Take a Load Off, Mona Jamborski Read online

  Either way, it was Mr. Warrington who cursed audibly in the hallway the next day, and I sat as still as a cornered rabbit on the couch, my hand that was turning the page of my book halted in mid-turn.

  "Jesus Christ on a cracker," he said, "she has no shame. No shame." I heard him bump into my door perhaps more than he had to, as he picked up my bag, and a moment later there was silence. He was gone.

  I could probably use industrial vats to measure my shame, such was the size it was. But Mr. Warrington was a dickhead, simply put. I knew his type – arrogant and smart, but he wielded his intelligence as a weapon. His athleticism was an achievement in an area that wasn't necessarily his forte, because his forte was so easy as to have become boring – in his case, it was some kind of internet technology, abandoned for the sake of his children, but that was a happy abandonment since the career wasn't fulfilling anyway. I'd bet my bottom doughnut that he hadn't been athletic as a teenager or a younger man – I bet all of this mid-life competition with other men was his version of a my-muscles-are-bigger-than-yours Napoleon complex. Plus, he was bald – he shaved his head all around, to disguise how much was missing just off the top.

  I put out another bag the next day and giggled into my hands when I heard him curse.

  Hey, there is not a lot I can do here to entertain myself. I gambled that he'd never knock on my door – any confrontation between the two of us would be as harrowingly mortifying for him as it would be for me. In that way, I could use my weight as a weapon – if I could stand there and be as gross and ignorant as he thought I was, he wouldn't want anything to do with me, not even the privilege of giving me a piece of his mind.

  The game did not last for very long – the dentist took him back six months later and he moved out. A single mother with a ten-year-old daughter moved in, and I put my first bag out with a sticky note on top: "Dear new neighbors, I am incapacitated and do not leave my apartment. If you would be kind enough to see to my trash along with your own, I will happily pay you for your efforts."

  The bag disappeared, and I taped an envelope with a ten dollar bill to their door.

  And without us ever meeting face-to-face, for $10 every few days, this is how I have gotten my trash out for the last two and a half years.

  Chapter 5

  I used to love biking, when I was a kid. I learned how to ride when I was seven, my parents tag-teaming the chore of running alongside me, gripping the handlebars to keep me upright, while I panicked and crashed and skinned my knees. My sweet, artistic parents, who loved their doughy pigtailed only child so much, never failed to lose their tempers when they worked with me on the bike. I think they were so challenged by the efforts of running and pulling me into balance that patience became secondary. Neither was particular athletic, or at all athletic, so I can forgive them what must have been a milestone they dreaded ushering in.

  However, that magical moment when balance found me was celebrated more by them than it was by me. I imagine they cracked the champagne and brought out the shrimp cocktail that evening, while I was busy cycling up and down our sidewalk, up and down, up and down, bursting at the seams with pride (and probably clothes I was growing too round for), and didn't come in until bedtime.

  That same season, or maybe the next, while I was firmly on the same flat sidewalk, streamers on the handlebar grips, requisite horn clamped there too, doggedly cycling back and forth, my father met me in the front lawn and nodded his chin towards the intersecting – and much busier – street that ran past my house the other way, and down a steep hill, at Charlie Moore, an older teenager who was flying on his own two-wheeler downhill, without even touching the handlebars.

  "That'll be you one day," remarked my dad, and I gasped.

  "I will never bike on that hill!" I exclaimed. "And he was in the street, not even the sidewalk!"

  I was almost offended that my dad accepted of the idea of his daughter executing such unsafe bicycling decisions – straying from the sidewalk, letting go of my grips, and succumbing to increasing momentum like a one-girl avalanche. No way was I ever going to try any kind of a hill.

  Until maybe a couple weeks later.

  I biked further and further up my own sidewalk until eventually I was required to cross a street to get to another sidewalk, and until I met a hill – an uphill – of my own, climbing to the top of the neighborhood. I realized that my house was halfway down a valley, and my street was unique in that it was one of the more level ones – the rest of the winding, tree-lined streets in my neighborhood were distinctly angled to accommodate whatever behemoth of a hill the development had been built on.

  And so I learned that summer to stand up on my pedals and pump, hard, to get to the top, failing halfway and having to dismount to walk my bike up. I learned to turn around and ride the same hill back down, or to round the corner and glide down a different one, and how if I turned my head just a little to the left, the wind wouldn't whip in my ears and I could hear with one ear if a car was behind me, when I braved the street. I discovered I could become airborne using the badly settling sidewalk and the ramps it created, one chunk of concrete distinctly higher than the next chunk, pushed up by tree roots and launching me a foot or two into the air before the rubber hit the ground again.

  I was a daredevil. No, I wasn't, but I was a normal kid riding a bike. I did fly down Otteridge Road too, like Charlie Moore did, but always with a death grip on my handlebars, and never in the street. Other roads, I would use the street, but Otteridge was the one road in my neighborhood with the dreaded double yellow lines of death: a veritable highway, as far as I was concerned.

  Otteridge dumped out to the main avenue that connected our several towns, and apparently the corner was a bad intersection, because I can remember several times, more than several times, helicopters landing in the small field back behind my house, which was as close to the intersection as a helicopter could land, to airlift some poor soul to shock trauma. A few occasions at night, I heard the thumping and whirring of a helicopter, and I ran to my bedroom window to watch the circular lights hover and land, absolutely sure I was witnessing a UFO. During the day, however, the helicopter was a giant insect, and many of us hopped on our bikes or took a walk to rubberneck at the accident.

  Marcia Stone hopped excitedly from one foot to the other, waiting eagerly for someone to look at her so she could point out what she'd seen.

  "There's blood on the windshield," she hissed into my ear. "Look."

  And there was. The star-pattern of crushed windshield glass was punctuated by a red spatter, and I was shocked at the grisly reality of an accident that usually, for me, was just a fun chance to see a helicopter and later find the occasional wreckage of a bumper or a side view mirror left on the shoulder. But this, this was terrifying.

  "And if you get closer," she continued, her breath hot in my ear, "there is a puddle of blood on the driver's seat."

  Appalled, I wrenched away from her. I felt her eyes on me as I biked away, and I felt her eyes on me the next day at school, when she was waiting outside her classroom door and I was walking past to get to my own. I didn't look at her – I didn't want to share our moment. She ended up going to a private school later, so our paths never crossed again, until, of course, much later on Facebook, where she was every bit as erratic a woman as she'd been a child. She pronounced her hatred of our president in half her statuses, and moaned over her bad luck in the other half. Sometimes, she took a moment to thank Jesus Christ for being her personal savior. The only thing I ever hoped Jesus would save me was some of that bread, after the wine – if I ever attended the Last Supper, I know I'd be wanting serious carbs.

  Ah, carbs. The seeds were planted so early. I could eat bowls of cereal like it was going out of style, when I was a kid. I used to pretend that I added more cereal to my milk because I had leftover milk in my bowl, and then add more milk to my cereal because now I had too much cereal. I pretended I was after some golden ratio when in fact it was just an excuse to keep eating
cereal. Cheerios, Wheaties, Rice Krispies, it didn't matter. Sugary cereals weren't allowed, so I was never indulging in Cookie Crisp and Fruit Loops, but how I loved my Corn Bran, Raisin Bran, even Grape Nuts. My grandparents stocked Apple Jacks, which was hands-down the best cereal ever, to be consumed only at their house, and only one bowl at a time – I mustn't shock my grandparents. They scolded me when they found me with my hand in the cookie jar too often. You know how that's an idiom now, getting caught with your hand in the cookie jar? It's literal. Nothing idiomatic about it.

  On Sundays, we got doughnuts after church, and my mom became concerned over how many I could eat.

  "That's your fifth?" she asked, surprised, trying not to shame me but still trying to get a handle on what it was I was doing. My mom did the Scarsdale diet every few years, to fight her own tendency towards pudge, but I never saw her eat like she couldn't control it. Her eating was always downright prim, whether it was a buttered cracker or a slice of cucumber. Neat, delicate, unhurried, always with a napkin, and she ate her French fries with a fork.

  I loved yard sale days, twice a year, spring and fall, because when we participated, we made cinnamon buns with icing to eat early in the morning as we set up our tables, and when we didn't, I could walk to the houses that were giving out munchkins alongside their wares. One house, around the corner on Hedgehill Road, always served hot chocolate from a silver urn-thing with Styrofoam cups and let me take as many marshmallows from the bag as I wanted, to put on top.

  I loved Christmas, because we always had a pancake feast when we were done opening presents. My dad and I both curled up with new books, and my mom took over the kitchen and filled our house with the vanilla smell of butter melting on the griddle and the pancakes sizzling on top. I loved Halloween because candy, and I loved Easter because candy. I loved birthdays, anyone's birthday, because cake.

  I am not so fat because my parents died, regardless of whether I gained my last couple hundred pounds since it happened. I am fat because I am fat. I am fat because I was born this way. I was born insatiable and with a deep craving for the most processed of white flour and sugar.

  I was also born with frizzy brown hair, which can be coaxed into ringlets if I use enough product, which of course I haven't bothered to do for years, and light blue-green eyes that earned me compliments, because of how they contrasted with my darker hair. I used to have freckles in the summer, which faded by September and didn't come back again until June. I was so pleasantly surprised to discover I was fairly pretty, during my brief visits with being skinny, but it wasn't a prettiness that lasted when my face rounded out again.

  I miss riding my bike. I took a friend's bike out once in my 30s, and the seat dug so painfully into my crotch I couldn't focus on even the burning muscles of my thighs. I couldn't wait to just get off the seat. I bought a stationary bike for myself, also in my 30s sometime, when I was heavier and would have only biked indoors, in private, and I had the same problem. If I could just find a seat that I could sit on, I bet I'd have kept on riding, but like so many things, I sacrificed biking to butter and Brie and biscuits, refrigerated biscuits in the can that pops when you open it, making me jump no matter how much I brace myself as I peel the paper away from the seam.

  Biscuits, what a good idea. I think it's dinner time. I've been sitting on the couch for most of the evening, recovering from putting away groceries, wondering when the urge to eat would bring me to my feet again. Biscuits biscuits biscuits. I have the Flaky Layers kind, and I have the Southern Buttermilk kind. I think a can of each would do me nicely, and I can take turns which type of biscuit I eat, alternating them, the better to appreciate their different flavors. Ooh, I just remembered, I also have the Honey Butter kind, which is a different sort of flavor for a biscuit but surprisingly good. Well, that's three cans. Can I eat three cans? Would I need to pace myself?

  I think.

  Eight biscuits times three cans. Twenty-four biscuits. Yes, I can do 24 biscuits. The only problem is, by the time I eat maybe eight of them, the rest will be getting cold. By the time I eat 16, the remainder will be really cold, and maybe getting hard. Can I stagger my cooking times? Yes, but, that means getting off the couch twice – not an easy feat – or, eating the first batch standing up in the kitchen while I wait for the second batch to cook, then taking the fresh second batch to my couch to enjoy, having essentially ruined the first batch by eating them standing up.

  Which can would be the first batch? Eating one can at a time means I cannot intersperse the flavors as I had just planned. Do I eat one can in the kitchen, and bring two to the living room? Or vice versa?

  A coil of panic starts to rise into my throat, as I weigh my options and find none of them ideal. It's not an option, unfortunately, to choose only two of the cans when I know I have three. If I had never remembered the third can, I'd have been happy with two, but now I know those Honey Butter ones are there. They are there, and I can't un-know that. I am required to eat them now. I don't know why. Waiting is never an option. Saving them is never an option.

  I am not looking forward to eating biscuits now but the requirement has taken over my mind, and my stomach is now howling in harmony with my circular thoughts. I am outnumbered, two to one: brain and body against soul. I'm going to eat biscuits.

  I get up – I don't need to walk you through how, again, and for how long – and make my way into the kitchen. I preheat the oven, retrieve the three cans of biscuits from the refrigerator, and place the cans on the counter. Cookie sheets are an issue – they are in the cabinet next to the oven, so, low. I have to bend over to open the cabinet, release the air from my lungs to give my body room to bend even lower, and reeeeeach for the cookie sheets, two of them, to fit all three cans of biscuits. My fingers graze the rounded edge of the cookie sheets and I strain a little further, my eyesight going black, sweat popping out on my forehead and my lungs screaming to inhale.

  Got one. I stand up and gasp for air, gripping the counter, almost throwing the tray to the top of the stove as I pant to catch my breath. God, I have to do this one more time: I need the other one. I slowly exhale, bend over again, and this time is a little easier – I grab the second cookie sheet on the first try and stand up.

  I line them with foil, so I won't have to wash them when I am done, and here's how smart I am: I open all three cans, jumping a little each time of course, and place each circle of dough on the foil one from each can at a time, so they will be a combined batch automatically. Go me. Mona's got big brains.

  First batch, into the oven. Wait, I will put the second batch in the oven too, and that way, once I am settled and eating, if they do start to get cold, I can always microwave them. That means getting up off my couch, but … wait. If they're already cold, and essentially inedible, I can always let them sit, get off the couch later, at bedtime, wrap them in the foil, and microwave them tomorrow for breakfast.

  I am brilliant.

  Score one for the soul.

  Chapter 6

  I had a dream I was skinny, last night. When I woke up this morning, I closed my eyes again and tried to hang onto it. It's been a long time since I've had a dream like that. This time, I was sick – maybe cancer, maybe something autoimmune. I didn't know, in the dream, and I didn't care. I was a little alarmed, in the dream, when I walked in front of a reflective window at a restaurant, to see how thin I was. I hadn't just recently been that thin, so clearly the weight was falling off me at such a rapid pace that I wasn't even noticing. Fatal illness aside, I was joyful, in my dream.

  I was instantly hungry, too, thinking I now had wiggle room to eat whatever I wanted, now that I was thin, and apparently going to get even thinner. I started planning my restaurant order, when the niggle of worry crept up on me. But this is how you gained it back each time, it said in my head. When you got skinny, got comfortable, and started eating whatever you wanted again. Because it felt safe.

  Damn straight. But here I was dying or something, so, I ate.

  An
d I woke up.

  But I'm not depressed, now, being awake. I mean, not more than usual. Waking up into this body, after having just briefly experienced another one, should be a horrifying return to reality, but I'm used to dreams like this.

  When I first chopped off all my long hair, at age 12, deciding it was time to be cool and get layers and use hairspray, I had dreams my hair had grown back. I didn't realize that I would wake up ugly – uglier – every morning, with my hair sticking up every direction like a bombed bird's nest. I didn't realize that all my wavy frizz would fight against the shiny, effortless wings that the other girls flipped around. Of course my hairdresser hadn't warned me of any of that. So began the grueling process of growing my hair out – and my bangs too, this time – and I dreamt constantly that I woke up to long hair again.

  Some years later, when I got tired of looking like a fat hippie, I kept my hair long but cut my bangs – better than my mother had, of course. But, again, my mental image missed the memo that my bangs would squirrel themselves into a curly little knot on top of my forehead unless I blew them dry straight every morning. Waking up ugly again.