Massive - Softcover

Julia Bell

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330415611 ISBN 13: 9780330415613

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 2003

Synopsis

`Big, bold and brave` J-17

`I`m fat,` I hear myself saying. I look in the mirror. My face has gone hot and red; I feel like i`m going to explode. `I`m fat.` It sizzles under my skin, puffing me up, pushing me out, making me massive.

Weight has always been a big issue in Carmen`s life. Not surprising when her mum is obsessed with the idea that thin equals beauty, thin equals success, thin equals the way to get what you want. And somehow her daughter is going to be thin.

When her mother sweeps her off to live in the city, Carmen finds her old world disappearing. With everything to gain and absolutely nothing to lose. Carmen starts to ask: if she were thin, very thin, could it all be different?

About this title

About the Author

Julia Bell was born in 1971 and brought up in Wales. She co-edited adult story collections Hard Shoulder (Tindal Street Press, 1999) and England Calling (Weidenfeld, 2001), and co-edited The Creative Writing Handbook (Macmillan 2001). She established the small press Pen & Inc at the University of East Anglia where she teaches Creative Writing.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter One

"If I was as big as her I'd kill myself," Mum says, pointing at a picture of Marilyn Monroe in her magazine.

I'm sitting at the kitchen table waiting for my toast to brown. If I don't watch it, it will burn. Mum always buys

lo-salt Danish bread that toasts really quickly, the kind that has more air in it than flour. On her new diet she's allowed two slices at breakfast, along with 1 ounce of Special K with skim milk.

"You'd tell me, wouldn't you? If I got that big?"

I look at her, I can see her bones through her clothes.

"Of course," I lie.

She watches me as I spread Gold Ultra Lite on my toast.

"Don't use so much, Carmen."

My name is Carmen because Mum likes to imagine that she's got Spanish blood in her. That and the fact that I bawled my eyes out, "like some bloody opera singer," for six months after I was born.

"You're unlucky," she says to me sometimes, looking

me up and down, assessing my already plump chest, my thick hips, my freckles. "You'll end up with a Mediterranean figure, like your nan. You'll always have to watch your weight."

At fourteen I already know this much about my own destiny. If she wanted me to be tall and skinny she should have given me a different name.

Mum has been on a diet ever since I can remember. She has more diet books than the town library. A whole shelf of them above the cooker. Diets for hips and thighs, for chests, for rapid weight loss, for toning, for shaping. Books by celebrities, doctors, sports stars, cranks. Diets that tell you to eat nothing but grapefruit, yogurt, skim milk, milkshakes, fish, cabbages, broad beans.

Don't snack! They all say that. Don't snack! Don't fill your mouth in between meals, chew gum, drink water, nibble carrots. No crisps, no chocolate, no cola, no chips, no calories.

Mum likes to think we do the same diets together. She loses but I stay the same, or sometimes I put on a few pounds. She can't understand it, she says I must be cursed with a slow metabolism. What she doesn't acknowledge is that I don't stick to them properly. That I eat fries and Big Macs. That I snack.

On the fridge there are lists of foods and weights and portions that change every day.

This week it's a Power Diet!™. The Power is You!

Today it says:

• Breakfast
• One half grapefruit/1 oz. Special K
• Toast x 2
• Spread 1Ž2 teaspoon
• Lunch
• Consommé
• Carrots 7 oz. (washed)
• Supper
• Power Shake™ (Vanilla)
• Snacks
• Dried-fruit mix (2 oz.)

These lists are stuck on with novelty magnets that have slogans like: Don't Do It! A Moment on Your Lips, Forever on Your Hips! She gets them mail order from a place in America.

The Power Diet™ comes complete with a month's supply of Power Shakes™, a handbook, and a box of recipe cards for lo-cal meals, most of them involving carrots and brown rice.

According to the box, NASA developed Power Shakes™ as meal replacements for astronauts. Inside the foil pouches is a thick, gloopy liquid, rich in vitamins and essential minerals, which you are supposed to dilute with water. Mum let me try one when the box arrived, DHL from California. Unlike the picture of a thick, frothing shake, it was thin

and watery and had a weird, metallic aftertaste. You're only supposed to have three a week as replacements; Mum has them for nearly every main meal.

She shuts her magazine and opens the Power Diet™ handbook. It is full of Positive Affirmations, slogans to make you "think and feel in a more powerful way."

"You are a beautiful person." She smiles. "There. Doesn't that make you feel better?"

Dad comes in looking tired, his clothes crumpled. Looks like he spent the night in the garage again.

"Slept with your computers, did you?" Mum says, raising an eyebrow at him. He's set up a workshop in the garage, because Mum won't let him bring his stuff into the house. "I can't deal with the mess, Brian. All those itty bitty bits of wire get stuck in the carpet and ruin my tights."

He grunts and opens the fridge. "Who's for fried eggs?"

"Yes, please," I say.

"Brian." Mum doesn't look up. "We're supposed to be on a diet. How is she ever going to learn if you keep giving her food?"

He doesn't say anything and lights the flame on the gas.

Dad ignores Mum's diets, mutters about them being whacko, nuts, that they only end up making her sick. "They don't make you look any better, Maria."

She moans about this, says it's not fair that she still has to buy his full-fat food while she's dieting. There are three separate shelves in the fridge. At the top, Mum's tubs: Tupperware full of carrot sticks and celery, boiled rice, slices of chicken with the skin removed, lemon wedges, grapefruit halves, cottage cheese, no-fat yogurt. My shelf

is supposed to be in the middle but Dad always mixes things up. He puts his leftover takeaway trays back on

my shelf next to all the Weight Watchers ready meals and lo-fat spreads. Mum ignores these little digs, muttering under her breath as she puts the butter back on the bottom shelf that he doesn't understand a thing about feeding a family.

He takes a box of extra-large free-range eggs from his shelf and asks me if I want my egg sunny-side up, over easy, or upside down.

"Over easy, partner," I say. It's our little joke; we like to pretend we're American.

"Do you have to fry them? I don't know how you can eat them like that, all that mucus." Dad cracks two eggs in his fist over the pan. The slimy insides drop into the hot fat and start spitting. "Brian, it's making me nauseous." He doesn't say anything, just carries on shifting the pan around over the flame.

When he puts my egg in front of me, the yolk all runny and soaking into my toast, she makes exaggerated puking noises. I turn away from her and eat it really quickly.

"Fried egg on toast, 300 calories. At least. You'll be on lettuce all week now, you know, Carmen," she says. "After all that fat."

Later, she complains that she can smell it on her clothes. "I stink like a chip shop," she says, giving herself an extra squirt of perfume. "It's disgusting."

My mother works in a clothes shop in town. Waltons for Women. An exclusive boutique where they sell clothes that cost more than most people's wages. Top designer labels like Gucci, Prada, Versace, Armani, Paul Smith. Mum got the job part-time when she was convalescing, switching to full-time last year.

Mrs. Walton who owns the shop is delighted, she says Mum has a real flair for the London fashions. Profits are up twenty-five percent in the two years since Mum's been working there. She even lets Mum do some of the buying now. This week she's got appointments in Birmingham and Leeds.

"The only way is up, baby," she says, zipping up her Louis Vuitton overnight case and patting herself on the thigh.

She's away in Birmingham and I will have a Big Mac for tea if Dad's "cooking," from the new McDonald's they built on the edge of the valley.

I am at home watching TV, eating a Movie Bag of tortilla chips bought on the way home from school, waiting for Dad to get back from work. The pretty blonde girl in the Australian soap kisses her new lover. I feel a pang. I've never had a boyfriend, not like Janice who's nearly gone all the way already.

My fingers have turned a violent orange from the cheese powder. I wipe them on my Adidas track pants, making greasy tiger stripes across my thighs. The bag is already empty; my mouth is shriveling from all the salt. I wonder what else there is in the house to eat. If only I didn't feel so hungry all the time.

He should be home by now. But he's probably forgotten that he's supposed to be looking after me tonight. I eat the box of snack fruit that Mum left in the cupboard: 12 ounces, a week's worth of dried sultanas and raisins.

Dad owns half of a computer business -- NorTech -- a name Mum says sounds like someone trying to bring up phlegm. He builds the computers from scratch to the customer's specifications, and his business partner, Moira, runs the shop in town, taking all the orders and selling peripherals like printers and software and Mickey Mouse mats and glow-in-the dark joysticks. Dad says that in the past few years, with the technological revolution and everything, business has never been so good.

Moira has a bigger house over in the next valley. Her husband, John, put money into the business when it started, and they have two sons, Adrian and Sam, who both go to private schools. Adrian, the eldest, is the same age as me.

When Mum got sick, Dad used to take me over there for sleepovers. Moira made proper teas, giant dishes of macaroni and cheese, lasagna, shepherd's pie. "Your dad has been under such a lot of strain," she said to me in her creamy voice, scooping a small mountain of pasta onto my plate. "Looking after you is the least I can do."

When Mum came back from hospital she banned me from going there. She said that Moira was nosy, interfering. "Everything's been getting far too cozy while I've been away."

I watch the news, a holiday program and half of another soap before I hear his key in the door.

"Hiya kid," is the first thing he says as he flops onto the sofa next to me. He has McDonald's bags in his hands.

"Did you get me a Big Mac?" I ask.

"Don't tell your mother," he says, winking.

My mother left a whole fridge of instructions and portions for me. Today's affirmation is: Don't put it off! Do it Now!

I'm supposed to be eating a lo-fat ready-made cheese and ham tagliatelle. A Weight Watchers special, under 400 calories and less than one percent fat. Instead, I'm letting the grease of a Big Mac slide down my chin. Dad doesn't look at me as he chews on his Fillet O' Fish. He plugs in the PlayStation, while he holds the burger in his mouth. He sits down, cross-legged in front of it like one of those brass Buddha statues they sell in Margy's Mystic Shop in town. He plays Wipeout. ...

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan MacMillan
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0330415611
• ISBN 13: 9780330415613
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 232