The Fat Girl Read online

  Woodbury, Minnesota

  The Fat Girl © 2007 by Marilyn Sachs.

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  First e-book edition © 2010

  E-book ISBN: 978-07387-2511-6

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  For Zoe Borkowski,

  good and indispensable friend

  one

  The only way I could get out of Mr. Wasserman’s chemistry class was to register for something else at the same time. There weren’t many choices.

  “Since when have you been interested in ceramics?” my advisor asked, his nose twitching suspiciously.

  “Oh, I’ve always been interested in ceramics,” I told him, trying to get the right look of honest enthusiasm into my face.

  “Come on, Lyons,” he said, “get off it. Guys like you give me a pain! You’re only trying to get out of Mr. Wasserman’s class. You can’t fool me.”

  “Uh uh,” I said earnestly, shaking my head. “I really want to take that ceramics class. I’ve been wanting to take that class ever since I started high school, but I never could fit it in.”

  “Well, you can’t fit it in now either. It conflicts with your chemistry class.”

  “There is another chemistry class,” I reminded him gently, “in the fourth period.”

  “It’s filled,” he said.

  “Well, I did go over and talk to Mrs. Humphreys just before I came here, and she said if it was all right with you, she could squeeze me in.”

  My advisor looked at me with disgust. Behind me, at least ten other students waited to see him, and a low, restless growl permeated his small office. He was pressured and I knew it, and he knew I knew it. “You’re just handing me a line of bull,” he said. “None of you kids want to work. That’s the trouble. That’s the way it is with all of you. But I’ll tell you something, Lyons. If you’re planning to go to college, you’ll learn a lot more about chemistry in Mr. Wasserman’s class.”

  As usual, my advisor was missing the point completely. I did want to go to college, and that was why I couldn’t afford to take Mr. Wasserman’s course. I already had a couple of Cs and didn’t need another one. Everybody knew that Wasserman was a tough marker, so I wasn’t taking any chances.

  “I really want to take ceramics,” I told him. “I’ve always wanted to take ceramics.”

  Later, on the way to the ceramics class, I figured I would wait a couple of weeks before dropping it. My advisor wasn’t particularly vindictive, but he might’ve just switched me back into Wasserman’s class if I had irritated him too much.

  I never did drop ceramics that term. Instead, I fell in love and spent the best and the most miserable year of my life. All because Mr. Wasserman was such a hard marker. None of any of this would have happened if it wasn’t for him.

  The fat girl and I arrived at the door at the same time. Since she was twice my width, it was obvious that we couldn’t get through the door at the same time. So I gallantly stood back and held out my arm, directing her to go first. Somebody behind me snickered, and she looked up at me as if I’d goosed her.

  “I didn’t do anything,” I said.

  She hurried inside and I turned, raising my eyebrows at the guy in back of me. “What a butt!” he said. “Did you ever see anything like that before?”

  Inside, people were already working. You have to understand that ceramics is a religion to its disciples. They don’t do anything else but worship clay. They eat, sleep, drink pots. Nothing else matters. Some of the people in the class had been taking ceramics for years. They came before classes started in the morning and during their lunch hours, and they stayed as long as they could into the afternoon until Ms. Holland, the teacher, threw them out.

  She wasn’t in sight when we first arrived. The fat girl moved off to a corner, and the rest of us newcomers stood around at the front of the room, waiting and watching the regulars. At the back of the room, a girl was slamming clay down on a table. She threw it down, picked it up, and slammed it down again. A few kids were sitting at a long table, working on various clay projects, their faces solemn and intent. At one side of the room, two others were turning pots on potter’s wheels. Then somebody cried out, “Oh, my God, how gorgeous!”

  A girl came through the door at the back, from the kiln room, holding up a large, round bowl. She was caressing the bowl, running one hand up and down its side in a way that made me feel warm.

  “Look at this,” she hollered. “I added a little copper oxide and just look at that color. It’s so beautiful I can’t stand it.”

  A few people stopped their work to murmur approval. The guy next to me, in a low voice, made an unflattering comment about what he thought the pot could’ve been used for. But I hardly listened because I had fallen in love.

  The girl looked like what I had been dreaming about ever since I started dreaming about girls. She was tall and slim and very fair, with long blonde hair flowing down her shoulders and deep, deep blue eyes.

  I cleared my throat. “It’s beautiful,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  “Well, I mixed copper oxide with my standard mottled semigloss glaze and . . .” she began, moving over toward me and speaking in an excited voice. Close up, I noticed a tiny ridge of pimples between her eyes and also that her ears were rather large and stuck out. But aside from that, she was about as perfect as a girl could be.

  Her name was Norma Jenkins. She sat next to me once the class started and gave me a lot of useful information about clay. I didn’t hear any of it. I was busy admiring her even, white teeth and blessing Mr. Wasserman.

  On Friday, I helped her carry four pots home from school.

  “Don’t you do anything else?” I asked her. “I mean besides make pots?”

  “Sure I do,” she said, “lots of things.”

  “Like what?” />
  “Well, I . . . I . . . No.” She began laughing. “Not too much. I’ve had a love affair with clay since I was eight, I guess.”

  “Only clay?” I said, my elbow brushing against hers.

  “Be careful,” she cried, holding out her arm. “That pitcher . . . I’m going to give it to my mother for her birthday.”

  There was a clay smudge on her chin and her fingernails were caked with a pale, green glaze. Around us, a cold San Francisco fog pressed down against our heads. I remember looking at her pink cheeks, at the alarm in her face over the thought I might break her pitcher, and I felt warm and happy to be alive.

  “Only clay?” I repeated, cradling the pitcher against my chest.

  “What?”

  “I mean, you’ve had a love affair only with clay? Nothing . . . nobody else?”

  Her cheeks grew even pinker. “Well, there was this boy . . . he took ceramics last year . . . he made some nice mugs but . . .” She shook her head. “He really didn’t understand glazes.”

  “Is that why you broke up with him?”

  “No . . . Anyway, he broke up with me.”

  “Because you knew more about glazes?”

  “Now you’re laughing at me.” She tilted her head and laughed up at me. I was so happy, I pressed the pitcher hard against my chest and heard her shriek, “Watch out, you’ll break it!”

  “So why did he break up with you?”

  “Because he found somebody he liked better,” she said carefully.

  “The jerk!”

  “No,” she said softly, “he wasn’t. I mean, he isn’t a jerk. He’s very nice, very smart, but I guess he just found somebody he liked better. I guess she’s a nice girl. She’s more interested in the kinds of things he likes to do. I don’t know her—she never took ceramics—but I guess she’s nice.”

  I snorted.

  “I felt bad for a while, but I’m over it now.”

  “I’m glad,” I told her, and we both smiled quickly at each other and looked away.

  “How about you?” she asked. Our elbows brushed again, but this time she didn’t yell anything about her pot.

  “Oh, I went around with a girl in my sophomore year. She was the big one in my life. Then there were a few in between, and this summer there was somebody I met at the hardware store—I work part-time at a hardware store—but she was kind of a birdbrain, talked on the phone all the time, and had a weird laugh. That’s all over now.”

  “How about the girl in your sophomore year?”

  “Kendra Gin?”

  “Kendra Gin? I know her. She’s gorgeous.”

  “Yeah, I guess she is.”

  “Was the girl this summer . . . was she pretty too?”

  “Yeah, I guess she was.”

  “I guess you like pretty girls.”

  “I guess everybody likes pretty girls.”

  “Well,” she said, very seriously, “it doesn’t matter to me. I mean, I don’t care whether a guy is good-looking or not. It’s what’s inside that counts.”

  “Sure,” I told her, “that’s important too, but I don’t think I’d ever be attracted to a girl who wasn’t pretty. I mean, she has to be pretty for me to get interested in her, and then, after that, there has to be something inside for me to stay interested.”

  She argued with me. She said that physical beauty was only skin-deep. She said to look only for physical beauty was superficial and demeaning. Her voice was husky and filled with warmth. We walked together through the gray fog, arguing—comfortable and happy in the certain knowledge that both of us were good-looking, and that something powerful was beginning between us.

  two

  I didn’t tell my mother about Norma for a couple of weeks. Not that she wouldn’t have been interested. She was interested in everything I did and in everybody I liked. She was always asking me to tell her what was happening in my life, but whatever I told her, it was never right. Most of the time I didn’t tell her anything. But that wasn’t right, either.

  “So how was school today, Jeff?”

  “Okay, Mom.”

  “Anything unusual happen?”

  “Nope.”

  “How are your marks?”

  “Pretty good, I guess.”

  “Whatever happened to that friend of yours you used to be so close to last year? What’s his name?”

  “Jim?”

  “No, the other one—short boy with very good manners. I liked him.”

  “Fred? Oh—Fred Waller. He moved, Mom. His family moved away to Chicago.”

  “You never told me.”

  “Mom, it’s six months at least.”

  “Well, you never said anything. You never tell me anything.”

  I don’t like to tell her anything because she always feels bad when I do. Like when she found out about Norma.

  “Who is Norma, Jeff?”

  “She’s in my ceramics class, Mom.”

  “Well, she calls you an awful lot. Wanda says you’re on the phone with her all the time.”

  “Wanda’s got a big mouth.”

  “And I know you’ve been spending a lot of time over at her house. You’re never home weekends anymore.” My mother was smiling now. “You can tell me, Jeff. I’ll keep your secret.”

  “Well . . .” I looked over at her. The two of us were sitting together at the kitchen table after dinner. My sister, Wanda, was out of the room, probably taking another shower.

  “Well . . .” I started laughing and my mother laughed too. She’s a little woman with a thin, dark, worried face. She doesn’t smile too often. Maybe she used to before my father left her, but it was so many years ago I can’t really remember. Anyway, I get this happy feeling when she laughs. It catches me off guard, makes me forget that it never lasts.

  “Another notch in your belt, Jeff?”

  “Oh no, Mom. Norma’s different. All those others were just pretty faces. She . . .”

  “Doesn’t have a pretty face?” My mother was still laughing. She reached over and patted my hand.

  “Oh, she’s gorgeous, Mom, but she’s really a special person, a wonderful person.”

  “So when do I meet her?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Why don’t you invite her over to dinner this weekend? You’re always over at her house. You eat there all the time. Her mother must be a great cook.”

  “No, she’s a lousy cook, Mom. Not like you.”

  My mother has two little dimples in her face when she smiles. I don’t see them very often, and I watched them as I went on.

  “She’s a lousy cook, but she likes to can things. Her kids complain because she’s got like hundreds of jars down in the basement—things like quince jam and pickles and figs. She keeps telling me to take some, but . . .”

  “I like quince jam,” said my mother, still smiling. But suddenly there was a little edge there, like she was thinking why didn’t I think of her? Why didn’t I remember she liked quince jam and bring her a lousy jar?

  “Her kids complain all the time,” I hurried on, “but she keeps right on canning things.”

  “What does she do,” said my mother, still pleasant, “when she’s not canning?”

  “Oh, she doesn’t work. Norma says she’s one of the few women left in the world who doesn’t feel guilty about being a housewife.”

  “Just stays at home,” my mother murmured, and picked up a few crumbs on the table with one hand and dropped them into her other hand.

  “Well, she doesn’t really have to work. They’re loaded. Mr. Jenkins is a lawyer, and they live in a big house on Jackson Street. It’s a great house, but it’s kind of a mess because Mrs. Jenkins isn’t much of a housekeeper. All she does is can stuff and listen to opera records.”


  My mother’s face relaxed. I should have stopped, but I didn’t. That’s the trouble. Once I start, I never know when to stop.

  “But she’s gorgeous, Mom. They’re all gorgeous in that family. Norma says she’s the ugly duckling, and I guess she’s right. Because as beautiful as she is, her two sisters are even more beautiful. And her mother—her mother’s a real knockout. Even though she must be around forty, she’s got to be the most beautiful woman I ever . . .”

  My mother stood up, her little dark face tight again. “Sure she’s gorgeous,” said my mother. “All she’s got to do is sit around her big house and do nothing. What’s she got to worry about with a rich husband and more money than she knows what to do with?”

  “The house is a mess,” I cried desperately, but it was too late.

  “No wonder you’re never home anymore,” said my mother, that tight, sharp edge twisting in her voice. “I guess you like mingling with the beautiful people.”

  My mother turned her back to me and started washing the dishes. I tried to remember exactly what I had said that changed everything this time.

  “What did I say?” I said. “What are you all worked up over?”

  She turned off the water and twisted around to face me. “Nothing,” she said. “You didn’t say anything. You never tell me anything. I have to pull it out of you.”

  “But anything I tell you, you get upset. Even if you just ask me the time and I tell you, you get upset.”

  “Because you’re selfish,” she said, not shouting, never shouting. When my mother gets angry, her voice sinks lower and lower and comes out between her teeth. “All you think about is going off with your rich friends and forgetting you have a mother and sister. I’m working forty hours a week, and I don’t have the time to sit around listening to opera and looking beautiful.”

  “Mom, Mom . . .”

  “And all I ask is for you to help just a little . . . pick up a few things at the store, run the washing machine once in a while, check up on Wanda. But you only think of yourself . . . just like your father.”

  Then I was shouting. I always ended up shouting, and banging my chair into the table, and storming off into my room and slamming the door.