Dwellers Read Free Page B

a folded piece of paper with equations marked “Fundamental
Accounting”, a flyer for a jeans sale (“UP TO 75% OFF!”), and small cardboard cards covered in calligraphy script.
Sweetness. Elegance. Fuck.
    Louis turns the pages of the planner, every now and then turning to me and pointing at something the girl has written. We look at her calendar. It is March.
Final group paper due.
She has
encircled a date in April.
Solo trip—can’t wait to see you, Vigan!!! Can’t wait to get OUT of here.
    She is supposed to enter her senior year in college by June. She has notes up to that month, sweet June that she never saw.
Online pre-enlistment. Comm 180.
    I suddenly find it hard to breathe.
    “This poor girl,” Louis says.
    “I hope it’s not her,” I say. “The one in the freezer. I hope it’s not Meryl.” But that would mean an anonymous corpse and a potential witness to the
crime.
    We come upon a page filled with names and phone numbers, but Louis skips ahead, probably planning to deal with that later.
    “Look at this,” Louis says.
    The page shows a photo of people sitting in a circle. Cut from a magazine, taped on the page.
    Meryl used black ink for her notes and wrote in beautiful cursive.
     
    - Hi I’m Meryl, and I’m overweight.
    - Hi Meryl!
    - Really, it’s okay, I don’t even know why we need to make a big deal out of this.
     
    The next page is an Alice in Wonderland collage, blonde Alice in a blue dress with a mushroom umbrella. The Cheshire cat. Lace. Glitter. Pink swatches. We turn the page.
     
    I DON’T WANT to go home, to be honest. I’d avoid it if I can. This is all they see: one hundred and seventy pounds. I am doing well in my studies, thank you for
not asking, and yes this dress doesn’t fit me anymore. Alice ate the Eat Me Cake, the foolish slut.
     
    I WAS 120 POUNDS when I entered college. I bought bigger jeans, upped my shirt size. It didn’t feel like a big deal. I was enjoying myself. But one time I came home and
my mother looked at me and said, “You are so fat”, with such incredulity and such disgust that every spoonful I consumed felt like a sin.
     
    THE NEXT PAGE shows another magazine cutout, a photo of a gray-haired couple smiling at the camera.
We’ll love you if you are exactly
this
size!
the caption
reads.
     
    There was a time when my cousins and I went out and had a spa day. A cousin of mine apparently saw the (petite) masseuse roll her eyes while kneading my shoulders. My cousin said, she’s
too big for you, isn’t she? And they all laughed and of course I had to laugh because I had to be a good sport, I can’t be fat AND sensitive, oh no, because I did this to myself,
didn’t I? Then we had dinner and I ended up paying for their food. I don’t know why I do this to myself.
     
    I HAVE BEEN called a whale. I have been asked in jest if I were pregnant, and why the gestation period was so long. Someone in class I didn’t even know very well asked
me to come over, gestured “wide” with her arms, and asked, “What the hell happened?”
     
    I HAVE MORE stories like this. Maybe you’d like to sit down.
     
    I HATE: PENCIL skirts, scuba gear, sleeveless tops, family reunions, college mixers, a gathering of any kind that involves people looking you up and down and passing judgment
on you even before you open your mouth, i.e. she is fat, therefore she is: lazy, undisciplined, greedy, has thunder thighs that will rip apart the dress she’s wearing any. Second.
Now.
     
    THE FUNNY THING is I go on a diet, I drink lots of water, and my classmates eat pizza and burgers and drink soda every day yet they remain reed-thin while I am this. And the
world looks at us, points at me and says I eat like a monster. I did not create this body—it was given to me.
     
    I AM ALSO a pretty decent artist, but who the fuck cares.
     
    THERE IS A pastel drawing of a little girl with her arms spread wide. Over her is a rainbow, and over the rainbow is an arc of words