Julia's Chocolates (4 page)

“The woman who talks to God. Who knows what He wants. Perhaps God told her what to buy at Pottery Avenue?”

Lara smiled, then sagged. “Well. He told her to buy three different sets of dishes, a chair, tablecloths, a new set of pans…I listened to her arguing with the saleswoman about the bill. ‘No’ to the roof for the preschoolers, but ‘yes’ to a set of striped picnic basket plates for five hundred and thirty-five dollars.”

Lara’s blond hair was ripped up tight into a bun. Bright blue eyes summed me up pretty quickly. I knew that she was taller than me, but almost as thin as the twitchy-eyed but beautiful psychic.

She was wearing proper beige pants. Proper, boring flat shoes. A dull blue blouse that was buttoned straight up. A mediumsized gold cross hung around her neck.

“Nice black eye,” she observed. “Who did that to you?”

I was not surprised by her bluntness. “My ex-fiancé. Fine family. Fine old, respected Bostonian family,” I muttered. “Fine, proper, respected men dot the family, and they all take fine, old potshots at their wives. Apparently they don’t beat up on their girlfriends—no, scratch that. Those scandals are covered up. Who wants to argue with a fine, old respected family, especially when they imply that the woman, the hittee in question is clearly an addict and a slut and after the family money by filing frivolous lawsuits.”

“Ah, I see. Don’t worry. They’ll slip right into hell when they die. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that wife beaters and child abusers go straight on down. Forgiveness does not extend to those who hurt the innocent with no remorse.” Lara took another long sip of her wine, then tiredly ripped the rubber band out of her hair, letting her blond locks fall about her shoulders.

She undid the top few buttons of her sweater and the stiffly starched white blouse, twisting her neck around from right to left as if the shirt had been strangling her.

The transformation was astounding. Lara had gone from looking like, well, like a proper, devout
minister’s wife
, to looking like a college student who sat around with friends and drank every night.

Lara raised her glass to me, her mouth trembling. “You’re lucky you left. You would have had to be prim and proper your whole life, and you would have to smother exactly who you are as a woman. Forever. You would have to do what everyone expected you to do, be who everyone expected you to be.”

She drank again, and I saw a pulse leap in her temple as she watched the flame dance on the candle.

“And if you deviated from the course even a little bit, people would look at you with shock and disgust, and your mother-in-law would suggest to your husband that you needed counseling and more Bible readings. You, as a person, would be gone. Squashed down like a bug. All because of a mistake you made years ago, when you were young and in love and desperate to please your father but even more desperate to escape from him.”

“Eat this.” Lydia handed her a brownie. “Here. Have two.”

“Is there?” I heard hope in Lara’s voice as she took a bite.

“Just a bit. As requested.”

Lara ate the brownie, interspersed with long gulps of wine, her eyes closed tight. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, what is your name again?”

I told her.

“Julia. Julia. Julia.” She rolled the name around in her mouth, as if tasting it. “That is a lovely, lovely name. And you escaped.
You escaped
!”

“Quiet, ladies, quiet!” Aunt Lydia commanded, taking a deep breath, the candlelight flickering against the soft curves of her face. After Lara’s “escape” comment we had all taken a detour away from awakening our breasts. The conversation had flown as we all discussed our own quick escapes. I did not mention Robert. “Reach into your inner souls, into your breasts. Do it now. Come on, now, dive into the rhythm of your body, harness your inner beat, and don’t be shy.”

Perhaps it was the wine, but I didn’t feel a shy bone in my body as I whisked off my shirt, then my bra. I almost sighed with relief as my boobs were released from their bondage. Wearing a bra with boobs this size can make you feel like you’re wearing giant blobs of hot metal secured to your chest with duct tape.

I took a deep breath and looked at my boobs as instructed. They were huge, but at least the nipples still looked straight ahead, like they should. Go, nipples!

I studiously avoided looking at the other women’s breasts, giving them privacy as I heard bras unhook and shirts come off. The candles flickered again.

“Now, look at one another,” Aunt Lydia insisted.

Oh, sheesh. I didn’t want to look. I resisted, but could feel other eyes on me, so I lifted my head. What the heck. The first breasts my eyes landed on were Lydia’s. Big, like mine. Sagging a bit, but I have to say she looked great.

Caroline’s were small and pretty. I wondered if, being a psychic, she could see into the future and see what her breasts would look like in fifty years.

Lara had a fairly large chest. She certainly covered up well. I could hate her for having such perfect boobs, but she was swigging another long drink of wine, and I knew why she was drinking, so I decided not to hate her. I wouldn’t have been able to stand being a minister’s wife, either.

Katie’s boobs were even bigger than mine.

She must have been thinking the same thing. “I have wanted to get rid of these things since I was a kid,” she said quietly.

“Me too. God might as well have attached mammoth watermelons to my chest.”

Katie stifled a giggle.

“Ladies, we are one, under the Sisterhood of Women. The Sisterhood of Breasts,” Lydia said, her voice low and hypnotic as she clasped her hands in front of her as if in prayer. “No breasts are better than others, just different.” I would have to disagree with her on that, but I kept my mouthola shut. “Now, ladies, close your eyes. Hold your breasts. Feel the soul inside of them, the core of your womanhood.”

The core of my womanhood was tattered and tired, I thought. Did I even have a core anymore?

“There is courage in our breasts,” Aunt Lydia said, her voice rising. “There is fortitude. There is passion. But we must keep them free of all evil forces, men included. We must offer them freedom.”

Freedom for my breasts? If they were any more free at the moment, they would pop off my chest and do a jig. I grabbed them anyhow. They felt like they always feel. Heavy. Very, very heavy. I wondered for the eightieth time how much they weighed. A hundred pounds each?

“The evil of this world surrounds us, surrounds our nipples,” Aunt Lydia intoned. “We must sensitize our nipples to the dangers, to respond to their cries for help!”

My nipples were probably crying out to be attached to less weight.

“Do not hate your breasts, ladies! Do not diminish them! Your inner soul tells you to love them. Love them! Love them! Love them!”

We were quiet. I closed my eyes, thought about the Mammoth Melons attached to my chest and tried to love them, love them,
love them
.

“I have reached into my inner soul, into my boobs,” Lara cried, “and I think I need more wine.” She grabbed another bottle. “And a new life.”

“But, Lara,” said the psychic, her eye twitching in quick succession, clearly not focusing on her perky breasts. “What about Jerry? He loves you and you—”

“He loves who he thinks I am, who he wants me to be!” Lara cried. “And I’m not that person. I can’t be that person anymore.
I just can’t.”

I rubbed my fingers over my injured eye. Yep. Still swollen. Still painful, although dulled by the wine. “What kind of a person is that?”

“What?”

“You say you can’t be the type of person that Jerry wants. What kind of a person is that?”

“It’s a nothing person,” she said bitterly. “A nothing person.”

A Nothing Person. Yes. I knew a person like that. A Nothing Person. I grabbed the mirror, looked at the underside of my bulging breast. There did not seem to be any power there at all. Only a large curve that pointed more or less up. I closed my eyes. At least the underside of my breast didn’t curve downward like a ski slope yet.

Still, I knew a nothing breast on top of a nothing person when I saw it. I lifted my head just enough to let a bit more wine slide down my throat. For a moment I wondered if I’d run far enough for Robert to leave me alone.

No, I told myself. That was impossible. He hated to lose. He would come.

“I don’t want to help run a church any more,” Lara said, her voice ragged. “I don’t.”

The silence was deep, heavy. It covered the five of us like an invisible black wool blanket.

“Well, then!” Aunt Lydia declared, putting both hands under her boobs and giving them a lift. “Grab those boobies! What do they tell you to do?”

Even in the darkness I could see Lara roll her eyes, but she cupped both her breasts, studying the nipples as if they would suddenly sprout mouths and tell her exactly what she wanted to know. “They’re telling me to do what I want to do.”

“Good!” Aunt Lydia stood up, at least a dozen braids swinging over her naked breasts, the candlelight flashing against her skin. Sixty-three years old. I got teary-eyed looking at her. She was fabulous. Must be all the target shooting and jam making and brownies with pot and the tea she drank that was laced with rum.

“Your breasts, ladies,
will talk to you
. They’ll offer sage advice, help to corral in your courage, steer you on your womanly course. They are, after all, closest to your heart. So. Tell us, Lara, what do you want to do? What have your breasts communicated to you?”

“That’s simple.” Lara dropped her breasts, her eyes flashing in anger, her mouth twisting. “They can’t stand being a minister’s wife any longer. They can’t stand the lid that is tightly nailed down onto the box. They want out. Completely out. They want to be free. Very free. Completely free.” She took another swig of wine, her blond hair falling about her shoulders.

“Well, then! Your breasts are offering you truth! Wisdom! Share more, share!” Lydia’s eyes opened wide, awaiting the official announcement.

“They want me to leave here and become an artist,” Lara said quietly. “In New York.”

And then she burst into tears, burying her face in her hands, the cross dangling between her knees until she reached up and broke it right off the chain.

S
ometimes life is better when you’re woozy. Very woozy. My shirt and bra were still off, discarded somewhere behind the couch, the candles flickering between me and the four other women.

We were still examining our boobs, trying to understand their psychology. Well, all of us except for Lara, who was on her sixth brownie and fourth glass of wine and laughing hysterically on the couch as she mimicked the voices of various people in her church’s congregation.

At one point she stopped, yanked her boobs up so she could see them well, and said to me, “Still young. Still happy-looking. What happened to
me
?” She kept laughing, the sound getting more high-pitched as the evening went on.

I glanced down at the Mammoth Melons. I had always felt completely detached from my breasts, as if they were another appendage, an appendage that I didn’t need and didn’t want. 35 DD. And they had been that big and bouncy since eighth grade. I almost needed a harness to rein the things in.

The women in our family line for as far back as we could remember had all had huge boobs. Huge, protruding breasts. We’d all tried to hide them. Even in old family portraits the women are sitting ever so slightly hunched, their shoulders pulled inward, as if they couldn’t stand for future generations to know what lived on their chests.

Yes, we all tried to hide our top halves, except for my mother, who wore them like a giant come-and-get-me banner.

And it had worked. Many husbands. Many boyfriends.

My whole childhood was filled with Creeps Who Liked Large Breasts. Even on children. I groaned as an avalanche of memories started to cave in on me, black and dirty and horrifying, and I fought them off, knowing how they bended what little sanity I felt I had left.

Robert had liked my breasts, but really nothing else. He had played with them, squeezing them until I’d cried out, pushing them together, then back out. Massaging them as one might massage bread.

“Come on, baby,” he would whisper, “arch your back for me.” He’d push me onto his king-sized bed in his bachelor pad, insist I strip, then make me pose in various positions.

At first I had liked it. “You look hot, baby. Open your mouth. Oh, yeah.” I thought it was kind of sexy. I had only been with one man before Robert, a hurried and somewhat drunken affair, and that a man like Robert wanted to be with me at all, that he was willing to risk seeing me naked, well, that in itself was sexy.

He’d straddle me and play with my boobs with his hands, his mouth, then he’d flip me over and do the same thing. It was as if my breasts were the only thing about me he really liked. He rarely kissed me at all, even less so on the lips, and the second after we’d finished having sex—and he’d never noticed that I’d never orgasmed—we were out of bed, and he would start in on his complaints and demands…

“We’re going to my mother’s tomorrow night…. I know your cooking class is then. You’re going to have to skip it. I already told her and my father we would be there. My mother wants to talk to you about your clothes. It’s about time, too.”

Or, “Those pants, well”—a mean laugh—“they don’t quite look right, do they? On someone who was built thinner than you, they might, but Cannonball, these aren’t made for you.”

And the worst, “Would it kill you to show a little enthusiasm in bed? What is wrong with you? I think it would be easier to have sex with an icicle.”

And still I stayed. I tried to please him. That didn’t work. I tried walking away. He came after me. I tried to fight back, but he squashed all my efforts. By the time I took off on our wedding day, I realized I hated him for making me hate myself.

“There is power in your breasts!” Lydia boomed. “Sit up straighter, Katie! Look for your power!”

I watched Katie struggle to sit up straight, her eyes at half-mast. Her face was more relaxed now than it had been, the wine having worked its wonders, her red hair only loosely held back by a rubber band, but even in the candlelight I could see her exhaustion, and I sensed her profound unhappiness, as if black charcoals had settled on her soul.

“I think my power was lost the first day I gave birth,” she said with a groan. She picked up the mirror that Lydia handed to her and held it up to her large, tired-looking breasts. Her bra, I had noted, was tattered and frayed, a dull beige. Her bra and her sweatshirt were folded neatly behind her.

“I have nursed four children. One still reaches for me as soon as I walk in the door. Sometimes I think it’s like having a pet leech. Oh, God. Did I just call my child a pet leech?” She groaned again, dropping the mirror.

“He’s not a leech,” she muttered, tears pooling in those dark eyes. “He’s so adorable, I could cry. Yesterday he climbed on my lap and kissed me on the cheek and said, ‘I love you better than the cat, Momma.’ Better than the cat! And he loves that cat.”

“You must regain yourself through your breasts, Katie!” Lydia admonished although I noticed that her voice was softer. “You have to make some choices.”

“I’ve made a choice to sit in this house, on this floor, and drink a lot of vine. I mean wine. It’s the perfect choice.” Katie lay back down and giggled, balancing a mirror on her breast. “There are no children to take care of. I am doing no housework in my home right now, or anyone else’s. I am not dealing with Mrs. Nunley, who told me today I wasn’t a good grout cleaner.”

“You’re not a good grout cleaner!” Lara laughed, taking a break from her drunken mimicking. “Horrors. I am sure you will be going to hell for that! I will pray for you.”

“That would be helpful, Lara,” Katie said. “Pray also that I don’t try to grout Mrs. Nunley’s face.”

“How many houses did you clean this week?” Aunt Lydia asked.

“Fifteen so far. Fifteen houses in Golden are bright and spanking-clean because of my vacuum cleaner and dust rag. See?” she declared, sitting up again and wobbling just a bit. “I have become what I wanted to become. A business owner! Whooo hooo! Katie’s Cleaning.”

But the whooo hooo came out weak, tired.

I knew something was up with Katie, and I knew the other women knew, too, by the way they looked at her, but no one said a thing.

“Mrs. Nunley said she is not going to recommend me to any of her friends unless I whiten the grout. ‘Make it as white as my teeth’ she told me. ‘
As white as my teeth.
’ Then she pulled back her lips with those wrinkled hands of hers and showed me her teeth, sticking out her tongue so I could see right down her throat.”

Katie started to laugh. I noticed the slight pitch of hysteria. “They weren’t white! She had rows of those silver fillings, and her front teeth were yellow. And there she is, with a sick grin on her face, her fingers pulling her lips back to her ears and telling me to make her grout as white as her teeth. At least I have my won-der-ful husband to support me.”

I did not miss the looks that Caroline, Lydia, and Lara exchanged.

“Oh, gag me,” Lara said. “Just ggaaaagggg me.”

Katie’s laughter filled the room, but none of the other women seemed to think this was the slightest bit amusing.

The lights were still low, the candles burning, but the Breast Power Psychic Night group had broken up a bit. Lara had passed out on the couch after declaring that she could hear the state of New York calling her name through aliens. Lydia had pulled a sweater over her head and sat embroidering a pillow that read, “Sex is good for the skin. Men aren’t.”

Katie had wrapped an afghan around herself and was in a rocking chair by the window, staring straight out, not moving, not reading, just staring.

And Caroline and I were huddled on the floor, sitting across from each other. Caroline and I had both put our shirts and bras back on.

I had heard nothing from my boobs except that I was fat, with no job, almost no money, and had a Dread Disease and a sicko ex-fiancé I had had to escape from.

Caroline the Psychic didn’t ask to see my hand to trace my lines. She didn’t ask for my favorite number. There were no fancy-schmancy teacups or tarot cards, only a flickering candle between us and Lydia’s quiet humming. I think it was a southern song, one the slaves would have sung in the fields. A song with an upbeat tune but words so tragic, so hopeless you wanted to cry.

Caroline stared at me. “Let me look at your knees.”

“My knees?” She nodded. “Okeydokey. You’re the psychic. If you can read knees, all the better.” I pulled up my skirt. My knees were scarred in several places from childhood.

“What’s this scar from?” Caroline asked, pointing to the smallest scar, shaped like a half moon.

“I was hit by a car.”

“Hmmm,” Caroline said, her shiny brown hair surrounding her head like a veil.

I thought I heard wisdom in her “Hmmm.”

“And this one?”

“That one I got when I was a baby.”

She arched an eyebrow at me. It looked like the wing of a blackbird.

“My mother said I was too fussy that day. She put me on the patio of our apartment when it was raining. I stood up in my high chair and fell over the top.”

I didn’t tell her the rest of it. Aunt Lydia had told me later what happened. She got the scoop from the neighbor next door, who heard my pathetic cries. The neighbor had rushed over and untangled me from the tray of my high chair.

There was a gash on my head where the tray of my high chair had hit me when it slipped off in the crash. My hands, elbows, and knees were also bleeding messes. The gashes required nineteen stitches. The new scrapes and bruises simply added to the old scrapes and bruises and two old breaks in my bones.

The neighbor had banged on the sliding glass door, but my mother didn’t answer, being passed out in bed, upset and drunk because another boyfriend had walked out. So the neighbor had called the police, who called Children’s Services and an ambulance. I went to the hospital and had eleven stitches put in my head and eight on my knees. I still have the scars.

Children’s Services picked me up for the third time that year and deposited me in a foster home until Aunt Lydia found out about it and came and got me. She petitioned the court for custody, for the second time, but lost when my mother, Candy, who is very petite, except for her breasts, and can look like the most harmless, lovely woman anyone has ever seen, convinced the judge that she had mended the error of her ways, wasn’t drinking anymore, and had found Christ. She was born again, praise the Lord. She was walking with Jesus and felt blessed to have this second chance at living a holy life.

The judge, a devout Christian, believed her, and back I went with my mother. Aunt Lydia was furious, she told me later, but my mother was careful from then on out. Not because she wanted me, but because she didn’t want Lydia to have me. Then Lydia would have won. Candy couldn’t have that. Ever. Even if her child’s life was a miserable, terrifying mess. Lydia was quite a bit older than she was, they shared only a mother, and they had never, ever gotten along. “I don’t get along well with sociopaths,” Aunt Lydia had told me once.

I know Aunt Lydia lived with a massive amount of guilt for not rescuing me from my mother, but there was nothing she could do. She tried again and again, when she could find us, or when I could secretly send her a letter, to convince Candy to let me come and stay with her. But except for summertime, Candy always said no. And yet, I think my mother often hated me, especially when I became a teenager.

“Hmmmm…” Caroline said again. “It looks like a scar of inner pain. Of betrayal. The pain is still in you, isn’t it?”

I nodded, but wasn’t too impressed. It’s not hard to discern from that story what really happened.

“That’s one of the things you’re running from, isn’t it? Besides the fiancé?”

I swallowed hard.

“In fact, you have another scar here that was caused by your mother, wasn’t it?”

I looked down at Caroline’s little hand. She was tracing the largest scar on my knee and was studying it, as if looking through a microscope.

“Well, that one isn’t exactly from my mother,” I hemmed.

“Yes, it is,” she insisted, rubbing it softly with her finger. “Your mother caused this one. Again, it was neglect. Not the same sort of neglect, but neglect, right? Yes, I can see that I’m right. I’m very sorry.”

I wanted to burst into tears. Sometimes a kind voice, a steady look, and a touch will make you cry, and this was it.

Yes, that was the worst scar, the tunnel to more scars, all of the same sort, all emblazoned on my heart as if I’d been branded by a cow poker.

“So.” I tried to bluster my way out. “What kind of fortune do you see in my knees? What’s my future?”

Caroline laughed. “Oh, I can’t see a thing in your knees for the future. They were the door to the past, to your pain. I’ve already seen your future. I saw it when I walked in the door.”

“You saw my future?” That was alarming.

“Yes,” said Caroline. “And no. I saw a purplish haze around you and—”

“A purplish haze?”

“Yes. That stands for change, and for choice.”

“What else?” I knew there was something else. She was pleating her fingers together and the eye-twitching was getting more intense.

It would be melodramatic to say that the candle between us flickered and went out, but it is the truth. That candle died. Just died, the wax swallowing up the wick, and though other candles burned in the room and Aunt Lydia had her embroidery light on, it was dark between me and Caroline.