I had three pieces of pizza. It’s not fair; between Lee and Mom I got no slack! If it was just Mom I could have bullshit her, beat her down, made her give in and be happy with a compromise- one piece of thin crust vegetarian, patted with about three napkins just to remove any trace of grease that could possibly be lingering on it- even with Lee there could have been some kind of compromise: maybe just one slice of the regular meat lovers that he loves. Even that would have been better. But, no, both just gained up on me at the restaurant, ordering a large stuffed crust meat lover’s pizza. Even the sound of the words coming out of Mom’s mouth smacked of residual grease, a heartattack waiting to happen. And just when we’re sitting down and I’m trying to find the smallest piece of the pizza so I can cut it in half, Lee reaches over, grabs my plate, and piles the biggest fucking piece that I have ever seen onto it. Then he grins that sexy grin that makes it (almost) impossible to hate him and hands me the plate. “And when you’re done with that you can have another.” I glare at him, taking in every greasy, disgusting piece, feeling my stomach pushing against the waistband of my jeans, the grease making a trail down my throat into my stomach.
Lee is lounging on my bed. This is the part that I have dreaded all day, Scene fifteen, act two, Undressing In Front of Lee. Yes, I’m a fatdisgustingpig, I hate myself, I think that I have got to be the most disgusting thing on the planet, and this does not make me want to undress in front of my boyfriend any more than it would if I was a size 0. Hesitantly, I grab my sweatpants and t-shirt, “I’m gonna go get dressed…” I say. He smiles up at me, those beautiful blue eyes bearing into my soul and stretches out on my bed, opening his arms up wide.
“Why? You know that you’re just going to get undressed again, anyway.” I blush, shrugging.
“But, what if I don’t want to…”
“Why, baby? I haven’t seen you in two months. I’ve missed you.”
“But….” I struggle for an excuse, but that part of my mind is busy, holed up in the back of my skull with the other pieces, fighting for its piece of the pizza that is trying to make its way through my digestive tract. “….I don’t want to….” I finish, lamely.
“Baby,” he sits up, anger written across his face is 48-point font. “Goddamnit, I want to make love to you! What is wrong with that? What is different now? I used to have to drag you away from the bed!” he yells.
Yeah, Miranda hisses into my ear, when you were a huge cow and wanted to keep him happy in bed so that he wouldn’t just run off with the sexiest girl that he found that was skinnier than you. You’d better bet that he bragged about you- that you always gave him what he wanted, when he wanted- but he let his eye roam, don’t even let him lie to you about that. Even you know that he did- he thought about fucking those sexy cheerleaders that were doing splits and that weren’t as fat as you are.
“I’m just not in the mood to tonight, baby.” I plead with him, holding onto my clothes for dear life, wishing that I were Dorothy and could just click my heels together, find out that this was all a nightmare and the last few years hadn’t happened.
“It’s about the eating thing, isn’t it?” he gets up, walking toward me, the panther toward the frightened gazelle, frozen in the panther’s glare. I can’t answer, and then his arms are around me, his lips on mine. He rips the clothes out of my hands and throws them on the floor. “I’m going to say this once, Lilli. I love you. I think that you were the most beautiful woman that I had ever seen when I first met you, and the longer that I’ve known you, the more beautiful you have gotten. But this…disease, obsession, whatever you call it, it’s taken away my beautiful Lilith. You still have those glimpses where I can see the beautiful woman that you were, that you still are, but it’s just hidden by all this…” he motions to my body. “Now, I still love you. I want to make love to you, because when I do, you are the only thing on my mind, how much I love you is the only thing on my mind- not how you look, not how much you weigh- just you. Will you please let me have that?”
He doesn’t wait for an answer, leading me to the bed and putting his hands under my jaw, holding me there as he kisses me, his hands coming down to lead mine up around his neck, grasping the hair that has grown out from the buzzcut that I gave him before I went off. He kisses me, first on the forehead, the cheeks, the eyelids, the lips. He kisses his way down my neck, to my collarbone, and across it. I lean back, pulling off my shirts, blocking Miranda out with all of my might, sure that as soon as he sees me in my underwear he’ll give up, he won’t want to make love to a skeleton. He glances at my body, and I can se the indecision in his eyes, but then it’s gone and there’s a fire in his eyes that I know too well- it’s the look that he gets when he knows that he should give up, and that little place in his head tells him that he’d better not, that he knows better than to give up. I’ve seen it in his runs; I’ve seen it when he tried to learn German and playing the guitar. Now I’m seeing it again, and it almost scares me. He lies on the bed, pulling me on top of him and unbuttoning my jeans. I push his hands away, scared again, nervous as a new virgin, but he puts his hands back on the buttons, kissing my neck, “C’mon, baby, just let me do it. Don’t think about it. Just go, like you did the last time.”
I’m lying on the bed, and he’s poised above me, the muscles in his chest ripping, his hair flopping over his face. I can feel him nudging against my thigh, but he stops, leaning down to kiss my neck. “I love you, baby. No matter what you are the most beautiful thing in the world to me.” He kisses me wasted breasts, my protruding ribcage, down to my hipbones and I try to sit up, knowing where he’s going with this. Gently, he pushes me back down, one hand staying on my ribcage. I feel his warm breath on my thigh, kissing up it, then the warm tongue that almost makes me jump out of my skin. I jump a little, an electric volt running up my spine that makes him laugh. I grab his hair, feeling a moan escape me.
Jess follows me out to the courtyard, allowing me my nicotine fix before fifth period Physics (a.k.a. How to Make Your Head Explode). We head to our usual spot: underneath the overhang of the neglected West wing of the school, the spot that all of the other Rejects hang out in. I sit down and one of the Freaks, a girl named Rhonda that has permanent nicotine stains on her fingers and whose hair is thirty different colors, glances at me, raising her eyebrow- the accepted greeting among the Freaks whose only interaction is between classes when one of more needs a cig to get through the rest of the day. Jess pulls out her pack of Reds and hands one to me. I cup my hand around it while she leans forward with her lighter to light it. I keep my eyes focused on the glowing end as I take a deep lungful, allowing the nicotine to flow into my brain. Ah, more brain cells dead as we speak. Maybe at this rate, my heart will give out and my brain will shut down at the same time. Maybe that way I won’t suffer much. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Jess move, trying to be subtle and failing miserably. I glance up, sharply, and take too deep of a breath on my cig, choking on the acrid smoke that flows up my nose. Rhonda pounds on my back while Jess digs in my bag for my everpresentwaterbottle, handing it to me and letting me take two deep swallows, getting the breath back into my lungs.
“Why is she out here?” Rhonda’s gravely voice cuts through my ears, straight into my brain. “Those people don’t belong out here with us. They’re not welcome.”
I can tell who she’s talking about before I even look up, studiously ignoring Jess making swift, chopping motions with her hands. There, sitting across the quad, is Lee….with Bobbi, who is looking disgusted with both her surroundings and those who currently co-inhabit it with her. Lee shakes a cigarette out of his pack, turning his back to me and, before I can say anything, Jess is on her feet, halfway across the quad (which is not that much of a feat- the quad is only about three feet wide). She taps him on the back and he no sooner turns around than she starts screaming at him.
“WHERE THE FUCK DO YOU GET OFF?!”
I can’t hear his answer, and I suck at reading lips. Bobbi looks up at her, innocently, and I can see the perfectly pouty lips forming an answer. Jess’ back tenses up, and Lee gets a look in his eyes like he would rather be anywhere but there.
“YOU FUCKING WHORE! I KNEW THAT YOU WERE A TRASHY SLUT THAT WOULD DO ANYTHING WITH A DICK BUT TO STOOP THIS FUCKING LOW…..SHE JUST GOT OUT OF FUCKING REHAB! AND HE WAS THE ONLY THING THAT WAS KEEPING HER ON THIS SIDE OF SANE!” I can feel my face go scarlet, and wish that I could just make Jess shut the hell up.
Rhonda taps my shoulder, “Mills, you need to go over there. Grow some balls, chick, and go get your man back!”
I nod, standing up and lighting another cigarette, feeling much tougher with a cigarette clutched in my fingers. Before I know what I’m doing, I’m walking across the quad, seeing Lee’s face get closer and closer to me. Jess turns around. “Do you know what the fuck this whore told me?”
“Well, if the little freak wants to know, I think that I should get the pleasure of telling her myself, lesbo.” Bobbi answers, turning to smile at me. “Your friend over here asked where I got off and I told her….” She trails off, grinning an ugly grin at me, “with your man inside of me.”
I’m seeing red. There are few times that I let the pure rage that is Miranda boil up inside of me, but this time I let it out. Before I could even see what I was doing, I reared back, allowing Miranda full reign. Then, as if I was watching it in a movie, not doing it myself, I reared back and sent my fist flying right into her perfect nose.
“No!!!” she screams, putting her hands up to her nose, “Daddy’ll kill me! This was a birthday present!!!”
She stumbles off, tripping on the concrete in her hooker heels and almost falling onto the cracked pavement, but she regains her footing. Jess turns a look of amazement and pride in her eyes and makes to slap me on the back. Then she looks at Lee, then at Bobbi, “I guess I’d better go turn myself in.” she grins a wicked grin, mocking slapping herself on the wrist, “Bad, bad, Jessica, punching a girl in the nose. What a horrible person I am….maybe I’ll get leniency because she did deserve it.” She wraps me in a hug, “Good job, love.” She whispers into my ear, “I’ll call you later.”
Lee looks at me, “Lill…”
I turn away, throwing down my cigarettes and ripping his hoodie off my shoulders, then start walking, Miranda riding my ass all the way home where I curl up on my bed, falling into a partially-comatose state until I hear the tires crunch on gravel and the door slamming that meant Mom was home. She opens the door, leaving a shadow on the wall behind me, leaning in to make a half-profile. “Baby?” she whispers. I slow my breathing, make believe I’m asleep. After a few minutes, she closes the door softly, leaving me to be raked over the coals, yet again, by Miranda.
I’ve started to become really good at ignoring the phone. For the last three days, I’ve become a robot: waking up in the morning; throwing on the first thing that my hand lands on; going to school; answering teachers on autopilot; smoking mechanically; going home; doing homework to make up for what I’ve missed while I was away; daydreaming during dinner while Mom rambles about her day; having the obligatory “family time” with Mom; zoning out on the couch, hiding behind my Ayn Rand or Tolstoy, then slipping upstairs as soon as I could to curl in bed, thinking my nasty little thoughts, feeling the worms eat into my brain.
The nightmares have come back full force, like they did when I first went into treatment. They always say that it gets worse before it gets better; I just didn’t know that it “getting worse” meant that you would almost be torn in two before you got any better. At first it was horrible, I stayed up all night, drank cup after cup of coffee every day, and curled up in my bed when lights out came around, staring at the same one spot of white wall that ran behind my bed, watching my memories be played out like movies on the wall.
No comments:
Post a Comment