2
Alina
“Time for dessert,” Aunt Liz calls, as she carries in a most spectacular-looking pumpkin cheesecake and places it on the dining room table, the remains of our turkey dinner having been cleared away.
I salivate, taking in the perfectly smooth, swirly, two-toned cheesecake. To say I have an obsession with all things pumpkin would be an understatement. Too bad I’m already stuffed. Aunt Liz had actually allowed me to have seconds tonight, going so far as to offer them, even.
Tasked with the job of serving dessert, I hand out pieces as Uncle Virgil, Lucky, Dean, and Uncle Virgil’s parents all gather back in their spots around the table. I ask, “Can we wrap my piece up for later? I’m so full, I’m not sure I can eat anything else right now.” I look up at my aunt.
“Jesus, Alina, don’t be so selfish!” she mutters at the audacity of my question, low enough that no one else hears as they take their seats. “We haven’t even served all our guests yet. And, quite frankly, I’m not sure that butt of yours needs any cheesecake at all.”
I recoil immediately. “Okay, never mind,” I whisper, passing a plate to Lucky, ensuring my smile is in its rightful place.
“Thanks, Squirt. Looks so good, Aunt Liz,” Lucky says, reaching for the Cool Whip.
“Well, let’s hope it tastes as good as it looks. There’s plenty, everyone, so don’t be shy,” she says, casting me a sideways glance, knowing her comment is sure to elicit a reaction. But as I pass out the plates, I work damn hard not to give Aunt Liz the reaction she’s looking for. It’s certainly not the first time she’s done something like this, but lately it’s been happening more and more often. And each time, it’s like a slap in the face, stinging and burning, chipping away at how I see myself. Does everyone around me also see me as the fat girl, but unlike my aunt, are afraid to say anything? Maybe Liz is doing me a favour?
“Aren’t you having a piece, Alina? It’s your favourite. It’s why Liz made it,” my uncle asks, smiling warmly as I set down the platter and take my seat. Of course that’s why she made it.
“It is my favourite, but I’m so full. If I’d’ve known, I would have saved some room,” I laugh, trying to shake off the hurt. “Hopefully, there’ll be some left,” I try, avoiding my aunt’s face.
“Well, it’s a shame,” Aunt Liz crows, “because if you can’t eat it now, you’ll just have to miss out. I doubt there’ll be any left. And if there is,” she pauses, discreetly glancing down at my stomach, “I’m sending it home with Grandma McQueen. Us girls are starting our diets this week, remember? We need to fit into our holiday dresses.” She smiles lovingly, and I know it’s all for show. There hasn’t been any talk of “our” diets, and I’ve already been told I can’t get a new dress for the school Christmas dance. So, no, I don’t remember. I reach for my water to stifle myself from answering back.
Luckily, at that moment, Thor—the family’s Bichon Frise—comes whining to the table, saving me from more scrutiny.
“I’ll let you out in a minute, Thor,” Uncle Virgil mouths around a forkful of cheesecake, one I so badly want to be eating myself.
“It’s fine, I can take him. I’m all done anyway,” I offer, knowing if I sit here any longer I’ll cave and eat a piece, which will only make me feel sick.
“Thank you, honey,” Virgil nods.
“No problem.” I move to pick up Thor, thankful for the escape. I need a few minutes, anyway, because Aunt Liz’s digs are making me feel like I’m going to burst into screams.
“Let’s go, baby. You need a break, too?” I whisper, snuggling him into my neck as we head out the back door to the large yard.
Following Thor around, I can’t stop thinking about how cruel my aunt was for allowing me seconds of turkey tonight, knowing full well she’d secretly made my favourite dessert. “I should’ve known there was a reason. Seconds. I’m never allowed seconds,” I huff, shaking my head and walking towards the small bench next to the spruce tree. I can’t help replaying her words over and over.
“Our diets…don’t be so selfish…I’m not sure that butt of yours needs any cheesecake…”
Sitting here as Thor scouts around looking for the perfect place to pee, I can’t help wishing I did have room for the cheesecake, wishing for once I could do something to spite my aunt, to show her she’s not in control of me after all. I can’t stop thinking of them all sitting inside, and how amazing the dessert must taste, in spite of the pressure in my stomach.
Determined, I stand. Looking around to make sure I’m alone, I see Thor over in the corner, busy sniffing around. I make my way towards the back of the fence, alongside the old brownish-red shed, a feeling of satisfaction forming in the pit of my stomach as the idea of how to make some room for dessert takes shape.
Standing with my back to the house just in case anyone looks out, I spread my legs far apart in case this actually works. For the first time in my life, I stick my index finger in my mouth down my throat a little, and wait. When nothing happens, I decide maybe if I lean a little more forward and add another finger, it will do the trick. And with a few jerky movements, a few unladylike gags and groans, another step forward, and sinking my two fingers in a lot deeper than before, I make myself throw up.
Not only did I make room for, and eat, the most amazing piece of pumpkin cheesecake despite my aunt’s disapproving glares and shitty comments that night, I also found a new sense of contentment, and a feeling of power had risen inside me. This was something I could control—for the first time in years, I made a decision that was all mine, and just for me.
It was supposed to be a one-off to spite my aunt, a way of allowing myself to have my cake and eat it, too. A way to piss her off.
However, years later, the joke would be on me.
I didn’t plan to be weak. I never thought it would happen again, or that I’d let myself fall so far down the rabbit hole that I’d one day be in so deep I’d never find Wonderland, but it happened.
Circumstances change people. Words have the power to impact and puncture our souls, leaving our psyches poisoned and vulnerable, long after those words are said. When we sling words like weapons, using them to hurt, deceive, or to make gains, we often don’t stop to consider the lasting effects those words might have on someone else. That boy in elementary school whom people treated as if he’d had some sort of communicable disease; the “clique” you hung out with in high school, thinking you were better than everyone else and making sure everybody knew it; the guy or girl you rejected with an unkind comment because he or she didn’t look the part. Be it intentional or not, we all carry some fault in shaping the way those people we trampled on see themselves today.
I know this to be true. I speak from experience. Even though I was never so much the target of my peers at school, it came from my own family. My mother and my aunt, always my biggest tormentors with their words, not only wounding me but crushing my spirit, piercing it into a million tiny pieces, with an end result of stripping me of any confidence I might have left.
“You’re pathetic, you can’t do anything right,” my aunt would spit when taking her anger out on me.
“You cannot be my kid,” my mom had scolded when she was a drunken mess.
Each and every comment was like a direct hit in a game of Battleship.
Relentless in their fucked-up game of Crushing Alina’s Soul, a game which never seemed to end, even after my mother’s death.
“Hey, stupid! Don’t you know how to listen?” I can still hear my mom shout, whenever she had wanted me to get her another drink. Even after death, my mother’s words have played on repeat in my mind, only to be echoed in the actions and words of Aunt Liz when we moved in with her.
“No wonder she didn’t love you. You’re such a pain in the ass, you never do anything right,” Aunt Liz had said one night, when I dropped and broke a dish while emptying the dishwasher.
These words and phrases worked against me, helping to cultivate the inner voice of my bully who, after that Thanksgiving night, wasn’t silently waiting around anymore. I had given Her the opening she needed. She knew I was already weak and, taking that kernel, She began working to trick me into believing that I was everything my mother and aunt said I was.
I guess my illness is a product of circumstance, verbal abuse, and my own weakness. I never intentionally meant to hurt myself so badly that I’d have to constantly hide behind a façade of fake happiness, lies, and bullshit. It was a kind of cause-and-effect syndrome, which led me straight into Her clutches once upon a Thanksgiving night.
I guess you could say that my mom and Aunt Liz had launched their torpedoes at warp speed, crushing me with each blow, and they eventually found and sunk my battleship.
Over the years, with the voice of my bully egging me on, I started seeking food for comfort and comfort in food, believing everything they’d said about me as if it were my truth. And, looking back, it all started that night at the tender age of thirteen. That’s when I’d set the wheels in motion for what would become the biggest fight I’d ever face—the battle for myself. And with my mother’s and Liz’s words playing on repeat as the voice of the bully who lived inside my head, I was sure they were right all along.
I would never be enough.
Just like they said.