It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (7 page)

In hindsight, I see so clearly the isolation, the desperation for attention and affection of any kind that absorbed me. Mom returned to work three days after the funeral. Anthony didn’t go back to school in Arizona. He began staying out with friends all night, working, doing anything to avoid coming home. I was desperate for one of them to stay with me, to keep me from feeling as though Dad’s death was eating away at me, slowly and alone. But neither ever did. And I never asked them to.

I prayed for invitations to hang out with friends, for anything that might involve a real plated meal and a family. Our home had become the loneliest place I’d ever been, and I hated it. I hated that I was the one who had to lock the front and back doors to our
apartment each night before heading to bed. I hated worrying that another tow truck might show up early in the morning to repossess our car and that maybe this time I’d be the only one home. I hated worrying that the electric company might turn off the lights again, and then I’d be left not only alone, but in darkness, too. I hated myself for wishing that Anthony felt guilty for going out, because I understood why no one would want to remain in our lifeless home. I hated the feeling of helplessness, of knowing that Mom was working to support me while I sat at home gorging myself on almost all of the only food she could afford. I hated it each time I stuffed the cardboard of a cereal box into our trash can, knowing that I’d just eaten five bowls and she’d eaten none.

But hating it didn’t change anything; it didn’t fill our home with more people, more food, or more comfort. None of us could offer each other anything substantial. Not Mom, not Anthony, not me. Instead, Mom and Anthony left, surviving by busying themselves. And I, for my part, ate.

When I’d finish eating all the sweets in our kitchen, usually a measly three days after Mom had gone grocery shopping, I’d begin baking. I restocked our cabinets with homemade treats. Almost exclusively, I lifted recipes from the pages of the one, the only recipe book that sat on our counter:
The Silver Palate Cookbook
, our favorite. Mom, concerned with even the mention of clutter, wasn’t the kind to leave things out—especially things that belonged on bookcases or in cabinets. That she let that tome keep company with her KitchenAid stand mixer on the counter meant something.

Since my fifth birthday, I had been Mom’s apprentice every time she baked. I shadowed her as she beat butter and sugar into glossy gold batter for bishop’s cake. We made luscious lemon squares with tart, bright notes of citrus and a buttery shortbread base. She let
me dust powdered sugar across their gooey tops. I helped by cracking eggs into the bowl and running a knife along the top of her measuring cups, letting the excess flour drop off the sides. I learned the timing. I learned the precision. I learned the delicate nature of baking. And my favorite: the requisite taste testing. There was value in licking every battered spoon and every frosting-laden finger. What, exactly, that value was, I’m not aware, but my belly knew, and I’d say that’s enough. I left most major decisions to that part of me—to the wisdom of my waist.

Having spent years at Mom’s side, asking questions, watching cupcakes dome through the oven door, I learned to read almost exclusively by recipe cards. They served as flash cards, lined up neatly in the pattern of the alphabet.
Apple Pie, Banana Bread, Carrot Cake …
 And somehow, without consciously realizing the transition, I became the baker. I sat there in our kitchen—now thirteen and unsure if it was hunger or just loneliness that brought me there—and recreated the confections we once made together. The ones that drew me, nose first, into the kitchen tied themselves to moments in my life and tucked themselves away in the closet of my memory.

Double fudge brownies as fat and dense as bricks, coconut white-chocolate blondies, cashmere custards so thick they’d remain stuck to a spoon held upside down, spicy molasses cookies, and all things that conjured lust. As I yanked each of them from the oven’s mouth, never quite making a clean getaway without some form of heat blister, I felt full. Our apartment wasn’t so lonely with two dozen cupcakes cooling on the kitchen counter. It wasn’t so quiet when the timer dinged and the mixer churned. There was less to notice when my hands were knuckle-deep in kneading dough.

And when I wasn’t baking, when I wasn’t all alone in my own
kitchen, Mom drove me to Boston to stay with her sister Maureen; Maureen’s husband, Mike; and their kids, Michael, Matt, and Meredith. I spent weekends, summer breaks, vacations, and holidays with them when Mom had to work. If only I’d had an
M
name, I might have forgotten that I wasn’t one of them. Maureen and Mike treated me no differently than their own children; my cousins—all around my age—accepted me as a sister. I experienced a kind of nurturing—a sense of structure and normalcy—that I hadn’t known before. I was happy there. I was a kid there. But sometimes, in quiet moments when I’d turn the corner into their kitchen to see Mike tinkering with a school project for Michael, or when I’d take notice of Matt’s report card hung proudly on the fridge, or when I’d watch Maureen French-braid Meredith’s hair for her dance recital, I’d be jolted back to the reality that this perfect family was not truly mine. At my house, no one was there to help me with projects, no one knew if I brought my report card home or not, and even if Mom could braid my hair, it would be unlikely that she’d be able to make it to my recital. When Mom would come to pick me up, even though I’d have missed her terribly, I’d stare out the car window as we’d drive away, back toward Maureen’s big, beautiful yellow house and wish that I could stay.

Back in Medfield, I found other surrogate families—those of my best friends, Kate and Nicole. Nicole’s dad, Paul, was the one to drive me home most school nights after he’d cooked dinner for all of us. I always felt a pang of guilt, no matter how many times he reassured me that it was no trouble at all shuttling me back to my apartment, because I knew it couldn’t have been easy to juggle all that he did. On top of being a volunteer firefighter, he also worked a full-time rotating shift—nights and days—as a gas control operator.
I hadn’t known many men to work so tirelessly. I hadn’t known even one, in fact, who not only went to work at multiple jobs but also helped to clean the house, cooked dinner, and would still be present for every Youth Soccer game his three daughters had. The seasons that I played in that soccer league, Mom only made it to one game. But Paul was there, on the sidelines at every game, running down the field and cheering for me as I dribbled the ball—just as he did for Nicole.

Perhaps because of the baking, perhaps because of Paul’s unbelievable spaghetti and meatballs, surely because of the way I ate, I gained twenty-five pounds during seventh grade, bringing me to two hundred pounds total. And though I had only ever grown outward, Mom hadn’t made me aware that she noticed. In fact, Mom was the only one, other than Anthony, who never acknowledged my size. I look back in amazement that Anthony had never once hurled the word
fat
at me as an insult the way my classmates had. Not many people in my family did, except Dad’s mom, Nana. She was the one who had been microwaving Lean Cuisines for me all the years I could remember.

Each summer, when Anthony and I stayed with her and Papa in South Carolina for the month of August, Nana made sure to stock up on food for our stay. On her counter sat a box of twelve sticky cinnamon-pecan buns glazed so thickly with white frosting, you could barely see their coiled centers—and they were all for Anthony. Next to them, for me, sat a package of sugar-free, fat-free Jell-O pudding cups—and not even the ones with the vanilla in the middle. The freezer, too, was split between Anthony’s food and mine. He had the Klondike bars, I had the Lean Cuisines, and we all had the tray of lasagna that she’d made a decade before, give or
take a year. In the mornings, Nana suggested I sprinkle Equal on my Rice Krispies so that I could “keep my sugar down,” just like she did, to manage her diabetes. Still concerned, she sat me down one afternoon to tell me that she was disturbed by how many bananas I’d eaten. I hadn’t even realized one could eat too many bananas, let alone be concerned about it. I looked at Nana and nodded, ashamed of my fruit consumption. But as she started to get up, I noticed the trouble. She was stuck within the arms of the chair. At five feet two inches tall, Nana weighed well over three hundred pounds. Her belly—like Dad’s—preceded her. Perhaps she didn’t want me to end up as she had. Perhaps she thought she could fix me. But all I gathered from her actions and suggestions was that fat people should eat diet food, while skinny people could eat delicious food.

Mom wasn’t like that. She never even brought a scale into our home. For better or worse, she let numbers and measurements live in doctors’ offices and in the mall beside the bathroom where people could pay twenty-five cents for an unpleasant reality check.

Instead, she rubbed my back when people in school began to tease me more. When I came home and cried after being humiliated in homeroom, she supported me rather than suggested I change. My weight was something that we both wished were different, but neither of us spoke of it as something fixable. We treated my fat in the same way we treated New England winters: wishing they weren’t so burdensome, but accepting that they probably wouldn’t change anytime soon.

It wasn’t until my annual physical in eighth grade, just after I turned fourteen, that Mom and I began to think differently about my weight. We sat in the doctor’s office, just as we’d done year after
year, waiting for my doctor to comment on how big I was before letting us go. This time, though, he breathed deeply and then held my growth chart in front of him for us to see. I looked at the graph, marveling at the line that rose steadily upward and to the right, from 1985 until that day in 1999. He traced a finger along the line, explaining that my weight since birth had increased rapidly, and that the rate at which I was still gaining was alarming, to say the least. He paused. “Andrea, my girl, you’ve got to lose weight.” What he said next has always stuck with me: “At this rate, I predict you’ll weigh three hundred pounds by the time you turn twenty-five.” As if in sync, my stomach and jaw dropped. My heart stopped beating for a solid ten seconds. Mom reached over to hold my hand. I was horrified. So horrified that big fat tears came rolling down my cheeks as he rattled off a list of suggestions to help me lose weight. “Eat more fruit, try whole wheat bread, don’t eat cookies …” I stopped listening after the one about joining a sports team for exercise, too scared to even feign interest.

To say I was overwhelmed in that moment would be as much of an understatement as saying I was a little pudgy. When my doctor left and closed the door behind him, Mom grabbed my face in her hands, looked into my saltwatery eyes, and assured me: “Francie, now you listen to me. You’re the most beautiful being I’ve ever laid eyes upon.” And though every mother might spout the same sentiments, I knew mine wanted nothing as much as she wanted me to believe her words.

We left the office, and I cried all the way to lunch at Pizzeria Uno, where we sat in a leather booth built for two and talked earnestly for the first time about losing weight. I felt vulnerable acknowledging with Mom how big I’d gotten, when weight had
always kept a quiet and immutable existence. I didn’t say it aloud, but I recognized the oddity of talking about eating healthier while swigging a Sprite, just one of the many things the doctor suggested that I eliminate from my diet. I picked french fries from my platter of chicken fingers and brought them to my mouth quickly, compulsively, as though clearing my plate were the first order of business in making room for change. I finished my meal and even helped with some of Mom’s, and what I was left with was an odd tug-of-war between hating and pitying myself. I could feel the fat clinging tightly to me as it always had, and now, at the very thought of having to rid myself of it, I felt it cling tighter. At fourteen and two hundred pounds, I couldn’t help but feel burdened by my weight. Worse, I was saddled with the fact that I was the one who had to actively lose it.

I thought of my best friends, how they ate, and how I seemed to eat no differently. After school, we all ate the same Drake’s chocolate cakes with cream filling. We all stirred chocolate syrup into our milk. We all knew which houses handed out full-size candy bars on Halloween. I believed that my body had betrayed me. Unwilling to accept any responsibility, I thought I’d been unfairly stuck with fat for no reason.

Within a week, I grudgingly began my first diet. Mom had read an advertisement for a voluntary clinical weight loss study being conducted on young women at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. She came home with a stack of forms she’d already filled out and signed. “It’s a good opportunity for you,” she promised, her voice soothing and hopeful. She explained that I’d learn a great deal, that I’d have a support system. And though I couldn’t muster enthusiasm or even a shred of confidence, I wanted badly to believe her.

The study aimed to observe the effects of a new and experimental weight loss medication called Meridia (sibutramine). The drug was an appetite suppressant whose desired effect was reduction of hunger and, in turn, food consumption, thereby encouraging weight loss. This exact medication type has since been withdrawn from the US market by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in several other countries for its potentially dangerous side effects.

Half of the group of twenty volunteer girls, ages twelve to seventeen, would be administered the drug itself; the other half would be taking a placebo. Neither group would know which pill they took: real or fake. Over the course of three months, the girls would meet every other week to be weighed and measured and to talk collectively with a team of registered dietitians.

At first, it seemed like a reasonable idea. At our first Saturday-morning group meeting, I met ten girls, each seated next to her mother, and our lead nutritionists. I scanned the room when we all sat down and immediately noted our similarities. We were all big, all squished into chairs with thin metal arms that dug into our thighs, all fidgeting and uncomfortable, all clearly wishing we were somewhere—anywhere—else. I looked around at each of the mothers and noted that none of them was thin. Like their daughters, each carried at least twenty extra pounds. I wondered if they hoped to lose as much weight as they wanted their daughters to lose by enrolling them in this study. I looked to our main nutritionist as she tugged at her gauzy muumuu, readjusting it so that it draped over her belly like a towel over a beach ball.
How can she be fat?
I wondered.