I only allowed myself a few quick glances. That was enough. Looking at myself in the mirror, I saw the woman who’d been dead for nearly twenty years. There was my mom in those pillowy arms. She was there in the thighs, round and soft, and in the place the flesh met between my legs. And, Oh, God, there she was again, leaving the imprint of her Love that Red lipstick-stained lips on the filters of her L & M cigarettes, in that shelf of hips surrounding my mid-section like a curse.
The sight was too painful at first. Such a fate couldn’t be happening to me. I exercised and ate healthy food. I almost never indulged in dessert. And I hadn’t brought any children into this world. Why was I suddenly looking like a mom?
I griped to my husband, who assured me I looked fine. Several of my co-workers responded, “But you’re so thin.” I reminded them of what they couldn’t see under my oversized blouses and sweaters. “It looks different under there,” I’d assure them.
My future began to unfold before me, the first time I allowed myself to buy a pair of shorts in the next larger size. I said I’d done it for comfort. Wasn’t it nice not to have the waist cinch in and press against my gut, so that all I wanted to do was go home and pull on a stretchy pair of sweatpants with its kind elastic waistband? Still, I couldn’t help but see my mother’s super-size Bermuda shorts or be walking with her under the throbbing white glare of fluorescent lights in Gimbels basement, where they hid the size 16’s.
I stopped looking at my reflection in mirrors. If I caught a glimpse by mistake, it was unsettling enough to force my eyes away from shop windows for another month. I only shopped for clothes when I had no choice.
In middle age, after my father left, my mother was forced to work for the very first time. She took a class at the local vocational school, where she learned to type and take shorthand. For the rest of her life, my mother would spend every day in a lawyer’s office, typing court pleadings and opening her boss’ mail. My mom’s meager salary wasn’t enough to cover the mortgage payments for our three-bedroom, split-level house. So in her early fifties, my mother moved into a trailer.
I hoped if I went to college, I wouldn’t end up like my mom. And I also assumed that if I didn’t marry and never had kids, no man could ever leave me stuck. What I didn’t understand until much later was that my mom had taught me something else that no amount of education or self-sufficiency could erase. My mom taught me that I was weak, and this made me feel like a vulnerable victim.
That weakness, the inability I have to say no, is what got me talked into this. Of course, now I’m glad. But, at first, I felt that I’d been taken. With no money saved, I agreed to spend cash I didn’t have on a personal trainer. And all because I could no longer stand to look at myself in the mirror.