Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski Read online

  Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski

  By Joanna Franklin Bell

  Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski

  Copyright: Joanna Franklin Bell

  Published: August 31, 2014

  The right of Joanna Franklin Bell to be identified as author of this Work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover photo credit:

  © Brad Calkins | Dreamstime.com

  Cover design:

  John Bowen | DesignFlaw

  Dedication

  For Robert Olmstead,

  who said I couldn't write,

  and Robert McConnell

  who said I could.

  Big girls don't cry.

  Who said they don't cry?

  - The Four Seasons

  Like to listen? This book is available as an audiobook, on Amazon's Audible platform:

  http://www.amazon.com/Take-Load-Off-Mona-Jamborski/dp/B00SSTSKJ8

  Chapter 1

  I've been thinking about Christmas pudding lately, and not for the reasons you'd expect. I don't actually want any, because as sweet as my tooth is, the idea of dried fruits and treacle and brandy, all aged for a few months in a bag, isn't really appealing. But the words sound so festive: Christmas pudding. It should be a remarkable dessert. Or, even a remarkable main dish, if you want to think back to the savory types of meat puddings those Brits are always referring to in books. In my head, Christmas pudding should be something as creamy and chocolaty as what you'd get from the single-serve Jello cartons, milky and sweet and free of lumps or raisins or complicated fermenting. It should probably be a little minty, as a nod to the candy-cane atmosphere of Christmas, but have a sprig of holly printed on the lid. That would be my ideal Christmas pudding.

  But here I am in July, and why am I thinking about Christmas pudding? Probably because we always pine for what we do not have. The winter seems cozy and romantic in the hell of summer, but hot beaches and sunlight are what we yearn for all winter. To be clear, I am not hitting the beach this summer, and my thoughts of next Christmas are firmly based upon books, magazines, and tv shows – I have no life. My coziness will be isolated and manufactured, and my beach experiences are inside of bestsellers, or on my small flat-screen, where the cable company can give me any season I like.

  I am only tangentially aware that it is July right now – my air conditioning is on, and, since I am being honest here, I have not gone outside in three years, and I only crack the windows during the mildest days in spring and fall. The temperature could be 67 degrees, 365 days a year, for all I know. Except for one panic-stricken day last summer when my a.c. failed, and I felt the room temperature slowly climb a few stifling degrees at a time until my apartment was nearly 90, before the building manager repaired whatever was wrong with the compressor outside. My relief flooded back tenfold with every degree the apartment temperature dropped, until I felt nearly giddy over my near-miss as the cool air blowing from the floor register continued to billow up my long, gigantic skirt. I had been prepared to slowly cook and drown in my own puddles of sweat, before I would go elsewhere. I was prepared to literally die, choking for days on hot stale air, before I would leave my apartment. And since I am trapped inside my body already, bring trapped inside my apartment didn't feel any different, until the motionless air started to get hot. Then, claustrophobia like I cannot describe took over. Clawing my clothes off would bring no relief, as it was the hundreds of pounds of fat I needed to claw off my body that would help me adjust to any oppressive warmth, let alone actual summer heat.

  I don't know what I would have done if the air conditioning hadn't been repaired the same day. I am uncomfortable right now, thinking about it, realizing that the compressor could go up again any time this summer as well. But, the perks of condo ownership pretty well necessitate that all that stuff must get taken care of, when a repair affects the entire building, and not just our individual units. So, there's nothing to be worried about. Right? We even have back-up generators, covered by our condo fees, for power outtages during storm season. I am safe, inside my apartment, really. I never need to leave.

  And that is a weighty relief.

  I have not always been fat. I have certainly never been this fat. I am shocked, sometimes, at how uncomfortable I am in my own skin – I would expect to be used to myself by now, having weighed more than 400 pounds for a few years now, and only exceeding 500 this past year. You can get used to anything, right? Everyone's experiences become their own normals, and a new normal can replace an old normal even for kidnapping victims, prison inmates, refugees, or anyone else whose crazy story I've read, or seen on the Discovery channels. When I was skinny, off and on, briefly at the end of high school, twice later in my 20s and once in my 30s, I got used to it so quickly that I stopped being delighted with myself – I couldn't remember what it felt like to be self-conscious, or to fear walking past mirrors. I was just me, simply me, thankfully and happily anonymous, drawing no stares except for occasional approving ones. I never stopped appreciating that feeling, but I didn't take my new normalcy as the gift from the universe that it was – the chance to live life as a normal skinny person. I remember standing in a Home Depot, maybe twelve years ago, waiting for an employee to saw down some slats of wood I needed for a bed frame, feeling my knees clunk together when I crossed my feet. I remember wondering what it used to feel like before, when my knees didn't clunk. Standing there, I didn't remember. I didn't remember being chubby. I had probably only been that skinny for a few months, at the time, and yet, the knee clunking had already eclipsed the chafing of the thigh rubbing. My weight fluctuated so much that I guess I just accepted whatever the new me was. It's not like I could control my obsessions, whether they were bingeing-on-peanut-M&M obsessions, or the starving/smoking/shrinking disciplined yogurt and tuna obsessions, with a side of Marlboro Lights. Yo-yo dieting is not nearly a strong enough term to characterize my life. Yo-yos only move a few feet in each direction. My life is more like, mountain-climbing-Everest-then-falling-into-a-deep-ravine dieting.

  And, I have pretty much always been chubby, excepting my brief forays into skinny. Varying degrees of chubby. Like, the stage where you are just a little chubbier than your friends, when no one really notices until you go clothes shopping together and you're at the rack four sizes bigger, trying to pretend you're not really looking there. Or, when you all go swimming, and you're the only one not in a bikini, or you are in a bikini, but you keep your wrap on pretending that you don't want to be sunburned. That was high school. Then there is the later stage of chubby, as grown-ups, where you are the chubby friend, but still an acceptable chubby, the one who gets set up on blind dates with other people's chubby male friends. The chubby where you wear tailored jackets and queen-sized stockings and feel like, if you were 20 years older than you actually were, that you'd probably look polished in a matronly way.

  And then there is the chubby where you are officially middle-aged and you weigh, as of last week, 528 pounds, assuming that one foot each on two bathroom scales can be accurately added together. That's the chubby that no one sees except for delivery men, because that's the chubby that doesn't leave the apartment. That's the chubby that doesn't even commu
nicate with old friends online anymore, the chubby that deleted its Facebook account, because to not confess to being so chubby felt like a lie, and to confess to the entire newsfeed felt equally purposeless and unnecessarily dramatic. The number, 528, has stopped meaning anything to me this week, and actually didn't mean much even when I learned it. I was braced for an emotional shit storm from myself when I weighed myself, but as usual, the effort of getting into the bathroom, aligning the scales, grabbing the towel racks for balance, but being careful not to assign them too much weight, standing straight and still, and using a hand mirror to see the digital numbers at my feet exhausted me to the point where I didn't care about anything else by the time I got my result. Walking around, just from one room to another in this apartment, feels exactly the way it would feel if I were carrying myself around. And I am. I am carrying my sludge-like pendulousness, infinitely heavy and immobile, every time I take a step. Or draw a breath. Or maneuver into the kitchen to eat more food.

  Which I shall do now. I haven't eaten much today, since the morning goes slowly, and calmly, and the feeling of insatiable need doesn't begin to creep in until afternoon or so. It's two o'clock now, and I will heave myself through the doorway, feeling my hips and upper arms brush the door frame, and stand in the kitchen, to contemplate the food groups.

  Veggies aren't a food group. But carbs are. Baked goods are. Salt is. Chocolate definitely is. I don't dislike fruits and vegetables, but they do nothing for me – leave me feeling emptier than before. Thus, I only ever ate them when I ate out or when someone else cooked, but since it's been years since that happened, I am left to what I would pick out if I were left to my own devices, which, for some years now, I have been. I default to pasta, with tomato sauce, or plain pizza. I default to cans of ravioli or prebaked lasagnas. I'm not much for meat – I really like the sauce and cheese and anything bready, yet ground beef in my pasta sauce is entirely acceptable. Sausage on my pizza isn't so much. I've always been a fool for desserts, the more icing the better, and snack food that's salty like pretzels, more so than chips: I prefer my potatoes mashed, with equal parts cream cheese and sour cream, not crisped up and greasy.

  That's enough about food. I am not, actually, 528 pounds because I love food. I actually have a pretty limited palate. I am not tempted by your exotic urban nights sampling Thai nam phrik and Ethiopian wat and injera – good lord above, please give me my Velveeta macaroni and cheese. I am 528 pounds because I eat just a little bit too much, every day. And the next day, I eat just a little bit more than the day before. And the next day, I will eat just a little bit more than even that. And thus it goes, and goes, and goes. And the more I eat, the heavier I feel, the harder it is to move. Do you know I have a treadmill? It probably still works. I have used it. But I am afraid to get on it now. I am afraid to try to get into the tub now – I am afraid of what would happen if I couldn't get out. I am afraid to lay down in my bed, fearful that this is the night I won't be able to roll out again in the morning. I am not afraid to die – I am afraid to be embarrassed, being found by the firefighters who must break down a wall to lift me, wallowing on my mattress like it's a soggy flying carpet, with a crane down to the special-order ambulance that can fit me inside.

  But, truth be told, this isn't all that different a fear than I've lived with my whole life. I've always been afraid. In school, I was afraid of displeasing the teachers, and at home, I was afraid of disappointing my parents. As an adult, I was afraid of the judgments of my peers, and of my failure to form my own family, or to ever succeed in any kind of real career. I was afraid of the opinions of my colleagues and the strong political rage that I saw on the internet. I do not understand all this negativity. I wanted to hide even when I weighed 150. I wanted to hide when I weighed 76, as a child, when the school nurse announced my weight as she announced everyone else's weight, and everyone else weighed 66. Those ten pounds made all the difference between ridicule at recess and blissful anonymity. I looked the same as everyone else in my class photo, but the yearly pronouncement by the nurse marked me as different, every time. Ten horrible, clinging, hateful pounds different.

  So, my kitchen. It's a standard-issue condo kitchen – modern, but without any extravagant touches like granite countertops or stainless steel appliances. The money went into really good cabinetry, when the building was built, which is where buyers used to want their money to go, before Home and Garden TV took over the airways and made everyone salivate over restaurant-grade stoves and marble kitchen islands with a second sink. My parents bought this condo 20 years ago or so, and it became mine about five years ago when they both died. It's paid off, and my inheritance more than covers my utility bills, cable bills, condo fees, and, believe it or not, my grocery bills. The money won't last forever, but, neither will I. I will bet you this jar of Four Cheese Marinara that I am heating in the microwave that my time will run out before my inheritance will.

  My mom had redecorated the kitchen with green ivy wallpaper border, like everyone did in the 1990s, and I let it stay when I moved in. The ivy pattern reminds me of her, along with the matching ivy dishtowels, the dishes, and the clock on the wall, the little green leaves looking so … kitcheny. Ivy just works in a kitchen. I don't know why, as it's not edible, but it's as cute as herb-themed kitchens with their little patterns of basil and oregano. So, I kept it then, and I'll keep it now. I did paint one of the walls an accent color, a year after I moved in, when I was trying to personalize the place more to my own tastes and chase a little bit of the ghosts of my parents away, as comforting as they were. I painted the wall a dark green, matching one of the ivy shades, and hung two bright sunflower prints for contrast. I was pleased with the result, and at the time, I was maybe 300 pounds, so I was doubly pleased with my ability to execute the task at all. The wall still looks nice now too. But, other than that, there is not much I can do with the kitchen. Clearly I am not going to renovate the place – that would put a swift end to my money, and I really don't care whether the kitchen looks like a Better Homes magazine cover. I mean, the room itself is my nemesis, but also my darkest comfort. To say I am conflicted is an understatement. If I won a lottery, I'd still never have workmen come in to snazz it all up to granite and stainless steel standards, because I wouldn't want them to see how I lived, and how could I eat in front of them?

  Enough of that. Marinara in the microwave, and tortellini boiling in the saucepan. The tortellini is the fresh refrigerated kind, not frozen. It's so good. They float to the top of the pot when they are cooked, which only takes five minutes, much faster than dry pasta in a box. Insta-food.

  Whee.

  Chapter 2

  At around 260 pounds, which means this memory could have be from seven years ago, or, around fourteen years ago, since that was what I've weighed twice, I saw an ex-boyfriend walking from the train station when I was driving my car past.

  The memory is more likely from seven years ago, as it still feels fresh, and "ex-boyfriend," for the record, isn't entirely accurate. Chris Manikal was a childhood friend who went to elementary school with me, and while we were never in a class together, we ran around the playgrounds quite a bit. He was a grade behind me, but my same age – that happens when you're born towards the end of the cut-off year, and some families push their kids into kindergarten while others wait. I was pushed – he got to wait. Chris was little and scrappy – I would have outweighed him no matter what. I was aware of being bigger than him even at the time – Chris showed me once how to scale the wall to the kindergarten courtyard, and I could feel myself struggling to pull my weight up, in my little flannel late-70s shirt and probably flared jeans, while he climbed it like a monkey. The school's playground was Chris's backyard – his house backed up to the fields. I don't remember why I was outside the school so much, after hours. Maybe my mom volunteered on committees? I wish I could ask her. I know that Chris and I had the rolling fields and the creaking, rusty playground equipment to ourselves, often, watching the twilight creep up on us so
metimes, and only once that I can remember, chasing lightning bugs. Maybe my mom had an evening PTA meeting that day.

  Another kid had stabbed Chris in the neck with a pencil, or so he said, and my horror slowly changed to indulgence as I realized he was exaggerating. He wanted me to see the embedded graphite in the side of his neck, and I peered at the mystery spot he was indicating, amazed that he was so un-self-conscious, to show himself this way. Even so young, I was still careful to maintain only fleeting eye contact, and skip away from direct rays of sun if someone was close to me. Here he was, baring his neck, and I was the one who had to struggle to draw close enough to pretend to look at his wound.

  "I went to the nurse," he informed me nonchalantly, and I shuddered at the memory of the metal scale in her office. "She says I might have lead poisoning and might have to go to the hospital."

  This, I knew, was posturing. The nurse would have said no such thing. She might have weighed him, however, and announced his number to the faculty lounge with a megaphone, but she wouldn't have told him something scary and then just sent him home. Besides, my dad had told me a story about some kind of blood poisoning he had when he was a kid where he watched the dark line travel through his veins from a cut in his arm all the way to his heart, knowing when it got to his heart he would be dead. He wore his red pajamas to keep himself awake that night, he said, afraid if he fell asleep he would die, and the cut was from dirty ice in the street when he fell, playing outside, in the winter. I think it was his brother, my uncle, who had pushed him? I can't remember the story. Obviously he had lived, but I knew from the story's moral that any kind of poisoning marked its trail through your veins to your heart, and Chris had no such trail.