Fried Eggs

"You're so fat. And ugly. Fat pig." If you said hello or asked to borrow an eraser or told the kid in front of you she dropped her pencil or tried to play skip rope at recess there was no doubt every reaction or reply would refer to your fatness. Popularity depended mostly on who was skinniest and prettiest. If your tummy had an extra layer of pudge, you were automatically a teaser target.

"Can I have some of your Snickers? You should share, you don't really need anymore Snickers."

Sofia Blitnor sucked in her belly. Her father just bought her a new pair of jeans because the old ones wouldn't zipper up anymore. Her fat spilled over the tops of her waistline only slightly now, but if she sucked in hard enough, it almost didn't spill over at all.

"I'll trade you my apple for that Snickers. You should have this apple, you can pretend it tastes like Snickers."

It was hard not to hate Jenny Weldney for her blond hair alone. It streamed out the top of her head like skinny yellow ribbons. Every strand was like another little skinny girl taunting Sofia about her belly or sausage arms or back rolls.

Jenny snagged the Snickers from Sofia's hand. Her pink glittery nail polish reflected in the sunlight as she peeled away the plastic wrapping of the chocolate bar and sunk her square, white teeth into the nuts and caramel. Noticing the string of caramel hanging off her chin, Jenny stretched her tongue out to scoop it up, and slurped it into her mouth. A piece of nut was stuck in between her two front teeth, but it wouldn't matter, not to anyone who walked by. Devouring the last of the bar, she swallowed hard, like pressing down a spoonful of fudge, and with that long, pink tongue, she swiped the nut from between her front teeth.

Sofia stood, watching her Snickers melt away, down into Jenny's tiny bowl of a belly.

How many Snickers would Jenny have to eat to get as fat me?

The afternoon melted away like caramel in Jenny's mouth. Sofia sat on her front stoop, waiting for Jenny to come back with a chocolate bar, or even that apple. She waited for an opportunity to confront forgiveness and make God proud. Pressing against the cement of the stoop, the fat of her thighs dimpled like orange peel. She ran her fingers over the bumps.

The last thing Sofia Blintnor's mother, Jacklyn, had taught her, before she left Sofia's father and vanished from their home, was the word "propaganda." They were walking through the magazine isle of a Walmart when Sofia stopped to stare at Kate Moss' waify torso. Jacklyn was trying perhaps, to make her understand skinny little girls, the world into which she was about to abandon her for a short while.

There were two worlds, anyway. In one, her father came home late from work, black under his fingernails, rolled under his car in the garage, repaired odds and ends of things needing fixing and dispensed dollars to her mother when necessary, and her mother, home all day with a clean face, pressing shirt collars, baking cookies that made the house smell happy, pouring detergent into the washing machine, on and off the phone with her sister in a different country, and praying by her bedside that her own mother, who was far away in that country with her sister, would be ok. These worlds were for Sofia full of kindness, patience and independence, like her mother herself. She would clutch Sofia, and with fingers pressing into the fat of her arms, say, "You're a good girl, you're such a good girl," or "don't ever change, not for anything in the world," or just as likely sit on her bed and cry with worry that she was herself, a bad daughter, for not being able to help her sick mother. She was sweet with information that Sofia couldn't yet use: God is everywhere and carries you when you need to be carried, the perfect banana bread needs a whole teaspoon of vanilla, the media abuses children emotionally, premarital sex is a sin, Martha Stewart's Christmas wreathes are too costly to make but do make lovely gifts. Sofia pushed through Jacklyn's domestic ideals, asking her not to plug the iron in and watch a movie instead, and would rub her back and bring her tissue telling her she was a good mommy and that grandma thought so too. Jacklyn had grown up a church girl with no care for glam or pointy hip bones, and when Sofia would cry about being called two ton tessie at recess, Jacklyn would eject her from the first of her two worlds, the house, into the second. The outside, the playground. The skinny terrain.

"If someone calls you fat, tell them God will only punish them for their cruel words," Jacklyn said. "Don't be ashamed of how you look, God made us all differently." She'd pulled Sofia away from the covers of fashion models, explaining how the people who pay them, pay them to eat even less than they seldom do, so that little girls can feel bad about themselves and buy make up and dresses and shoes that will help them look and feel better. "Don't let me hear you say that you're ugly," she said slowly, sternly. "Thats the one word you should never use, because as long as you have a good heart, you are never ugly. Who says that being skinny like a toothpick is beautiful? Who says that a little meat on your bones is ugly? People want you to feel ugly so they feel pretty. You just love yourself and turn the other cheek when those girls at school tease you." She pulled Sofia in close and tucked her beneath her arm. A piece of brown hair was falling out of the fastening pin, falling away from the rest of the brown hair clumped under the pin's pressured hold.

"A 16 year old girl in Spain died because she stopped eating. She wanted to model, and she did, but she's dead now. Reading those fashion magazines will only poison you, those girls at school who tease are poising themselves already. Thats why they tease you, because they are poisoned. Listen to your mother, I'm the one who loves you."

Jacklyn wasn't fully responsible for what she said, Sofia knew. She was naive because she didn't grow up as a fat girl. She was only scared for her. Sofia's role was to unravel what she said and try to believe in ninety percent of it, to make her proud.

"That lovely woman who moved in next door is Mary Slym, she's a school teacher, she teachers elementary school and is of our Catholic faith and she reads at mass on Sundays. I actually heard her read last week. Her daughter is your age, she looks like a sweet girl. I bet you two will be best friends before the end of summer.

"D'you wear make up?" Bella Slym asked, the first day they met.

"Only at home in the bathroom. Like when my mom's asleep and stuff." Sofia said. Bella pulled a large, pink Caboodles kit out from her closet. Lipsticks, nail polish, eye shadows, blushes, powders, creams, brushes, sponges, compacts. They'd been used, some the pressed powders thin and empty in their middles, lipsticks worn out flat, not like the sharp edges Cindy Crawford would apply on the Revlon commercials Sofia has seen on TV. "BELLA, BELL OF THE BALL" was written in large, curly letters across the Caboodle kit.

"You know, I'm so sick of pink lipstick. I've really been liking red lately. It's so much more fancy and mature. The girls at school are such kids with their pink lips. Like, grow up. Don't you like red better than pink?"

"Red is nicer. More like a lady."

"Yeah, very lady like. What color does your mom wear?"

"My mom? She doesn't wear lipstick really. Mainly that Vaseline stuff, because she says it makes her lips not get all chappy. She's got some same Vaseline stuff for her hands. They're always cracked and chappy."

"D'you have last year's Holiday Barbie? She's got red lips."

"No." No Holiday Barbie's from any year Sofia almost said. She found an artifact on Bella's dresser, a pair of scissors of some sort without any blades.

"That's an eyelash curler, to make your eyes all fluttery like the models. Want to see a silk gown?"

Sofia nodded mutely, dropped the eyelash curler. Bella Slym was an exasperating breath of fresh, purified air. Sofia was already jealous, wondering how long she'd be able to keep her to herself.

They crept upstairs. Mary Slym has a whole closet for herself, one so big you could walk right into it. She had a built in organizer, with drawers and slots to put jewelry and hats and shoes in. The drawers were lined with red velvet, filled with gold and silver and charms and other shiny stones. Hanging on the back of her closet door, was a long plastic bag of sorts, a long zipper running down the middle. Bella unzipped it, and the silk gown was just that, long, cascading eggplant purple silk, with thin straps and a very low cut neck line.

Bella led Sofia to her playroom, where they made Barbie change her outfit three times before deciding on what Ken would think she looked best in. The room smelled like flowers, or berries. The whole house smelled like flowers or berries.

"Barbie's dress is almost like my mom's gown. You know my mom paid a lot of money for that gown, even though the lady she got it from gave her a discount since she shops there a lot. I cant wait 'til I fit into all her dresses and stuff, she says I can have 'em all."

"That’s lucky. I bet all her clothes are really nice."

"Well, I don't want her church clothes, she doesn't look beautiful in her church clothes, they're so, ugly. But she says it's inappropriate to wear sexy stuff to church 'cause God will be offended or something. Whatever, God made her like that so why is he offended? Makes no sense."

Sofia looked at Bella's hair and eyes, her fatless belly, took it in. Sofia wanted to slice the tire of fat off her own torso. Slice it off or stick the end of the Central Vac vacuum inside herself and suck all the fat out.

Bella Slym was a week and 2 days older than Sofia Blintnor but walked around in her mother's high heels like a whole decade older than their nine years of age. It wasn't age separating them, but the oodles of skinny girl things inside Bella's Caboodle. Their worlds were separated into the compartments of that kit, skinny girls in one slot, fat in the other, and while they were in the same grade that first year, Bella Slym played in the skinny slot while Sofia Blitnor played in her fat one.

On the Caboodle playground of that fourth grade year, there was a large group of neutral kids: the regular, boring, in between, neither here nor there kids, who jumped rope, played sports with the boys, read books, did their usual business, getting on well with out a second thought of it. But then, the two opposing sides, the skinnies and the fats, the former, who are too pretty and fashionable and cool to merge with the others, who engage in only one game with the boys: hard to get, and spend most of their lunch hour and recesses discussing what slobs the fats were, and the latter, not that they were a group as a whole, but they were individually their own group, that being a joke in itself, for their size, but mainly because they were just so tormented that they didn't engage much with anyone, not even eachother. The boys had their own Caboodle kit separation, but for the girl fats, the Sofia Blintnors, boys were so completely out of the question they cease to exist.

Walking to and from school, Bella Slym would chit chat the chitter chatter that her other skinny friends were interested in chit chatting about, while always a few steps behind, Sofia Blintnor's footsteps would go unheard, unnoticed, even by Bella, but quietly and secretly Sofia knew the segregation of that kit. She felt ok about it because she felt she was walking where she belonged, on a trail her mother could be proud of, a trail that was distant from the propaganda of poisoned skinny minds. She was content to walk home behind them, thinking about her mother far away in that other country, sitting next to her grandmother's bedside. She knew her mom was doing what she thought was the best thing, because maybe, she just thought that God would carry Sofia for her. When the walks home would come close to their end, Bella would slow her pace and let Sofia catch up, and would carry on with their steps, saying first words like, "You gotta see this new nail polish my mom got, matches that turquoise sweater you have almost perfectly, come in and I'll paint your nails for you," in a way that seemed to negate the segregation of the day.

They spent their days watching Christy Turlington strut her stuff down the catwalk, and when Bella Slym's mother was out getting groceries or buying a new dress, they'd try on all her clothes and have runway shows of their own. Sofia was pleased because though she was fat, she felt skinny in Mary Slym's adult clothes.

"So like, your mom's gone forever? Or just until your grandma dies?"

"Yeah I guess so, I don't know. She said she'd be back before I knew it."

"Well the good thing is you get to wear make up to school, because your dad's always so tired I bet he doesn't even notice you got it on."

Fifth grade went the same as the fourth. Difference was, in fifth grade, Bella Slym had grown more beautifully into her nose and her cheek bones seemed to be hallowed out a little more like the sharp and round cheeks of Linda Evangelista, and her legs had grown longer which made her that much taller, and over all gave a sense of a much skinnier Bella. Sofia Blintnor on the other hand, had gained an inch around her arms alone, with a larger and softer ring of fat around her waist, her eyebrows seems to come in fuller, and a bad haircut left the fringe over top those brows so short they frizzed up into a puff of unmanageableness that added to her weight and bulkiness. Every once in while they would do their dress ups and fashion shows and make-overs, trying on Mary Slym's new shoes and Bella's new nail polish. Sofia had nearly perfected the polish application; seldom did she get any on her cuticles at all.

During a rainy lunch hour in June, Sofia had gone to the washroom to re-apply a lipstick Bella said she could have.

"Look at Miss Piggy trying to be pretty. Do you think lipstick makes anyone think you're skinny? It doesn't make you less fat. You're fat. Lipstick doesn't matter."

Sofia wiped the color off with the back of her hand. Red smeared across her plump skin. She shoved the lipstick into her pocket.

"Where'd you get that, anyway? Your mom? I bet she's fat too. She shouldn't bother with lipstick either." Red as dark as the lipstick flushed Sofia's face.

"What's your problem?" Bella Slym said, emerging from one of the stalls. "Like, don't you have anything better to do?"

For the first time, the worlds of the skinnies and the fats collided like peanuts crushed between teeth. Sofia stood, red faced, fat, hair frizzed, silent. She wanted to squash the girl for talking about her mother. Her mother was not fat. She wanted to defend her, with justice, and spit and slap and scream. But she couldn't bring herself to act out that way, she thought that if she did, God will tell her mother that she didn't turn her other cheek.

"She's just pissy because some fourth grader showed up today with the same jacket as her. She's upset her mother bought it for her, she's embarrassed that her mother has no style. She's one of those moms who go to the grocery store wearing big coats and slippers with socks. No style at all. She's taking it out on you, forget her." Bella had a funny way of making Sofia feel better. Jacklyn was one of those women who went to the grocery store dressed like a slob. "I don't need to impress anyone, God doesn't care what I look like," she used to tell Sofia. Sofia was upset at her mother now. For having no style. For being away. For having birthed her a fat kid.

The first day of sixth grade, Sofia woke up early. She spent an hour getting ready, flat ironing her hair, spraying, squirting, squeezing hair products into her hands. She tamed it, holding the shorter parts down with her mother's bobby pins. She'd grown taller over the summer, but the squishy, pale layer of fat remained. Her chin had grown another chin underneath itself. She thought she looked ok. Presentable. Waiting patiently on her doorstep, she sat alone, trying not to pay the dimples on her thighs any attention. She waited for Bella to walk through her front door, dressed immaculately, no doubt. But Bella never showed.

Come on, Bella, where the heck are you?

Alone, Sofia walked to school. She would have rather been walking behind Bella than walk alone. She brought her walkman, knowing damn well that there would be no chatter from the mouths of skinny girls to listen to. Do you know what it feels like for a girl...do you know what it feels like in this world...for a girl... Except Madonna didn't know how it feels for a fat girl. She switched songs. Like a Prayer.

Three whole weeks of school had gone by. Sofia gained 2 pounds. All her make up was stashed away into a shoebox with the words SOFIA, SO FAT across the top in purple marker. She made the letters round and bubbly, and tucked the box away in her closet. Bella was gone and Sofia felt like wearing make-up without Bella's opinion of it was wrong, like a sin, like going behind Bella's back. Despite being angry with Bella for disappearing without a word, she forgave her.

During lunch recess, Sofia's eyes caught the skinnies heckling Pam Heff, a girl her age but a good 15 pounds heavier. They were throwing chocolate covered raisins at her. One hit her in the temple, and finally, she got up off her layers and headed inside.

The next recess, Sofia, feeling bad and sympathetic, went over to Pam, who was sitting alone on the only piece of grass that was near dead, and sat next to her.

"Those skinny girls are total assholes. Seriously, I want to just slap them in the mouth." Pam said.

"Yeah I know, you gotta just ignore it," Sofia said, "They're just dumb."

Pam picked a chocolate covered raisin from her shirt pocket. She pressed and circled it between her thumb and index finger as if to check for its edibility, then popped it into her mouth. Sofia's gaze shifted from the saliva that was collecting at the corner of Pam's mouth from the sucking of the raisin and noted how Pam's hair had a course and frizzy texture. Pam spit the raisin in the grass. Her eyebrows grew close to each other. The fat of her thighs pushed through the seams of her jeans. Sofia sucked in her belly, pushed it out, sucked it in, the pushed out again.

Bella Slym knocked on Sofia's front door with a bony, bronzed fist.

"Her stranger," Bella said when Sofia answered the door. "Miss me?"

"BELLA!" I heard you went away or something." Sofia closed the door behind her and they sat on her front steps. Bella's hair looked touched by the sun, it separated in streaks. She had mascara on her lashes in large, hard clumps. Black goup gathered in the corners of her eyes, traces of black liner smudging under her bottom lashes. No lipstick, just gloss.

"No one in Florida wears red lipstick, only gloss. Their so tanned, way darker than me, you probably think I'm so dark, but I'm not compared to them, so they don't really wear bronzing powder either. I mean, I did, because I'm pale next to them, but only a little. And everyone's blond! My mom let me get a few streaks, aren't they nice?"

A woman, that Sofia faintly recognized but couldn't place and ultimately passed off as someone who must sing in the choir at Sunday mass, was walking by when she overheard Bella's declaration of her new streaks.

"A child ," which sounded like chi-old, said the woman, "should not have poison put onto her scalp to make it a few shades lighter. You should be pleased with what God gave you."

Bella looked at Sofia, and then Sofia looked at the women.

"It's just a little sun-in, no big deal. We're just kids, happy with what God gave. Didn't you play dress up when you were a kid?" The woman exhaled deeply and kept walking. Like thinking, and they talk back.

"I am not a kid, Sofeeeia. Maybe YOU are, but I AM NOT. That was sooo embarrassing. This isn't dress up." Bella's eyes were the hugest Sofia had ever seen, mainly on account of her expression but also from the allusion all the black around them gave.

"Oh come on Bella, I didn't want her thinking you were giving in to like, what the whole world wants you to be."

Well at least I don't have to wear it 'cause I'm fat was the only poison Bella could spit out. Sofia stood up, belly spilling over, wet under the fat of her arms. She waited for Bella to say something, anything, anything that could redeem her and give Sofia the chance to forgive her. But there was nothing. Bella left Sofia's doorstep, long tanned limbs, clavicle like soup bowls, a black mess around her eyes.

Sofia carried her box of make-up to the curb, ridding herself of the lipsticks, nail polish, eye shadows, blushes, powders, creams, brushes, sponges, compacts, and the need to suck in her belly.