Hi everyone. I’m Rosemary. My friends call me Rosie and I hope you will too. I’m new to this and haven’t figured how to change my "profile picture" yet. The anaemic white dot-for-a-face up there, top left – that’s not me. I’m, you know, rosie. Ha ha. And I have a tan. Picture me poolside sipping a smoothie after I’ve done my laps. Hey, maybe I’ll post a photo. "You’re all skin and bones." Takes all types to make a world, Mum. The dot’s got no features. I’ve got lots: fun and friendly, for a start. I love to cook for friends. In fact, I’m typing this in between trips to the kitchen (slow roast lamb). I invited Lotte too. I hope everyone’s nice to her. It takes so little to be nice. Lotte always is. She has a sweet nature, she likes to help. But she’s a little plump, and that puts people off. She says that’s all they see: plump. Blinded by plump. Lotte’s invisible, hidden inside her body. People avoid her. They get awkward. They can’t know what it's like to ask a shop assistant from behind a curtain for an even larger size. Her mother used to feed her platefuls of love, pinch her cheeks, and call her dumpling. Kids at junior school called her fattywhompus. Later it was butt-face, lard-ass, puddin’ tits. They yelled "oink oink" at her from across the street. A co-worker referred to the elephant in the room. It makes me cross to hear what she has to put up with. Furious, actually. Someone gave her an old jokey British seaside postcard of a whale-woman in a polka dot costume paddling in the shallows. Around her dimpled knees, wide-eyed, wide-mouthed fishes gape at her. All in good fun. She hides hurt with a giggle, or a sweet forgiving smile. She'll even puff her cheeks, bulge her eyes, and rock like a tugboat to join in the joke. She can put on a good-humoured show of anger too – fists, frown, growl. Some large people use their bodies to claim space and power. They dominate with bulk. But that’s not Lotte. She’s unassuming. It’s a way to shrink.
I meant to tell you about my lovely labrador, and Griff, my corgi, who digs up the tulip bulbs down the driveway, and about the guys I go hiking with, but I got stuck on Lotte.
And there’s more. Her thighs rub raw when she walks. They bruise and bleed. She uses creams and bandages. No one knows this. Finding a chair is a challenge. She breaks toilet seats. In the grocery aisle, trolleys can’t get by. She fills a lift. She actually saw someone check the maximum weight on the safety notice. There have been looks of revulsion. Imagine what it must feel like to repulse someone!
***
Hi there. I’m back – the blank dot! It’s been a while. More than a while. Anyway, here, dear "Friends", is the big catch up. Gonna tell it like it is. Hold on to your seats.
I think I’ll brief you first about the factory. Fact check: I don’t model perfume ads. Picture me – Quality Control section, ten girls in a row, Maureen on my left, Patience on my right. We maintain speed, precision, and focus. No errors; we fear them. Walled in with fluorescent lights. Hour after hour I check men’s underpants: a) is the stitching neat? and b) is the label dead centre? – the same tiny task, on and on and on. Shoulder knots, neck aches, wrist pain. You go home sore. Can’t resign. Need the job. Long bus ride to my empty bedsit, staring past the glass into the night. Sorry: no house, no garden, no dogs. You’re not allowed to chat in Quality Control, and anyway how can you with the machines machining, the intercom screeching, and non-stop drone? Hard to make friends there. Or anywhere, actually.
So, it’s a Monday, strict forty-minute lunch break. I check out at the turnstile and dash – my version of dash – to the supermarket. All excited. Aflutter, in fact. It’s my birthday. I got my hair done – a birthday treat. I spend my lunch money on a cake to share with the Quality girls. I dash back. Peep in the box now and then – creamy pink whorls dotted with real cherries. This makes me happy. It’ll be a lovely surprise for them. My lips purse.
There’s a queue at the gate, and I’m already late. I get my punchcard out and prepare myself for the turnstile tango – a sideways shuffle into the quarter-circle wedge, lead with one arm and trail the other, push hips – push! – mind the bosom. Normally I’d position both arms straight down and pull them in close with shoulders bunched forward. Can’t today because I’m holding the cake. It takes extra seconds to wiggle in and suddenly it jams. I’m stuck. I can still turn my head. The check-in guy is slouched against his desk chatting on his phone. "Excuse me" – I yell it, but politely (it’s the lilt of birdsong) and do my sweet apologetic smile. I yell it again, up an octave. He glances across at me – a caged blimp, rolls of flesh bulging between the bars – and snorts. And he’s laughing and commenting into his phone. I can’t breathe. A wrist is forced against a metal bar, and my right elbow is hurting. Everything’s constricted. Panic’s taking over. I try to unbend an arm and the box breaks open and I’m squashing cake and cherries. He’s choking with laughter and his fumbling fingers can’t punch the code into the keypad. I hear sniggers, and turn my head. Gaping fish eyes, gaping fish-mouths. Someone cracks up. It sets them off – guffaws and squeals and teeth. "No don’t. No, please don’t. Please ..." – but the words won’t come out. And in my head it’s porker, oink, pie-junkie, jelly-jowls, blubbergirl oink oink oink oink oink all over again. He’s still spluttering, busting a gut as the gate gives and crushed cake falls and I’m out, I’m free. I reel and stagger like a drunk, gasping. I upend the desk and kick the stuff across the hall. My voice is back and it’s screaming. I use my bulk to push him. He’s stopped laughing. I want to wedge him into the cage, let him see what it’s like. I want to break his useless fingers. He’s reaching for his phone. I send it flying across the room. He slips on cake, loses balance, scrambles up and is out of here in a flash, calling for Security. I turn and face the mob on the other side of the glass. Cameras are out. "Right, you fuckers, you want it? Here I am: Rosie." I’m outfacing them. Got nothing to lose. I’m immense. Invincible. Uncaged. I grab my collar. With one gesture, fabric rips, buttons fly. My blouse is open. It’s off. My bra, my pants, panties. A delirium of rage and euphoria. I seize a chair, lift it above my head, and rush towards the glass. The crowd lurches back as the pane cracks, and a sleek sheet plummets, slicing clean a slab of thigh.
What happened? Well, doctors, lawyers, fifteen bizarre minutes of fame, letters from strangers and even money, and people with their own terrible stories, and George the physio, Gina the therapist, sitting in a circle with the group and crying and laughing, and Bernadette, the skinny-hipped, kind-eyed weight-loss specialist. The Quality girls visited me in hospital and they brought a cake, which was nice, and Maureen came again once. There are people – I’ve seen them – who have their crisis, shed 300 pounds then go on morning TV and get hugs and applause then whoops and squeals when they say their fiancé proposed at Disneyland. But that’s not what happened to me. Yes, I’ve lost a lot, but I’m not ready to fit into one leg of my old pants. And I know I won’t ever be. And not much has changed except now I don’t take shit from anyone. Ever. What really happened was animals. I help at the shelter every day, rain or sun. You can be you with animals. Also, they’re good listeners. And so am I. They know that. Every day they make me happy. Lotte is gone – decapitated by a plane of glass. There’s just me. And that’s okay. I’m a big girl and there’s lots to like.
Here’s a Before / After photo for you.
It’s Rex, rehabilitated. What’s not to love?
Author: Michael Pettit is an established South African artist – a painter. His short stories have appeared in The Bookends Review, Barcelona Review, and the Parracombe Prize anthology. He has received an Editor’s International Choice award in the Hammond House Literary Prize, and has also won the Song Lyrics category.