Fat Girls and Lawn Chairs (2 page)

Exercise, you might advise me solemnly, is hard for fat women.

Exercise is hard for everyone.

Exercise is as hard as you make it.

Miss Tri Athlete shared a conversation with me the other morning. She said, “It feels really good to get this out of the way
first thing in the morning, doesn’t it? I think when you plan to exercise in the evening it just hangs over you like a bad
cloud all day.” She can’t be more than twenty-five, she can’t be carrying more than six ounces of unnecessary body fat and
I’ve never seen her move like anything hurts. Her joints don’t creak. Her back doesn’t ache. She sweats and turns pink just
like everybody else. She trains like an iron woman, but she’s relieved when it’s over.

I don’t believe it’s exercise that keeps fat women out of the gym. I think it’s the distance from the bench in front of the
locker to the shower and back. I think it’s years and years of standing in grocery lines and idly staring at the anorexic
women on the cover of
Cosmo,
I think it’s four-year-olds in restaurants who stage-whisper, “Mommy—look at that FAT lady,” I think it’s years of watching
American films where famous actresses never have pimples on their butts or stretch marks where they had kids. It’s
Baywatch
. Barbie. It’s never really understanding, in our gut, that if we could ask her even Barbie could tell us exactly what is
wrong with her body. And we all know, intellectually, of course, that Barbie’s legs are too long, her waist is too short,
her boobs are too big and her feet are ridiculous, but she’s a doll. What we do not know, as women, is that my sports physiologist,
who is in her late twenties and runs marathons, also has tendonitis in her shoulder, a bad back, and passes out if she trains
too hard. My former coach for the Nautilus machines had MS. None of us have perfect bodies. If we did have perfect bodies,
we would still believe we are too short or too fat or too skinny or not tan enough.

None of us have ever been taught to admire the bodies we have.

And nothing reminds us of our personal imperfections like taking off our clothes. Imagining that—for whatever reason— other
people are looking at us.

My sports physiologist is more afraid of wounding me than I am of being wounded. The program she has set up for me to regain
my youthful vim and vigor is appropriately hard. Not too hard, not too easy. It’s just exercise. The most difficult part of
my routine, designed by my physiologist, is walking through the heavy-duty weight room to get the equipment I need for my
sit-ups. The weight room is full mostly of men. Lifting weights. Not one of them has ever been rude to me, not one of them
has even given me an unkind glance: still, the irony that I make the greatest emotional sacrifice to do the exercise I like
the least is born again each time I walk into the room.

Someone might laugh at me.

Someone might say, “What are you doing here?”

I have a perfectly acceptable answer.

I joined the gym because my girlfriend said, “I want to walk the Appalachian Trail.” I have no desire to backpack across the
wilderness: but I could barely keep up with her when she made this pronouncement, and I could see myself falling farther and
farther behind if I stayed home while she trained. I joined the gym because I used to work out and I used to feel better.
Moved better. Could tie my shoes. I joined the gym because I dropped a piece of paper on the floor of my friend’s car and
I could not reach down and pick it up. I joined the gym because I have a sedentary job and a number of aches and pains and
chronic miseries that are the result of being over fifty and having a sedentary job. I joined the gym because my sister, who
is younger than I am and more fit, seriously hurt her back picking up a case of pop. It could have been me. It probably should
have been me.

I keep going back to the gym because I love endorphins. I love feeling stronger. More agile. I can tie my shoes without holding
my breath. I can pick papers up off the car floor without having to wait until I get out of the car. I don’t breathe quite
as loudly. I have lost that doddering, uncertain old lady’s walk that made strange teenaged boys try to hold doors or carry
things for me.

I keep going back because I hate feeling helpless.

Years ago, a friend of mine convinced me to join Vic Tanney, a chain of gyms popular at the time. There was a brand-new gym
just around the corner from where we lived—just a matter of a few blocks. She had belonged to Vic Tanney before, so she guided
me through the guided tour, offering me bits of advice and expertise along the way … I plopped down money, she plopped down
money, and a few days later it was time for us to go to the gym.

She couldn’t go.

She was fat.

Losing weight had been her expressed goal when she joined: now she couldn’t go until she was “thinner.”

Everyone else at the gym, she said, was buff and golden.

“I’ll be there,” I pointed out (for I have never been a small woman).

She couldn’t go. She was too fat.

She was a size twelve.

I have determined that I don’t particularly mind being the queen of my gym. There may indeed be women who wake up in the morning
and sit on the edges of their beds and think to themselves, “There is that fat woman at my gym who goes almost every day,
and if she can do it …” I am proud to be an inspirational goddess. It has taken me most of my life to understand that what
we see, when we look at another person, may reflect absolutely nothing about how they see themselves. Always having been a
woman of size, I have always believed that it must be just a wonderful experience to be thin. What I am learning is that the
reverse of the old truism is equally true: inside every thin woman there is a fat woman just waiting to jump out.

We give that woman entirely too much power over our lives.

We all do.

M
ANY, MANY YEARS AGO
when I was just a child, a neighbor girl’s parents came to my house and gave me a bag of ducks. I remember the bag, which
was a big, brown paper grocery sack, and I remember the anticipatory expressions on the faces of the adults around me. I remember
realizing the bag held some form of moving life. And I remember looking inside the bag to find myself the proud owner of six
baby ducks.

It would never have occurred to me to transport six baby ducks in a grocery bag. (I am not the least bit anal retentive, but
I would have gone directly to the animal transport store and purchased the official Audubon-approved duck crate. I would have
paid $50. And I would have panicked had I discovered, a week later, that I now needed to transport six baby rabbits.)

As you can imagine (brown paper grocery sacks being about the same size they’ve always been), my six ducks were tiny. Ducklings,
really. Ducklettes. I remember them as being somewhat fuzzy—sort of pre-feathered ducks—of a loose, barnyard-mongrel genus
of duck. The day they became mine they were black and yellow and they made sweet little peeping noises in the bag.

I immediately released them, thus learning very early in life that even very tiny, fuzzy ducks making sweet little peeps can
cover an amazing amount of ground in a hurry. My father loped off across the back yard to examine his fine personal collection
of chicken wire. We built a pen for my duck herd and my duck herd spent the rest of their lives escaping.

Not entirely without provocation, I admit.

The Peck family (or at least my immediate twig of it) at the time belonged to a small but fiercely protective cat named “Gussie”
after the tennis player, Gussie Moran. (Both wore what appeared to be white lace panties.) Shortly after the duck pen was
built and the duck herd was incarcerated, Gus strolled through the back yard and heard an unfamiliar chorus of sweet peeps.

She stopped.

One ear swiveled, not unlike a radar dish.

Her whiskers twitched.

She dropped her belly to the ground, and, peering through the blades of grass, she espied a small pen of hors d’oeuvres.

I believe Gus may actually have contributed to the ducks’ arrival. Gus had a dark side to her personality—downright nocturnal,
really—and she frequently came home with a swelling belly and began building little nests all over the house. She and my mother
waged prolonged battles over where Gus would give birth to and raise her new family; my bed, my mother’s shoe collection and
the clean laundry basket being on the top of Gus’s list and the bottom of my mother’s. Sharp words were spoken on both sides
when Gus decided to consolidate their daycare problems and give birth in one of my younger siblings’ bassinet. I raised each
and every one of Gus’s children as soon as I found them, and—tortured by the idle threats I heard from the adults around me—I
was quite passionate about homing all of her kittens. It is entirely possible I gave the neighbor’s family a kitten—which,
I vaguely recall, immediately walked the three miles back home, so I had to give it up again—which may have been what provoked
them into be-ducking me.

We did not count on Gus.

Compressed all but flat, she seemed to flow like liquid toward the duck pen, and she coiled to pounce just as my father began
wiring on his makeshift lid.

She refused to speak to him for days.

She gave up motherhood.

She did not eat.

She spent all of her time lying in the deep weeds, her eyes drawing a bead on my ducklings, her body utterly motionless except
for the steady switch, switch, switch of her tail.

Every once in a while when she just absolutely could not stand it anymore, she would release a howl of pure rage and charge
the duck pen, sending the inmates into a panicked peeping clutch on the far side. Then Gus herself would spend some time extracting
various body parts from the holes in the chicken wire and she would retreat to bathe herself from toe to tail as if to say,
I didn’t really mean that.

Meanwhile, the ducklings grew and in a very short time became real ducks. Each one would have required his or her own grocery
sack.

My father grew tired of retooling the duck pen and wandered off to construct prisons for woodchucks.

By the time Gus managed to penetrate the duck pen, the ducks were roughly the same size she was and there were six of them.
They had done hard time. A pact was swiftly drawn: the ducks would huddle together, quacking in mock terror as they raced
in tiny circles around their water bowl, and Gus would hunker down and stalk them but never eat them.

My mother amused herself most of the summer by waiting for people who drove into our yard to rush up and warn her that her
cat was stalking her ducks. My father used to sit on the back steps with the garden hose in his hand, and when Gus would get
the ducks going, he would blast her. I put my younger sisters in the duck pen to see if they would toddle in circles around
the water bowl as well. I believe we all grew as human beings.

The tale ends bitterly, of course. It turned out Gus was not alone when she thought of my ducks as food. My own parents murdered
my ducks.

My mother—who gave birth to me, and who devoted years of her life to keeping me from watching the miracle of feline childbirth—cooked
one of my ducks and tried to make me eat it. I couldn’t eat a bite. And neither could anyone else in my family because months
of being herded around the water bowl by the spirit of the Serengeti had turned my ducks into about the toughest birds to
ever waddle down the pike. My father claimed he broke a tooth and shot a baleful look at Gus.

Once again, she was visibly pregnant.

I
LIVE NEXT DOOR
to Eleanor. Every morning that I don’t go to the gym I see Eleanor and her mother race out of their house, coats, scarves
and book bags flying as they scrape off their car, jump in and speed off to wherever it is that Eleanor goes. Sometimes we
speak. Sometimes we nod. Sometimes my coat, scarf and book bag are flying as well and we just duck our heads and get on with
the going.

Once, back in the fall when my leaves were all piled neatly in the street, waiting for the city to come get them, three little
girls daintily rode their pink bikes into my leaf piles in what appeared to be an extremely feminine demolition derby. It
was at that time that I realized that unless Eleanor is exactly where Eleanor should be, doing exactly what Eleanor should
be doing, I really can’t tell which nine-year-old girl is Eleanor. I am a bad adult. While I still do vaguely remember how
the world spun around me when I was nine, how none but only the most irrelevant adults could fail to recognize me and my significance
to the universe on sight, all nine-year-old girls now pretty much look alike to me.

Several weeks ago I stayed home for three days to nurse an ailing back, and sometime during that brief respite from work,
there was a gentle tap on my door and when I went to look, there stood Eleanor. She had one of those color brochures of inedible
candies in overpriced tins that seem to be the staple of education finance, and she inquired very politely, in a hurried and
obviously memorized speech, which of these delightful tins I might personally wish to purchase. The simple answer would be
“none,” but there was the noblesse oblige of neighborliness to consider. I gave solemn consideration to several possibilities
until it occurred to me that none of the candy ever tastes quite like it should and I should just pick out the tin I objected
to the least. So I did so. I asked her if she needed the money now or later and she said it didn’t matter—my order should
come in X number of days/weeks/months and she would bring it to me. She thanked me very politely and made her escape.

Eleanor is unfailingly polite.

Some time went by.

I don’t remember exactly how much time. I had been taking muscle relaxers when Eleanor sold me the tin and at the time I was
lucky to have been able to figure out how to open the door to let her in.

However, as my life clipped along, every morning I would see Eleanor and her mother making their run for the car and it would
occur to me that I had not yet received my tin. The tin itself was inconsequential: what mattered was that if I did not pay
for the tin there was the chance that Eleanor herself might have to pay for it and I didn’t want that to happen. No one should
have to finance her own education at the age of nine.