Sarai Walker - Dietland

Delete.

At home there was a package. I sat on my bed, the straps of my purse and laptop bag still tangled around me, and ripped open the puffy brown parcel. Inside was a knee-length poplin shirtdress, white with purple trim. It was even prettier than the photographs in the catalog had been.

In the corner of my bedroom was a floor-length mirror in a brass frame. I kept it covered by a white sheet, which I tossed aside so I could hold the dress in front of me, imagining what it would look like when it fit. When I was done I put it in the closet with the other too-small clothes.

My regular clothes, the ones I wore on a daily basis, were stuffed into the dresser or flung on the floor. Stretchy and shapeless, threaded with what must have been miles of elastic banding, they were not in fashion or out of fashion; they were not fashion at all. I always wore black and rarely deviated from the uniform of ankle-length skirts and long-sleeved cotton tops, even in the summer. My hair was nearly black too. For years it had been shaped into a shiny chin-skimming bob, with blunt bangs cut straight across my forehead. I liked this style, but it made my head look like a ball that could be twisted from my round body, the way a cap is removed from a bottle of perfume.

Inside the closet, there was nothing black, only color and light. For months I had been shopping for clothes that I would wear after my surgery. Two or three times a week the packages arrived—blouses in lavender and tangerine, pencil skirts, dresses, a selection of belts. (I had never worn a belt.) I didn’t shop in person; when someone my size went into a regular clothing store, people stared. I had done it once after I’d spotted a dress in a store window that I couldn’t resist. I went inside and paid for it, then had it gift-wrapped as though it were for someone else.

No one knew about the clothes, not even Carmen or my mother. Carmen didn’t even know about the surgery, but my mother did and she was against it. She was worried about the potential complications. She sent me articles that outlined the dangers of the procedure, as well as a tragic story about children who were orphaned when their mother died post-surgery. “But I don’t have any children,” I said to her on the phone, unwilling to indulge her.

“That’s not the point,” she said. “What about me?”

This isn’t about you, I had wanted to say, and refused to discuss the surgery with her again after that.

After straightening and rearranging the clothes, I shut the closet door. I knew it was foolish to buy clothes I couldn’t try on. They might not fit right when the time came, but I bought them anyway. I needed to open the closet door and look at them and know this wasn’t like the other times. Change was inevitable now. The real me, the woman I was supposed to be, was within my reach. I had caught her like a fish on a hook and was about to reel her in. She wasn’t going to get away this time.

Carmen called to ask if I wanted to join her and her girlfriend at a pizzeria for dinner, but I didn’t like to eat at restaurants when I was following my program, so I said no. From one of the new Waist Watchers recipe cards, I made lasagna, which used ground turkey instead of beef and fat-free cheese and whole-wheat pasta. While it was cooking it smelled like real lasagna, but it didn’t taste like it. I gave it three stars. After I ate a small portion (230) with a green salad (150), I cut the rest into squares and put them in the freezer. My hands were still slightly trembly from hunger, but I would be good and not eat anything more.

After changing into my nightgown and brushing my teeth, I took my daily dose of Y—— from the bottle, the pink pill. It was my ritual before bed, like saying a prayer. As I finished my glass of water, I went to the window in the front room and pulled back the curtain, looking to see if the girl was sitting on the stoop, listening to her music, but she wasn’t there.

I STAYED HOME for most of the holiday weekend, the unofficial start of summer, leaving only to go to the library and to see a movie. The girl was nowhere around. On Tuesday morning I walked to the café, and as I turned the corner onto Violet Avenue, I wasn’t looking where I was going and bumped into someone—or maybe she bumped into me. “Sorry,” we both said at the same time, and then to my surprise, I saw the girl standing before me, with her Halloween eyes and cherry-red legs.

“It’s you,” I said. My heart was a moth flapping around a lampshade.

The girl smiled and said good morning, then opened the door and held it for me as I followed her inside. “Plum,” Carmen said, rushing past the girl, waving her hands at me. As she approached, her massive belly covered in yellow and pink polka dots, I remembered I was supposed to cover for her while she went for her checkup. “I won’t be gone long,” she assured me as she hurried out the door.

The girl walked ahead of me and I watched as she sat at my table. I was annoyed but didn’t show it and went behind the counter to help Carmen’s assistant. When I set my laptop bag down I felt the tension release from my shoulder as I rid myself of the computer and its endless cries for help. Surrounding me in the kitchen were flour and butter and eggs, the stuff of life; there wasn’t a line of text in sight. I breathed in the sugared air and savored it, then felt a twinge of hunger. My Waist Watchers granola bar (90), like sawdust mixed with glue, hadn’t provided much sustenance.

It had been a while since I’d helped out at the café, but I soon remembered how things were done. I poured cups of tea and sliced carrot cake. I set delicate cupcakes into pink cardboard boxes, licking the icing and sprinkles from my fingers when no one was looking. It was a relief to engage in work that didn’t involve angst, that allowed me to speak with three-dimensional people who asked for simple things like coffee and a slice of pie, not how to fix their cellulite or decipher the behavior of an emotionally stunted boy.

While I was working I glanced at the girl, who was sitting at my table with a makeup bag in front of her. She pulled a silver clamshell compact and a lip pencil from the shimmery pouch. I watched through the glass lid of a cake stand, blurrily, as she lined her lips and smacked them in the mirror.

Distracted by an order, I turned around and busied myself with the espresso machine and three tiny cups. When I returned to the counter I saw the girl in line behind the woman who’d ordered the espressos. My coworker had gone into the kitchen, so I would have to serve the girl. We would have to speak.

The girl stepped forward when it was her turn and we stood face-to-face. “Give me your hand,” she said. Startled, I did what she asked. She took the cap off a lip pencil and turned my right hand so that my palm was facing her, my thumb at the top. Then she began to write. I couldn’t see what she was writing, but I felt the point of the pencil digging into my skin.

When she finished, I pulled my hand back. “DIETLAND,” I read aloud.

“DIETLAND,” the girl repeated.

I stared at the penciled letters on my palm. Was the girl telling me to go on a diet? So much mystery, and there it was: she simply wanted to make fun of me.

In the absence of any comment from me, for at this point I was too embarrassed to speak, the girl quickly gathered her belongings from the table and left the café. Just then my coworker reappeared. I wiped my hand on my apron and excused myself to go to the kitchen. The bottom of the white sink filled with a faint pink color as I put my hand under the cold water and tried to rinse the lettering off.

When I emerged from the kitchen, I saw that the girl had left the lip pencil sitting on the table. I went to collect it. It was a Chanel pencil in a shade called “Pretty Plum.”