayed my fingers on the manicure table while Marlowe selected the paint color for me, a Ryla Cosmetics shade called Show 'Em the Pink. Then Marlowe and I attended a class called Strippercise, but Marlowe's commentary didn't go over well and we were escorted out by a security guard. A woman on the Upper East Side taught me how to do kegels.

After the penultimate task we were in a taxi and I felt exhausted, resting my head against the window, letting it bang on the glass every time we hit a bump. I was used to life in Brooklyn, hidden away in my apartment on Swann Street, trekking to the café and letting myself go like an overgrown garden. The makeover had been days of mowing and pulling weeds, a whole landscaping experience that was painful and disheartening. I still didn't feel like Alicia. If anything, I had never felt more like Plum. It was her body I had seen in mirrors, her flesh that was painted and waxed and injected with toxin. If Alicia was buried under there, she was impossible to see.

“Next comes the dieting portion of the makeover,” Marlowe said, “but you're having surgery instead. You're cutting right to the front of the line, you cheater.” She took me to a plastic surgeon, Dr. Peter Ahmad, famous as the pioneer of the “mommy makeover,” a package deal that included a breast lift, tummy tuck, and vaginal rejuvenation. He also specialized in post–weight loss surgery reconstruction, which is why Marlowe chose him. In the waiting room, a nurse came for me. Her nails were painted the same shade as mine. Marlowe stayed in the waiting room as I was led to the doctor.

Dr. Ahmad asked me to disrobe. We stood in front of a full-length mirror, him in his suit, me naked. I had never been completely naked in front of a man before. The humiliation would have been overwhelming before, but I was numb from days of being prodded and worked over. Even the sight of my crotch—sleek as a hairless cat—didn't inspire horror. As I stood before the mirror, beneath the bright lights, the shocks of Y—— withdrawal began to needle me again. I could feel them under my skin, but in the mirror I couldn't see them.

“As I'm sure you know, on a diet your body shrinks slowly,” said Dr. Ahmad. “With the bypass you'll lose the weight quickly, so you'll be left with a lot of sagging skin. It will require a number of procedures, which I can do for you.” He took the cap off the black marker he was holding. “First thing is a tummy tuck,” he said. He lifted my stomach and pressed it in, as if it were clay. “You'll have a flat stomach when we're through. We'll cut here,” he said, holding up my stomach with one hand and with the other drawing on me with the marker. He started on my left side and drew a dark, thick line all the way from left to right, showing me where the incisions would be and where he'd stitch me up. He let go of my stomach and let it flop back down.

“That'll be a long scar.”

“It'll fade over time. You won't even notice it.” He moved his hands to my breasts, pushing them up, cupping them in his hands. “You'll need your breasts lifted. I would also suggest implants to give you more fullness.” He drew on my breasts with the marker, showing me where he'd cut and stitch me back up. He traced around my nipples; in the mirror they looked like eyes, the wide outer rim of my stomach at the bottom a smiling mouth. “You're not ever planning to breastfeed, are you? You probably won't be able to after this procedure.” He showed me where my new nipples would be positioned, in a place higher than they'd ever been.

Next he asked me to hold my arms straight out. “Your batwings are pretty significant, so there will be a lot of hanging skin we'll need to remove.” He drew on the flab hanging down from my upper arms. “We'll do an arm lift. The scar will be in your armpit, so no one will see it.” I stood frozen with my arms outstretched as the doctor drew on me. He moved behind me and placed his hands on my butt. “The last big thing you'll need is a complete lower body lift. We'll remove the sagging skin from your thighs and your behind and then lift everything, giving you a smoother, tighter appearance.” He turned me around and gave me a handheld mirror so I could see my reflection in the larger mirror behind me. He bent over and continued to draw on my skin with the marker, long smooth lines and smaller dotted lines all over the back of me. I pictured him with a pair of scissors, cutting my flesh as if it were cloth.

He stood up and told me to put my arms down. He maneuvered me back slightly so my face was directly under the bright light above the mirror. “You're probably too young for a facelift, but we'll see how it goes with the surgery. Be prepared for the fact that you'll look older when you're thinner. Fat is like a natural collagen, so without it you'll wrinkle more.” He turned my face to one side. “Your nose is a bit big. I could fix that.”
Big compared to what?
I wanted to ask. Not compared to a Volkswagen.

Dr. Ahmad put the cap back on the marker and smiled at me. “That's it,” he said. “You may need some lipo if you have small pockets of fat here and there, but we won't know that until you've had the bypass. You look worried. Don't worry. You're in good hands. I do this all the time. Several times a week, in fact. In about a year from now, you could be a whole new person.”

He left me to get dressed and I looked at myself in the mirror, full on. There was Plum's body with black lines showing how Alicia would be carved out. I'd look like Frankenstein by the time it was over. I turned full circle, trying to take in all the black marks. No matter what I did, there was no escaping the body that trapped me. I could see that now.

In the taxi on the way back to Calliope House, I didn't say anything to Marlowe. She congratulated me on finishing the makeover and handed me a copy of
Fuckability Theory,
which she'd signed
For
Plum
Alicia, love Marlowe xo.
I noticed the book's dedication:
To the 3 Stus and Sharlene.

“What's wrong?” Verena asked when we walked into Calliope House.

“Nothing, I'm just tired.”

“Making yourself fuckable is a lot of work,” said Marlowe.

“I'm not fuckable,” I said.
I'm Frankenstein.

Verena told me to go to her office at the top of the stairs, that there was a present for me. Hanging on the back of the door was a new version of the white poplin shirtdress with purple trim, along with a pair of purple tights. More than double the size of the original, this duplicate dress was like a cartoon. I set down my bag and Marlowe's book and held the dress in my hands. For some reason, I wanted to put it on.

I locked myself in the bathroom, where there was a pubic hair on the toilet seat, as black and spindly as a spider's leg. I took off my clothes and replaced the black control-top tights with the purple ones. There was a brief flash in my mind of Leeta, she of the colorful tights. I stepped into the dress and then stood before the mirror. Seeing Plum wearing Alicia's dress was like looking in a funhouse mirror. Alicia, blown up twice the size she should have been. The dress was sleeveless, so my upper arms were visible, with the pattern outlined by the doctor's black marker. The pattern of Alicia.

Thankfully I couldn't see my whole body in the bathroom mirror, but what I saw reminded me of Janine, the outcast from the Baptist clinic, with her bright and colorful wardrobe. What if it were my fate to look like Janine forever?
What if this is your real life?
What if you're already living it?
Only a month earlier that had seemed impossible.

“Plum, are you all right?” Verena called up the stairs.

“Coming,” I said. I turned away from the Plum-Alicia hybrid in the mirror and returned to Verena's office to collect my things. I didn't bother to change into my regular clothes—I wanted to leave the red-walled house as quickly as possible. As I was about to walk out of Verena's office, I saw the bottle of so-called Dabsitaf, the French diet pills, on her desk. I stuffed the bottle into my bra, in the space between my breasts. I was downstairs and out the door before Verena and Marlowe realized it, heading toward the subway in the dress, my legs bulbous and grapelike in the purple tights, which didn't press in my stomach.

In the subway station at Fourteenth Street, I waited on the platform for the train, conscious that people were staring at me in my costume. I concentrated on the blackness of the tunnel, but from the din of the station, a male voice cut through.

“Can you imagine doing
that?
” the man said, loudly enough for everyone in the vicinity to hear. He was about thirty, wearing a polished gray suit, standing between two other young men in suits. The trio was unshaven-on-purpose, wearing white shirts and ties in different colors, the only way to tell them apart. They laughed at the woman in the white and purple dress, knowing she could hear them, but not caring.

Not today,
I thought.
Please don't do this today.

I turned to face them. The shame and embarrassment I felt made me want to keep quiet, as always, but then I remembered:

A Baptist isn't afraid to take risks.

I looked at the man who'd made the comment and said, “I'm too much woman for you. From the looks of you, you probably like to diddle little boys.” The two guys next to him, the friends, his white-guy posse, laughed.

They shouldn't have laughed.

The fist of the man who'd made the comment came flying at me. I saw it coming—the white paw, the hairy knuckles, the ring finger wrapped in a thin gold band. I opened my mouth as if to yell but his fist hit me before I could, the gold band smashing my lip into my incisor. I stumbled backwards, past the white line, near the edge of the subway platform. Someone screamed, but it sounded far away. I turned my head and saw the train approaching, the silver bullet, its white light heading toward me. My arms moved propeller-like as I fought for balance. Blood filled my mouth. I didn't want to die this way, not with these people watching, but the white light was moving closer. I braced for impact, but then I felt hands pulling at me.