Dietland

by Sarai Walker

wanted to become smaller so I wouldn’t be seen. If I was smaller they wouldn’t stare. They wouldn’t be mean.

not seen

She even invited me out for coffee after the meeting, but I said I was busy. I had never had a fat friend and I didn’t want one.

no fat friends

Gladys directed us to close our eyes and imagine ourselves thin. She told us to write down five things that our thin selves would be able to do that our overweight selves couldn’t. The other women and I began to write, but Janine looked stunned. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “I came here to lose a few pounds because of back pain. What kind of sick, self-loathing mindfuck is this?” She was flipping through the booklet, red in the face, breathless from rage.

When I'm thin

If the photos from all the tourists were collected and placed in chronological order, I could have flipped through them to see the girl under the tree become a young woman, one who grew larger and larger, moving into the house, standing behind the curtain—half in the frame, then nothing but shadow.

just a shadow

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

controlled

For some reason, locked in my second bathroom stall of the night, I imagined Mason trying to pick up Alicia in a bar, not as a joke but because he liked her. She might have been flattered by Mason’s attention. She might have gone back to his apartment and had sex with him. She couldn’t see his true self. Stupid Alicia.

This.

Mason thought he could throw a crumb in the direction of the fat girl and it would make up for everything that had happened to her in her life, most of all what had happened that night. Telling her she’s pretty was the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the winning lottery number, the healing hand of Christ on top of her head. He had been made to believe he had such power. It had been given to him by women like her.

this.

He wasn’t Mason anymore; he was them. Looking at him, looking at them, the behavior of my whole life was suddenly inexplicable. The years of Waist Watchers, Baptist Weight Loss and plans for surgery, the hours and hours that added up to years of my life spent sitting at home afraid to go outside, afraid to be laughed at and shunned and rejected and stared at by faces like the one looking up at me now, one of the generic, mass-produced, ordinary, follow-the-crowd, hateful faces. At another time, at home alone, I would have wept to think about it. I wished I could go back to the beginning of my life and start again. I removed my foot from his chest. I didn’t want to fight with him. He didn’t matter. I turned to leave, pushing my way through the onlookers. No one tried to stop me. The police hadn’t been called. Mason’s friends seemed to have disappeared. As I walked away from the bar, the sky above was clear and black. Somewhere up there was the laugh that had escaped from me, the long trail of light that was now part of the universe. I couldn’t see it, but I knew it was there. I would only have to look up to remember it.

This.

“I want you to know she’s gone,” I said to Verena. “The thin woman inside me, the perfect woman, my shadow self.” “Alicia?” “No, I’m reclaiming her. That perfect woman, that smaller self, was only ever an idea. She didn’t really exist, so she doesn’t need a name.” Alicia is me, Alicia is me. Verena blew me

Alicia is me.