Twenty-Three Pounds
by David Ortiz Parr
I don’t wear my bikini. It fits. I mean, I did lose twenty-three pounds over the summer. Well, really it started in March, but I wore the same baggy clothes I always had on all the way through the end of high school. See, I had this big idea that when I started at Boville, I’d be, like, this whole new person. With a crowd. All that. I’d do all this bold-ass stuff with my new girlfriends and the guys would side-eye us and be too intimidated to come over because we’d be so fine.
And, don’t get me wrong, I do. Look good, I mean. Like, okay, when I go to Littman’s I can see the men – some of them waaay older, right? Looking at me, playing like they’re not paying attention and looking at the apples or the melons instead of my melons. I mean, I didn’t just up and start dressing slutty all a sudden, but I scouted some outfits with my graduation money, you know? Got my rows done. And my nails. Shit, they looked good. They’re mostly chipped off now, but I never put that weight back on.
Okay, so it’s just these men checking me out at the grocer and not any college boys, because I’m not at Boville. I’m just working here now – filing and office shit, depending on what the agency has each day. It’s all good, and I still lost the weight, right? Except – and here’s what makes me shake my head when I’m alone in the car driving back to my mama’s place, and maybe I hit the steering wheel sometimes, too, and all right I scream and dig my nails into my thighs, and maybe this is pretty much everyday – I don’t even know if these guys are looking at me. I mean, looking at me. Even old Murray who sits in that park every afternoon with his bottle and whistles and catcalls each woman he lays eyes on, he tracks me up and down when I slide by, but he never says one word like he does with any other girl walking through.
See, I don’t know if any of these fools are just seeing the girl from the pool, and whenever they check me out it puts me right back at Bear Care. It’s August third, my second year there, and it was good money for me in high school. I got Tamara and Brian and Lyra and little Troy with me after nap time. And I’m playing and we’re splashing in that wading pool, and it’s just up to, like, my shins, and we’re practicing our ABCs a little. Just a beautiful day, you know? And me in my new purple bikini because I want to try it out before anyone taller than three feet sees me in it. So then I’m singing the Little Lion song and they all growl when it’s time, and at the end when I roar back – and they know it’s coming – they squeal, oh my! So again, they want it again, right? And Tamara makes her little growl when I bring my nose right up to her nose, and then Brian does it when I come in close, then Lyra. But then there’s no growl and I see why little Troy isn’t making that sound, and I can’t touch his nose with my nose because his nose is in the water. And then I’m making real sounds, real-life roars, and I get him out, but by the time Miss Addie gets there it’s just me and the other little ones looking down at little Troy now on his back, and his lips are purple just like my suit. He’s about as big as the weight I shook off, and just as gone. And Lyra is there patting his leg, like maybe he’ll sit up.
So, like, what do you do after that? After all the police and the investigation. After they let you off. You don’t go to Boville. Or maybe you do, but it’s a blink before you’re huddling on the floor of your dorm and shaking and scaring everything out of your white roommate, who thought she maybe had a new friend. It’s back to your old bedroom, then, where you took all your posters down in June and where your mama wanted to make a home office. It’s temp jobs and feeling those eyes everywhere you go. It’s losing more weight without trying to. And before you know it, it’s November and getting cold out, and that’s just as well, because that bikini? You’re never going to put that on again.
David Ortiz Parr is a teacher who lives in Portland, Maine. He is the son of a Maine milltown father and a Nuyorican mother, and he is a husband, father, and dog-owner (shout out to Bernie!).