Thankfully, Brian’s nodding as I talk. “Okay, sure. Like, if you were named Clarence McConkey, maybe life’s not so great for you.”
“Exactly! There’s nothing technically wrong with the name Clarence McConkey, but people probably have feelings about it. I mean…yikes.” I realize this conversation has probably gone on way longer than it should, but I spend a ton of time thinking about names. When you’re writing, you’re always trying to come up with the perfect names for your characters, and maybe I get a little carried away sometimes. Shrug emoji. “Anyway. Packages?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Packages. We’re grouping six small ones with each of these large ones. You take the small, I’ll take the big?”
I’d normally want to argue about it. I’m no weakling just because I’m a girl, but the boxes are big, and I notice that Brian’s muscular arms could handle them with ease. He’s husky, you know? Like he could be a football player. He isn’t, but I’m just saying. He’s really not bad to look at.
I smile and agree, and we get to work.
“How long have you worked here?” I ask as we sort.
“Just started this semester. I found the job through the guidance counselor at school. I like it so far. Pretty painless. What about you?”
“I started in the fall. I like it, too. Everyone’s really nice.” As I talk, I shift boxes. “I just wish I had a clue what they actually make.”
Brian laughs. “You neither? That makes me feel a little better. It’s stuff for hospitals, that’s all I know. I’m not out here trying to become a doctor, obviously.”
“Same here. No thanks. I have a hard enough time thinking about how I’ll have to dissect a frog in bio.” I pretend to gag.
“Who was it that decided dissection would be a useful skill to have? Cool, I have no idea how loans work and I’d love to learn more about that whole ‘401K’ thing, but yeah, let’s dig into this frog!”
I laugh at that. He’s totally right, and I’m pleased with how easy our conversation is as we work. Before I know it, we’re done. I check my watch (an activity tracker that my mom bought for me so she can track my steps) and realize it’s almost time to go.
“All set?” I ask.
“All set. Man, that went way faster with your help,” Brian says, looking over at me. Then he chuckles. “Oh. You’ve got a little something.” He points at his forehead. I rub mine with my sleeve.
“Did I get it?” I ask, feeling embarrassed.
“You got it. Happens to me all the time,” Brian says. “It’s dirty back here. Sorry you had to help while wearing your nice clothes.”
I feel a smile involuntarily tug at my lips. I like that he thinks my clothes are nice. “It’s no problem. Glad I could be helpful.” I turn to leave. “See you in…art class, right?” I pretend I’m not sure he’s in my art class even though I know he totally is.
Brian smiles at me. “Yeah! I’ll definitely see you in art class, Charlie. Thanks again.”
When I get home, my mom’s car is missing from the driveway. Small miracles. Inside, on the kitchen counter, there’s a note that just says Enjoy. It’s propped up on a meal-replacement shake, and suddenly my good mood dissipates.
My mom swears by these shakes. They’re what got her thin, she says to anyone who’ll listen. She loves them so much that she’s become a consultant for the company, and now she sells them on Facebook as part of what’s definitely not a pyramid scheme (it’s a pyramid scheme).
For a while now, she’s been trying to get me to drink them, too. She tells me if I just replace one meal a day with them, I can really start to see some results on my body—my unruly body that needs to be controlled, I guess—and I can finally start living. Like it’s impossible for me to live now in this body I have.
I’m ashamed that I often look at my body and secretly agree.
See, the thing about my mom is that she was fat until, suddenly, she wasn’t. Or at least that’s how it felt to me. I feel like I woke up one day and the Mom I knew was gone and replaced with a newer, thinner model.
But the change didn’t actually happen overnight. Perhaps I didn’t want to see what was right in front of me—that my mother’s body was slowly shrinking, looking less and less like mine every day, because I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) acknowledge that she was achieving the very thing I waste so much time longing for.
It went like this: my dad got sick and died, my mom wallowed for a long time, we both got fatter together in our sadness, she had trouble feeling good about herself, she decided to throw herself into losing weight, and then—bam. Things were different.
I guess there were a few other things that happened in between, but that’s the gist.
It didn’t help that my mom and I were never especially close. People always said I was Héctor’s girl, through and through. I inherited Papi’s brown skin, dark eyes, curly hair, and sense of humor. My mom—white, with light-brown eyes and straight hair, not as easily amused as us—would sometimes grumble about the fact that she felt left out of our jokes.
My dad and I just clicked. Our relationship was easy in all the ways that my relationship with my mom is hard. It was like he got me right down to my core from the moment I could talk.
Though he worked construction, Papi’s heart really belonged to storytelling. He wrote in his spare time—he loved mystery novels and the art of a good thrill—and passed that admiration for language on to me (though telling stories about ordinary people falling in love is more my cup of tea). Storytelling was just something we did together. When I was a kid, he read me stories at bedtime until I was old enough to read some to him. Then we ditched the books altogether and started making up the stories together. It was our thing, and he even wrote a few of his favorites down so we would remember them. My favorite was “Charlie and the Rainbow Shoes,” which we based on a pair of Mary Janes I owned that had rainbow stitching around the edges. In the story, they were magical and let little Charlie do things like swim with whales and fight monsters and ride unicorns and fly. I still have the story in a box under my bed.
Papi had a thing for the spoken word, too. He was bilingual and always seemed to be talking—he just always had stories bursting out of him. He couldn’t (or didn’t want to?) contain his big imagination, and sometimes that meant he got too invested in new projects that would never go anywhere. If we needed a little extra cash: What if we started a dog-walking business? If we were bored of the same meals: What about a night of homemade sushi and gyoza? If we were seeking some adventure: What if we drove to the coast and explored the shoreline?
I liked to think of my dad as a balloon always drifting toward the sky, and my mom as the anchor always keeping him tethered to the ground—not enough so that he couldn’t dream, necessarily, but enough so that we didn’t go broke or end up at the beach in the middle of the night when it was freezing cold out.
Even though sometimes my parents were like fire and ice, for the most part, they worked together. She never let him float away, and he helped her keep her joy alive.
That’s why it was better when we were three. There was a sense of stability, and when things got tough between me and my mom, my dad could serve as the buffer between the two girls he loved most. Because if I got my love of words and laughter from my dad, I got my stubbornness and tenacity from my mom. We aren’t so much oil and water as we’re just two straight-up firecrackers who both like to be right and have the last word and are—ultimately—incredibly sensitive.