No. 7

Fall 2004

Steve Fellner
Untouchable

One day my father put a poster on the refrigerator door. It said, "FAMILY MEETING. HERE. 7 P.M. DON'T MAKE ANY OTHER PLANS."

What other plans would we make? We never had any money to do anything, and my mother and I spent our nights praying my father would come home.

At 7 p.m. we all entered the kitchen and sat around the table, my father at the head. He held a little gavel, something he had bought for this special occasion. We had never had a family meeting before. The gavel made him look powerful when he knocked it on the table.

"Today's business," he said, and then paused, "Family night."

My mother and I both looked at each other. We had no idea what he was talking about.

"Family night," he repeated. "We need to spend more time as a family."

"In other words," my mother said, "you're tempted to do something really dramatic, and you want us to keep an eye on you."

My father flashed her a dirty look. "That's one way of looking at it. But I was thinking that we could spend quality time together. And do something that'd help us. All of us. Like go to Overeaters Anonymous."

"Are you saying I'm fat?" my mother asked.

I didn't dare ask the question.

Three weeks before the family meeting, my father and I had gone to Sears to buy me a new pair of jeans for my first day of eighth grade. When he discovered that I was too fat to fit into a husky, he said, "If you get any more husky, we're going to have to shop for your clothes in the tent department."

Now my father wanted us all to go to Overeaters Anonymous. There was no doubt about it. We were all fat.

"If you're concerned about weight," my mother said, "have an affair with a thin woman. There's no way I'm going." She left the room.

My father looked at me and said, "There's an eight o' clock meeting. Wanna go?" On the car ride there, my father told me that when he was a teenager, he was five foot seven and weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, no muscle. His parents sent him to a weight loss camp for the summer. From his first moment there, he was plotting his escape. My father did flee during the night. He ran into the nearby forest, making his way to the highway, sneaked on a string of buses, and then found his way home. I loved imagining my father trudging through the countryside, clutching his stomach, suffering from exhaustion and dehydration.

"Why didn't you just stay?" I asked. "You probably lost just as much weight running away as if you had stayed put and done the drills."

He grunted.

The meeting was held in the back room at a church. As soon as my father and I walked into the room, everyone yelled "Hi, Lew!" There were about a dozen overweight women. They were huge, carrying around so much fat you knew they required two seats, not one, wherever they went. Everyone was dressed in black and wore pants that looked two sizes too large. It was like they wanted to trick themselves into believing they had lost weight. No one wore any makeup, not that it mattered. The babyfat on their faces hid wrinkles.

On a table, there were rice cakes and a cooler of water. One of the women marched over to my father and me. She was a wearing a shirt so tight it showed off her belly. I was impressed she let her skin show. "Lew, we're so glad you could make it," she said. "You made so many huge emotional steps last time."

Was this where my dad was spending the nights he disappeared? Was he really not cheating on my mother?

And would my mother care if it was with women as large as these?

"My name is Ellen," she said and shook my hand. "This is your son?"

My father nodded.

"Better keep him away from the ladies, Lew. He's a keeper."

Ellen yelled for everyone to grab a chair and form a circle. The meeting was going to begin. A woman poked me on the shoulder and asked if I wouldn't mind grabbing a chair for her.

"I'm too fat and weak," she laughed.

Ellen heard the woman, and marched over to us. I picked up the chair, and Ellen told me to put it down.

"Did you say what I think you did?" Ellen said to the woman.

The woman looked at the ground, shook her head yes.

"You know self-hatred isn't allowed here," Ellen said. "It's a contagious thing. It spreads."

"Sorry," the woman said.

Ellen told the woman to drag the chair to the circle. She was strong enough to do it herself, and it was her responsibility to contribute to the positive energy of the space.

I sat down next to my dad and watched the woman push the chair towards us. Every couple of seconds, she paused and took a deep breath, and then started again. As I watched her, I could feel myself paying extra attention to my own heartbeat, believing I could hear my own arteries hardening.

"Let's begin," Ellen said, and then looked at the woman on my right. The woman introduced herself as Wilma, and then confessed to everyone that she still hadn't gotten over what had happened the week before.

Everyone bowed their head, as if they hadn't gotten over it either.

"I missed that one," my father said. "What the hell happened?"

Wilma began, "Last week Felicia brought in a cake. A low-fat yogurt cake."

"I'm Felicia," Felicia said. "I just love everyone here and wanted to show it. I was making a fattening one for my son, so I thought I'd make one for the girls. Just make the necessary, healthy substitutions."

Ellen said, "It was delicious. I couldn't believe it was low fat."

"None of us could," Wilma said, "We all had seconds. We devoured the thing."

"During the break, my son called me to say I took the wrong cake. They had the low fat one. We gobbled up the unhealthy one," Felicia said.

"When Felicia announced the mistake to the group, I began to gag. I didn't have time to go to the bathroom," Wilma said. "I couldn't control myself."

"So you puked?" I said. I couldn't believe I had blurted those words out without thinking.

"Don't shame her," Ellen said.

"I was just making sure I understood her," I said.

"But why did you puke?" my father asked. "Do a few extra calories really matter when we're as big as we are?"

"We?" Wilma said, "We? Don't lump me in with you. I don't consider myself fat." Wilma weighed at least 250 pounds.

"But we are all here for a reason," my father said.

"Of course," Wilma said, "but my reason isn't necessarily your reason."

"We are in a group called Overeaters Anonymous, right?" I said.

"What gives you the right to butt in?" Ellen said. "This is your first meeting. Most of the newbies know to shut up and listen."

"But she puked," I said. "What lesson is there in that?"

Wilma put her head down and started to cry.

"How dare you!" another woman screamed. "How dare you come in and mock us."

"I'm fat, too," I said.

"That might be the problem," Ellen said. "We don't see ourselves as fat and unattractive. We overeat. There's a difference."

"But do other people see you as fat and unattractive?" my father asked.

"I'm disappointed in you, Lew," Ellen said, "Last time you came so far, telling us that your shame about overeating came from your feeling that it gave your son permission to pig out."

"I just don't want other people to see him as fat and unattractive," my father said.

"But what does it matter what other people think?" Felicia said.

"Everything," my father said. "Absolutely everything."

"Well, I don't care what people think," Felicia said.

"That's perfectly obvious," my father said.

Wilma said, "I've seen you at the Sizzler. I wouldn't make enemies. You need this group."

"Don't tell me what I need. You're the one who's puking all over the place," my father said. "You need a lobotomy."

Ellen said to my father, "And you need a shrink. Please leave now. Make a graceful exit."

My father grabbed my hand; we walked toward the door. I couldn't believe he was holding my hand. I had never even seen him hold my mother's hand. I was almost twelve years old. It felt weird. I wondered if holding my hand kept him from running, as he had from the fat camp.

In the car, my dad said, "I'm hungry."

"Me, too," I said.

"Want McDonald's?"

"Can we afford it?"

"I'll use the money I was going to pay for our dues."

We went through the drive-thru and bought food not only for us, but also for my mother and brother. When we got home, they were waiting at the door. They could smell the food from the driveway.

"Why'd you spend money on all this?" my mother asked, "I already made dinner."

"Then we'll have two meals," he said. "We're going to eat like kings!"

"Like kings?" my mother repeated. The phrase obviously tickled her.

"We're going to eat like kings!" I shouted.

"We're going to eat like kings!" she laughed, and started to set the table.

I looked at my mother, short and stocky, with a horrible home dye job that made her hair look more faded than its natural color. I thought about her weekend outfit that never changed no matter what the season, no matter who was coming over, no matter where we were going: a Cubs sweatshirt and a pair of green sweatpants. I thought about the times I went out with her in public, cringing when people looked at us, knowing they would look down on us, thankful when they did.

I looked at her now.

I looked at my family.

So fat and unfashionable, we were untouchable.

Copyright 2004, Wendy Murray

nidus is an online publication supported by the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh's English Department.