Big Summer

by Jennifer Weiner

The meeting leader was an older black woman named Valerie, with freckled, reddish skin and short, curly hair that was longer on one side of her head than the other (after a few weeks of regular attendance, I heard Nana whispering to another member about Valerie’s wig, which was when I realized that those curls weren’t her own). Valerie’s eyebrows were skinny, plucked arches, her body was tall and lean and long-waisted. She had a long, scrawny neck with a soft wobble of a chin underneath it, the only part of her that was still fleshy and soft. Valerie’s voice was a marvel. It could go from a soft whisper to a confiding murmur to an exhorting shout, and hold the crowd spellbound, bringing them to silence with just a whisper. She reminded me of the Reverend C. L. Franklin, whom I’d heard on my parents’ Aretha Franklin CDs. She spoke in the same kind of preacherly cadences, encouraging the weak,

congratulating the strong, welcoming backsliders back into the fold, and celebrating with the women who’d hit their goal weights. Valerie would begin each meeting by showing a poster-size picture of herself. In a blue satin dress with her hair in a short, black bob and bright red lipstick on her lips, she didn’t even look like the same person. Her breasts and belly bulged, her hips were so wide they seemed to strain the seams of her dress. She had a wide smile on her face, a paper plate of food in her hands. There was only Valerie in the picture, but, if you looked closely, you could see a man’s arm at the edge of the frame. Sometimes, I would let my mind wander while Valerie talked, and wonder if the hand belonged to a father or a brother or a husband or a boyfriend, someone who’d loved Valerie when she’d been that big. “That was me,” she would begin, her voice serious and quiet. “Oh yes! Oh yes it was!” she’d say, as if someone had voiced their doubt out loud. “I was twenty-six years old.” Her voice would get louder and louder as she went through her litany. “I weighed three hundred pounds. I was morbidly

obese. Borderline diabetic. I had sleep apnea. I couldn’t walk up a flight of stairs without needing to catch my breath.” By then, women would be nodding along with her, all of them listening raptly, even the ones who’d heard the very same litany the week before and the week before that. Valerie would lower her voice. “I’d tried it all. Grapefruit. Cabbage soup. Slim-Fast. Did I call 1-800-Jenny? You know that I did. And then…” She would pause, hand uplifted, looking over the room, making eye contact with different members. “Then I found this program. And this program…” Another pause. Valerie would put her hand on her heart and say, “This pr...

and forgiveness and exhortations to stay the course in the upcoming week. I thought it was nice, how the women all seemed to want to help each other. When Valerie would open the floor, saying “Ladies, let me hear about your triumphs and temptations,” someone would start talking about an upcoming party, or a business trip, or how there’d been birthday cake at the office, and everyone would want to help. “They know I’m on a diet!” the birthday-cake woman had wailed. “And I couldn’t not eat it! I had to be polite!” I listened as the other Weight Watchers proposed solutions—Tell them you’re allergic! Take a slice and say it’s for later and throw it away! I wondered if this wa...

“You are fine, just the way you are,” he said. “Bodies come in all shapes and sizes. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel any differently.”