excerpt: Flesh Wounds
"I want nothing in the world more than to please the blonde lady on the other side of the brown clinic desk..."
This is an excerpt from a work in progress, a memoir with the working title Flesh Wounds. I’ll be sharing periodic excerpts from this manuscript here on Substack. Please feel free to leave feedback.
I want nothing in the world more than to please the blonde lady on the other side of the brown clinic desk. Her thick hair is pinned on top of her head in a massive blowsy Gibson-girly pile and when she smiles it makes me feel like maybe everything will be okay. Her body matches her hair, all curves and swag. Her black-skirted hips want to burst the metal prison bars of her office chair arms wide open. Even as an eleven-year-old it is not lost on me that it’s a little ironic that the weight-control counselor in the office is down the hall from my pediatrician’s is a fat woman. Her name is Marnie and I think she’s beautiful. I can see a tiny diamond of her belly where her shirt gaps between buttons and I am careful not to stare but somehow I just know it’s the softest thing in the world.
Marnie hands me a lime green card. It’s half a sheet of cardstock, unevenly cut, its top margin falling from left to right so that the outermost tip of the Y in “DIARY” is clipped off. This is my treats diary, and Marnie tells me I can have one treat each day for the next two weeks until I see her again. I’m to write down what they are, how much I have, and what my mood is like when I eat them. I nod enthusiastically. I’m going to do it every single day and use my best handwriting. I’m going to make Marnie proud of me. She’ll smile at me and tell me I did good, that I’m the best treats diary filler-outer she’s ever seen.
My mother has other plans and they are laying on the back seat of the station wagon when she pulls up in front of the clinic. She drops me off, then goes to the shopping center across the street to run her errands. “I got you some special treats,” she says, reaching over the back seat to gesture at a pile of little foil bags of hard, crunchy dried apple shreds and a head-sized jar of what the label says are “Strawberry Wafers.” Reading the fine print on the label later on I learn that they are delicious appetite suppressants, high in fiber and extremely satisfying.
Two weeks later I have gained two pounds.
