Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski Read online

  Besides, pencils weren't made out of lead anymore.

  But I did not challenge him, as I would not have challenged anyone, and Chris was a sweet kid who had never said a word against me, unlike David Brewster, who called me thunder thighs. "Wow," I breathed, "that's scary. What does your mom say?"

  He shrugged, done with the drama.

  "I dunno," he said. "She's waiting til my dad gets home. Wanna go up top?"

  That meant sit on top of the monkey bars, something only the most daring of us did. I gamely kept up – I'd put in my time on playgrounds. I wasn't lithe but I could hold my own with some of the bigger challenges, as long as they did not involve actual chin-ups. As long as I could clamber with my legs, too, I was good to go, if a little clumsy. In hindsight, those monkey bars were high. I was little, so they probably appeared even higher, but even now, trying to imagine them, and accounting for the difference in height between my present self and my past self, I still think they were high. This was before all the playgrounds got replaced with colorful plastic structures that are insurance-approved, bedded on mulch, and have nothing to offer but a series of low bridges and steps. The dumbing down of playgrounds – that should be an article someone writes. It's a little sad. I know we like to keep our kids safe, but I'd be heartsick if I had to grow up on today's playgrounds. Getting sand in my eye every time I executed a skin-the-cat, kicking my sneakered feet up above my head, was like a rite of passage – we called that playground the sand court. The other set of equipment was on the hard court, where the swings were too. That was asphalt. There was some kind of tall, looping, painted metal structure, which had no name. It was a thing we climbed. It was high. It spun. A kid had fallen from the top and died, many many years before our time, a story I never doubted then but somehow know now was only a legend. There was another tall thing, built like a pyramid of ladders, with poles down the middle. The slide was metal – all of it was metal. It all got hot in the sunlight.

  There was a tree that I named Tony – I do not know why – and the squirrels that nested in its highest branches were tamed by Chris's mom, several squirrel generations ago, to come sit on our shoulders and accept peanuts. I did not name the squirrels but I named the tree. I have no idea what this says about me. Maybe Chris named the squirrels, since he saw them far more than me and would have considered them pets. I never saw the squirrels during the school day at recess, only after hours with Chris.

  Chris had bright little walnut-colored eyes and wavy brown hair, cut badly. His mom was the sort who probably cut his hair herself, but then again, I had the shortest, bluntest, least flattering bangs in the world that I can thank only my own mother for, which looked pasted-on atop my forehead in all my school pictures, anomalous next to my otherwise long hair. It would have been hard for me to look more like a potato, facially. Chris looked just like his little sister Janie, who was, without exception, the most beautiful child I had ever seen. Quite a few years younger than us, she considered us kings and queens in her world, and was always thrilled to have our attention. I, on the other hand, was tickled pink by hers, because I could not believe I was adored by someone so tiny and beautiful. It was my privilege to say hi to her in the hallway when her miniature parade of a first grade class came walking in its double-file lines, past my fifth grade single-file one.

  Their features worked better on Janie than Chris. By high school, Chris wasn't handsome, not that he was ugly. He was just the same motorized kid, only bigger, and self-medicating with as much weed as he could find. I saved him a locker next to mine and my friends', when he arrived as a freshman, and thus he had a ready-made harem of sorts of sophomore girls, all of whom declared him the cutest thing ever, couldn't imagine where I found him, toyed with him mercilessly, and refused to date him. He took it in stride.

  We stayed friends off and on throughout high school, settling into different circles. I took him ice skating once, and he was too stoned to even lace up the skates without collapsing in a fit of laughter. I didn't see him much after that.

  But once, a few years after high school, we met for coffee and had a kind of half-awkward, half-tender evening together, where my face was so close to his that I could see where his smile lines were going to start. I still outweighed him, which made sex awkward, but not more awkward than it usually was for me, as self-conscious as I was. Not that I had bedded entire football teams by then or anything – by age 21, I'd had a few small relationships: predictable, shallow, doomed, and a few hook-ups. I guess in that respect I was normal, other than being horribly ashamed and embarrassed by it all. Knowing that men walking around out there knew what I looked like naked, knew where my stretch marks were if they'd noticed, knew how lumpy I felt when their hands sought my hip, knew exactly what jiggled when I was on top, was, and is, in a word, excruciating.

  But I faked it fairly well in front of them. I was shy, I was modest, and none of them knew how much I died inside when I disrobed. I saved that shame for later when soothed myself over a carton of Ben & Jerry's.

  My evening with Chris would have been the magical ending to a special childhood friendship, if I had been skinny. No, I am not overly emphasizing the role of my weight in my life. These are not blinders I have on to avoid my deeper psychological issues. I am not obsessed over body shape because I am transferring other trauma. This is the simple truth. I would have bounded back into his life like the light and free spirit he took me for when we were children, and happily banged away, probably in those same school fields just for old-times' sake, probably laying naked in the grass under the moonlight, sharing a joint, or a beer maybe, talking about our futures and how music had changed since this new Nirvana thing hit the scene, and whether the cold war was really over.

  But instead I slunk away, wondering if he still even thought I was pretty, now that he'd seen so much of me. He swore he'd had the biggest crush on me since we were little, but I was there too when we were little – we loved each other then, but it wasn't like that. The concept of crush didn't even exist, then. The more he talked about how beautiful my eyes were, the more I knew he was naming one of the few body parts he could name without being called out. I smiled and pretended to accept the compliment, but I hid my body under the sheet of his twin bed in his mother's house, and I hid my feelings behind my mask of playfulness. And I hit the ground running when it seemed time to go, afterwards.

  And that's the last I saw him, until I drove past the train station seven years ago and realized that the skinny man in the slouching cargo pants with the slow, sexy walk, smoking a cigarette while he held a duffel bag over his shoulder, was Chris. This was Chris at 40, lined, weathered, still apparently carefree and in no hurry at all, and probably without a car, or why would he be getting off a train back in his hometown. I knew he filmed small-budget indie movies up and down the east coast, which made me cringe when I saw him on my computer screen once when I downloaded one of his films, seeing him so vulnerable in the merciless eye of a cheap camera. His acting was atrocious, but he did it as he did everything – utterly without self-consciousness. He played the bad guy with every sneer and glare of a vaudeville villain, clearly loving it, and I teared up to see so much stubble on his face and hair on his chest – that hadn't been there before. His cheeks had grown leathery, and he was almost gaunt, but the sharp bones in his face reminded me more of how he had looked as a younger child, when he had been so skinny to seem almost frail – funny how we come full circle.

  So I pulled over and hailed him and he got in my car and we had the best time catching up…. Okay, of course not. Women who weigh 260 do not get to do such things. Not when the man they are catching up with last saw them when they were 180 or so. No, women who weigh 260 just catch their breath at the sight of an old lover and a former friend, stare for a nostalgic, heartbroken moment, then peel away before they are spotted, crying, eventually, later that night.

  Incidentally, Janie stayed beautiful and also found a film camera – last I heard she was doing pornos, but th
at was years ago. She'd be in her early 40s by now too, now that Chris and I would both be 47. I hope she's happy. I am certain she's beautiful, if she's still alive. I could look her up on Facebook, but as we know, I deleted that. I am left to merely wonder about people, which I find preferable now to actually finding them. The photos on my Facebook page were all from before my parents died, so I was fat of course, really fat even, but not like this. Without seeing updated photos, people will assume that you still look as your old photos show you, and as the difference between me and my photos grew, month by month, the more ridiculous it was for me to pretend that I was still me, as I exchanged bland pleasantries with the Facebook pages of old classmates, old roommates, and previous colleagues from my jobs.

  I try to imagine, if I could fit myself into a car now, what it would be like to pull over and find Chris, or anyone, walking down the sidewalk. As I mentally roll down the window and call his name, does recognition joyfully crinkle his eyes as he sees me? Or is he shocked at how appalling I have become? Or, possibly worse, is this exactly how he expected me to end up? Would he recognize my face now, lost as it is above my enormous, rolling neck, or, would he see me as he always had? See, the trouble with each of us being ourselves is that we always feel just like ourselves. Now that I am older, I have gained no wisdom, no enlightenment, no vast insight about the world – I am mentally identical to my younger self, really. I haven't changed. This is why Hallmark movies about sprightly old folks in nursing homes have so much appeal – they look withered and wizened, but inside, they're the same as they were at their Homecoming dances, and their snappy jokes and jovial flirty humor is doubly touching. Right, Hallmark? I never believed this until recently, when I realized, if I continue living, this is who I will be in another ten years at 57, and again at 67, and 77, and so on. I can live to be 107, fat, fatter, or even thin again, and I will still be me. This is why I am always surprised when I look in a mirror. In our brains, time does not march on. I am as surprised by my fat as I am by the gathering of my grey hairs, collecting like storm clouds in my part.

  But when we see someone else, who has been away from us for a long time, their surprise is our unexpected barometer – their surprise registers as our own shock, always. Why do they look so surprised? Have I changed? I am still me, standing here, before you. Can you not recognize that?

  What age do our self-images calcify? What age do I expect to see permanently looking back at me in a mirror? What age do I expect to see reflected back at me in Chris's eyes when I ever – never – see him again? Is it 12? 21? What weight was I when I felt the most like me? Was it 150? 100? 350? Who am I?

  I am the woman who didn't stop her car to say hi.

  Chapter 3

  One of the most obnoxious aspects of being fat, and rather plain, when I was a kid, was how damned beautiful all my cousins were. Forced to play with each other at every family function, required to invite each other to every birthday party and sleepover, my cousins all looked like kids out of a Disney channel television show – long bony limbs and tight tummies, bright smiles that never needed braces, effortless bouncing hair, and dimples. That was the coup de grace – the dimples. How such a rare touch of beauty managed to crown my already lovely cousins was just an extra kick in the crooked teeth, for me.

  And they were nice. Really nice. So nice that I caught on at some point that they were told to be nice. Kids do not naturally default to nice – perhaps you have noticed. You, whoever you are, had to have survived recess too, right? You know. Everyone gets made fun of for something. But these kids plastered on the grins and told me my shirt was pretty, and then let me go first in Monopoly.

  I can only imagine my aunts and uncles admonishing them to treat me with pity. But, looking back at old photos, it occurs to me that my parents were the plainest of their own siblings, so how humbling could I have possibly been when I emerged as a product of the two of them. My mom, pretty enough, posing cutely with her two sisters in the black-and-whites from the 1940s, is clearly, by the standards of the time, the pudgy one, and my dad couldn't have held a candle to his brother if he'd tried. My uncle was truly a handsome fellow, and now, in the yearly Christmas cards I get, he's still formidably good-looking in the group photo, well into his 70s.

  And my cousins' names, they had me beat there as well. Darling curly Aimee, glamorous Tess, strong and daring Alexandra, lucky Jimmy, talented Brian and little cooing Josie, the coveted afterthought from one of my aunts: the newborn who possessed a baby's magnetism and had a crowd of clamoring older siblings and cousins around her who wanted to hold her, always – all of them graced in their own way, with names they could carry proudly for the next pile of decades. Me? Mona Jamborski.

  Of course, the cousins on my dad's side were saddled with Jamborski too, but Mona? Mona? What were they thinking? There is no "moaning Mona" joke I have not heard, and no moaning double entendre that hasn't been made at my expense. No one thinks of the Mona Lisa, except when my mom did, my mom the art major, the dabbler in watercolors, who named me for her favorite painting, and my dad went right along. So Mona I am, and Mona I must remain. Briefly, in middle school, I had the epiphany of going by Mo, which was cute and could be pulled off if I were adorable and skinny. Maureen McArtle got to the idea first, and her Mo was everything mine wasn't – perfect permed hair sprayed into 1980's stiffness, pink glossy lips, and a perky butt. Mo McArtle got to demonstrate how to use the uneven parallel bars during our gymnastics unit in Phys Ed, and the teacher actually said, as Mo sat in a V-up position on the bar, "I don't know how you can balance on such a tiny butt!"

  Mo was elected by the girls' team when the girls faced the boys during the Phys Ed teacher's idea of a fun class, where we had to compete on the equipment, but doing silly moves, not gymnastic ones. On the balance beam, Mo had to start at one end, and Scott Ryman had to start on the other, and the goal was to get past each other and not fall. After a funny tango in the middle, which was only funny because they were both so cute, Mo hunkered down like a little bean and Scott stepped right over her. Wasn't she just darling.

  I could have shot her, and then myself.

  But this is about my name, not my body. Fast forward to my freshman year in college, where Ponytail Man, which is what my roommates called the guy a year ahead of us whose long hair and disregard for sidewalks had caught my attention and captured my heart, was three sheets to the wind at a frat party and expounding upon classic syllabification of names.

  "Sarah," he said loudly, pointing at no one in particular in the group that was gathered around him as we passed a bottle. Several bottles, actually. "Maya. Gina. Leah. These are names in the trochaic. Trochaic monometer. Where the first syllable gets the stress. Completely—" he paused and belched – "classical. What we should be naming our daughters. Strong, and traditional. Benah, Dana, Farrah, Nina."

  "Ooh," I squealed, having had several swigs too many, "and like Mona, too."

  The twenty seconds of silence that followed were more painful than if I had just looked down and discovered I were naked. Another belch from Ponytail Man blessedly ended the moment as he said, "Now the amphibrach would be a name with the stress in the center, surrounded by two unstressed syllables, like Amanda, Samantha, Diana…."

  I stopped listening as the roar of blood lingered in my ears, and I waited for my face to stop burning. Ponytail Man had strong opinions on everything, and his long hair did not make him a hippie – he grew it out, he told us once during another drunken party speech, to subvert the social class, to be a long-haired conservative so that politics as a whole had to look past the constituents themselves to see actual belief systems and not just appearances.

  I guess he talked a good game. I know I was first smitten with him when I watched him jump over three different hedges, getting from one class to another, taking what was clearly the most direct route from building to building, rather than staying on the winding and picturesque campus path. He thought differently, completely outside the box, and he ma
de me yearn to be the kind of girl who could flaunt the rules too. Who would think to navigate a campus as a bird flies? I had to make him mine, somehow, and I wondered about him loudly with my roommates and they watched him too, giving him his secret name, and naming the other interesting sorts who caught their attention as well. We had Ponytail Man, Redhead Freckled Dude, Wet Shower Man, Dread Man, Overalls Man, Goatee Guy, and Sweaty Running Guy. Wet Shower Man got a girlfriend and they became the Clean Couple, and she now appeared in public always as freshly showered as he, with both of their heads of hair combed back wetly, bearing ridges from the comb's teeth. Did they shower together, we wondered? Were they always post-coital? Was she picking up on his habits, or did he first love her because she was as clean as he? But only I loved Ponytail Man. He was different enough, I reasoned to myself, to be attracted to a girl who wasn't attractive in the typical way. A girl who might have made a good Baroque painting, in the style of Rubens maybe, whose women were always heavy.

  Do you think I did it, dear reader? Do you think I scored myself Ponytail Man? In fact, I lost my virginity to him, but that's the nicest fact I can assign to the encounter. I was so disappointed to discover that the enlightened philosopher who was Ponytail Man, who seemed to want nothing more than to equalize the gender and racial playing fields, bringing women up from servitude and empowering them with classicism, and blacks out of a culture that was self-propagating in its poverty, who could quote his professors at length and assign factoids to any conversation that, pre-internet, we had no way of verifying, who scoffed at the students who dropped acid when they swore they had seen aspects of the universe that we hopeless norms could not, was in fact quite the misogynist. He never said a word about my physique, because body types didn't matter to him – all women were equally subservient, and he didn't bother to classify us beyond that. I still, sometimes, feel a hot flash of anger, how he humiliated me with his silence about my name, when we were discussing what I thought was simply poetic meter. I am angry with myself that I confused his acceptance of my body as an acceptance of me, myself.