Mary Gaitskill - Two Girls, Fat and Thin

She could find nothing to link the charming world represented by her little photographs with the squalid, sweaty-pantyhose situation that became her adolescence — even though the pictures taken of her adolescence recorded a smiling, vulgarly pretty, confident young girl surrounded by friends wearing white lipstick and flowered miniskirts, her handsome, bemused parents in the background. Justine hated to look at these pictures, which, in her eyes, had the queasy, urgent, side-tilted quality of a dream that is rapidly becoming a nightmare. Her earliest memories though, weren’t as clear, and she was thus completely seduced by the bright old photos.

When she was five , they lived in Lancelot, Illinois, in a large apartment with two floors. Her father, having just graduated from medical school, was in residence at the hospital there. She pictures him returning home in his white coat, exuding safety, duty, and cheer. He is sitting slouched before the coffee table with little Justine tugging at his pant leg, a tuna sandwich on the plate before him. He is talking about important things. He sounds angry, but the anger is sleek and shaped to look like something else; it makes Justine feel afraid and reassured at once. Her mother replies as though she knows exactly what he means and has known all along. Her voice isn’t angry. It’s strong and almost proud, yet it has a curiously unstable quality as though the strength can’t sustain itself but needs to plant itself in some other form of energy to thrive. It makes Justine feel uneasy and confident at once. Their voices weave in and out of each other; they construct their conversation like a bridge of concrete high above Justine’s head. She watches solemnly.

They got up at five for breakfast because Dr. Shade had to be at the hospital at six. There was less talk then; Daddy was grumpy, not triumphant. He would say, “Lorraine, these eggs are mucusy,” or “How do you expect me to drink this?” The anger pulled against its sleek shape, and Justine held her breath. Her mother was subdued and obedient, but the strength in her voice was vibrant, as though rooted in her husband’s peevish demands. As to a corporal in the army, obedience to a respected superior was not degrading, rather it ennobled, it scornfully subsumed feelings that didn’t serve it, it gave a hard, elegant shape to every movement and object that embodied it. Mother’s grace and efficiency as she moved to pour the juice, the beautiful, fragile flowers in the vase, the stirring classical music coming from the radio were all performing a duty, augmenting and uplifting the campaign to get Dr. Shade out the door in the morning. Yet all this beauty and order could be disturbed by mucusy eggs. Her daddy could still get out the door, but it would be that much harder to do the important things. It was a puzzle.

When Daddy marched out in his white coat, Justine and Mama went into the living room to do their exercises. It built discipline, said Mama in a voice of conviction that had its roots in something Justine didn’t know about. Mama would change from her robe into her leotard, and Justine would stay in her pajamas. Mama would put on the exercise record of surging yet sedate music supporting a man’s voice which said, “Up ladies! Down ladies! Very good ladies!” Justine loved the record. The man’s voice had a mysterious foreign accent, and on the cover were pictures of a beautiful serious woman wearing a gray leotard, who was swinging her legs or touching her toes or kneeling and putting her head to her knee, just like the foreigner said. Justine and her mama would face each other as the music began, they would move up and down and back and forth together. Mama’s chest would get red and blotchy where Justine could see it exposed by the plunge-necked leotard, but her chin and face remained upright and intent as she rose and sank or knelt and swung. “We must learn to push ourselves, Justine,” she said.

After twenty minutes, the record was dispensed with, there was five minutes of stretching and then the mysterious pleasure of a “spit bath.” They would strip off their sweaty clothes and hang them on a towel rack to be hand-washed later that night and stand naked to the waist (except for Mother’s richly embossed brassiere) before the mirror, daubing their armpits and necks with washcloths and deodorants. Sometimes Mama would let Justine daub her back while she applied her modest lipstick and mascara, her face absorbed by the mirror as she licked her fingertips to remove the stray smudges of makeup from her eyes. During the winter, the rattling electric heater would be on, and the windows would fog, and the smell of their sweat would rise off their bodies like the sighing sounds you make in sleep. Justine hated leaving this warm, safe room to go out into the world. She wanted to stay with her mother always.

But they would get dressed and into the car, and Mama would drop Justine off at kindergarten and then go to work herself.

She remembers this morning ritual with great vividness, probably because they repeated it so unwaveringly for so long. Most of her other memories are snatched in arbitrary fragments from the deep past and fraught equally with emotion and meaninglessness as they float by for her half-conscious perusal as she lies daydreaming on her back.

She remembers the way her mother would push white wax suppositories into her ass with a slow gentleness that made her feel her body was being turned inside out. There was no place in her body where she could hide from the feeling. Her mother’s face wore the pursed look of duty it had when she made breakfast or put on her makeup, and the memory of the expression combined with the inexorable, horrible gentleness filled the adult Justine with loathing.

She remembers the way her mother came to her at night, with her nightgown undone so her moist breastbone gleamed in the light from the hall. Her blond hair would be rumpled, her unmadeup eyes tired, with damp little bags under them, her body warm and vulnerable, totally unlike the brisk pink Mama who did squats and knee-swings and made breakfast with the same purpose and strength. There was a different strength here, a kind that didn’t have to be planted in anything else to survive but rather infused her mother’s body and voice like blood. She put her arms around Justine, and stroked her face and told her stories. She was like a mama tiger licking her cub, and Justine never wanted her to go away.

Then there were the walks in the park on Sunday when they would lead the ducks on a bread-crumb parade, Daddy showing the way. They were admired; Justine especially was admired standing next to Mama in their almost-matching yellow dresses. There were spaghetti dinners while they listened to classical music on the radio and pretended they were in Italy, and Daddy stood at the table to conduct the orchestra while Mama cried, “Bravo, Dirk!”

Sometimes Daddy’s colleagues would come to the house for drinks. They stood in the living room, dark pant legs and deep, utterly sure voices, holding the drinks. Mama would stand in her flowered dress with her hands folded, her voice ringing with approval, and Justine would climb on the men’s laps. There was one she liked to climb on in particular, a man named Dr. Norris. Dr. Norris didn’t speak or move in quite the same confident way of the other doctors. He was somehow tentative, with numb, helpless-looking hands and eyes that seemed to defer to whomever he was with. Justine climbed on his lap and said, “If I were in trouble would you come like Popeye?” and he said, “Yes.” Mama told Justine in passing many years later that he liked her “especially,” and that he spent a lot of time with her. Justine remembers this; she remembers one time in particular.

They were walking in the park with him and his son, the contemplative, nose-picking Sam. They were by the swing sets when she told Dr. Norris she had to go to the bathroom. He asked which kind, and she said to pee. He took her hand, and they walked for a while until they were away from people. He began to take off her pants. She didn’t stop him because he was an adult, a gentle adult she trusted. But she didn’t want to take off her pants in public, even though there were no people around. She felt horrible standing naked except for her shoes and her shirt. He told her to spread her legs and pee on the ground. She spread her legs, but her whole body was suddenly stiff and she couldn’t pee. It felt so stiff it felt like wood. Even her face felt like wood. There was something wrong, but Dr. Norris didn’t seem to know it. “This will help you to pee,” he said. He said it in his kindest, most deferential voice. He knelt before her and licked his fingers and rubbed her between her legs where she would pee from. Her abdomen contracted like a crouching insect. Her bladder was full and it hurt. She looked at Dr. Norris’s face. He was looking between her legs with his numb eyes, and she saw that he knew there was something wrong but that he was going to do it anyway. He rubbed her briskly and numbly, and he talked to her, his voice coated more and more thickly with an expression she had never heard before. A strange and horribly powerful sensation flexed its claws in her body.