The Beholder is Blind

It’s hard to remember exactly the first moment I knew that I was fat.

 

The earliest memory I have was from my crib. I remember looking up at the white ceiling that wasn’t white, but gold from the sun through the window, and gray from the shadows of walls. The crib shook and my oldest brother climbed in, his face full of happiness like he was saying a big, “Hi!” I wasn’t happy to see him. It wouldn’t be the last time a boy would disturb my world, but it was the first. I told my mother about my memory a few years ago and she thought that was impossible. I must have been told about it she said and she described my bedroom. I corrected her though, and said that no, when I was a baby, my crib was in the boys’ room, on the wall to the left as you walked in. She said, “Oh! That’s right!” And then she believed me.

 

I might have known sooner that I was fat if my brothers had teased me about it, but they didn’t. Not ever. Oh they teased me, but not about that. They teased me about sucking my thumb and about riding a tricycle when I really should have been on a bicycle, but they never teased me about being fat. I still wonder about that and why they didn’t. It would have been such a delicious and easy cruelty. But I guess that provides my answer. My brothers were not cruel.

 

When I started school I was spared the tortures of the fat child because my best friend Elaine was petite and cute, had large brown eyes and three dimples, one sitting impossibly in the middle of her chin. Everyone wanted to play with her and she made it abundantly clear in the midst of her playground power, that if anyone was going to play with her, they’d be playing with me too. She was my champion and my fierce protector. I told  her this a few years ago; this theory of our playground—that it was she who saved me from ridicule and pain. She was incredulous. She said, “Is that what you think? Are you nuts?” Then she said, “Louise, I did none of that. Kids liked you because of you.” I replied, “That may have been true once they got to know me, but I still think it was you who paved the way to allow for their getting to know me.” That conversation made me ever so aware of how two perspectives of the same time, the same people and the same playground can be so utterly different. 

 

Elaine wore patent leather Mary Janes to school. I coveted them. I was so fat my mother was concerned that my feet would become “flat,” if not encased every day in some kind of protective armor. I was sentenced to wearing brown leather oxfords with a million, gazillion eyes that needed shoelaces a foot long. They were called “Girl Scout shoes” and every time I had to lace them up I cursed Juliet Lowe. And people wonder why I find cowboy boots so thrilling.

 

One day in the sixth grade we all had to line up at the Nurse’s office for measuring and weighing. I dreaded it, especially since we were measured and weighed by the Nurse who then called the numbers aloud to the chronicler sitting five feet away. As I approached I heard the weights of all the little girls ahead of me, “76 pounds, 82 pounds.” I approached the scale and then heard in a voice that I imagined reached every inch of hall in Bernon Heights Elementary School, “116 pounds.” It was a deep humiliation.

 

Growing up in a culture that values appearance in females above all else, I was at a distinct disadvantage. Add to that my upbringing in a Catholic environment in which pride was considered the greatest sin. My appearance was never affirmed or complimented lest I become vain. One day as my mother and I were walking together down Main Street, no doubt on our bi-annual trek to Kornstein’s Department Store to purchase aforementioned dreaded Girl Scout shoes, she encountered a woman on the street whom she knew, but whom I had never before seen. They chatted and chatted while I patiently and silently stood by looking all around me. Quite suddenly their talking became a whisper and the change in volume of their voices caught my attention and I began to listen. The woman whispered to my mother, “She’s beautiful.” My mother whispered back, “I know.” I turned my head to see what lovely girl might be walking towards us and upon whom they might be commenting. I saw no one. And incredulously realized they had been discussing me. It remains a moment, a memory, full of wonder.

 

I suspect that Elaine’s memory of that time has been influenced by the result of my subconscious, child-like understanding that if I, a fat child, was going to make it in the world I couldn’t rely on my appearance. I suppose I learned to develop my personality and this is what Elaine remembers. In some ways I was a quite confident child and teenager. I was fearless on the softball field, wielded a ping pong paddle to local championship status, began public speaking when I was 16 and was so likeable in high school that I managed to ingratiate myself into every clique possible. I was accepted by the geeks, the cheerleaders, the hippies, the black kids, the athletes, the dopers. A month before graduation in my senior year, the newly published yearbook was distributed and we all turned to the Superlatives page; you know… Most likely to succeed, Cutest Couple, Best Dressed, etc. And there to my astonishment, I found my own picture above the superlative, “Wittiest Girl.” I had received the majority nod in a graduating class of 350 seniors who voted for me as female class clown. Superlatives were determined by write-in ballot. Evidently singing 1940’s torch songs in the middle of the hallways in between periods had drawn more attention  than even Ithought. When I brought the book home and showed the page to my mother, she said, “How come you’re not funny at home?” She had a point. In the company of others I was charming and funny. At home I was a teenage bitch.  

 

Eventually, when I was 23 and the mother of a young son, I decided to lose the weight. My top weight had been reached at 215 pounds. I wore a size 42 in men’s jeans.

I didn’t want my children to have a fat mother. I lost 70 pounds in 7 months. People who had known me my whole life didn’t recognize me on the street until I smiled or hailed them. Some people thought I had contracted a fatal illness because surely if I was thin, it must mean I was dying. I wonder if you can imagine what it was like to walk passed a mirror and be so startled by the image that you had to return to it, not recognizing at all the figure that was reflected there. I was so unaccustomed to the contours of my body that one night while my ex-husband and I were lying in bed, my arm brushed against my hip. I stopped dead, moved my hand once again over my hip and said, “Oh my God. I have a lump.” He said, “Where?” I said, “Here,” and moved his hand to touch the protrusion. He said with a laugh, “You funny idiot, that’s your hip bone and you have another one just like it on the other side.”  Sure enough, there it was.

 

One would think that after so long a period I would now be comfortable in this body and yet, I still grab clothes off the rack that are too large and I am surprised when in the dressing room they fall off. Evidently, I still don’t see what others see when I look into the mirror.

 

One night,while sitting at a bar with a friend here in Charleston, a twenty-something year old tried to pick me up. When he left I said, "What the hell is wrong with him?" My friend asked what I meant. I said, "Well, look around. The place is full of beautiful young women." She launched into what can only be described as a lecture. When at last she asked, "What is it that you think when someone looks at you like that or tells you that you are beautiful?" I said, "Well, if they are my friend, I think it is because they love me. If they are a stranger, I think they are just being kind." She said, "People are not that kind." And when people do say such things I am freakily fascinated by it. I want to see what they see and I want to say, "Don't be silly," as startled by it as I was that day standing on Main Street with my mother. This same friend who scolded me and in the attempt to help me acknowledge that at the very least I might be attractive, made me promise to stand before my bathroom mirror every day and really see (and love) what is there. She knew not the difficult assignment she had given to me.

 

It is a lifelong curse and blessing, I suppose, this blindness within oneself that denies what others would acknowledge. Just this week someone used the word “beautiful,” and in response to my reaction said, “You really don’t see it.” I said, “No. I really don’t.” And so what? So what? I can still wield a ping pong paddle in victory. I can still take command of a room when I speak. I can still bring about a peel of laughter from friends. And dammit, I can wear cowboy boots. So what, if when someone says something very similar to, “She’s beautiful,” I still have the urge to turn my head to see what lovely girl might be approaching?