Carmel
‘You have already lost some weight, I see.’ Masha opened Carmel’s file to begin her counselling session.
‘Have I?’ said Carmel. She felt like she’d won a prize. ‘How much?’
Masha ignored the question. She ran her finger down a sheet of paper in the file.
‘I thought I might have lost some – but I wasn’t sure.’ Carmel heard her unused voice tremble with pleasure. She hadn’t dared to hope. It seemed that Yao deliberately stood in such a way that she couldn’t see that dreaded number on the scales each day.
She put a hand to her stomach. She had suspected it was getting flatter, her clothes looser! She’d been secretly touching her stomach, like when she was pregnant for the first time. This retreat was just like that euphoric time: the feeling that her body was changing in new and miraculous ways.
‘I guess I’ll probably lose even more when we start the fast tomorrow?’ Carmel wanted to demonstrate her enthusiasm and commitment to the retreat. She would do whatever it took.
Masha said nothing. She closed Carmel’s file and balanced her chin on her folded hands.
Carmel said, ‘I hope it’s not just fluid loss. They say that in the first few days of a diet you mostly just lose fluid.’
Masha still said nothing.
‘I know the meals here are all calorie-controlled. I guess the challenge will be maintaining my weight loss when I go home. I’d be really grateful for any nutrition advice you can give me going forward. Maybe a recipe plan?’
‘You do not need a recipe plan,’ said Masha. ‘You are intelligent woman. You know what to do to lose weight, if that’s what you want. You are not especially fat. You are not especially thin. You want to be thinner. That is your choice. I find this not so interesting.’
‘Oh,’ said Carmel. ‘Sorry.’
‘Tell me something about yourself that is not related to your weight,’ said Masha.
‘Well, I have four daughters,’ said Carmel. She smiled at the thought of them. ‘They’re aged ten, eight, seven and five.’
‘I know this already. You are a mother,’ said Masha. ‘Tell me something else.’
‘My husband left me. He has a new girlfriend now. So that’s been –’
Masha waved that away irritably, as if it were of no relevance. ‘Something else.’
‘There is nothing else right now,’ said Carmel. ‘There’s no time for anything else. I’m just a normal busy mum. An overweight, stressed-out, suburban mum.’ As she spoke she scanned Masha’s desk for family photos. She must not have children. If she did, she would know how motherhood swallowed you up whole. ‘I work part-time,’ she tried to explain. ‘I have an elderly mother who is not well. I am always tired. Always, always tired.’
Masha sighed, as if Carmel were not behaving.
‘I know I need to work more exercise into my schedule?’ offered Carmel. Was that what she wanted to hear?
‘Yes,’ said Masha. ‘Yes, you do. But I find this also not so interesting.’
‘When the kids are older I’ll have more time to –’
‘Tell me about when you were schoolgirl,’ interrupted Masha. ‘What were you like? Smart? Top of class? Bottom of class? Naughty? Loud? Shy?’
‘I was mostly near the top of the class,’ said Carmel. Always. ‘Not naughty. Not shy. Not loud.’ She thought about it. ‘Although, I could be very loud. If I felt strongly about something.’
She remembered a heated argument with a teacher who wrote ‘the thunder boomed, the lightening flashed’ on the blackboard. Carmel stood up to correct the teacher’s spelling of ‘lightning’. The teacher didn’t believe her. Carmel wouldn’t back down, even when the teacher yelled at her. She was all-powerful when she knew without doubt that she was in the right. But how often did you know for sure that you were right? Hardly ever.
‘Interesting,’ said Masha. ‘Because right now you do not seem like a very loud person.’
‘You should see me in the morning when I yell at my kids,’ said Carmel.
‘Why have I not seen this “loud” Carmel? Where is she?’
‘Um – we’re not allowed to speak?’
‘That is a good point. But see – even then, when you made a very valid point, you said it like a question. You put this questioning sound at the end of your sentences. Like this? Your voice goes up? Like you are not really sure? Of everything you say?’
Carmel squirmed at Masha’s imitation of her speech patterns. Was that really how she sounded?
‘And your walk,’ said Masha. ‘That is the other thing: I don’t like the way you walk.’
‘You don’t like the way I walk?’ spluttered Carmel. Wasn’t that kind of rude?
Masha stood and came out from behind her desk. ‘This is how you walk right now.’ She rounded her shoulders, dropped her chin and did a scurrying kind of sidestep across the room. ‘Like you are hoping no-one sees you. Why do you do that?’
‘I don’t think I exactly –’
‘Yes, you do.’ Masha sat back down. ‘I don’t think you always walked like this. I think once you walked properly. Do you want your daughters to walk like you walk?’ It was obviously a rhetorical question. ‘You are a woman in the prime of your life! You should march into a room with your head held high! Like you are walking onto a stage, a battlefield!’
Carmel stared. ‘I’ll try?’ she said. She coughed, and remembered to turn it into a statement. ‘I will try. I will try to do that.’
Masha smiled. ‘Good. At first it will feel strange. You will have to fake it. But then you will remember. You will think, Oh, that’s right, this is how I talk, this is how I walk. This is me, Carmel.’ She knocked her closed fist against her heart. ‘This is who I am.’
She leaned forward and lowered her voice. ‘I will tell you a secret.’ Her eyes danced. ‘You will look thinner if you walk like that!’
Carmel smiled back. Was she joking?
‘Everything will become clearer over the next few days,’ said Masha, with a gesture that made Carmel stand up quickly, as if she’d outstayed her welcome.
Masha pulled a notepad towards her and began to write something down.
Carmel hovered. She tried to put her shoulders back. ‘Could you just tell me how much weight I’ve lost so far?’
Masha didn’t look up. ‘Close the door behind you.’